Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)

Müller, Ralph; Departement für Germanistik, Germanistische Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Freiburg/Schweiz

»Weil Tränen nicht die Welt verändern«. Literarische Metonymien in Protestsongs [Abstract]

Spörl, Uwe; Universität Bremen, Neuere deutsche Literatur

Philosophische Debatten um fiktionale Literatur: Status, Wirkung und Interpretation [Maria E. Reicher (Hg.), Fiktion, Wahrheit, Wirklichkeit. Philosophische Grundlagen der Literaturtheorie, 2007.]

Gittel, Benjamin; Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institut für deutsche Literatur

Zur Beziehung von außer-poetologischem Autorwissen und Arten der literarischen Darstellung [Olav Krämer, Denken erzählen. Repräsentationen des Intellekts bei Robert Musil und Paul Valéry, 2009.]

Misselhorn, Catrin; Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Philosophisches Seminar & Collège de France/Paris

Die Imagination im Spannungsfeld von Philosophie, Alltagspsychologie und Wissenschaft [Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination. New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction, 2006.]

(2009), 3:1

Robinson, Jenefer; Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati

482 Abstracts
JENEFER ROBINSON
Music and Emotions
Ever since Plato people have thought that there is an especially intimate relation-
ship between music and the emotions, but in fact there are several such relation-
ships. In this essay I explain how music can express emotions and arouse emotions.
And although strictly speaking, music cannot represent emotions, it can tell psy-
chological stories that lend themselves to expressive interpretations. As a philos-
opher, my main aim is to analyze these different relationships between emotion
and music, but I also illustrate my arguments with an array of musical examples.
Some people have claimed that music can represent the passions. According to
the Baroque doctrine of Affektenlehre, different movements of a suite or concerto
should ›represent‹ distinct emotional states such as gaiety or melancholy. The
emotion ›represented‹ was often a principal means of unifying the movement.
Some Baroque composers also wrote ›character pieces‹ that portray different
Abstracts 483
characters or temperaments, sometimes illustrating that of their friends or the
notabilities of the day.
But ›representation‹ in music is not strictly representation at all. A picture can
identify a specific person or thing or event, but with some minor exceptions
music without the aid of a title or program or the words of a song cannot do this.
All it can do is present qualities, including emotion qualities such as »cheerful«
and »melancholy«, that may or may not be attributed to or characterize some
specific individual.
In the Romantic era, it became a commonplace that music can express emo-
tions, whether the emotions of a character or protagonist in the music or the
emotions of the composer himself. Some theorists believe that musical expres-
siveness is a matter of the listener’s experiencing music as resembling expressive
human gestures such as vocal intonations and expressive movements and behav-
ior. On this view when we say that a piece of music is expressive of sadness,
we are not saying that there is anybody around who is actually expressing any
sadness. It’s just that the music is experienced as sounding like or moving like a
person who is sad. Others believe that when we hear music as expressive of emo-
tion, we hear or imagine an agent or persona in the music, the ›owner‹ of the
states expressed. Even some ›pure‹ instrumental music – especially some music
from the Romantic era – can be heard as containing a persona who is expressing
emotions. My own view is that expressing emotion in music in the full Romantic
sense should be thought of as in essentials very much like the expression of emo-
tion in ordinary life: it is primarily something that a composer or a persona in the
music does or achieves, rather than primarily something detected or experienced
by listeners.
Finally, I turn to the question of whether and how music can arouse emotions
in its listeners. In Book III of The Republic, Plato argued that the musical mode
known as the »Lydian« mode should be banned from the education of future
governors of the state on the grounds that it makes people lascivious and lazy,
whereas the Dorian mode should be encouraged because it makes people brave
and virtuous. There is now ample evidence that Plato was right to think that
music affects the emotions of its listeners. There are several ways in which it
does this. As Peter Kivy has remarked, listeners often get pleasure from the
beauty and clever craftsmanship of a well-constructed piece of music. Leonard
Meyer has shown how having certain emotions is a mode of understanding cer-
tain music. Thus when listening to a piece in sonata form, we might feel anxiety
at the delayed return of the tonic, bewilderment when the keys modulate further
and further from the tonic and relief when finally the tonic returns. Another way
in which music arouses emotions is by getting us to respond sympathetically to
emotions expressed in the music by the composer, or his surrogate in the music.
Finally, there is good evidence that music arouses emotions and moods in a more
direct bodily way as well, influencing the autonomic system and the motor activ-
484 Abstracts
ity of listeners. These various mechanisms of emotional arousal often func-
tion simultaneously so as to produce powerful, complex, ambiguous emotional
states.
Music and Emotions 417
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418 Jenefer Robinson
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Music and Emotions 419
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Full-length article in: JLT 1/2 (2007), 395-419.  
 
 
 
  
How to cite this item: 
 
Abstract of: Jenefer Robinson, Music and Emotions.   
In: JLTonline (19.03.2009) 
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-000466 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-000466 


English

Music and Emotions

Jahraus, Oliver; Institut für deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Text, Context, Culture [Abstract]

Eibl, Karl; Institut für deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Von den szientistischen Rothäuten und der schöngeistigen Wagenburg

February 2007, JLT,

Editorial: In What Direction is Literary Theory Evolving?

Margolin, Uri; Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta

Response [Statement on: In What Direction is Literary Theory Evolving?]

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