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The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical
Arousal, Expression and Social Control
(2013, Oxford UP)

Review Essay (unpublished draft, 2014)

by Dylan van der Schyff, Simon Fraser University
Introduction

The power of music has been a topic of fascination for thousands of years; there is perhaps no
human activity that so fully spans the range of human experience and potentials. Music exercises
our cognitive abilities for pattern recognition and structure and thus affords some of the most
exquisite formal phenomena we are capable of experiencing. Beginning early in life, musicality
also plays a central role in developing the corporeal and social bonds that allow us to form
interpersonal relationships, a sense of identity, belonging and community. As a result, music has
traditionally provided an important public space where we come together to participate in
culture. Musical experiences do move us physically, intellectually, socially and spiritually; and
the transformative musical phenomena associated with ritual, ceremony, therapeutic contexts and
everyday life are shared features of human existence around the world. But while it appears to be
largely agreed that musics ability to do what it does must be related to the way it engages our
emotional faculties, explaining just how this is so is extremely difficult.
For most of the last century, this project was dominated by a focus on the relationship
between structure and expressivity in Western classical musicuntil relatively recently the
putative superiority and autonomous status of the Classical canon went largely unquestioned and
the locus of musical expressivity was often thought to be found in (or 'possessed by) the formal
structural relationships of the music itself. From this so-called expressionist perspective, the
subjective experiences of listeners and performers are largely irrelevant; it is only necessary that
they are in possession of the appropriate cognitive apparatus to perceive, represent and correctly
appraise the supposedly objective formal relationships encoded into the score by the composer
(Bohlman, P, 1999; D. Clark, 2012; Small, 1999; Davies, 2002).
This perspective has developed hand-in-hand with the dominant information-processing
model of the mind. By this light, cognition is understood to occur through a hierarchical inputoutput process, where representations of a 'world out there' are computed through abstract symbol
processing at non-conscious levels in the braini.e. the mind as computer metaphor (Pinker,

2009; Varela et al., 1993). Thus research and theory has been dominated by a strangely
disembodied, detached and decontextualized focus on the cognitive appraisal (i.e. processing) of
musical stimuli in terms of basic or garden variety emotions (such as joy, fear, anger and so
on) according to rule-based processeswhere socio-cultural environments, human development,
and personal agency receive little attention.
Eric Clarke has argued that this so-called cognitivist orientation reduces musical
cognition to an "abstract reasoning or problem solving process" where perception is treated as a
kind of disinterested contemplation with no connection to actionwhich bears little relationship
to the essentially exploratory function of perception in the life of an organism" (2005:15). Indeed,
recent decades have seen a shift in our understanding of how the mind functions, as well as a
much richer conception of what music and meaning-making entails. The notion of innate basic
emotions has come under growing scrutiny (see Colombetti, 2014); and an increasingly
influential ecological-embodied paradigm has emerged that suggests more plastic, adaptive, and
interactive (or enactive) conceptions of the mind-brain and organism-environment relationships
(Doidge, 2007; Gallagher, 2005; Johnson, 2007, Ramachadran, 2011). These new insights offer us
a deeper perspective on the affective power of musicone that goes to the core of our embodied
existence to consider how, beginning in infancy, our involvement with music originates in an
embodied emotional-aesthetic context that is based in movement, cross modal perceptions, and
pre-linguistic recognitions of embodied affective states (Johnson, 2007; Trevarthen, 2002).
That we engage with music at this primordial biological level is evident in clinical settings
(music therapy), developmental contexts, and in everyday life (DeNora, 2000; van der Schyff,
2013). Along these lines, a range of researchers are exploring the affective power of music at the
levels of culture and direct lived experience, revealing that even within rather codified cultural
contexts individuals do enact unique relationships with music that are central to their sense of
identity, embodiment and self. As DeNora writes, music is a device for ordering the self; a
resource for meaning and world making (2000; 2011). In brief, a greater emphasis is being
placed on understanding how people become involved with music in terms of enacting individual
and social-cultural economies, not as passive listeners-consumers but rather as active and
embodied participants in the construction of musical meaning.
This is all to say that it is indeed a very exciting and productive time for the study of
musical emotion. A more nuanced story is beginning to be toldone where the factors that give
rise to emotional-affective musical experiences span ecological-embodied interactions, primary
bodily processes and social contexts, as well as cognitive appraisals and abstract cultural and
individual meanings. Not surprisingly, the complexity associated with these richer conceptions of

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music, emotion and meaning is too much for one discipline to accommodate and recent decades
have seen a surge in cooperative research across diverse fields of inquiry. Much of the knowledge
generated by this interdisciplinary work has been presented in excellent edited anthologies (e.g.
Juslin & Sloboda, 2010). The most recent contribution is The Emotional Power of Music:
Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Arousal, Expression, and Social Control (Cochrane,
Fantini & Scherer, 2013), which will be the subject of the review that follows.

