Emotion-Oriented Systems

Chapter 9

Music and Emotions ¹

9.1. The growing importance of music in society

With the low cost and increasing simplicity of production technology, music is now omnipresent in our daily lives. From public transport to concert venues, theatres or even elevators, it is now difficult to spend even two hours without hearing music [SLO 01]. According to a recent report, time spent listening to music now exceeds that spent on other activities, such as watching television or going to the movies [REN 03]. As Zentner has suggested, “music must be uniquely rewarding to its listeners” for it to occupy such an important space in our daily lives [ZEN 08]. However, what is so special about music? What makes it so satisfying to humans?

Since antiquity, the emotions evoked by music have been proposed as a possible answer to these questions. Aristotle, inspired by Plato’s The Republic, gave a relatively detailed description of the emotional effects of each type of music. For example, while the Mixolydian mode tends to make people sad, the Phrygian mode makes them enthusiastic or happy (Politics, book VIII). At the start of the 17th Century, Monteverdi revived this idea with a rappresentativo style, which encouraged writing freedom (dissonance, rhythm, etc.) and strengthened the expression of feeling. Since Plato, and in parallel with the development of musical practice, music and emotions have been a favorite subject of philosophy, as demonstrated by the impressive number of theories on the ...