BASLER BEITRÄGE ZUR
HISTORISCHEN
MUSIKPRAXIS
Moved by Sound Emotions in Early Music
AGNESE PAVANELLO (ED.)
Basler Beiträge
zur Historischen Musikpraxis
Veröffentlichungen der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz/Musik-Akademie Basel
Hochschule für Musik Basel
Herausgegeben von Martin Kirnbauer
Band 44
Agnese Pavanello (ed.)
Moved by Sound Emotions in Early Music
Schwabe Verlag
Editorial Board:
Susan Boynton (Columbia University New York), Christelle Cazaux (SCB), Martin Kirnbauer (SCB), Tess Knighton Bolton (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Ulrich Konrad (Universität Würzburg), Kelly Landerkin (SCB), Birgit Lodes (Universität Wien), Johannes Menke (SCB), Martina Papiro (SCB), Agnese Pavanello (SCB), Katelijne Schiltz (Universität Regensburg), Peter Wollny (Bach-Archiv Leipzig)
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2026 Schwabe Verlag, Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG, Basel, Schweiz
This work is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or translated, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The use of content for the purpose of developing or training AI systems without the consent of the publisher is prohibited.
Cover illustration: Image excerpts from L.-L. Boilly, Une loge, un jour de spectacle gratuit (1830), Versailles, Musée Lambinet. Compilation by Dagmar Putzberg.
Cover illustration design: Dagmar Putzberg
Cover design: icona basel gmbh, Basel
Cover: Kathrin Strohschnieder, Stroh Designagentur, Oldenburg
Typesetting: Daniela Weiland, Textformart, Göttingen
Print: Beltz Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza
Printed in Germany
Manufacturer information: Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG, St. Alban-Vorstadt 76, 4052 Basel, info@schwabeverlag.ch
Responsible person under Art. 16 GPSR: Schwabe Verlag GmbH, Marienstraße 28, 10117 Berlin, info@schwabeverlag.de
ISBN Print 978-3-7965-5439-1
ISBN eBook (PDF) 978-3-7965-5440-7
DOI 10.24894/978-3-7965-5440-7
The ebook has identical page numbers to the print edition (first printing) and supports full-text search. Furthermore, the table of contents is linked to the headings. rights@schwabe.ch www.schwabe.ch
Emotions in Early Music. Foreword
Lidya Yurdum, Samuel A. Mehr, Roza Kamiloğlu, Disa Sauter: Emotional Responses to Music Are Shaped by Acoustic Features, Individual Differences, and Contextual Factors
Michele Calella: Von der musikalischen Affektenlehre zur musikalischen Emotionsgeschichte
Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild: Permeated by Emotions: An Introduction to the History of Emotions in / and (Early) Music 79
Eleonora Rocconi: Music and Emotions in Greek Antiquity: A Case Study from Plato’s Laws
Tess Knighton: Emotional Practices in Urban Ritual in Spain in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Andrés Locatelli: The Use of Passions: A Preliminary Approach to Claudio Monteverdi’s Emotional Lexicon
Christoph Haffter: Mastering Affects: An Early Modern Debate in Philosophy and Music Theory
Bettina Varwig: Dis-Eased Musicking in J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion .
Elizabeth Dobbin: The Imagination, the Body, the Voice: The Singer’s Expressive Tool Kit as Viewed Through the Lens of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Sources 217
Reports, Reflections, Experiments
Kelly Landerkin: Modality and Ethos / Emotions –Intercultural Approaches. Report on the Roundtable Discussion . . . . 257
Deda Cristina Colonna: “Quando il Senso è Maestro”: Weaving Riccoboni’s Principles Into My Pedagogy of Historical Acting Techniques
Johannes Menke: Affektarien von Johann David Heinichen. Einleitung
Valentin Richter: Zur kompositorischen Vervollständigung eines Arienfragments J. D. Heinichens
Abstracts and Short Biographies
Emotions in Early Music
Foreword
How can we grasp and interpret the emotional world of early music? How can we approach the “affective” content of today’s historical repertoires, created long ago for a different emotional world? These questions summarise the central challenge that every early music performer faces when re-proposing the music of the past. If making music per se implies engaging with emotions –a term which in modern usage generally refers to bodily reactions such as sensations and feelings, elicited by musical language and performance through their power to express a diverse semantic content capable of “moving the passions” and stirring the imagination, – then those who devote themselves to early music must also confront the challenge of cultural and temporal distance. Careful and conscious mediation is required to translate and revive repertoires historically rooted in contexts and sensibilities that differ greatly from our own. This mediation concerns multiple aspects, including notational, timbral, stylistic and aesthetic ones, which shape the semantic and affective content of music.
The emotional component is thus an integral part of the musical experience for listeners and musicians alike, yet it is only seldom addressed explicitly in the training of early music performers. For this reason, reflection on the appropriate criteria, principles and practices for convincingly reviving historical repertoires remains essential – not only as a matter of stylistic accuracy and artistic consistency, but also to cultivate awareness of the expressive potential inherent in these repertoires and to bridge scholarly reflection and artistic practice. These considerations gave rise to the idea of organising a symposium on the theme of emotion in early music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis / FHNW . Authentisch? Zum Umgang mit Emotionen in der Alten Musik, held in Basel from 23 to 25 November 2023, was conceived as an interdisciplinary forum designed to foster dialogue between various scholarly and performative
approaches and stimulate fruitful interaction between academic enquiry and artistic experimentation. In addition to the lectures, roundtable and lively discussions, an important part of this symposium were musical performances by students, teachers and invited ensembles that were deliberately designed to reflect the theme.1
This peer-reviewed volume collects selected contributions from the symposium as well as new essays written specifically for this publication, and offers a broad overview of contemporary research on music and emotion from antiquity to the nineteenth century. It includes interdisciplinary studies that address the theme from historical, philosophical, psychological and performative perspectives. The essays explore how emotions are conceptualised, conveyed and experienced in music, ranging from historical investigations of emotional expression and theory to insights from cognitive science and neuroscience. They also cover practice-based approaches that seek to bring the emotional content of historical repertoires into present-day interpretations. Together, these studies propose diverse ways of studying, understanding and interpreting emotional expression in music.
The opening essay by Lidya Yurdum, Samuel A. Mehr, Roza Kamiloğlu and Disa Sauter surveys current psychological and neuroscientific research into how emotional responses to music emerge from the interplay of sound, individual traits and context. This essay offers both a foundation for interdisciplinary dialogue and an accessible entry point for readers who are new to the field. Michele Calella’s contribution outlines a historiographical trajectory from the doctrine of the affections to the modern history of musical emotions, tracing conceptual shifts and their methodological implications for the study of past music, while highlighting the potential of new approaches offered by the history of emotions for expressing emotion in performance practice. In the field of the history of emotions, Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild’s essay provides a foundational overview, emphasising how evolving theoretical and methodological approaches in this field deepen our understanding of early music practices as culturally, socially and emotionally embodied phenomena.
1 See the programme at https://www.forschung.schola-cantorum-basiliensis.ch/de/ veranstaltungen?detail=0badfac7-1e4a-468b-bac5-14aa47b7bfdd (5 August 2025).