Review: The Emotional Power of Music

Like its predecessors, The Emotional Power of Music is organized around broad themes. Three
sectionsrespectively entitled Musical expressiveness, Emotion elicitation and The powers
of musicprovide the general categories by which a diverse range of ideas and approaches are
presented and discussed. Each section receives an introduction by one of the editors where
constituent chapters are outlined and placed in context. These introductions offer useful
background information for readers who may be new to this area of research. Likewise they allow
more experienced readers to better orient the research offered by each author within the field at
large. The writing is generally clear and well referenced; key terms and concepts receive adequate
explanation. As a result, the book should be accessible to anyone interested in the topic while
remaining a valuable reference for professional musicologists. For the most part, the music and
musical practices discussed are restricted to Western art music and this will certainly frustrate
some readers. This notwithstanding, the book offers critical perspectives, as well as welcome
enhancements to traditional approaches, with many of the authors embracing important current
concerns associated with embodiment. The focus of this review is on areas associated with
philosophical and psychological musicology, which comprises the majority of the volume
chapters dealing with historical issues are considered only briefly.

Section 1 Musical expressiveness

Following Tom Cochranes introduction, Section 1 opens with Michael Spitzers analysis of
Trocken Blumen from Schuberts song cycle Die Schne Mllerin. Spitzer begins with

traditional musicological approach, initially looking for emotional meaning within the melodic
and harmonic structure of the work. The chief focus here is on understanding how the composer
constructs the pieceand, as Spitzer suggests, the whole cyclearound a melodic apex (the
highest sung note) that coincides with the emotional peak of the composition. What makes
Spitzers approach so interesting, however, is the way he develops a more explicitly biological
and movement-based conception of musical emotion than one usually finds in traditional score

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based analysissee, for example, his discussion of the subconscious physiological-emotional

power of the cry, as well as the metaphor of growth and blossoming. Indeed, Spitzer argues
that most analytical approaches to musical emotion are static and he suggests that we would do
better to consider music in terms of its affective trajectory. This perspective allows Spitzer to
analyze the core affectin this case sadnessas a complex package of entailments; or as a
group of goal driven processes.
This approach is not necessarily at odds with attribution, expressionist or persona models
of musical expressivity. However, it does tend to radicalize such possibilities with the listener by
highlighting the fundamental transformative aspects of musical experience; and by recognizing
that emotions are not simply expressive modes, but rather states of mind or being that involve
action tendencies. Thus, for Spitzer, our affective involvement with music is grounded, first and
foremost, in empathic experiences of movement, the body and social interactions (e.g. separation
anxiety). According to him, these primal responses and associations are what allow emotional
contagion to occur in the first placewhich, in turn, allows us to aestheticize the feelings we
refer to with terms such as sadness, joy and so on.
Some readers will recognize the influence of theories developed in affective neuroscience
and may wish that this connection be developed more fully. The work of Panksepp, for example,
is discussed only briefly. Mark Johnsons (2007) work in embodied aesthetics is also relevant to
Spitzers affective trajectory approach; the inclusion of such research would lend further
support from the fields of neuroscience, human development and philosophy of mind.
Nevertheless, the chapter provides a welcome embodied extension to traditional musicology that
may point the way towards enhanced forms of analysis.
Following Spitzers analytical approach, Chapter 3 offers an interesting change of focus.
Here Tom Cochrane interviews three very different composers in order to discover how they
understand and employ the expressive powers of music in their practice. Cochrane begins each
interview with essentially the same question, Do you believe music arouses emotions in
listeners? This allows each composer to move off in his own direction, with Cochrane providing
further questions that do an excellent job of clarifying and advancing the ideas at hand. The first
interview is with electro-acoustic composer, Jean-Claude Risset. Risset works outside the context
of traditional tonal harmony and is therefore able to offer a unique perspective on the relationship
between sound and feelingone developed over many years of creative practice and research
composing with sound and composing sound itself. The composer discusses our affective
relationship with sound on a number of levels (bodily states, environmental context, survival and
evolution) and he considers how music and sound may be used to manipulate listeners, for better

