# Aiming for emotion



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Nicksievers said:


> As a composer I can say and I think with some level of confidence (although always take it with a grain of salt), composers who aim for emotion as the subject of creation always fail to deliver…


What do you think? Do composers "aim for emotion"? Or just some of them - who? Does it work? What might they aim for otherwise?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Opera composers "aim for emotion" constantly. The great ones hit the bullseye.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

False. All art in all its forms across the whole of human history is, fundamentally, the following:

An expression of creativity, relaying emotion(s) and concept(s) -- each of these facets to greater or lesser degree. 

Every art work ever produced (music, film, paintings, or otherwise) stems from this.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

My reply might change depending on what exactly he means by "aim for emotion"?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AfterHours said:


> My reply might change depending on what exactly he means by "aim for emotion"?


That is the nub of the question. Art may express many things; it may simply revel in the beauty and interest of color, sound, and form, and show no sign that any emotion was intended to be communicated. It may still evoke feelings in the observer, but that needn't imply that the artist was "aiming" for those feelings. It's a curious fact that a piece of music can seem "expressive" without expressing anything particularly identifiable.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

From my experience as a composer I'd say from the very first note emotion is always being expressed. And with a constant awareness of what is being expressed and what has been expressed I think about what I ultimately want to express. It has everything to do with emotion, even music that feels unexpressive is an emotion being felt.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Do composers "aim for emotion"? Or just some of them


Some, not all. In the 19th century and before composers aimed for emotion. But in the 20th century some composers explored other possibilities.



KenOC said:


> What might they aim for otherwise?


The expression of a concept, conceptual music, in which an idea is more important than traditional musical values like beauty, complexity, tension and release of tension, feeling etc.



KenOC said:


> who?


An obvious example is Steve Reich in his Pendulum Music. Others may be Robert Ashley in his opera Concrete, and Helmut Lachenmann in Gran Torso. I'm not sure about something like Mycenae-Alpha, because I find it traditionally expressive, but expression may not have been Xenakis's intention.

Some of these composers are, I think, exploring in music two ideas which were fundamental in C20 plastic art - chance and readymade.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> That is the nub of the question. Art may express many things; it may simply revel in the beauty and interest of color, sound, and form, and show no sign that any emotion was intended to be communicated. It may still evoke feelings in the observer, but that needn't imply that the artist was "aiming" for those feelings. It's a curious fact that a piece of music can seem "expressive" without expressing anything particularly identifiable.


I agree with the gist of what you're saying and I think this just comes down to semantics, and probably not any actual disagreement between our main points. I would say that even art simply reveling in beauty, color, sound, form and what-have-you, is eliciting emotion (and concept) -- to greater or lesser degree. Even if one whittles it down to just the effort -- mild, medium, or strong -- being put into the playing of the instrument(s) -- it's always there as one of these three fundamentals. In each note, in every phrase, in every stroke of the brush, in every turn or stillness of the camera (etc). I do agree with you that a specific or known emotion or concept may not, in certain cases, be the main purpose the composer/director/painter (etc) is after -- probably rare though, such as in some abstract art, or in cases when the emotion is "subconscious" (or of the sort), but it is there as a common denominator nonetheless.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

> As a composer I can say and I think with some level of confidence (although always take it with a grain of salt), composers who aim for emotion as the subject of creation always fail to deliver…


Depends on who's listening, obviously, as to whether music deliberately aimed at producing emotion "delivers". But if these composers _always_ fail to deliver, how could film music be a thing?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think all composers aim for a response or effect, not necessarily emotion. Ie. 4'33"


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I'd say that the great majority of music is/was composed to 'aim for emotion'. I can't think of almost any other reason for it. That applies to classical music, popular music, film music, holiday music, dance music, patriotic music etc, etc.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

This seems wrong. As Woodduck points out, opera composers always necessarily aim for emotion. The same goes for a fair amount of religious music - Bach was certainly "aiming for emotion" in his passions and many of his cantatas.

That said I suspect a lot - probably most - music was not composed "aiming for emotion." Instead I think composers started with musical ideas, and the emotion followed.


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## KJ von NNJ (Oct 13, 2017)

It is all communication in one way or another. Even the most austere or esoteric music reaches for a certain thought or feeling. Even if it's silence. I can handle 4'33", but a day of it may reduce one to tears, thus triggering an emotional response regardless of the aesthetic one is trying to achieve. 
I think Robert Simpson's symphonies are remarkable, with an absence of common musical emotion, favoring cosmic elemental power and tonal splendor while suggesting growth or regeneration. Sort of 'mad scientist music'. No 'big tunes' and few repeats. Lots of twentieth century composers follow a similar muse. I connect with some, while others completely elude my interest.
Geez, the romantic period was all about gushing emotion and bleeding chunks!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

> *Nick Sievers* "Composing music gave me something to look forward to," Sievers explained. "Without something to look forward to or something ongoing that gives you purpose, there's just nothing enjoyable about life."