In a focused historical case study, Eleonora Rocconi revisits Plato’s Laws, building on the concepts of pathos and ethos expressed in ancient Greek theories linking music and emotion, particularly in terms of these concepts’ pedagogical and ethical functions. Her contribution offers valuable insights into the early conceptualisations of music’s emotional power. Tess Knighton shifts the focus to early modern Spain. She explores emotional practices in public rituals and urban soundscapes, particularly processions, emphasising the function of music as a socially embedded cultural practice. Analysing the affective language in Monteverdi’s letters, Andrés Locatelli proposes a framework for understanding the musical passions reflected in the composer’s work. This framework is informed by contemporary approaches from the history of emotions and refers to seventeenth-century conceptions of affective expression. Investigating early modern philosophical perspectives on emotions through the works of René Descartes and Athanasius Kircher, Christoph Haffter outlines the coexistence of diverse concepts and their relevance for interpreting the expressive dimensions of early modern music. Bettina Varwig addresses the theme of emotional (and physical) disturbance in the context of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion. She examines how early modern Lutheran notions of sin, pain and bodily affliction shaped listeners’ emotional responses to Bach’s Passion. Elizabeth Dobbin’s contribution analyses seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French sources offering practical guidance to singers on how to interpret text expressively, engaging the voice, body and imagination to vividly convey its embedded passions – an approach grounded in rhetorical ideals useful for reimagining early music performances on today’s stage.
The Reports, Reflections, Experiments section brings together various contributions and formats related to the symposium, documenting some of the reflections, discussions and performative experiments that took place at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis on that occasion. In keeping with the tradition of our institution, the scholarly conference was also conceived as an opportunity to promote interaction between scientific and artistic research by combining theoretical approaches with performance-based contributions.
Kelly Landerkin’s report summarises the content of an intercultural roundtable exploring modality, ethos and emotion. Particular attention was given to reflections on the effects of music on the human soul in ancient times. The reception and transformation of these ideas has shaped musical expression and its aesthetic principles throughout history. The contributors to
the roundtable included Eleonora Rocconi, Alexander Lingas, Peter McMurray and Disa Sauter. The roundtable also aimed to explore the intersection between historical theory and contemporary global perspectives.
Pedagogical experiences and creative reimaginings of historical material respectively inform the final two contributions to this volume. Reflecting on her work as a teacher of historical acting technique, Deda Cristina Colonna draws on her studies of historical treatises – particularly the writings of Luigi Riccoboni – to demonstrate the ways in which pedagogical sources from the past remain relevant for and are effective in shaping the methods and aims of modern teaching.
The Affektarien of Johann David Heinichen, as discussed in his 1728 treatise, provide an opportunity to critically examine eighteenth-century musical strategies for expressing specific passions and to experiment with a historically informed musical vocabulary tailored to a specific text. Johannes Menke’s contribution introduces the creative work of Valentin Richter, who completed a fragmentary aria by Heinichen using historically appropriate expressive means, while reflecting on the challenges and implications of such an endeavour.
Although these contributions cannot fully capture the liveliness and vibrancy of the sessions and concerts from which they originated, they aim to document the interplay between theory and practice that characterises the work at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, which continually yields a fresh and diverse crop of artistic outcomes.
Together, the papers in this volume present a rich panorama of current research on music and emotion, encouraging a productive dialogue between historical enquiry and performative experience and aiming to inspire further interdisciplinary exploration.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank our authors for their contributions and for the stimulating exchange of ideas throughout the process. We are also indebted to the colleagues who generously participated in the peer review, as well as to the members of the Scientific Board and colleagues at the Research Department of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis for their valuable external perspectives and insightful suggestions in the conception and implementation
of the event and this publication. Our special thanks go to Margaret Hiley for her meticulous English copy-editing, carried out with expert knowledge of musicological writing. We would also like to thank the Maja Sacher Foundation for its ongoing support, and especially for funding the symposium from which most of the contributions in this volume emerged. Finally, our gratitude goes to Arlette Neumann and Sonja Peschutter at Schwabe Verlag for their professional support throughout the publication process.