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and for worse. Along these lines, Risset shares some of the fascinating discoveries and
experiences he and his colleagues have encountered in their practice, as well as reflections on
how post-tonal and non-tonal music is received and experienced emotionally in different contexts
(e.g. film, theatre, acousmatic listening environments and so on). In all it is a fascinating
discussion, underpinned by Rissets quasi-ethical position that the generation of emotion in music
should be an interactive process, performed by the active and attentive listener, rather than as a
result of systematic processes intended to make the music emotional by using tricks of the trade
producing direct psychological effects (p.26).
This is followed by a brief conversation with Brian Ferneyhough that examines concerns
associated with the relationship between emotion and the cultural milieu, as well as the
composers understanding of his relationship with the performers of his works. Ferneyhoughs
recognition of the fundamentally embodied status of the performer and listener (and thus the
music itself) is revealing. Also interesting is the embrace of ambiguity and multi-layered
contextual interpretation in his understanding of composer-performer-listener relationships. As
Ferneyhough puts it, sincerity [is] not interchangeable with the abandonment of ambiguity (p.
31).
An insightful discussion with film composer Carter Burwell concludes the chapter. Among
other things, Burwell reveals the central role music plays in highlighting the subtext of a
cinematic narrativehow music conveys emotional context when the visual imagery might
otherwise be neutral or ambiguous: like Psycho where the music is telling you to be tense, even
when youre just watching someone in a hotel room doing nothing (p.36). Of course, the way
this is done varies drastically from film to film. As Burwell discusses, cinematic music may be
employed both rhetorically and ironically to underscore more nuanced aspects of character
development, plot, and style. See, for example, his entertaining discussion of musical
exaggeration in the Cohen Brothers film, Fargowhere the fact that the music cant see the
comedy is itself funny. Its like the music is the straight man who has no idea that anything funny
is going on (p.39). In all, the chapter provides fascinating insights into how these three
composers understand the emotional power of music and develop it in their work: Burwells
approach is overtly manipulative in order to support (or sometimes even drive) the narrative of
the film; Ferneyhough plays with ambiguity and interpretation; and similarly, Risset highlights
the active agency of the listener for enacting the emotional meaning of the work.
Having considered the perspective of the analyst and the composer(s) in chapters 2 and 3,
the following three chapters take up themes related to performance. In Chapter 4, Daniel LeechWilkinson begins with a look at the anxiety about the ontology of musical works. The author

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suggests that the traditional view that places the locus of musical meaning and expressivity solely
within the score is wrongheaded. He discusses the origins of this assumption; and he argues
persuasively for the central role of the performernot simply as producers of faithful
representations but rather as agents who are culturally and historically situated and who
necessarily bring their unique embodied life experience to bear in their involvement with music.
Leech-Wilkinson draws on three performances of Schuberts song Die junge nonneeach
offering a very different emotional experienceas well as analyses of Alfred Cortots highly
idiosyncratic performances of Chopin. In the process he develops a performance-centred
approach to musical expressivity that focuses less on musicological facts and much more on
bodily response (p.50). Here Leech-Wilkinson refers here to the recent work of philosopher
Mark Johnson (2007) in embodied aesthetics to explain how our experience of music is informed
by the ways we move and respond to the environments we inhabit. These provide us with
metaphorical models for experiencing other kinds of motion and apparent motion (p.50). Given
such insights, Leech-Wilkinson argues that music cannot be said to exist. Rather, it happens, and
in a multitude of ways (p.44).
This approach breaks with the reifying tendencies of traditional music ontology by
understanding a musical work (or a body of work) not as a thing, but rather as an ongoing,
transforming process. As such, it resonates strongly with the growing pool of researchers who
explore the adaptive, ecological and enactive nature of musical involvement. In all, LeechWilkinson presents a refreshing approach to musical expressivity that is based in experiencethe
lived (and living) world of the performer-listener.
Chapter 5 follows with a detailed look at the considerable challenges involved in
effectively conveying emotion in opera performance. Here Klaus Scherer explores the question of
whether it is necessary for the singer-actor to actually experience the emotions the narrative
requires in order to be convincing, or if the performer must learn how to skillfully feign them (i.e.
the actor/singers paradox). The physical requirements of theatrical singing and movement, as
well as the psychological demands of maintaining character and narrative, means that the opera
performer must maintain a high level of control over psycho-physical states. However, as Scherer
points out, in order to be convincing the emotions the performer exhibits must satisfy a number of
requirements. Most importantly the expressive modalities must be coordinated in a way that
credibly invokes the spontaneity and lack of control associated with genuine, highly charged
emotional experiences. After a series of brief interviews with five professional opera performers,
as well as a consideration of a number of approaches to emotional expression in acting (e.g.
Diderot, Stanislavski and Roach), Scherer argues that the real vs. fake dichotomy may not be

