Music and emotion

Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions. The research draws upon, and has significant implications for, such areas as philosophy, musicology, music therapy, music theory, and aesthetics, as well as the acts of musical composition and of musical performance like a concert. Two of the most influential philosophers in the aesthetics of music are Stephen Davies and Jerrold Levinson. Davies calls his view of the expressiveness of emotions in music "appearance emotionalism", which holds that music expresses emotion without feeling it. Objects can convey emotion because their structures can contain certain characteristics that resemble emotional expression. He says, "The resemblance that counts most for music's expressiveness ... is between music's temporally unfolding dynamic structure and configurations of human behaviour associated with the expression of emotion." The observer can note emotions from the listener's posture, gait, gestures, attitude, and comportment. Associations between musical features and emotion differ among individuals. Appearance emotionalism claims many listeners' perceiving associations constitutes the expressiveness of music. Which musical features are more commonly associated with which emotions is part of music psychology. Davies says that expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective in the sense of being projected into the music by the listener. Music's expressiveness is certainly response-dependent, i.e. it is realized in the listener's judgement. Skilled listeners very similarly attribute emotional expressiveness to a certain piece of music, thereby indicating according to Davies that the expressiveness of music is somewhat objective because if the music lacked expressiveness, then no expression could be projected into it as a reaction to the music.

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Music can be interpreted by attributing syntactic relationships to sequential musical events, and, computationally, such musical interpretation represents an analogous combinatorial task to syntactic processing in language. While this perspective has been ...

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Increased functional connectivity in the right dorsal auditory stream after a full year of piano training in healthy older adults

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The Structure of Free Polyphony

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The human ability to perceive and understand music is remarkable. From an unstructured stream of acoustic input it creates a wide range of experiences, from psycho-acoustic effects to emotional and aesthetic responses. One such set of phenomena is the expe ...

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This course will introduce students to the central topics in digital musicology and core theoretical approaches and methods. In the practical part, students will carry out a number of exercises.

According to some music therapists, the use of Music in the therapeutic environment has an affinity with psychoanalysis in that it addresses obstructions in the mind that might be causing stress, psychic tension, and even physical illness. Music has been used, in conjunction with a psychoanalytic approach, to address symptoms of a variety of mental disorders, as well as forms of emotional distress, such as grief, loss, mourning, and trauma.

Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life. Modern music psychology is primarily empirical; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants.

Music therapy, an allied health profession, "is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program." It is also a vocation, involving a deep commitment to music and the desire to use it as a medium to help others. Although music therapy has only been established as a profession relatively recently, the connection between music and therapy is not new Music therapy is a broad field.

Musical Features: Emotion & Expression

Explores how music communicates emotions through various features and syntactic structures, impacting listeners' responses and performers' expressions.

Emotion & Expression: Mechanisms and Impact

Explores the mechanisms behind emotion and expression in music, covering brain reflexes, rhythmic entrainment, memory, and cultural impact.

Musical Expectancy: Modeling and Transitions

Explores musical expectancy formation, modeling transitions in music, and computational challenges in representing musical structures, concluding with a study on Jazz harmony.