Music and Affect: The Praxial View (original) (raw)
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Emotions expressed and aroused by music: Philosophical perspectives
Sometimes philosophy seems to psychologists to be psychologizing in a fashion that is uninformed and unrestrained by empirical data. (And sometimes psychology looks to philosophers like unskilled philosophizing!) As this is the only chapter by a philosopher, I begin with an introduction outlining the nature of academic philosophy.
MUSIC AND EMOTION: AN EMPIRICAL CRITIQUE OF A KEY ISSUE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC
2007
The crux of much of the debate in the aesthetics of music has been the relationship of (instrumental) music and emotion, and specifically the issues of expression and induction of emotion by music. Kivy (e.g., 1989Kivy (e.g., , 1990Kivy (e.g., , 1999 has addressed these issues influentially, in part by means of the "emotivist" versus "cognitivist" dichotomy. A related topic has been the comparison of "musical emotions" to those that arise in the non-musical "real world." The aims of the paper are to show that some of the most important claims by the contemporary philosophers of music are empirically testable; to review some of the recent experimental work; and to demonstrate how such methodological and empirical advances can render certain aspects of the philosophical commentary obsolete. The paper concludes with the attempt to replace the concept of "musical emotions" by those of the measurable responses of "thrills/chills," "being moved" and "aesthetic awe" -all of these states being hierarchically related components in the Aesthetic Trinity theory (Konečni
The secret diaries of a music lover: associating emotions to music
2012
When trying to describe the relation between music and passion so that an interest in the passion will ipso facto be an interest in the music, one should avoid what Malcolm Budd calls “the heresy of the separable experience”: “the separation of [the experience] of what gives music its value (...) from [the experience of] the music itself.” (Budd 1985, p. 123) Or as Richard Wollheim puts it, it is hard to accept an explanation of art that places its essence outside the object of art itself. A heretical description “represents a musical work as being related in a certain way to an experience which can be fully characterized without reference to the nature of the work itself.” (Budd 1985, p. 123) Some emotional responses are more prone to this heresy than others. In order to avoid the heresy, one needs an explanation of the listening experience that keeps unified the expressive and non-expressive aspects of it so that they are the objects of one single act of attention.
Rethinking Philosophy, Re-Viewing Musical-Emotional Experiences
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012
This article aims to demonstrate the value of music education philosophy by applying characteristic philosophical procedures in an ordinary language and naturalist approach, and scientific research to an important issue in music and music education: musicalemotional experiences. The first part considers the identity of fully human music listeners, and the second reviews research in contemporary music psychology. The third part examines the strengths and weaknesses of two prominent philosophical concepts of musical experience. Building on the first three parts of the article, the fourth part offers a provisional explanation of people's musical-emotional experiences. The fifth part explains the concept of musical experience practically for music teaching and learning.
Music, feelings, and the human brain
Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 2014
Music of varied kinds consistently triggers a large range of drives and emotions, which, in turn, induce a particular class of mental experiences known as feelings. The feelings are often pleasurable, though not necessarily. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies, in normal individuals as well as in patients with focal neurological lesions, reveal that music can change the state of large-scale neural systems of the human brain. The changes are not confined to brain sectors related to auditory and motor processing; they also occur in regions related to the regulation of life processes (homeostasis), including those related to emotions and feelings, most prominently in the insula and cingulate cortices, in the ventral striatum, in the amygdala, and in certain upper brainstem nuclei. The ease with which music leads to feelings, the predictability with which it does so, the fact that human beings of many cultures actively seek and consume music, and the evidence that early humans engaged in music practices lead us to hypothesize that music has long had a consistent relation to the neural devices of human life regulation. It is conceivable that, as a result, music-induced feelings can be informative and nourishing at the individual level and can also operate as significant promoters of sociocultural organization. We venture that the close relationship between music and feelings along with music's effectiveness in certain personal and social contexts, that is, its roles in homeostasis, explain, at least in part, the considerable degree of selection and replication of music-related phenomena, both biologically and culturally. As the invention of music forms continued and as intellectual analysis of compositions and reflection on music expanded, the practices and uses of music became less closely aligned with its affective and homeostatic aspects and, to a certain degree, gained autonomy relative to those aspects. This may account for the varied panorama of music invention, practice, and consumption that can be found today.
Reviews the book, The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Arousal, Expression and Social Control, edited by Tom Cochrane, Bernardino Fantini, and Klaus R. Scherer (2013). This book is an anthology that draws together an impressive range of perspectives to explore the deep connection between music and emotion. The volume includes interviews with composers and performers, historical accounts of the social and therapeutic uses of music, various philosophical approaches, as well as research and theory in psychology and neuroscience. The book is organized in three sections, entitled “Musical expressiveness,” “Emotion elicitation,” and “The powers of music.” Each section receives an introduction by one of the editors where constituent chapters are outlined and placed in context. These introductions offer useful background information for readers who may be new to this area of research. Likewise, they allow more experienced readers to better orient the research offered by each author within the field at large. The writing is generally clear and well referenced; key terms and concepts receive adequate explanation. As a result, the book should be accessible to anyone interested in the topic while remaining a valuable reference for scholars in the field of musicology and psychomusicology.