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useful in analyzing how performers actually convey emotion in practice. What is needed, he
claims, is a more nuanced middle ground approach. To this end, Scherer offers some interesting
possibilities for analysis such as his push-pull model, which considers how the performative
aspects of emotional expression in the theatre may be understood as extensions of those
experienced in everyday lifei.e. the distinction between largely involuntary internal
physiological factors that push emotional expression in certain ways, and those external sociocultural conventions that pull the expression to take on certain forms rather than others. As
Scherer writes, [] we all constantly play emotion theatre. Thus the distance from real life to
professional acting is not nearly as clear-cut as it is usually made out to be (p.66).
Some readers may wonder if such a clear push-pull distinction may actually be tenable
outside of isolated cases. Scherer responds to this concern by suggesting that push and pull
factors occur only very rarely in isolation and that both expression determinants interact with
each other (p.66). Thus it is implied that this distinction provides, at the very least, a useful
starting point for the comparative analysis of how emotions are performed both in the theatre
and in everyday life. Finally, although the focus of this chapter is on operatic performance,
performers from other genres may find much that is relevant here. Indeed, all musicians must
learn to inhabit the emotional world of the music they are creating as fully as possible while
maintaining a clear and present connection to the technical (physical and psychological)
requirements necessary to enact that musical world in the first placeScherers approach stands
to be greatly extended through research with performers working in other musical environments.
Chapter 6 takes up the issue of the resistance of the instrument. Here philosopher Tom
Cochrane moves from a discussion of the nature of artistic expression to how the resistance of the
instrument contributes to the creative act of the performer. Although some very interesting points
are raised on the latter subject, a very generalizing romantic view of the artist and expression is
put forward in the opening pages of the chapter. Cochrane relies heavily on the thought of
Collingwood (1938). And as a result, he seems to expect readers to simply accept certain
assumptions, such as the notion that artistic expression begins with a vague and oppressive
impulse from which the artist extricates herself through the clarifying act of creative
expressionthe business of art proper is to express the emotional state of the artist (p. 75).
Indeed, while the act of communication with the wider community is central to Collingwoods
theory, It has been argued that this approach overly identifies the artwork with the inner
experience of the artist himselfa view Cochrane seems to have no qualms with when he argues
that if the audience cannot re-create the artists emotional state by engagement with the work,
then the artist cannot be sure that he or she has had a genuine aesthetic experience (p. 76). By

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this light, the idea that the audience should have any role to play in interpreting the work is
effectively rendered nonsensicaltheir role is reduced to reconstituting the intentions of the
artist; a view that has received considerable criticism over the last century.
Furthermore, the Collingwood-Cochrane position also demands a clear separation between
the contrivances and conventions associated with some notion of mere craft and the rarified,
putatively original and wholly uncontrived activity of the artist. Keeping in mind here that the
artist Cochrane is discussing is the musical performer, we may reasonably question if all
performances worthy of the status of art should (or could) adhere to the ideal criteria Cochrane
lays out. Are we to exclude from art any music where the musician comes to the performance
prepared with certain emotional and technical objectives in mind? It seems possible that most
performers would (as a point of necessity) arrive with at least a tentative intellectual and
emotional trajectory. Are listeners indeed simply passive re-creators of the artists emotional
states? Are there some musical performers who are clearly not artists and are some performance
genres and contexts not artistic? Where exactly do we draw that line? In brief, a somewhat
outmoded and long-criticized idealist-expressionist conception of music and emotion is
uncritically assumed; and readers, especially those who are performing artists and criticalaesthetic philosophers, may find much that is problematic here. Unfortunately, Cochrane does
little to address potential objections or the question of who such ideal Collingwoodian performers
might be. However, he does comment that:

If the performer is engaging in a Collingwoodian act of creative self-expressionthe kind

of immediate creative articulation found not just in improvisation but any creative
interpretation of a scorethe physical interaction with the instrument will also shape that
mental state expressed by the performer in the musical event. In these circumstances, then,
we should recognize that the instrument is not merely a means to the end of realizing some
pre-existing expressive sentiment, but a vital part of shaping expressive content from the
beginning.

