March 29, 2023
It is widely accepted that music influences our emotions. But does it really make sense to talk about music “expressing” emotions in an essential sense (i.e., can music itself be happy or sad)? Even if it did, should we treat emotional expression as music’s essential purpose, or a criterion for judging its beauty? If music does not literally contain emotions, how does it affect our emotions so powerfully? And if not emotions, what does music express, imitate, or reflect?
Some answers to these questions must be given if we want to understand the nature and purpose of music, let alone its relationship to our moral and spiritual lives. Drawing on the ideas of the 19th-century music critic Eduard Hanslick and the psychologist Edmund Gurney, Thomas Milas argues against the conventional view that music is essentially a vehicle for emotion.
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