By music’s arousal of emotions I shall understand the arousal of emotions by music in the very act of listening to it (not in performing it, or dancing to it, for example). And by music I shall understand pure instrumental music – instrumental music that lacks a text, a dramatic context, a program that it seeks to illustrate, or anything else that might enable it to have a representational content that it would otherwise lack. Pure instrumental music undoubtedly has the power to arouse emotions in listeners. If ways that are irrelevant to appreciation of the music are not excluded, music can arouse emotions of every kind, including fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, despair, remorse, envy, patriotism, and embarrassment, for instance, rather than the relatively few emotions, such as joy, sadness, and excitement, that music is most commonly thought of as evoking. In fact, given any emotion and any piece of music whatsoever, no matter how poor it may be, that emotion might be elicited in someone by an appropriate relationship in which the listener stands to the music. This might be by means of a purely personal association or by some more general kind of association, a cultural one, perhaps, as with Elgar’s “once in a lifetime” tune (the Trio of Pomp and Circumstance March No.1) now tarnished by its regrettable association with hearty, feel-good English patriotism. But the musical arousal of emotions by associations that are not integral to the appreciation of the music is philosophically uninteresting. What I shall be concerned with is an aesthetic matter, the arousal of emotion in the appreciation of music as music, by the character of the music itself, not by the music’s being associated in the mind of the listener with something not in the music and irrelevant to its appeal as music, without which association the music would lack its power to excite the emotion. (This allows that associations of various kinds might well be exploited by composers – as often they are – and so be relevant to the appreciation of the musical works in question.) The crucial issue is what role, if any, the arousal of emotions plays in the understanding, appreciation, and value of (pure instrumental) music, and, in particular, what contribution, if any, it makes to the musical value of a piece. The important questions are these: Which emotions, if any, can music arouse in an aesthetically relevant manner? Why these and only these? In what way or ways does music manage to arouse them? What is the aesthetic significance of their arousal?
There is no consensus about the crucial issue. At one extreme is the view that the cupboard of emotions that can be experienced outside a musical context (“extramusical” emotions), and that music can arouse in an aesthetically relevant manner, is bare: there are no such emotions (Hanslick 1986). The opposite extreme is, I believe, unoccupied: nobody holds that music can relevantly arouse emotions of every kind (self-contempt, for example). The middle ground is occupied by the great majority. These thinkers believe that the cupboard is not bare, but neither is it full. Some of them claim that it contains relatively few emotions (Davies 1994). But within the middle camp there is disagreement both about the number and identity of the emotions music can arouse and about the way or ways in which music arouses them.
A very great deal depends on the correct conception of the emotions (considered as occurrent experiential states). A common view is the so-called cognitive theory of the emotions, which is adhered to by the principal philosophical skeptic about music’s ability to arouse emotions of the “garden variety” (Kivy 2001a, b). The cognitive theory exists in many forms, which differ in both the number and the nature of the elements of which emotions are said to be composed. The crucial cognitive element of emotion has sometimes been thought to be a belief, but that is not essential to a cognitive theory and it is certainly too strong, ruling out emotions based not on belief, but imagining. What is definitive of the theory is that it represents each type of emotion as being defined by a particular kind of proposition or thought plus some combination of bodily sensations, “feelings,” hedonic tones, or whatever, so that when the emotion is experienced, prompted by something perceived, imagined, or thought about, it will have a real or imaginary object upon which it is directed, the emotion being about this intentional object. So, for example, the propositional element of fear is (something like) the thought of danger to oneself or someone or something one cares about, and the perception, realization, or imagination of such a danger engenders whatever else constitutes the emotion of fear (increased heart rate, etc.), the intentional object of the emotion being the represented dangerous thing.