> *Peter Park *(orchestra director at Sievers's school): "When I first saw the score, I immediately thought his composition was very sincere and introspective, which is exactly what a composer is set up to achieve," Park said. "I saw a unique opportunity to perform a piece that reflects on such a personal and *emotional* and intellectual time in the life of this young composer."


Yeah.

If the OP quote is a member called "Nicksievers", then I ask: who is Nick Sievers, and why do we care?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Without reading all of the previous comments on this topic, I'll simply suggest that many of the great composers have most certainly aimed for emotion and in many cases succeeded admirably. Romanticism gives us so many examples. I think first of Rachmaninoff, but there are so many others. It is a practice that led many other great composers (Stravinsky for one, and probably Boulez for another) to actually attempt to aim away from emotion towards a more "objectified" sonic effect. Still, I think most music affects us emotionally rather than intellectually, and those composers (some of the twelve-tone school, for instance) who have attempted to delve more into intellectual music have found their audiences fewer in numbers than those who pull at the heartstrings.

Still, it's probably wrong to over do emotion in music. Tchaikovsky's 6th can certainly be overdone. Such is probably not necessary, as a fairly straight ahead reading (interpretation) of the music will likely supply all the emotional content one can handle. I weep when I hear this symphony, even when at the hands of its coolest interpreters.

Mathematical and Logic puzzles are fun, certainly. But give me music that plays to my heart. Only then will I really take time to _think_ about it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> This seems wrong. As Woodduck points out, opera composers always necessarily aim for emotion. The same goes for a fair amount of religious music - Bach was certainly "aiming for emotion" in his passions and many of his cantatas.
> 
> That said I suspect a lot - probably most - music was not composed "aiming for emotion." Instead I think composers started with musical ideas, and the emotion followed.


Isorhythm's post speaks for me too. I would just add that expressive qualities, what we have been calling emotion, are integral aspects of musical ideas and expressive logic is an integral part of how they are developed. If a sequence of ideas seems insincere or incoherent in expressive terms, it will usually sound defective or arbitrary musically as well. So I think the aesthetic judgment of composers takes emotion and expression into account when spinning out ideas, but I think "aiming for emotion" is exactly the wrong way to put it. I think, generally speaking, they take it into account as a species of musical judgment without consciously thinking of emotion at all - it is just a necessary part of structural thinking when writing expressive music.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

If I feel a piece is trying hard, 'aiming' to strike a very particular emotional chord in me, I don't like it. Great music (like all great art) has a certain ambiguity to it (or at least contains within it always the possibility to be interpreted in an ambiguous way). That is the essence of good music and that is why I don't listen to much opera: the emotion is too obvious, too profane.

I love music and yet am rarely moved towards a very particular emotion: music, for me, is a unique and special aspect of the human experience precisely because it can stand alone on itself as a totally new form of experience, of sensation and feeling, separate from emotions in the 'real world'. Musical transcendence comes when the music simply communicates _itself_, as if it had sprung out of somewhere totally detached from worldly matters and emotions.


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## Flavius (Oct 7, 2017)

Schubert: Winterreise. Fischer-Dieskau, Moore (DG)


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

If composers are not 'aiming for emotion' from the get-go, then what are they aiming for. Of course, there is an initial process of developing musical ideas, structure and melody, but in the end, tapping into some human emotion is the goal. Take Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms: name any work that does not aim at some human emotion.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I think one difficulty in discussing this is our differing ideas on what "emotion" is. What "emotion" was Beethoven trying to convey in the Allegretto of his 7th Symphony? Obviously it has a significant effect, but I can't recall reading any description of it that assigns any kind of emotion. So what _does _it convey?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

KenOC said:


> I think one difficulty in discussing this is our differing ideas on what "emotion" is. What "emotion" was Beethoven trying to convey in the Allegretto of his 7th Symphony? Obviously it has a significant effect, but I can't recall reading any description of it that assigns any kind of emotion. So what _does _it convey?