Emotional Responses to Music Are
Shaped by Acoustic Features, Individual Differences, and Contextual Factors
Lidya Yurdum, Samuel A. Mehr, Roza Kamiloğlu, Disa Sauter
Introduction
Throughout history, humans across cultures have made and listened to music.1 Today, music is ubiquitous in our daily lives.2 Our emotional responses to music may explain why it is so deeply integrated into daily life, rituals, and self-expression. In fact, when asked why they listen to music, people most commonly cite the regulation of emotions – whether to alleviate negative feelings, enhance positive feelings, or set a specific mood.3
1 See, for instance, Nicholas J. Conard, Maria Malina, and Susanne C. Münzel, “New Flutes Document the Earliest Musical Tradition in Southwestern Germany”, in: Nature 460/7256 (2009), 737–740, doi.org/10.1038/nature08169; Samuel A. Mehr, Manvir Singh, Dean Knox, Daniel M. Ketter, Daniel Pickens-Jones, Stats Atwood, Christopher Lucas, Nori Jacoby, Alena A. Egner, Erin J. Hopkins, Rhea M. Howard, Joshua K. Hartshorne, Mariela V. Jennings, Jan Simson, Constance M. Bainbridge, Steven Pinker, Timothy J. O’Donnell, Max M. Krasnow, and Luke Glowacki, “Universality and Diversity in Human Song”, in: Science 366/6468 (2019), 957–970, doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0868.
2 See Adam J. Lonsdale and Adrian C. North, “Why Do We Listen to Music? A Uses and Gratifications Analysis”, in: British Journal of Psychology 102/1 (2011), 108–134, doi. org/10.1348/000712610X506831; John A. Sloboda, Susan A. O’Neill, and Antonia Ivaldi, “Functions of Music in Everyday Life: An Exploratory Study Using the Experience Sampling Method”, in: Musicae Scientiae 5/1 (2001), 9–32, doi.org/10.1177/102986490100500102.
3 May Kokkidou and Helen Tsakiridou, “Why Do Young People Listen to Music: To Feel Upset, Upgraded or Uplifted?: A Field Study”, in: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of GSME “Music: Educates, Trains, Heals”, 2009 (CD-Rom, ISBN: 978-960-89847-5-2), 116–125; Lonsdale and North, “Why Do We Listen to Music?” (see n. 2); Thomas Schäfer, Peter Sedlmeier, Christine Städtler, and David Huron, “The Psychological Functions of Music Listening”, in: Frontiers in Psychology 4/511 (2013), doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511.
Music’s emotional power is evident in its wide-ranging uses, from soothing infants4 to setting the emotional tone in movies.5 Music fosters feelings of connection to the people around us,6 serves as “ambient mood control” in the workplace,7 and aids in therapeutic settings.8 The use of music to express and induce emotions parallels other forms of emotional expression, such as facial expressions and vocalisations: both music and non-musical emotional expressions develop early in ontogeny,9 occur across cultures with both simi-
4 See Laura K. Cirelli, Zusanna B. Jurewicz, and Sandra E. Trehub, “Effects of Maternal Singing Style on Mother – Infant Arousal and Behavior”, in: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 37/7 (2020), 1213–1220, doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01402; Ran Yan, Ghazal Jessani, Elizabeth Spelke, Peter de Villiers, Jill de Villiers, and Samuel A. Mehr, “Across Demographics and Recent History, Most Parents Sing to Their Infants and Toddlers Daily”, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 376/1840 (2021), doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0089.
5 See Annabel J. Cohen, “Music as a Source of Emotion in Film”, in: Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications, ed. Patrik N. Juslin and John Sloboda, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, 879–908, https://philpapers.org/rec/COHMAA-3.
6 Schäfer, Sedlmeier, Städtler et al., “The Psychological Functions of Music Listening” (see n. 3).
7 See Lorraine Plourde, “Sonic Air-Conditioning: Muzak as Affect Management for Office Workers in Japan”, in: The Senses and Society 12/1 (2017), 18–34, doi.org/10.1080/17 458927.2017.1268812.
8 See Alfredo Raglio, Lapo Attardo, Giulia Gontero, Silvia Rollino, Elisabetta Groppo, and Enrico Granieri, “Effects of Music and Music Therapy on Mood in Neurological Patients”, in: World Journal of Psychiatry 5/1 (2015), 68–78.
