Musical Performance and Emotion: Issues and Developments
This chapter takes the position that there is a range of characteristics which an emotion may contain. The more of these characteristics are present in a psychological state the more ‘emotion-like’ it becomes, but there is no clear cut-off between emotions, feelings, states of arousal, etc. Interactions with music certainly take one into the territory or domain where to talk of emotions being present is legitimate. In everyday contexts emotions can be identified and discussed with precision because they generally involve an event, often enacted by human agents, accompanied by biologically pre-programmed gestures and facial expressions, which has social and personal consequences. The so-called ‘power’ of music may very well be in its emotional cue-impoverishment. In addition, the chapter states that music blurs the boundary between feeling and judgment, and that there is clear evidence that pieces of music which vary in overall energy tend to have emotional peaks at points of high energy.
Keywords: emotions, music, feelings, judgment, energy, emotional peaks, arousal, facial expressions, gestures
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