This is a compelling statement (Collingwodian concerns aside) as it draws attention to the

essential psycho-physical engagement with the musical instrumentboth directly for the
performer and indirectly or empathically for the listener. Cochrane expands on this in interesting
ways, notably drawing on Toru Takemitsus discussion of the Japanese biwaa notoriously
difficult one string instrument intentionally made to embrace imperfections and noise. In brief,
it is argued that exploring and negotiating the resistance of the instrument is a central to musical

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creativity; and that a sense of such physical engagements with instruments is crucial for
emotional affect to be convincingly expressed and perceived in musical performances. Cochrane
highlights this by considering how computer musicians deliberately simulate such interactions
(imperfections: variations, or irregularities in timing, dynamics, tunings and attack) in order to
make their music more expressive. Following this, Cochrane discusses a recent trend in music
instrument technology that aims to reduce instrumental resistanceincluding his own mood
organ, which employs physiological sensors to collect signals that are then used to manipulate
musical variables.
Cochrane also makes some interesting comparisons with the historical move towards
standardization in instrument technology, and discusses how this may enable musical meanings to
be conveyed more consistently. Some readers may find referencing to relevant literature to be
somewhat limited. For example, the important recent work of Marc Leman (2008) is not
discussed, which is surprising given Cochranes strong interest in interfacing or mediating
technologies. In all, however, the chapter is very interesting and informative, although some
readers will find the initial discussion of Collingwoodian aesthetics problematic and unnecessary.
The last two chapters in Section 1 offer interesting historical perspectives on how
performance and emotion were understood in the early baroque and Renaissance periods
respectively. In Chapter 7, Christine Jeanneret discusses the gender ambiguity inherent in
performance practice and musical texts in 17th century Italy (i.e. the idea of the female performer
and the role of castrati). And in Chapter 8, Claude Victor Palisca explores the ethos of musical
modes that emerged and disappeared in the second half of the 16th century, offering comparisons
and contrasts with Ancient Greek perspectives. Because these chapters deal with concerns more
closely associated with historical musicology I do not discuss them at length here.

Section 2 Emotion elicitation

Section 2 turns the focus towards the question of emotion elicitation. This topic is one of the most
interesting and contentious in the field, largely because the nature of musical emotions remains so
frustratingly vague. For example, although studies have suggested that musical experiences may
elicit psycho-physiological responses that are similar to those produced by basic or garden
variety emotionsand that often appear to correlate with certain structural aspects of music
(rapid changes in dynamics, unexpected cadences, changes in tempo and so on)it has also been
shown that emotional-physiological changes associated with music do not always clearly map
onto those found in studies of non-musical emotions (Krumhansl, 1997: 351). Indeed, there
exists a large amount of evidence to suggest that specific emotions may be consistently attributed

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to given musical passages by appropriately encultured listeners, but it has nevertheless proven
difficult to demonstrate convincingly that music actually produces such emotions in listeners
(Scherer & Zentner, 2001; Gabrielsson, 2001-2002). This, along with philosophical problems
associated with musical intentionality (i.e. the object of musical emotions), has contributed to
the problematic suspicion that affective musical experiences may be emotionally cue
impoverished; that they are merely representative of, diminished versions of, or somehow
different from, other types of emotions.
Such ambiguities have prompted many researchers and theorists to develop more complex
approaches based on richer conceptions of what the word music implies as well as more
nuanced multi-factorial, embodied-ecological, developmental and action-based conceptions of
what emotional-affective response entails. Thus, as Scherer points out in his introduction (Ch.9),
underlying concerns in this section involve developing new perspectives on the nature of musical
emotions, how they are created and represented, and what the meaning of such processes might
be for human bio-cognitive development at ontogenetic and evolutionary levels.
In Chapter 10, Scherer and Eduardo Coutinho draw out a multi-factorial approach that
takes into consideration a wide range of interacting elements including structural, performance,
listener, and contextual features. Five possible mechanisms or routes that afford the
production of emotions in listeners are discussedappraisal, memory, entrainment, emotional
contagion, and empathyand the complex inner workings of each are considered at cognitive
and pre-cognitive levels. Again, these routes are thought to function interactively and useful
diagrams are provided to help clarify how this might be understood.
While Scherer and Coutinho acknowledge that musical experiences involve many different
types of affective states, their analysis is restricted to what they refer to as properly emotional
reactions to music as based on convergent definitions in the current literature and using Scherers
[Component Processing Model] of emotion as a guide (p.139). The CPM offers a way of
discussing the emotional appraisal of an event though a set of criteriaphysiological symptoms,
motor expression, action tendencies, and cognitive appraisal. These components are understood to
be integrated multi-modally and continuously updated through largely non-conscious processing.
This results in representations, parts of which may then become conscious and subject to
assignment to fuzzy emotion categories which may then lead to labelling with emotion words,
expressions, or metaphors (p.123). The CPM thus allows the authors to differentiate affective
phenomena into a number of classes that are not separated by sharp boundaries and where the
meaning of emotion words for the respective classes may be difficult to define and are multiply
interrelated (p. 128).

