Emotion and Meaning

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses some of the ways by which music represents and excites emotion. Emotional responses to music run the gamut from laughing and crying and chills going up and down the spine to cool appraisal of technique. Not only do listeners have emotional reactions to music, but pieces of music also represent emotions in ways that can be recognized by listeners. Indexical representation involves the direct association of a musical event with some extramusical object or event, so that emotions previously associated with the extramusical object come to be associated with the music. Music can represent emotions iconically because the ebb and flow of tensions and relaxations in the music mirror the form of emotional tensions and relaxations. Though the representation of emotion in musical icons is necessarily vague, listeners find it quite natural to attach general emotional labels to pieces of music. It seems plausible that autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal evolved as a fast-acting warning system to initiate activation of the organism in the face of potential danger.