Skepticism about pure instrumental music’s ability to stimulate extra-musical emotions in a listener in an artistically relevant manner arises at once from the fact that music is a non-representational form of art, presenting no scenes or actions that the listener might respond to emotionally as the viewer of a film or the reader of a novel might. There are two sides to this skepticism. The first is that there is no relevant intentional object for the emotion, that is, the lack of any real or imagined object for an emotion to be directed upon: there is no counterpart to the scene in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin as Anna walks along the railway lines to her death, or the scene in Kurosawa’s Ikiru as the final minutes of Kanji Watanabe’s life unfold as he sits on a swing in the playground he had fought so hard to get built. From this follows, second, the unavailability of the mechanisms of empathy and sympathy (or antipathy) active in appreciation of the representational arts. Now even if this skeptical line of thought has some plausibility, there are obvious exceptions. Admiration, repulsion, excitement, and amusement, for instance, are all emotions and, if aroused by the character of the music in listening to it, as they may well be, will have the music as their object. These and all other emotions whose intentional object is the music are unproblematic for a cognitive theory (or, indeed, for whatever is the correct theory of the emotions).
But a cognitive theory of the emotions is open to doubt. Two somewhat similar, but significantly different, non-cognitive theories deserve attention here, according to which, first, emotions are not in themselves cognitive states and, second, emotions do not in general need to be caused by cognitive states. Each theory is based on the idea of an emotion as a non-cognitive “appraisal” combined with physiological changes; both theories are contentious.
Jenefer Robinson represents emotion as a process in which a very fast, automatic, rough and ready “affective appraisal” concerning things that matter to the organism occurs without any conscious deliberation or awareness or any complex information processing, this appraisal inducing characteristic physiological and behavioral changes, which are likely to be followed by cognitive monitoring, which may change the experience (Robinson 2005, forthcoming a). So, seeing a stick beside me that resembles a snake, an affective appraisal concerning danger might be triggered, which induces bodily changes relevant to being endangered, only for me to realize that it is just a stick, which cognition calms me down, although perhaps my heart is still left racing somewhat. Robinson leaves the precise character of an affective appraisal uncertain (although “That’s offensive” or “Loss!” or “I like this” might, she thinks, be reasonable conceptualizations of such things). There is also a significant gap in her theory, for no account is offered of what makes an emotion process an experience of a specific emotion (jealousy, pity, nostalgia, amusement, grief, embarrassment, hatred, self-contempt, etc.). This leaves open the possibility that for at least some commonly recognized emotions an element of cognition (of a specific kind) is essential to them: only when this cognition enters the emotion process does it become an experience of that specific emotion. However, given her view that an emotional response is a response set off by a non-cognitive affective appraisal, it follows immediately that whenever pure instrumental music does not (in the aesthetically relevant manner) cause an affective appraisal, music does not arouse any emotions. Robinson herself accepts that in general music does not cause an affective appraisal, but nevertheless attempts to avoid the conclusion that music does not in general engender emotions – as I shall explain later.
For Jesse Prinz, emotions have two aspects: they are both “valent” and “embodied appraisals” (Prinz 2004). Embodied appraisals are embodied mental representations of a certain kind. They represent what they do by monitoring changes in one’s body, and what they represent is not a particular object or event but a relational property in which various objects might stand to oneself. More specifically, emotions are perceptions of (or as if of) changes in one’s body in virtue of which they represent something that has some bearing on one’s concerns or well-being, the emotions being differentiated by, on the one hand, the different contents of the representations, that is, by which concern is implicated, and, on the other, by their so-called valence. (Note that whereas Robinson’s affective appraisals cause physiological changes, Prinz’s embodied appraisals are perceptions of physiological changes already taking place.) Valence, which may be intrinsically positive, negative, or mixed, or which may be variable, is a matter of one’s attitude to the emotion: whether one wants to sustain or be rid of it. So, for example, sadness represents the loss of something valued by one, having a negative affect, whereas pride represents merit for a valuable object or achievement with which one identifies, this time with a positive affect. Each emotional experience consists of feeling (or apparently feeling) certain changes in one’s body, the changes (in general) varying from emotion to emotion (and also, sometimes, within the same emotion), the perception of the changes possessing the relevant positive or negative quality. Although generally emotions do not need to be caused by cognitive mental states, there are exceptions. These are the so-called higher cognitive emotions, the identities of which are, in part, determined by relevant judgments, beliefs, or thoughts of the subject and which can be experienced only by those who possess the appropriate concepts. These emotions, like all other emotions, are not in themselves cognitive states, but, unlike other emotions, derive their identities from being caused by a relevant cognitive state. For example, an emotion is self-contempt only if it has been caused by the thought of being worthless.