If someone can listen to the Allegretto of the 7th without feeling any of the emotions arising from the incredible beauty of the opening: the emotions of joy, happiness, a sense of resolution or hope and so on, then they should check to see if they have Energizer batteries inserted in their back. Why was this particular movement used in the movie, The King's Speech, wherein George VI was overcoming extreme adversity? Music has to touch people -which infers emotions- otherwise, there's no reason to listen.

Edit: I would add that you don't see much discussion about whether emotions are triggered and, if so, which ones, for a given work because it is assumed that emotions _are_ triggered and which ones are left up to the listener.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DaveM said:


> If composers are not 'aiming for emotion' from the get-go, then what are they aiming for. Of course, there is an initial process of developing musical ideas, structure and melody, but in the end, tapping into some human emotion is the goal. Take Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms: name any work that does not aim at some human emotion.


Generally, they are aiming for good musical ideas from the get-go. Expressive qualities to which humans respond emotionally are usually among the significant attributes of such ideas. But I think composers of instrumental music only become aware of the expressive potential of their ideas as they work with them. It seems bizarre to imagine they have some emotion in mind and then compose a theme with the aim of embodying it, if that's what you are suggesting. As Hanslick said, emotions aren't the subjects of music. The subjects are musical ideas.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

DaveM said:


> ...the emotions of joy, happiness, a sense of resolution or hope...


All very nice, but this can be said of a hundred works, or of a thousand. The "feeling" imparted by the Allegretto of the 7th is unique in my experience. Is it an emotion? What emotion? If it's not an emotion, what is it?

I thought about this just now when the radio was playing Bach's double violin concerto. Impressive stuff! But what "emotion" was Bach expressing in the first movement? Does it make any sense at all to refer to what is being expressed as an "emotion"?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

KenOC said:


> All very nice, but this can be said of a hundred works, or of a thousand.?


I rest my case.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Generally, they are aiming for good musical ideas from the get-go. Expressive qualities to which humans respond emotionally are usually among the significant attributes of such ideas. But I think composers of instrumental music only become aware of the expressive potential of their ideas as they work with them. It seems bizarre to imagine they have some emotion in mind and then compose a theme with the aim of embodying it, if that's what you are suggesting. As Hanslick said, emotions aren't the subjects of music. The subjects are musical ideas.


The OP was 'aim for emotion', not 'aim for a specific emotion'. I submit that all music triggers some emotion or other. A composer may initially start the process with the search for musical ideas, melody, structure etc., but the endpoint is an appeal to emotion. Perhaps we're getting caught up in semantics. When I say that composers are 'aiming for emotion' from the get-go, I mean that that is the final goal of composition. People go to a concert to be moved in some way. Being moved involves emotion.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

KenOC said:


> All very nice, but this can be said of a hundred works, or of a thousand. The "feeling" imparted by the Allegretto of the 7th is unique in my experience. Is it an emotion? What emotion? If it's not an emotion, what is it?
> 
> I thought about this just now when the radio was playing Bach's double violin concerto. Impressive stuff! But what "emotion" was Bach expressing in the first movement? Does it make any sense at all to refer to what is being expressed as an "emotion"?


The Allegretto sounds mournful at the beginning to me, then it becomes rapturous. I think it is a complex emotion, the sadness or unease doesn't go away during the rapturous moments (since the same theme is present). Like satisfaction in wallowing in melancholy.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DaveM said:


> The OP was 'aim for emotion', not 'aim for a specific emotion'. I submit that all music triggers some emotion or other.


First of all, that's like saying the aim of archery is to put holes in things. Some activities require more specificity.  But, more important, the triggered emotion is not in the music, it is in you. It is not what the music aimed at, it is what you extracted from it.



DaveM said:


> A composer may initially start the process with the search for musical ideas, melody, structure etc., but the endpoint is an appeal to emotion.


Emphatically no. It is a broad appeal to the imagination. Expressive qualities are an important aspect of music and how it is structured, but there is so much more to it. Musical lines, contrapuntal passages, harmonies and textures also move people by direct appeal to the senses, by their resemblances to natural phenomena and processes, by the pure delight in intricate patterns and unexpected transformations, and by imparting a sense of narrative continuity.



DaveM said:


> Perhaps we're getting caught up in semantics. When I say that composers are 'aiming for emotion' from the get-go, I mean that that is the final goal of composition. People go to a concert to be moved in some way. Being moved involves emotion.


I think we have read the OP differently (I mean the original one from which Ken's derives.) I understood it to be addressing the specific aims of composers in composing individual works. Of course composers have traditionally wanted their audiences to be moved in some way and to go home happy, because otherwise they would starve or have to change their profession. I'm certain that is not what the OP was intended to address.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Here's a very short favorite of mine: 




It's inconceivable to me that this resulted from Bach sitting down with a blank page intending to write something that expressed some emotion or other.