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Put simply, Scherer and Coutinhos approach offers a more nuanced view of musical
emotions, as well as a richer base of criteria and components for empirical research, than is
afforded by attempts to align musical psycho-physiological responses with so called basic or
garden variety emotions (e.g. Juslin & Vstfjll, 2008). This said, some readers may take issue
with a number of assumptions. Of the eight affective classes suggested, the authors single out
three as properly emotional and thus relevant to music: the utilitarian, aesthetic, and epistemic. It
is argued that immediate personal relevance is necessary for the production of utilitarian
emotions. Thus special emphasis is given to so-called aesthetic or epistemic emotions because, as
the authors claim, they correspond to the lack of personal relevance associated with most musical
experienceswhich, they argue, explains the ambiguity found in traditional attempts to align
musical and non-musical physiological-emotional responses.
In brief, the authors assume an essentially Kantian (aesthetic) stance with regard to musical
emotions that, for many critics, tends to reduce music to a kind of detached perceptual process
(Clarke, 2005; Johnson, 2007). Indeed the whole chapter, explores how music creates emotion
in listeners. And despite references to context and culture, the overriding assumption here is that
musical emotions are caused by external structural antecedents intrinsic to the music acting on
specific internal processing mechanisms. Some will object that this plays down the fact that
listeners are not passive receivers, but rather come to musical experiences primed for action,
ready to enact the musical worlds they participate ini.e. that musical experiences are personally
relevant. Along these lines, readers may find it useful to contrast Scherer and Coutinos
orientation with empirical research and theory associated with dynamic systems and enactive
models of emotion and the mind (Freeman, 2000; Colombetti, 2014; Lewis, 2005; ORegan &
Noe, 2001; Noe, 2004; Varela et al. 1993; Johnson, 2007). These perspectives offers a compelling
alternative to the traditional reliance on 18th century aesthetic axioms (see Johnson, 2007; Elliott,
1995) and the cognitivist/information-processing approach to cognition.
In Chapter 11, Luca Zoppelli looks at fear-arousing mechanisms in Verdis Messa
Requiem. Zoppelli distinguishes three main mechanisms of musical communicationA)
emotional coding, B) intrinsic meaning, and C) extrinsic symbolization. In doing so he extends
the traditional focus on the formal and referential elements of musical works by bringing
biological and developmental concerns to bear on the production of musical meaning. This allows
him to pose some interesting questions and to make some tentative suggestions with regard to the
various ways by which the constituent characteristics of A, B, and C might interact in differing
works, contexts and with different listeners. Zoppelli then applies his approach to Messa
Requiemthe juxtaposition of primordial embodied responses with symbolic imagery, traditional

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structural harmonic and melodic analysis, as well as a consideration of historical context, makes
for a rich analysis that demonstrates how the musical experience of fear in the piece occurs
through a complex and multilayered process. In all, Zoppellis approach is refreshing and, like
Spitzers (Ch.2), it offers a welcome extension to traditional musicological methods.
In Chapter 12 Jenefer Robinson offers a review of three well-known theories of emotion
that often underpin discussions of musical arousali.e. cognitive appraisal theories, and the
thought of Frijda and James respectively. The author claims that while all three approaches offer
important insights, each is incomplete on its own. Following the pluralistic view of musical
emotions developed throughout the book, and especially in the preceding two chapters, Robinson
argues persuasively that each approach may be understood as attending to a different mechanism
in a multi-stage process that involves, among other things, appraisal, action readiness, and
feeling. Thus she suggests that these perspectives might inform each other, thereby allowing more
comprehensive views on musical emotion than is possible through strict adherence to any one of
them. There is little here that will be new to experienced readers in music psychology and
musical aesthetics. Nevertheless, Robinson does a good job of outlining the complex concerns
associated with the theories at hand. As a result, the chapter serves as a useful introduction to
some important themes and figures in the field.
In Chapter 13 philosopher Stephen Davies introduces his theory of emotional contagion,
which he has been developing since the early eighties in order to deal with a central problem
related to how music induces emotions in listenersnamely, the question of intentionality, or
how best to understand the emotional object of musical experience. Initially (and traditionally) it
seems the obvious place to turn to is the music itself, to its formal expressive characteristics and
the listeners appraisals of it. As Davies points out, however, the music itself cannot be the
emotional object of the response because the listener does not believe of the music what would
make it the intentional object of a sad response, namely, that the music is unfortunate, suffering or
regrettable (p.170). He then discusses contagion theory as a possible explanation.
Davies argues for what he refers to as an attentional mirroring response, which does not
rely on beliefs about the music itself, but rather on the idea that we experience music as
presenting the kind of carriage, gait or demeanour that can be symptomatic of states such as
happiness, sadness, sassy sexuality, and so on (p.171). This, Davies suggests, allows for the
communication of emotion from music to listener as emotional contagion or infection, through
physiological mimicking behaviour in the listener. The approach is interesting in that it draws less
on representational syntactic-linguistic aspects of musical communication and more on movement
and body related characteristics. However, the support offered for the theoryat least in this