9 See Dario Galati and Manuela Lavelli, “Neonate and Infant Emotion Expression Perceived by Adults”, in: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 21 (1997), 57–83; Tobias Grossmann, “The Development of Emotion Perception in Face and Voice During Infancy”, in: Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 28/2 (2010), 219–236, doi.org/10.3233/RNN2010-0499; Richard Parncutt, “Prenatal Development and the Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Musical Behavior”, in: Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology, ed. Susan Hallam, Ian Cross, and Michael H. Thaut, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016, 371–386, doi. org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198722946.013.55; Manvir Singh and Samuel A. Mehr, “Universality, Domain-Specificity and Development of Psychological Responses to Music”, in: Nature Reviews Psychology 2/6 (2023), 1–14, doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00182-z.
larities and differences in form,10 contribute to social bonding,11 are frequently expressed vocally,12 and can communicate interpersonal information, such as affiliation or internal states.13 Given these shared characteristics, the relation-
10 See Hillary A. Elfenbein and Nalini Ambady, “On the Universality and Cultural Specificity of Emotion Recognition: A Meta-Analysis”, in: Psychological Bulletin 128/2 (2002), 203; Mehr, Singh, Knox et al., “Universality and Diversity in Human Song” (see n. 1); Patrick E. Savage, Steven Brown, Emi Sakai, and Thomas E. Currie, “Statistical Universals Reveal the Structures and Functions of Human Music”, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112/29 (2015), 8987–8992, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1414495112.
11 See Agneta H. Fischer and Antony S. Manstead, “Social Functions of Emotion”, in: Handbook of Emotions, ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd edition, New York / London: The Guilford Press 2008, 456–468; Juan G. Roederer, “The Search for a Survival Value of Music”, in: Music Perception 1/3 (1984), 350–356, doi.org/10.2307/40285265; Patrick E. Savage, Psyche Loui, Bronwyn Tarr, Adena Schachner, Luke Glowacki, Steven Mithen, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, “Music as a Coevolved System for Social Bonding”, in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44, e59 (2021), doi:10.1017/ S0140525X20000333.
12 See Gregory A. Bryant, “Animal Signals and Emotion in Music: Coordinating Affect Across Groups”, in: Frontiers in Psychology 4, no. 990 (2013), doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2013.00990; Patrick N. Juslin and Petri Laukka, “Communication of Emotions in Vocal Expression and Music Performance: Different Channels, Same Code?”, in: Psychological Bulletin 129/5 (2003), 770–814, doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770; Mehr, Singh, Knox et al., “Universality and Diversity in Human Song” (see n. 1); Disa A. Sauter, Frank Eisner, Paul Ekman, and Sophie K. Scott, “Cross-Cultural Recognition of Basic Emotions Through Nonverbal Emotional Vocalizations”, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107/6 (2010), 2408–2412.
13 See Juliet C. Barry, Edward H. Hagen, and Samul A. Mehr, “Vocalizations Are Ideal Identity Signals”, in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2025; 48:e53, doi.org/10.1017/ S0140525X24001079. Gregory A. Bryant, Daniel M. T. Fessler, Riccardo Fusaroli, Edward Clint, Lene Aarøe, Coren L. Apicella, Michael Bang Petersen, Shaneikiah T. Bickham, Alexander Bolyanatz, Brenda Chavez, Delphine De Smet, Cinthya Díaz, Jana Fančovičová, Michal Fux, Paulina Giraldo-Perez, Anning Hu, Shanmukh V. Kamble, Tatsuya Kameda, Norman P. Li, Francesca R. Luberti, Pavol Prokop, Katinka Quintelier, Brooke A Scelza, Hyun Jung Shin, Montserrat Soler, Stefan Stieger, Wataru Toyokawa, Ellis A van den Hende, Hugo Viciana-Asensio, Saliha Elif Yildizhan, Jose C. Yong, Tessa Yuditha, and Yi Zhou, “Detecting Affiliation in Colaughter Across 24 Societies”, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113/17 (2018), 4682–4687, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524993113;
ship between music and emotions, and the nature of this connection, have emerged as a focus in psychological research.