This account of the emotions has two significant implications for the musical arousal of emotions: it removes what might seem an insuperable barrier and allows us to circumscribe those emotions that music might relevantly arouse. In the first place, if it should be wondered how purely instrumental music can arouse any emotion the identity of which is determined by what it represents, the difficulty is mitigated by the realization that a perceived or imagined object does not need to present such a state of affairs in order to induce in the subject the experience of sadness, for example: all music needs to do is to bring about any bodily changes that mediate what sadness represents (the loss of something valued by one), thereby engendering the feeling intrinsic to sadness of the loss of something valuable (which does not need an intentional object). And – leaving aside a certain possibility – how music manages to do this is a scientific, not philosophical, matter. The second implication is that, given that pure instrumental music does not cause, in an aesthetic response, any of the cognitive states that determine the identity of the “higher cognitive emotions,” there is – leaving a related possibility aside – no question of its arousing any of those emotions in an aesthetically relevant manner. It might seem, therefore, that the issue of the arousal of emotions in listeners reduces to, on the one hand, the question of which of the emotions that lack the need for a cognitive stimulus can be aroused by music (in the relevant manner) and, on the other hand, a scientific explanation of this power that identifies both the brain mechanisms that mediate the musical arousal of emotion and, for each emotion, the properties of a musical work that arouse that emotion through the operation of these mechanisms – which concatenation of properties produces emotion E1, which emotion E2, and so on. But, as I have indicated, both of the above implications need to be qualified. For a significant feature of musical appreciation is awareness of music’s expressive qualities, and in particular its emotional qualities or the emotions it is expressive of; and a principal way in which music has been thought to elicit emotion is in response to the qualities of emotion that are heard in it. If this is right, it would allow a different explanation from the scientific (although one complementary to it); and if awareness of these emotional qualities consists in cognitive states, this might endow music with the power to arouse certain emotions of the higher cognitive kind.
A distinction is sometimes drawn between music that possesses an emotional quality and music that is expressive of that emotion. And it is indeed the case that if M is a musical passage and F a property, it is not always true that if M possesses F, then M is expressive of F: empty music is not necessarily expressive of emptiness, nor is jolly music always expressive of jollity (Scruton 1997: 155). But another distinction is needed also: the distinction between a piece of music that possesses an emotional quality and a piece of music that, in virtue of its possession of emotional qualities and various of its other features, can properly be said to be a musical expression of emotion. By a musical work’s being an expression of emotion I shall mean that it should be interpreted as displaying the experience of emotion in a persona (or number of characters): the listener is right to imagine, in accordance with the nature and development of the music, a persona (who need not be the composer) undergoing an emotion or series of emotions, or a number of characters doing so. I shall consider, first, the idea that the emotional qualities of music are such that they are liable to induce an emotional response in the listener. Note that this liability need not be thought of as a disposition of the emotional quality of a piece of music to arouse a corresponding emotion in listeners who perceive the quality. For that would be to focus on the emotional quality in itself, neglecting how it is realized in the music, and the liability need cover, for listeners who appreciate the character of the music, no more than impressive music with an emotional quality, not mediocre or poor music with that quality. In other words, the idea can be limited just to music that (for the listener) both possesses an emotional quality and is expressive of that kind of emotion – a restriction from which the idea would certainly benefit, since if one is listening to music that one finds unimpressive, one is unlikely to respond positively to its emotional quality, and may even resist responding to it. The second idea I shall consider is that listening to a musical work that is an expression of emotion is liable to induce an emotional response in the listener – or, more strongly, must do so if the listener is properly to appreciate the work.
