Articulates an imaginationist solution to the question of how purely instrumental music can be perceived by a listener as having emotional content. Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to be inadequate, he advocates an “imaginationist” solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination.
Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to be inadequate, he advocates an "imaginationist" solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination.
This new volume in the Series in Affective Science is the first book in over 40 years to tackle the complex and powerful relationship between music and emotion. The book brings together leading researchers in both areas to present the first integrative review of this powerful relationship. This is a book long overdue, and one that will fascinate psychologists, musicologists, music educators, and philosophers.
How can an abstract sequence of sounds so intensely express emotional states? In the past ten years, research into the topic of music and emotion has flourished. This book explores the relationship between music and emotion, bringing together contributions from psychologists, neuroscientists, musicologists, musicians, and philosophers
Aimed at lay, student, and academic readers alike, this book concerns the imagination and, specifically, imagination in music. It opens with a discussion of the invalidity of the idea of the creative genius and the connected view that ideas originate just in the individual mind. An alternative view of the imaginative process is then presented, that ideas spring from a subconscious dialogue activated by engagement in the world around. Ideas are therefore never just of our own making. This view is supported by evidence from many studies and corresponds with descriptions by artists of their experience of imagining. The third subject is how imaginations can be shared when musicians work with other artists, and the way the constraints imposed by trying to share subconscious imagining result in clearly distinct forms of joint working. The final chapter covers the use of the musical imagination in making meanings from music. The evidence is that music does not communicate meanings directly, and so composers or performers cannot be looked to as authorities on its meaning. Instead, music is commonly heard as analogous to human experience, and listeners who perceive such analogies may then imagine their own meanings from the music.
MUSIC AND ITS LOVERS AH EMPIRICAL STUDY 0. MOTIONAL AND fif CJINATIVE RESPONSES TO MUSIC VERNQN LEE S LITT. D NEW YORK E. P, DUTTON AND CO, INC lit U.. A, 1933 Ell rigkis PRINTBD IN ORBAT BRITAIN BY UNWIN BROTHERS LTD, WOK11 J DEDICATION AND THANKSGIVING This book based upon their answers to my Questionnaires I dedicate, after more than twenty years, to all my Answerers, known or unknown to me, living and, alas, also dead. But quite specially to the memory of BESSIE AND ISABELLA FORD OF ADEL And now that the book is actually going to the Printers let me also congratulate myself very gratefully that the same admirable collaborator, Irene Cooper Willis, to whom I owe so much help in the early stages of this work, should be able and willing to edit and pass it through the press when finished. CONTENTS PREFACE AIMS AND METHODS 13 PART I LISTENERS AND HEARERS CHAPTER PACE I, VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 23 ii. WHAT is LISTENING 35 III. THE EMOTION OF MUSIC, iv, COMPLICATIONS AND ENTANGLEMENTS 59 v. ANCESTORS OF EMOTION 66 VI. EMOTION OF MUSIC VERSUS EMOTIONAL MUSIC 86 is VII. AESTHETIC CONTEMPLATION HIGHER PLANES 97 VIII, ACTIVE AND PASSIVE ATTENTION. A PSYCHOLOGICAL P. S. 107 IX, EPILOGUE TO LISTENERS 115 PART II EMOTIONAL RESPONSES I. THE POWERS OF SOUND-123 II. CECILIA AND CECILIANS 135 in. AMBIENCE 141 iv. CHAOS THE UNINTELLIGIBLE AND THE OVERHEARD. 150 V. INTERMITTENCE AND EVOCATION. CASE OF DONNA TEODORA 158 VI. MUSICAL MEMORY, A PSYCHOLOGICAL P. S. TO DONNA TEODORA. 167 VII. AFFECTIVE MEMORY. RIBOTS HYPOTHESIS . 1 73 VIII. REFERENCE TO HUMAN PERSONALITY. 1 92 io MUSIC AND ITS LOVERS CHAPTER PAGE EX. PARTICIPATION, INTENSIFICATION, PASS MORT AND PASSE VIVANT. ELSA AND THEVIOLINIST 3 202 x. EVOCATION OF PAST AND FUTURE HERR WOLFRAM AMIE DE GABRIELLE MME. LOUISE YOUNG PEOPLE FRANCES 2 7 XI. INTRODUCTION TO DIONYSIACS. THE CUP OF COMUS 228 xii. DIONYSIACS FRANZ PROFESSOR PAUL MASTER HUGUES P. S. ON NIETZSCHE 240 PART III IMAGINATIVE RESPONSES i. INTERPRETATION MUSIC AS A LANGUAGE 259 n. LAPSES IN LISTENING AND THINKING OF OTHER THINGS 273 III. