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This chapter presents a research project devoted specifically to studying the underlying mechanisms responsible for induction of emotion through music listening. It describes a research strategy, a novel theoretical framework, and preliminary findings from ongoing studies that explore underlying mechanisms. It discusses the implications of this work for other issues in the field of musical emotions. The early parts of the chapter review findings about the prevalence of musical emotions, because a first step in developing a framework is to know what phenomena the framework is supposed to explain. The latter parts present a unified theoretical framework that can explain these prevalence findings in terms of seven distinct mechanisms, besides cognitive appraisal. This will illustrate the role of psychological theory in telling researchers where to look for ‘clues’ in their quest to unravel the mystery of emotional responses to music.

This chapter reviews theoretical concepts and empirical findings on musical emotions. First, it examines the notion of music as a means of communicating emotion and presents some relevant evidence concerning the issue. Then it provides a working definition of emotions and some conceptual distinctions for the study of musical emotion. It reviews mechanisms through which music may express and induce emotions. Finally, it considers various objections to music-as-communication and provides an agenda for future research. The discussion is limited to Western music, especially classical and popular music from the 18th century to present day.

Science strives for objectivity. However, by their very nature, experienced emotions are subjective phenomena. This could give the impression that the topic of the current chapter – subjectively felt or perceived musical emotions – is not suited for scientific study. Undoubtedly, this is how many people feel about emotional responses to music. They are seen as diffuse reactions that differ from individual to individual, from moment to moment, and which therefore elude scientific examination. This chapter shows that psychology provides an armamentarium of self-report methods and instruments, by means of which subjectively experienced states such as emotions and moods can be assessed with some reliability. These well-established self-report instruments have been consistently applied to the study of musical emotions over the last 25 years.

This chapter outlines some of the achievements of and challenges for the psychological approach to musical emotions. First, it describes how psychologists have conceptualized and approached the study of emotions in general. Second, it identifies some emergent themes in the psychological literature on music and emotion, and illustrates progress in addressing these themes through some studies that are considered, in one way or another, to be exemplary of the discipline. Finally, it highlights some implications of the research to date, including some directions for future research.

The objective of this chapter is to present current knowledge about musical emotions from a neuropsychological perspective. With limbic mediation, consistency, and precociousness, musical emotions resemble other important classes of emotions that are important for survival. Because music seems to be a much larger culturally learning component, one may wonder how the relation between music and these neurobiological substrates should be conceptualized. Here, we examine the possibility that music is particularly suited (or designed) to invade emotion circuits that have evolved for emotional vocalizations.

FUNCTIONAL neuroimaging broadly refers to methods used to visualize neural activity in the brain in relation to a specific experimental variable (e.g., an emotion). It was only about ten years ago that neuroscientists began to use functional neuroimaging to investigate the neural substrates of emotion with music. The first part of this chapter provides a review of functional neuroimaging studies of emotion and music. It then describes the functional significance of a number of brain structures crucially involved in emotional processing. A section is devoted to musical emotions, emphasizing (1) that music is capable of evoking ‘real’ and ‘basic’ emotions; (2) that music can evoke even more than just those basic emotions; and (3) that if an emotion can never be evoked by music, then it is not an emotion at all.

This chapter reviews a number of perceptual, cognitive, and behavioural (indirect) measures of affect that may help us understand musical emotions. It is organized as follows. First, the problems and limitations of self-report are described. Two main problems – demand characteristics and limited access to one own's internal processes – are discussed. Following this, the logic of indirect measures of affect is outlined, along with a set of definitions. This section also features a conceptual model of affective responding, which aims to facilitate distinctions and integration between different classes of indirect measures. The subsequent section describes seven classes of indirect measures and provides detailed examples of each class. The chapter ends with a brief summary and conclusions.

The previous chapters outline a number of musical features that may be used to express emotions, such as happiness and tenderness, and show that these features have certain characteristics that constrain their use. This chapter explains why and how the features come to denote emotions in the first place. Such an account can help resolve the second paradox of music and emotion. Some authors regard musical expression as something ‘subjective’ and ‘ambiguous’, whereas others as something that involves a great degree of inter-individual agreement. Exploring how musical expression actually ‘works’ shows that there is some truth to each of these perspectives.

This chapter supplements the previous chapter with some naturalistic data on rhythmic performance. This data confirms that performers make systematic and significant deviations from strict metricality, but also that it is hard to make generalizations about the nature of the deviations. The same figure may be played differently in different contexts, or by the same performer on different occasions. It treats timing in isolation from other means used by the performer, such as dynamics, intonation, and spectral variations. It also discusses different aspects of timing (tempo, classes of duration, articulation, deviations from mechanical regularity) separately from each other. In reality, however, all these means occur together in a complex, ever-changing interaction, depending on the instrument, the performer, and the situation.

