“Music can make me feel tense or relaxed; it can disturb, unsettle me, and startle me; it can calm me down or excite me…” Jennifer Robinson, ‘Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music’.
Dispassionate Listening
Cognitivist theory holds that the experience or interpretation a particular musical sound engenders is a result of a conscious process of inference. Implicit in this line of thought is the idea that music has expressive properties which listeners recognise (see Peter Kivy, Music Alone). One theory for instance is that the form of emotional music bears close resemblance to the bodily movements experienced when emotions are aroused. If for instance someone is in an agitated or restless state, she is liable to behave agitatedly or restlessly; and if she does, her body makes agitated or restless movements.
Aesthetic Responses
According to emotivist theory, music is both a cause and an effect of sentiment. In perceiving music we react to it affectively. Emotivists are persuaded that the directarousal of emotion, such as being surprised, disturbed, satisfied, relaxed etc by the music, is a clue to its emotional expressiveness. Hence,“Disturbing passages disturb us; reassuring ones reassure. Passages that meander uncertainly make us feel uneasy… Passages that move forward confidently make us feel satisfied: we know what is happening and seem to be able to predict what will happen next. Passages that are full of obstacles make us feel tense and when the obstacles are overcome, we feel relieved.” Jennifer Robinson, ‘Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music’.
The Limits of Rationality
As things stand, neither the cognitivists nor the emotivists provide a completely satisfactory answer to our central problem. Their inability to do so might be rooted in the fact that both sets are under the illusion that it is possible to come up with a reductive all-embracing approach which fully accounts for the relationship between music and emotion. Thus, behind the attempt of emotivists to establish how ‘sad’ music can make one sad is the desire to show that listening to music is a completely sublime and emotional activity, rather than an analytic and dispassionate exercise. The cognitivists who on the other hand think that sadness is some kind of property extractable from the music, must fight against allowing emotion distract from intellectually reading the meaning of the music correctly.“a musical experience may give rise in some listener to a subjective feeling or emotion. That feeling may or may not be ‘identical’ with, or congruent with, a feeling-tone ascribed to the music. If it is not, the relation may be a matter of psychological causation, dependent on the listener’s personal make-up and history… The listener may (correctly or incorrectly) identify a piece of music as having, or as being meant to have, a certain conventional affective significance,… (or) identify a piece of music as evincing (being caused by, being symptomatic of) a certain feeling or disposition in composer and/or performer.” Sparshott, ‘Music and Feeling’.
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