Musical Expression and Musical Meaning in Context :: Music Philosophy Essays

Musical port and Musical Meaning in Context 1. Some preliminaries.There is a growing body of work in the philosophy of harmony and tuneful aesthetics that has considered the various ways that music can be important music as representational (that is, melodic depictions of persons, places, processes, or events) musical as quasi-linguistic reference (as when a musical figure underscores the presence of a address in a film or opera), and most especially, music as emotionally expressive. Here I will focus on the give out topic, for I believe it will be useful for researchers in music perception and cognition to avail themselves of the clear-cutions that aestheticians have worked out regarding the musical rumination of emotion.Now we often say that music is expressive, or that a means plays with great expression, but what exactly do we mean? There argon at least two things unity whitethorn be saying. First, one may be praising a doer for their musical sensitivity, that he or s he has a keen sense of just how a passing game is supposed to be played. Such praise is often couched in price of the performers musicality (in statements that border on the oxymoronic, as when one says that a performer plays the music very musically). Such praise may also be couched in terms of expression--i.e., that a performer plays expressively. I have microscopical to say about these attributions, save that they are often linked to the reciprocal ohm thing one often means when speaking of the music or a performance being expressive an expressive piece or performance is one that recognizably embodies a particular emotion, and indeed may cause a sympathetic emotional response in the listener. indeed if one plays expressively, this means that the musics particular emotional qualities--its sadness, gaiety, exuberance, and so forth, are amply conveyed by the performer.Before we discuss those emotional qualities a number of separate preliminary remarks are in order. When we sp eak of the expressive properties of music, these are distinct from the expressive properties of sound. Sounds may be loud, shrill, acoustically rough or smooth, and so forth. These acoustic qualities have expressive correlates and may trigger emotional responses, and of score one cannot have music without sound. But musical expression is much than this it requires the attention to the music qua music, rather than as mere sounds. The opening O Fortuna of Carmina Burana may shock (and indeed scare) the listener due to its sudden chroma (especially when the bass drum starts whacking away), but this shock isnt a musical effect--we get the same reaction when we here a sudden knock at a fireworks display or when a car backfires.