This chapter considers the question of how music arouses emotions. It is a question with far-reaching implications for other issues about music and emotion. Which emotions does music arouse? Which brain regions are involved in this process? When do musical emotions develop? Are they universal or culture-specific? What is the relationship between perceived and aroused emotions? Are musical emotions somehow unique? The answers to these questions are all linked to the ‘how’ question: They cannot be answered satisfactorily without understanding the psychological processes through which the emotions come into being. The chapter suggests that previous attempts to explain musical emotions have succeeded to different degrees in this task. These attempts can be divided into three categories, referred to ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’.

This chapter provides a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It suggests that having read the previous chapters, readers will agree that little more can be said about musical emotions these days. However, much work remains to explore and understand fully the manifold mechanisms involved. Even now, it is possible to suggest possible ways of explaining how these mechanisms could produce some of the most complex and rewarding emotions experienced with music in daily life. The chapter also considers another paradox of music and emotion, which needs to be resolved: People tend to avoid experiencing sadness in everyday life, yet they seem to find the experience of sadness pleasurable in music listening.

The chapter highlights the rift between two forms of music, namely, romanticism and classical, on the virtue of the intensity of emotions expressed through them. Consistent with the Romantic thesis of music as self-expression is the notion that music must not express any feelings except that of their writer, as if emotions experienced by others cannot burn as intensely in their music as emotions they experience themselves. If the words used to characterize a musical emotion are unreliable, the words used to contend that there is no emotion must be equally unreliable. Composers may evoke emotions without knowing what they are and without being aware they are doing so. Classical composers felt that emotion did not always have to be at great heights or depths to be vivid and meaningful. The mere mention of “Classical” is enough to prepare some of the listening public for basalt frigidity as the polar opposite of the hot intensity of Romanticism. What often leads to the conclusion that emotions are absent where music ideally fulfills its structural essence is the difficulty of localizing them with respect to our normal connotative methods of thought. Yet the emotions are nonetheless specific.

This chapter considers a psychological mechanism that can arouse musical emotions called contagion. Contagion is something that people have experienced numerous times in everyday life — outside a musical context. For instance, some people can feel depressed after a conversation with someone who is depressed. Emotional contagion refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music because an independent region of the brain reacts to certain acoustic features as if they were coming from a human voice that expresses an emotion, which leads the listener to mirror the emotional expression internally. The contagion mechanism is strongly related to the emotional expression of the music.

This chapter considers a third paradox regarding musical emotions. Emotions can generally be communicated accurately from a musician to a listener based on musical features, despite the fact that different circumstances offer very different features to the performer's and listener's disposal. It pays particular attention to Egon Brunswik's theory of visual perception, i.e. his so-called ‘lens model’, which sought to depict the relationship between an ‘organism’ and its ‘environment’, and, in particular, how visual impressions are ‘mediated’ by a number of imperfect ‘cues’ in the environment that the organism is utilizing to make ‘inferences’ about perceptual objects.

This chapter sets the stage by introducing the field of music and emotion. It addresses the following questions: Why do musical emotions matter? Why did Freud not enjoy music? Studies show that in both ‘primitive’ cultures and modern society, a considerable amount of time is spent on singing, music, and dance. And it is not just time: According to musicologist David Huron (2001), people in North America spend more money on music than on prescription drugs. There are a number of theories about the possible origin and function of music, for instance that music originally served a purpose in parent-infant bonding, language acquisition, work coordination, transmission of cultural knowledge, sexual courtship, or social coherence. There are also theories which claim that music served no purpose at all.

This chapter considers a psychological mechanism that can arouse musical emotions called rhythmic entrainment. If brain stem reflexes focus on music as sound and sensation, entrainment focuses on rhythm. This is a primary feature of life. After all, we live in a rhythmic environment (e.g. seasons of the year, periods of daylight and dark), and our bodies are ‘symphonies of rhythm’, as reflected in processes such as heart rate, brain waves, and sleeping patterns. Rhythmic entrainment refers to a process whereby an emotion is evoked by a piece of music because a powerful, external rhythm in the music influences some internal bodily rhythm of the listener (e.g. heart rate), such that the latter rhythm adjusts towards and eventually ‘locks in’ to a common periodicity.

This chapter focuses on Sylvia Heschel, and how she began to launch her own career during the time her husband Abraham was writing and preparing Man is Not Alone for publication. Sylvia had practiced every day for years, preparing for her concert debut at Manhattan's Town Hall. Heschel zealously supported his wife's professional aspirations. He sent out numerous letters with tickets and copies of the program, urging relatives, friends, colleagues, and students to attend the recital. He even enlisted students to distribute tickets. Sylvia Heschel, as the playbill named her, would be performing pieces by Bach, Schumann, Mozart, Chopin, and Maxwell Powers, ending with Stravinsky's “Danse Russe” from Petrouchka. Sylvia's performance touched many in the audience, her expressive body movements heightening the musical emotions. After the concert, people remained to congratulate her.