The plausibility of the idea that the emotional qualities of music are liable to induce an emotional response in the listener depends on the correct account of what it is for music to possess an emotional quality (and to be expressive of that kind of emotion). Although there is agreement about the aesthetic relevance of these emotional qualities, there is no consensus as to how they should be understood. If an arousalist theory, which construes the possession of emotional qualities as a disposition to arouse the emotion in qualified listeners, were correct, the aesthetic relevance of the emotions aroused by music in virtue of its emotional qualities would be secured immediately; but the unacceptability of arousalist theories would still leave open the possibility that the emotional qualities of music play a crucial role in music’s arousal of emotions. Opposed to arousalist theories are perceptual property theories (the principal resemblance theory falling under this head) and imagination theories (of which expression theories are one kind). Perceptual property theories construe the emotional quality of a piece of music as a pure perceptual property of the music. If they do not elucidate the connection between the emotional quality of a piece of music and that emotion itself, they are thereby unable to offer any plausible account of how the perception of such a quality might arouse emotion in a listener. But explanations are open to perceptual property theories that specify the relation in question.
A perceptual property theory of the resemblance kind maintains that to hear an emotion in music is to experience the music as resembling a vocal or non-vocal expression or betrayal of the emotion. The outstanding advocate of such a theory is Stephen Davies, who construes the resemblance as obtaining between the music and non-vocal expressions of the emotion – the dynamic character of music is heard as being like actions that express or display the emotion – and who has offered an explanation of how the perception of music that possesses an emotional quality might well arouse that emotion in a listener. The explanation is, crudely, by contagion: the perception of the emotional quality is liable to induce a mirroring emotional response (Davies 1994, forthcoming a). Of course, there is a significant difference between the musical and a real-life case in which we are infected with another’s (apparent) emotion: in the one we perceive a person apparently in a certain emotional state, in the other we hear a piece of music the character of which is heard as resembling the character of the behavior of someone displaying that emotion. So the explanation, more precisely, is that as in ordinary life a mirroring emotion can be aroused by the perception of expressed emotion, so a mirroring emotion can be aroused by musical passages that are heard as being similar to expressions of emotion.
Robinson opposes to Davies’s explanation her own, based on what she calls the Jazzercise effect (Robinson 2005: 391–410). Her idea consists of two parts. The first is that music that presents an emotional quality of happiness, sadness, restlessness, or calm induces corresponding states of arousal that can be called “moods,” in which physiological changes, motor activity, and action tendencies take place, bringing in their wake an inclination to view the world in a way characteristic of the emotion. The second is that the musical arousal of such a state puzzles the listener, who then engages in cognitive monitoring, labeling the state in one way or another, ascribing to herself a certain emotion, which activity is likely to bring about corresponding affective appraisals, thus making it true that she is undergoing the named emotion. But this explanation is not a serious competitor to Davies’s. For, even if cognitive monitoring of a “mood” (state of arousal) is liable to trigger an affective appraisal (which seems unlikely but is required by Robinson), (i) on Robinson’s account it is not the (emotional quality of the) music as such that arouses an emotion of a certain kind but the listener’s puzzled reflection on her state of arousal, and (ii) if cognitive monitoring is essential to turn a process begun by music’s triggering changes in the body into one in which the emotion of nostalgia, triumph, or whatever, is experienced, then, in general, such emotions are not aroused by music, since we do not engage in such monitoring while listening (cf. Kivy 2006: 308–10).