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## karlsoren (Dec 19, 2017)

No question. One thing I love about Bach is that he does both the heavy emotional thing--the joy and grief of the religious works, for instance, the depression in some of the solo cello--and also stuff that is pretty dry but just great musically: French suites, 2 part inventions, etc. 
Certainly Mahler and Rach were heavy into emotions. Or think of Barber's Adagio for strings: the all time tear grabber. Except for La Boheme, which makes me tear up in about 2 measures.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Copland, in "Music and Imagination," quotes Eduard Hanslick: "An inward singing, and not an inward feeling, prompts a gifted person to compose a musical piece." Copland goes on to say that "this dichotomy has no reality to a functioning composer. Singing _is_ feeling to a composer, and the more intensely felt the singing, the purer the expression."


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

DaveM said:


> If composers are not 'aiming for emotion' from the get-go, then what are they aiming for. Of course, there is an initial process of developing musical ideas, structure and melody, but in the end, tapping into some human emotion is the goal. Take Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms: name any work that does not aim at some human emotion.


How does it aim at emotion? Does it make you feel happy? Does it make you feel sad? When I listen to the Brahms Haydn Variations I am simply listening to _music_ and revelling in the totally unique form of sensory enjoyment that music brings, and I view whatever 'emotion' I might feel as subjective. The Ode to Joy doesn't make me feel joyous because I am enjoying the _music_. If I want to understand and articulate what joy is then I will read the original Schiller text. The nice thing about Beethoven's setting is that it transmutes Schiller's Ode into something ambiguous and thus more satisfying and mysterious. The feelings great music evokes are not necessarily _pre-written into the music._ I don't want a cartoon sad face or a cartoon happy face on the score to remind me what emotion it should bring out so I know to go into a slump when listening as this is the 'appropriate emotion'. For me that is constricting the endless potential of music down to pre-determined actuality. Bernstein himself tried to dispel this Romantic myth that composers write only what they are feeling; that if they are heartbroken they write the Pathetique on their tear-stained note paper; that if they are full of joy they write pastoral ditties. The construction of music is to attain a piece of art that _transcends_.

I identify with what Beethoven's Allegretto strikes me _at that moment _as articulating without necessarily emotionally acting it out nor constricting it to a particular emotion so that I know what to feel next time I listen to it. I would rather revel in the mysterious beauty of the music and the fact that it is so totally unique in human experience, the miracle of the fact that it is its own mystery. To liken art to merely something that communicates 'emotions' is to cheapen art immensely. Some days, the Allegretto is sad, some days it is happy. What I like about it is that it contains within it the potential to be projected onto, rather than being itself the thing that projects onto you (though that is often how it appears, and gladly so).

Perhaps music does communicate emotions and composers perhaps intend particular emotions, but to say that this is the fundamental constitutive element of music or even its driving force is an extraordinary simplification, maybe even misunderstanding. Music, it seems to me, communicates three things: 
1. (subjectively projected by the listener) the world, or rather that residue of the unexplainable left over after the other arts attempt and fail to encompass 'experience'.
2. (by linguistic necessity) itself as a finite, act of creation
3. (most importantly) the very _act_ of striving towards an unattainable goal: that of communicating the incommunicable. Music communicates the wonderfully uneasy nature of its _own fundamental abstraction_. What makes music unique and beautiful is not so much _what it communicates, but *that* it is *trying* to communicate something that forever (and gladly) lies out of reach_. This process, this striving, this abstraction, this ambiguity, is the thing that makes one come back to a piece of music, what makes it so totally aesthetically addictive, more than any other art form, what makes it more than any other art form, attain something resembling the 'sacred', if you'll permit me to be so mystical. It is not a closed loop, it's essence is that of process, not static finality.

In short, music may be 'emotional', but it is the surplus of intractable ambiguity that eludes 'emotion' that makes the experience truly worthwile.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Tallisman said:


> Perhaps music does communicate emotions and composers perhaps intend particular emotions, but to say that this is the fundamental constitutive element of music or even its driving force is an extraordinary simplification, maybe even misunderstanding.