In this chapter, we introduce psychological research on emotions and music, highlighting key areas and new directions that we hope will benefit researchers across disciplines. We begin with a brief overview of the core questions that psychologists have explored within this field. Next, we examine prominent theories that explain how emotion and music are connected and examine the evidence supporting these accounts. Finally, we outline potential future directions that may prove productive for advancing research on the relationship between music and emotions.
How Do Psychologists Study Emotional Responses to Music?
A link between emotions and music has long been theorised, dating back to ancient philosophers. For instance, in The Republic, Plato suggested that different musical modes evoke different internal states – for courage for instance, he suggested the Dorian mode and for relaxation the Lydian and Ionian modes.14 In recent decades, the field of psychology has adopted an empirical approach in trying to understand this connection: while the Ionian mode may indeed
Edward H. Hagen and Gregory A. Bryant, “Music and Dance as a Coalition Signaling System”, in: Human Nature 14/1 (2003), 21–51, doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1015-z; David J. Hargreaves, Raymond MacDonald, and Dorothy Miell, “How Do People Communicate Using Music”, in: Musical Communication, ed. Dorothy Miell, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, 1–26; Ursula Hess, Reginald Adams, and Robert Kleck, “Who May Frown and Who Should Smile? Dominance, Affiliation and the Display of Happiness and Anger”, in: Cognition & Emotion 19/4 (2005), 515–536, doi.org/10.1080/02699930441000364; Samuel A. Mehr, Lee Ann Song, and Elizabeth Spelke, “For 5-Month-Old Infants, Melodies Are Social”, in: Psychological Science 27/4 (2016), 486–501, doi.org/10.1177/0956797615626691; Gaye Soley and Elizabeth S. Spelke, “Shared Cultural Knowledge: Effects of Music on Young Children’s Social Preferences”, in: Cognition 148 (2016), 106–116, doi.org/10.1016/ j.cognition.2015.09.017.
14 See James F. Mountford, “Greek Music and Its Relation to Modern Times”, in: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 40/1 (1920), 13–42.
induce relaxation, psychologists focus on how such effects can be demonstrated experimentally.
Psychological research on music and emotions often distinguishes between two central aspects: the perception of emotions expressed in music, and the ability of music to induce emotions in the listener. These are conceptually distinct: it is possible to recognise emotions expressed in a song based on its acoustic features or contextual information without personally feeling any emotion at all.15 For example, you might acknowledge that a chart-topping song sounds happy, yet still find it irritating. This chapter focuses on emotion perception and induction; however, a third, often less emphasised, aspect of the link between emotions and music is emotion communication, which requires alignment between the emotion intended by the performer and the emotion perceived by the listener.16
These three aspects (perception, induction, and communication) require psychologists to use different methodological approaches. For instance, studies on whether music can communicate emotions often use purpose-made stimuli or attempt to establish a “ground truth” about the performer’s intended emotion in order to compare this to the emotion perceived by the listener.17 Of course, such information is not always available. Studies that focus on the emotions listeners perceive in music also often assign a ‘correct’ emotion to a piece of music through pilot testing or expert opinion,18 although in principle, listeners could perceive any number of varying emotions in music. This approach of matching a piece of music to one emotion can oversimplify
15 See John A. Sloboda, “Empirical Studies of Emotional Response to Music”, in: Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication, ed. Mari Riess Jones and Susan Holleran, Washington D. C.: American Psychological Association 1992, 33–46, doi.org/10.1037/10104-003.