I have said that for a musical work to be an expression of emotion is for it to be correctly heard as presenting the experience of emotion of a persona (or number of characters). If the work is of any length, it will constitute a series of psychological episodes, a drama of the inner life, one emotion following another. If a musical work is heard as presenting the emotional experience of a persona or characters, then, as with fiction or drama or film or real life, a listener’s emotional response to the musical presentation of the persona’s experience, which could be empathic, sympathetic, or antipathetic, is unproblematic for a cognitive theory of the emotions, since it has an intentional object (the persona). It is unproblematic also for Robinson’s theory if she is right to claim that affective appraisals are triggered equally by imagination and reality. But are any works of pure instrumental music expressions of emotion in the sense at issue? There are three possible views that might be held about music that is expressive of emotion: a persona is correctly heard in (i) all (Cone 1974; Levinson 1996, 2006), (ii) only some (Robinson 2005, forthcoming b; Ridley 2007), or (iii) none (Davies 1997; Kivy 2006).
If a work that is expressive of emotion can be heard as a musical expression of emotion and in composing it the composer intended it to be so heard, then it is right to hear it in that way. But what exactly is a listener to imagine in listening to such a work? One indisputable point is that there is a marked disanalogy between the musical expression of emotion and the representational arts, which calls into question, if not the viability, at least the significance of the musical expression of emotion and its effectiveness in engendering emotion in listeners. For the “narrative” or “dramatic” content of a musical work that supposedly presents the emotional experience of a persona will inevitably be both indefinite and minimal, the work being incapable of presenting the sex, identity, thoughts, age, or moral character of the persona, the circumstances in which emotion is experienced, the number of characters involved, or any other of the multifarious facts available to fiction, drama, and film, all of which features serve to determine the nature and power of the emotional responses of the reader or viewer (cf. Kivy 2006: 298–304; Davies forthcoming b). And there is a further problem for any work that supposedly has a single persona, which concerns the continuity of the “soliloquy,” “monologue,” narration, or drama and so the continuity of the listener’s imagining of the persona’s experience. For it is doubtful whether there is any musical work, except a miniature, for which a listener imagines, continuously throughout the work, a persona undergoing a series of emotional states.
Given the inevitable thinness of the content, the emotional power of a work that is a musical expression of emotion would have to depend entirely on the mode of presentation – in the first place, the very fact that the presentation is by music, and, more importantly, the quality of the musical presentation. But what character might a musical work possess to compensate for the poverty of the story line, empowering it to move us deeply, not just in virtue of the emotional qualities it possesses and all the other qualities that can figure in the experience of a listener who does not imagine a persona in the music, but also because of the emotional history of a persona that it unfolds? Jenefer Robinson has claimed that music can mirror not only the appearance of emotions, but also cognitive or evaluative aspects of them, and, most importantly, the streams of emotional experience, the ways in which emotions change, blend, conflict, or become or remain ambiguous (Robinson 2005: 311–12, 325). However, this by itself is insufficient to overcome the marked difference in detail with the representational arts, for the features of the emotional life she indicates can be conveyed equally by works of fiction, for example.
But although this account fails to close the wide gap between the content of a work that is a musical expression of emotion and the content available to works of fiction, perhaps it explains the emotional power of a musical expression of emotion. For hearing a persona’s experience in music not only enables the listener to imagine that experience but, it is claimed, to undergo it: the music, imagined as a presentation of the emotional experience of a persona, induces physiological changes characteristic of that experience. However, granting the additional aspects of emotional processes that music can “mirror,” and accommodating the further point that the music presents the pure feelings of emotions uncluttered by thoughts, from the point of view of explaining the emotional power of music the introduction of a persona into a musical work would appear to be an unnecessary shuffle. For if the emotional qualities of music – in Davies’s terms, “emotion characteristics in appearances” – are fit to arouse the corresponding emotions in the listener, so are the other aspects of emotional processes that Robinson specifies: in each case the music does no more than resemble, perhaps strikingly, the aspect of emotion it “mirrors,” and if resemblance in one case is sufficient to generate emotion, so it is in the other. If the listener’s mirroring emotional response tracks the progress of the musical features, the resulting emotional experience will mirror that of the suppositious persona without any imagining of such a persona, who therefore can be discarded. If music is the most emotionally moving of the arts because it affects us more powerfully than any other in a direct physiological manner (Robinson 2005: 376), it has no need of a persona to explain its emotional power.
