Emotional Echoes

This is in response to Corey's post about the emotional response from literature as opposed to other artistic media. He bases his concept of emotion off of Malcolm Bud, who claims that emotion in relation to music is a "positive or negative response to the content of a thought." Corey goes on to note that while this definition seems to work well for literature, for music "the case seems to be not so clear as to what exactly a particular song references in terms of a concept or thought." He also says that he is skeptical of the claim that the listener has an emotional response to music because he or she recognizes a particular emotion within the song itself.

I agree with most of Corey's claims. I believe that concepts are much more difficult to discern in music (without lyrics) than in literature. I too and skeptical of the claim that our emotional response to music is based off our understanding of some concept contained within the music itself. I believe that the issue with this problem is Bud's definition of emotional response; not that it is completely invalid, but that it does not accurately describe the relationship of emotional responses to music. I have claimed in a previous post that I believe the nature of our emotions is often a pre-cognitive response to stimuli. I think that this definition applies to music. While the contents of a song may not inherently contain a particular concept or emotion, the structure, rhythm, and notes of a particular song may indeed illicit emotional responses from it's audience. Why do many of us feel melancholy when we hear a slow, resonant violin? (played in D-Minor perhaps). Or why do we get excited when we hear loud rhythmic drumming and bass, as is common amongst the dance music of today? It seems far more likely to me that our emotional response is to the direct stimuli of the music as opposed to the concept of melancholy or excitement that is imbued within the song.