16 See Patric N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, “Music and “Emotion”, in: The Psychology of Music, ed. Diana Deutsch, 3rd edition, London: Academic Press 2012, 583–645, doi. org/10.1016/B978-0-12-381460-9.00015-8.
17 See Patrick N. Juslin, “Communicating Emotion in Music Performance: A Review and a Theoretical Framework”, in: Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, ed. Patrick N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001, 309–337.
18 See Lindsay Alison Warrenburg, “Choosing the Right Tune: A Review of Music Stimuli Used in Emotion Research”, in: Music Perception 37/3 (2020), 240–258.
matters, as music frequently conveys multiple emotions simultaneously,19 and different emotional responses to the same piece of music are to be expected, to some extent, due to individual differences;20 explicitly selecting pieces to predominantly convey one emotion may smooth over this natural variation. Whether researchers are interested in emotion perception, induction, or communication also leads to distinct questions. Regarding emotion perception, researchers might ask how good people are at recognising different emotions in music, how consistent listeners are in their judgements, and how factors such as musical background or cultural familiarity influence their perceptions. On the other hand, while it is often assumed that music induces emotions, psychologists first needed to establish whether this is the case, and if so, whether these induced emotions were comparable to those provoked by non-music stimuli in everyday life. A further line of inquiry addresses why the same piece of music can induce different emotions in different individuals. However, the most challenging questions for both emotion perception and induction arguably concern the mechanisms behind these processes: how and why do certain sounds lead to the recognition of emotions, or to profound emotional experiences?
19 See Alan S. Cowen, Xia Fang, Disa Sauter, and Dacher Keltner, “What Music Makes Us Feel: At Least 13 Dimensions Organize Subjective Experiences Associated with Music Across Different Cultures”, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118/4 (2020), 1924–1934, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910704117; Patrick G. Hunter, Glenn E. Schellenberg, and Ulrick Schimmack, “Feelings and Perceptions of Happiness and Sadness Induced by Music: Similarities, Differences, and Mixed Emotions”, in: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 4/1 (2010), 47–56, doi.org/10.1037/a0016873.
20 See Hannah Strauss, Julia Vigl, Peer-Ole Jacobsen, Martin Bayer, Francesca Talamini, Wolfgang Vigl, Eva Zangerle, and Marcel Zentner, “The Emotion-to-Music Mapping Atlas (Emma): A Systematically Organized Online Database of Emotionally Evocative Music Excerpts”, in: Behavior Research Methods 56/4 (2024), 3560–3577, doi.org/10.3758/s13428024-02336-0.
Current State of Theorising on Emotional Responses to Music
In this section, we introduce some central theories that propose different mechanisms underlying emotion perception and induction in music, focusing on how these mechanisms underlie emotional responses to a variety of stimuli, not just music. We discuss their implications for the universality of emotional responses, and consider explanations for individual differences in emotional responses.
Emotion Perception
Perception of Emotion from Music Is Facilitated by Evolved General Mechanisms
It is common for listeners to talk about music in emotional terms: a song might be angry, joyful, or tender. Music can express any number of varied emotions ranging from ‘basic’ emotions such as happiness and sadness, to more complex emotions such as awe, desire, pain, humour, or solemnity.21 But why does music express emotions that we as listeners can recognise? This ability likely stems from general mechanisms that also allow humans to perceive emotions in non-music human behaviours,22 such as facial expressions, body movement, and vocalisations.23
Being able to interpret the emotions expressed by others’ faces and voices is useful as we navigate our social worlds.24 People are able to decode emo-
21 See Patrick N. Juslin, “What Does Music Express? Basic Emotions and Beyond”, in: Frontiers in Psychology 4/596 (2013).
22 See Klaus R. Scherer and Marcel R. Zentner, “Emotional Effects of Music: Production Rules”, in: Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (see n. 17), 361–392.
23 Bryant, “Animal Signals and Emotion in Music” (see n. 12); Juslin and Laukka, “Communication of Emotions in Vocal Expression and Music Performance” (see n. 12); Singh and Mehr, “Universality, Domain-Specificity and Development of Psychological Responses to Music” (see n. 9).