What is the aesthetic significance of the musical arousal of emotions by the emotional qualities of music? Admittedly, this may constitute evidence that a listener has perceived the music’s emotional qualities (Davies 1994: 314–15), but that does not endow them with aesthetic significance in themselves. A rather different idea is that the arousal of an emotion may help a listener to understand, and so to appreciate, the musical work, alerting the listener to what the music is expressing (Robinson 2005: 348–78, forthcoming b). But, granted that this is a possibility, a crucial question remains: is the arousal of emotions that mirror the emotional qualities of the music essential to understanding the music? Or can those who insist that the perception of the emotional qualities of music does not arouse corresponding emotions in them nevertheless understand the music just as well? Moreover, these kinds of question apply equally to the grasp of characteristics of music other than emotional qualities – to structural aspects, for example, or expressive qualities other than emotional ones. Is the arousal of emotion necessary for the grasp of these features of a musical work? Suppose that none of these aspects of music require the arousal of emotion. This would not mean that the musical arousal of emotions would be of no aesthetic importance. However, its importance would be rather slight. That importance would be increased if the arousal of emotions were to enhance the appreciation of the music in the sense that it makes the experience of the music more valuable to the listener – but that claim would be hard to defend.
See also Arousal theories (Chapter 20), Expression theories (Chapter 19), Music and imagination (Chapter 11), and Resemblance theories (Chapter 21).
Cone, E. (1974) The Composer’s Voice, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Davies, S. (1994) Musical Meaning and Expression, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
—— (1997) “Contra the Hypothetical Persona in Music,” in M. Hjort and S. Laver (eds) Emotion and the Arts, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 95–109.
—— (forthcoming a) “Infectious Music: Music-Listener Emotional Contagion,” in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds) Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (forthcoming b) “A Philosophical Perspective,” in P.N. Juslin and J. Sloboda (eds) Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hanslick, E. (1986 [1891]) On the Musically Beautiful, trans. G. Payzant, Indianapolis: Hackett.
Kivy, P. (2001a) “Auditor’s Emotions: Contention, Concession, Compromise,” in New Essays on Musical Understanding, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 71–91.
—— (2001b) “Experiencing the Musical Emotions,” in New Essays on Musical Understanding, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 92–118.
—— (2006) “Critical Study: Deeper than Emotion,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 46: 287–311.
Levinson, J. (1996) “The Concept of Musical Expressiveness,” in The Pleasures of Aesthetics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 90–125.
—— (2006) “Musical Expressiveness as Hearability-as-Expression,” in Contemplating Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 91–108.
Prinz, J. (2004) Gut Reactions, New York: Oxford University Press.
Ridley, A. (2007) “Persona Sometimes Grata: On the Appreciation of Expressive Music,” in K. Stock (ed.) Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 130–46.
Robinson, J. (2005) Deeper than Reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
—— (forthcoming a) “Emotion,” in J. Prinz (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (forthcoming b) “Emotional Responses to Music: What Are They? How Do They Work? And Are They Relevant to Aesthetic Appreciation?” in P. Goldie (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (1997) The Aesthetics of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Levinson, J. (1990) “Music and Negative Emotion,” in Music, Art, and Metaphysics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 306–35. (Explores what reasons there might be for valuing music that arouses negative emotions.)
—— (2006) “Musical Chills,” in Contemplating Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 220–36. (An exploration of the nature of musical episodes that arouse tingles along the spine.)