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT POETS, NOVELISTS AND PHILO SOPHERS 28 J IV. INTERPRETATION AS METAPHOR CASE OF SPIRIDION 20 v. MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION THE MICROCOSM RESPONDING TO THE MACROCOSM THE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 298 VI. THE IMAGINARY COMPOSER 308 VII. THE POWER OF WORDS 325 VIII. INTERPRETATION BY EQUIVALENCE 340 DC. SUGGESTION BY MOVEMENT FRAU MARIA AND BELLA 350 X. INTERPRETATION BY AS IF . ... 359 XI. INTERPRETATION AS ALLEGORY. PICTURES SUGGESTED BY MUSIC 3 3 XII. INTERPRETATION AS DRAMA. CASE OF LADY VENETIA 383 PART IV HAS MUSIC A MEANING COLLECTIVE EXPERIMENTS SOME RESULTS OF COLLECTIVE EXPERIMENTS CONTENTS ii PART V THE COMPOSERS PHENOMENON CHAPTER PAGE I. TRANSLATION INTO MUSIC 445 II. DIVIDED ATTENTION 456 III. AESTHETIC INTEGRATION. A COMPARISON WITH OTHER ARTS 468 iv. SYNTHESIS SOME EXPERIENCES OF MY OWN 478 PART VI HOW MUSIC COMES INTO OUR LIVES I. THE STATE OF AESTHETIC CONTEMPLATION 489 II. MYSELF AS CORPUS VILE 492 in. BETTINA A DUOLOGUE ON MOZART AND BEETHOVEN 510 IV. BEING ATTUNED TO .... 517 PART VII f E GUSTIBUS . . . I. SOME PREFERENCES CLASSIFIED 5 7 II. . . . NQN EST DISPVTANDUM 543 PART VIII BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL i. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 551 II. SOME ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 554 III. EXCITEMENT AS A VITAL NEED 558 rv. MUSIC VERSUS WORDS 559 ENGLISH QUESTIONNAIRE 563 INDEX 569 PREFACE AIMS AND METHODSI THIS BOOK, which, after so many years of working at it and dropping it, has at last got finished, is neither for Musicians nor for Musical Critics, though dealing with both. Not even for such intelligent Amateurs as have contributed so largely to it. It can teach no one whether any particular music happens to be good or bad still less how to make music which shall be good rather than bad. It tries to understand why the self-same music will, perhaps must, seem good, i, e, worth having, to some people, and bad, i. e...
The relatively recent "worship wars" over styles of worship -- traditional, contemporary, or blended -- have calmed down, and many churches have now reached decisions about which "worship style" defines them. At a more fundamental level, however, change has yet to begin.In From Memory to Imagination Randall Bradley argues that fallout from the worship wars needs to be cleaned up and that fundamental cultural changes -- namely, the effects of postmodernism -- call for new approaches to worship. Outlining imaginative ways for the church to move forward, this book is a must-read for church leaders and anyone interested in worship music.
Musicians imagine music by means of functional models which determine certain aspects of the music while leaving others open. This gap between image and the experience it models offers a source of compositional creativity; different musical cultures embody different ways of imagining sound as music. Drawing on psychological and philosophical materials as well as the analysis of specific musical examples, Cook here defines the difference between music theory and aesthetic criticism, and affirms the importance of the "ordinary listener" in musical culture.
"The conversation between music and theology, dormant for too long in recent years, is at last gathering pace. And rightly so. There will always be theologians who will regard music as a somewhat peripheral concern, too trivial to trouble the serious scholar, and in any case almost impossible to engage because of its notorious resistance to words and concepts. But an increasing number are discovering again what many of our forbears realized centuries ago, that the kinship between this pervasive feature of human life and the search for a Christian 'intelligence of faith' is intimate and ineradicable. Maeve Heaney's ambitious, wide-ranging, and energetic book pushes the conversation further forward still. Her approach is unapologetically theological, grounded in the passions and concerns of mainstream doctrinal theology. And yet she is insisting . . . that music must be given its due place in the ecology of theology. Although convinced that music should not be set up as a rival to linguistic or conceptual articulation, let alone swallow up 'traditional' modes of theological language and thought, she is equally convinced that music is an irreducible means of coming to terms with the world, a unique vehicle of world-disclosure, and as such, can generate a particular form of 'understanding': 'there are things which God may only be saying through music.' If this is so, it is incumbent on the theologian to listen." --Jeremy Begbie, from the Foreword