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documentis sparse and speculative. Indeed, the chapter seems somewhat abbreviated and some
readers may wonder why Davies does not draw on the growing body of research and theory in
ecological-embodied music cognition, embodied aesthetics, cross-modal perception and
developmental studies (but perhaps this is because such issues are taken up in subsequent
chapters). Such an extended view might allow Davies the freedom to orient his work in a broader
and more supportive theoretical context; at present he sees contagion theory as an exception to
more orthodox cognitive appraisal theories and he contrasts it with persona models.
In Chapter 14 Joel Kruger offers, as Scherer points out in the section introduction, a much
appreciated developmental perspective. As I discussed in the introduction, research and theory in
music and emotion has traditionally focused on examining the verbal and physiological
responses, the brains and behaviours, of adult Westerners within the rather codified and
prescriptive cultural environment of academic Classical music listeninggenerally assuming a
disembodied information-processing conception of mind, where cognition occurs through
representational recovery of an objective world out there (i.e. the mind as the mirror of nature;
Rorty,; Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1993). Therefore, it is not surprising that music and emotion
research has traditionally emphasized more explicitly componential and iterative cognitive
processes such as representation, appraisal and production rules. However, as Kreuger points out,
the uncritical acceptance of these views has led to what Sloboda (2005) refers to as the
pharmaceutical model, where musical listening is understood to be an essentially passive
experience. Given this prevalence of this view, it is also not surprising that many have argued that
music has little or no biological relevance for human well being, that it is merely parasitic on
cognitive processing (modules) that evolved to support proper adaptations (i.e. language, see
Pinker, 2009; Patel, 2010). In response to all of this, Kreuger offers an excellent review of
research and theory that focuses on infant musical development and neonatal therapeutic contexts
(see DeNora, 2000). Here he explores themes of empathy and intimacy through a discussion of
musicking (Small, 1999) as form joint-sense making. This allows him to demonstrate the
primordial necessity of musicality for embodied and pre-linguistic emotional-aesthetic forms of
understanding and communicationincluding the primary intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, 2002)
so necessary for developing social bonds. These embodied forms of knowing are understood as
central to our ability to enact the physical and socio-cultural environments we inhabit as infants;
and, as Kreuger argues, we continue to draw on them even as we grow up and begin to develop
language and propositional ways of thinking (see also Benson, 2001; Johnson, 2007).
In all, this developmental view offers a much broader conception of what music entails; it
demonstrates the deep biological significance of communicative musicality for human

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ontogenesis, socialization and well-beingi.e. musical experience as a form of social

