Observing the feeling

[Shadow]

I originally intended this as a journal for my last.fm page, but it didn't get anywhere so I decided to post it here instead.

The main topic is, basically, can music express feelings? And if it appears to do so, is it the music expressing anything or just something you attribute to it? Do you agree with this quote by Igor Stravinsky:

"I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc... Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, and as a label of convention - in short, an aspect unconciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being"

... or do you think he has got it wrong?

I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts.

 

[Anonymous]

Feelings are by definition subjective and music can give the impression to express what you feel when you hear it. A musical piece is a bit like a mood enhancer and seems to correspond to the feelings you have when you first hear it. Does it actually convey emotions? In a very subjective sense, I suppose so. Then again, I'm no expert and I may be wrong.

Everyone has got a song that reminds him/her of a particular event, happy or sad, or of a loved one. It's more the memories associated to the sound than the melody itself. Some subliminal conditioning, if you will.





I'll 'Seize The Day' when I'm 'Back From The Edge'. 

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with Stravinsky. Music, when we see it as a sequence of tones or beats or just sounds, can't in itself express anything. There are a few exceptions: a piano part resembling the sound of rain, a guitar riff sounding like machine-gun fire, 'crying' violin, stomping drums. But emotions in the true sense? I don't think it's possible, at least not technically.

Then again, music is about emotions too, we all know that, and musicians often create music to express what they feel (interesting comparison could be made with other forms of art - what makes a painting or, even better, a poem more effective in expressing an emotion?).

I have to say that music often makes me feel physical things rather than emotions. And if I feel a certain way while listening to moody music, it tends to enhance my emotion, or change it, as the case may be.

At times, it's easy to tell what emotion we were intended to get from a particular piece of music - that goes mostly for 'classical' music. As for pop or rock, we tend to associate our individual feelings and memories with it.

(Not bad choice of songs, Mav... )

 

[Urizen]

If we look at it from Stravinsky's point of view, than it is clear that nothing can express emotions. A painting is just color, no matter how the color is organised it is still only that, color, and it will become more only when we choose to  associate it with something from our own experience. The same goes for music and words. Words can only express emotions for the one who knows what emotion is related to a specific word(s). Someone who doesn't understand my langugage can't sense an emotion that I'm trying to express. In the other hand someone who understands my langugage, but is not familiar with the emotion I'm expressing(he didn't experienced it), will also be unable to sense it. But music is more universal as a mean of expressing emotions, because it crosses the langugage boundaries.

As for the question is music(or any art) capable of expressing emotions, I'll give this logical evidence that proves that it is.

Humans have emotions, and the ability to understand them.
Musicians are humans, we the listeners are also humans-we both(musicians and listeners) have emotions, and the ability to understand them.
Humans express emotions through music, musicians therefore express their emotions through music, and we listeners being also humans understand those emotions.
That said it is clear that we sense emotions while listening to music, because we are part of human communication zone, just like words of a certain langugage are only understood if both the person who speaks and the person that listens speak the same langugage.
Let's say we meet aliens.
Aliens, if we accept that they speak a different langugage and have a different view of emotions(or don't have them at all) than humans, wouldn't be able to feel emotions from listening to our music at all.

 

[SinisterMinisterX]

It's all conditioning. All the music you've ever heard, since childhood, has conditioned you. Especially TV and movies. When you see a happy scene in a movie, it's a major-key melody. When the scene is sad, it's minor-key. If the tradition had gone the other way, major scales would sound sad to us.

So one the one hand, there's nothing in music which, by itself, communicates an emotion. But because of this conditioning which we've all had implanted in our brains, emotion gets communicated.

Clever musicians can attempt to break these conventions for artistic effect, like when I wrote a breakup song in a major key with the happiest music I could create. Now we need someone to write a song in a minor key, something that sounds like doom incarnate, and give it feel-good lyrics.

 

[Onhell]

I Blame Wagner!