Well so say you. I refer you to the following wiki. For one thing, it talks about cognitivists and emotivists. _'The cognitivists' approach argues that music simply displays an emotion, but does not allow for the personal experience of emotion in the listener. Emotivists argue that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener.'_ There is a lot of evidence supporting the emotivists which term apparently applies to me. You may not agree with me, but my perspective can't be dismissed out of hand, because there is a lot of evidence to support it. So, I believe, particularly with most classical music, the triggering of some emotion is the endpoint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_emotion


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Well so say you. I refer you to the following wiki. For one thing, it talks about cognitivists and emotivists. _'The cognitivists' approach argues that music simply displays an emotion, but does not allow for the personal experience of emotion in the listener. Emotivists argue that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener.'_ There is a lot of evidence supporting the emotivists which term apparently applies to me. You may not agree with me, but my perspective can't be dismissed out of hand, because there is a lot of evidence to support it. So, I believe, particularly with most classical music, the triggering of some emotion is the endpoint.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_emotion


Music has a more concrete emotional affect on you than it does me, which is a totally understandable difference in character and thus perspective. But, just out of curiosity, is there still nothing in music when you listen to it that evades the total attachment to a particular, _actual _emotion. Is there not something that remains fundamentally elusive, when you stop to think hard about the phenomenon of music? Because to me there is always something miraculously abstract about the whole thing, always an element of something approaching absurdity which I find so attractive. Sometimes I remove myself from the intense, immersive listening and simply step back and wonder at the inherent weirdness of music as a phenomenon. Is it a kind of language? Is it even a kind of art? I wouldn't like it if all I got out of music was just the recurrence of the same emotions I can get from reading a book or from having a conversation or hearing bad news or anything else rooted in the everyday and the profane.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Well so say you. I refer you to the following wiki. For one thing, it talks about cognitivists and emotivists. _'The cognitivists' approach argues that music simply displays an emotion, but does not allow for the personal experience of emotion in the listener. Emotivists argue that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener.'_ There is a lot of evidence supporting the emotivists which term apparently applies to me. You may not agree with me, but my perspective can't be dismissed out of hand, because there is a lot of evidence to support it. So, I believe, particularly with most classical music, the triggering of some emotion is the endpoint.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_emotion


That Wiki article is a bit of a mess. The ideas attributed to Stephen Davies early on, for example, are actually more closely associated with Peter Kivy. In any case, your summary misses a main point. It is not controversial "that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener." Of course it does. The questions are (1) whether those emotions are full-fledged ones like the ones we feel in response to real life events (e.g., the loss of a loved one) or, on the other hand, etiolated forms like those we feel in response to movies, and (2) whether or not and the extent to which the emotional responses elicited are related to specific expressive qualities in the music.

"The triggering of some emotion" certainly seems to be the endpoint for you. It's just not clear what if any connection there is between your endpoint and the aims and intentions of composers.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I agree with Edward's posts in all the essentials, and I also think in any case that the explanation of the "emotional" valences of any expressive qualities in music would require the tact and technical knowledge of a Charles Rosen. 

Still, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any interesting or amusing examples of where composers themselves have discussed their intentions regarding how they wanted listeners to feel about a particular work or part of a work. It wouldn't resolve any of the large questions, but I find such autobiographical reflections interesting for their own sake. For example, Esa-Pekka Salonen is currently my favorite living writer of program notes (since they're always bizarre), and I know he's written some reflections on how composers' music—his own included—sometimes reflects the mental state of the author at the time of composition. If we flip through some cd booklets, we may find more specific and relevant examples.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> "The triggering of some emotion" certainly seems to be the endpoint for you. It's just not clear what if any connection there is between your endpoint and the aims and intentions of composers.


Well said, Edward.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> That Wiki article is a bit of a mess. The ideas attributed to Stephen Davies early on, for example, are actually more closely associated with Peter Kivy. In any case, your summary misses a main point. It is not controversial "that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener." Of course it does. The questions are (1) whether those emotions are full-fledged ones like the ones we feel in response to real life events (e.g., the loss of a loved one) or, on the other hand, etiolated forms like those we feel in response to movies, and (2) whether or not and the extent to which the emotional responses elicited are related to specific expressive qualities in the music.
> 
> "The triggering of some emotion" certainly seems to be the endpoint for you. It's just not clear what if any connection there is between your endpoint and the aims and intentions of composers.


My guess is that we are interpreting the subject at hand differently. I am not suggesting that composers are targeting a specific emotions with all their compositions, although they appear to be for some works given specific names such as 'Consolation'. What I am saying is that the endpoint of most classical works is the stirring of emotions. (Perhaps examples of exceptions might be some works by Bach which appeal to the left brain.) You dismissed the significance of my point that people who go to concerts expect to be moved, but IMO that is _the_ point.


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