24 See Laura Ferreri, Ernest Mas-Herrero, Robert J. Zatorre, Pablo Ripollés, Alba Gomez-Andres, Helena Alicart, Guillem Olivé, Josep Marco-Pallarés, Rosa M. Antonijoan, Marta Valle, M., Jordi Riba, and Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, “Dopamine Modulates the Reward Experiences Elicited by Music”, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116/9 (2019), 3793–3798, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811878116.
tions with above-chance accuracy from facial expressions, body movement, and vocalisations,25 both from members of their own culture and unfamiliar ones26 – and even from non-human animals.27 The general mechanisms that underlie emotion perception in these non-music stimuli likely also facilitate emotion perception for music.28 These shared mechanisms can result in surprising parallels in how emotions are perceived in music and seemingly
25 See Tanja Bänziger, Didier Grandjean, and Klaus R. Scherer, “Emotion Recognition from Expressions in Face, Voice and Body: The Multimodal Emotion Recognition Test (Mert)”, in: Emotion 9/5 (2009), 691–704; Ellen Blythe, Lúcia Garrido, and Matthew R. Longo, “Emotion Is Perceived Accurately from Isolated Body Parts, Especially Hands”, in: Cognition 230/105260 (2023), doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105260; Disa A. Sauter, Charlotte Panattoni, and Francesca Happé, “Children’s Recognition of Emotions from Vocal Cues”, in: British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31/1 (2013), 97–113, doi.org/10.1111/ j.2044-835X.2012.02081.x; Disa A. Sauter and Agneta H. Fischer, “Can Perceivers Recognise Emotions from Spontaneous Expressions?”, in: Cognition and Emotion 32/3 (2018), 504–515, doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1320978.
26 See H. Clark Barrett and Gregory H. Bryant, “Vocal Emotion Recognition Across Disparate Cultures”, in: Journal of Cognition and Culture 8/1 (2008), 135–148, doi. org/10.1163/156770908X289242; Georgia Chronaki, Michael Wigelsworth, Marc D. Pell, and Sonja A. Kotz, “The Development of Cross-Cultural Recognition of Vocal Emotion During Childhood and Adolescence”, in: Scientific Reports 8/8659 (2018), doi.org/10.1038/ s41598-018-26889-1; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman et al., “Cross-Cultural Recognition of Basic Emotions” (see n. 12).
27 See Piera Filippi, Jenna V. Congdon, John Hoang, Daniele L. Bowling, Stephan A. Reber, Andrius Pašukonis, Marisa Hoeschele, Sebastian Ocklenburg, Bart de Boer, Christopher B. Sturdy, Albert Newen, and Onur Güntürkün; “Humans Recognize Emotional Arousal in Vocalizations Across All Classes of Terrestrial Vertebrates: Evidence for Acoustic Universals”, in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284/1859 (2017), doi. org/10.1098/osf.io/rspb.2017.0990; Roza G. Kamiloğlu, Katie E. Slocombe, Daniel B. Haun, and Disa A. Sauter, “Human Listeners’ Perception of Behavioural Context and Core Affect Dimensions in Chimpanzee Vocalizations”, in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B 287/1929 (2020), doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1148.
28 See Nathalie Gosselin, Isabelle Peretz, Erica Johnsen, and Ralph Adolphs, “Amygdala Damage Impairs Emotion Recognition from Music”, in: Neuropsychologia 45/2 (2007), 236–244, doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.07.012; Beau Sievers, Carolyn Parkinson, Peter J. Kohler, James M. Hughes, Sergey V. Fogelson, and Thalia Wheatley, “Visual and Auditory Brain Areas Share a Representational Structure That Supports Emotion Perception”, in: Current Biology 31/23 (2021), 5192–5203.e4, doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.09.043.