scaffoldingand it strongly suggest that there is much more to musical experience than a
passive contemplation of the apparent musical meanings a composer has seen fit to embed
within a pieces compositional structure (p.178). As Kreuger suggests, listeners have a great
deal of perceptual autonomy in what they do with music: how they listen, what sorts of meanings
they choose to enact, and how they actively engage with music to forge relationships and shared
experiences (p.178). While some readers might wish that the relevance of this developmental
perspective for adult involvement with music was referenced in more detail (e.g. Johnson, 2007),
the chapter nonetheless offers an excellent compliment to the work of previous authors in this
volume who attempt to draw out more embodied or enactive approaches to musical experience
(e.g. Spitzer and Leech-Wilkinson); and it provides a valuable counterpoint to perspectives that
focus largely on appraisals, garden variety emotions and so on. As a result the chapter will be
especially useful for newcomers to the field who are interested in exploring alternatives to the
traditional focus on the relationship between structure and expression.
Lincoln John Colling and William Forde Thomson continue the concern with embodied
and ecological factors in Chapter 15, Music, action, and affect. Contra Davies (Ch. 13) the
authors argue that music as the paradigm example of an embodied signal can be the direct object
of powerful emotional experiences (p.197). In doing so they employ a multimodal and
embodied-ecological approach in order to consider how facial expressions and other bodily
movements influence the perception of musical emotions. They begin by pointing out that before
the rise of the recording industry, music was almost always experienced as a multimodal
phenomenon containing auditory, visual and kinesthetic dimensions; and that before the rise of
the concert halls, music was rarely observed passively [] music making was often social,
collaborative [] and had weak boundaries between performer and audience (p.197). Colling
and Thompson then review research that demonstrates the profound influence of gesture on music
perception and affective judgments. This research is then discussed in a theoretical context that
grounds perception in action. Here the insights of James and Gibson (1966) are discussed; as is
the common-coding theory, which states that the perception of action influences action
planning, and action (and action planning), in turn, influence perception (p.203). Action (i.e.
sensory-motor) based approaches to emotion are considered along with relevant empirical
evidence, including recent research in canonical and mirror neurons.
A special emphasis is placed on the Shared Affective Motion Experience model developed
by Istvan Molnar-Szakacs and Katie Overy (2006). Put very simply, the SAME model offers a
way of understanding how the mirror neuron system may allow music to access emotional

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faculties by representing music as motor commands: depending on the listener, movement is

extracted at different levels of the motor system; emotional intentions are thought to be inferred
directly from this motor-activity, whether actual or simulated.
Colling and Thompson attempt to refine this view by arguing that the action plans
generated by mirror neurons function for perceptual prediction (p.205). The authors then place
this in the context of musical expectancy theory, as discussed by Huron (2006), in order to
develop a feedback-controlled synchronization model that they claim unifies action-based
models of emotions with anticipation-based models of musical emotions. This model further is
supported by the work of Carver and Scheier (2009), which sees emotions as the natural
outcomes of the attainment of or failure to attain goals (p. 207)where feedback from this is
then sent to a behaviour control system that regulates or modifies future action responses. As the
authors explain in detail, this occurs though a complex process that operates over multiple
timescales and across bodily, environmental and abstract contextsthe results of more
immediate expectancies may interact with higher-order expectancies in order to create a
multilayered emotional experience (p.209).
To summarize, Colling and Thompson comment that by their model we infer emotions
from the motor activations that result from the actions we take to be responsible for producing the
music; that ones emotional valence is due to ones success or failure at predicting the musical
action; and that thus It is possible then for one to have a positive emotional experience in
response to predicting musical action that is perceived as emotionally negative (p. 209-210). The
authors rely heavily on the relationship between expectation and emotion elicitation; other
possibilities are not discussed in detail. Within this context, however, the chapter offers an
excellent enhancement to established anticipation theories (e.g. Meyer, 1956; Huron, 2006)one
that is very well researched and richly referenced and that will no doubt be of great interest to
newcomers and established musicologists alike. As with Scherer (Ch. 10), readers may find it
interesting to contrast this approach with more explicitly dynamic and enactive sensorimotor
approaches to emotion and aesthetics (for an overview see Colombetti, 2014; see also Johnson,
2007).
Chapter 16, by Wiebke Trost and Patrik Vuilleumier, takes up the topic of Rhythmic
entrainment as a mechanism for emotion induction by music. As the authors remark, By nature,
emotions are regarded as transient processes emerging and transforming themselves in time. In
this respect music shares an important characteristic, as they both fluctuate in time (p.213). With
this in mind, the authors consider how musical experiences influence the perception of time and
how such temporal properties are associated with emotional experiences; this is developed from a

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neurological and physiological point of view. After brief discussions of selected literature
concerning music perception and emotions, the mechanisms of emotion induction, and the
physiological reactions to music (i.e. respiration and cardiac activity), the authors go on to
discuss various forms of musical entrainmentperceptual, motor, physiological, social; and their
relevance for emotion induction. They suggest that a distinction should be made between familiar
and non-familiar music; and they briefly discuss why this is so, pointing to how: on one hand,
entrainment with familiar music may rely on established pathways through various induction
mechanisms like evaluative conditioning, emotional contagion, or episodic memory; while,
on the other hand, unfamiliar music must be analyzed along multi-step auditory pathways
according to general acoustic features [] (p.221). Along these lines, Trost and Vuilleumier
consider interesting possibilities for future research, especially with regard to how familiarity
might heighten entrainment responses and how entrainment might be understood in terms of a
cyclic or feedback processi.e. entrainment induces emotion, which in turn strengthens
entrainment. The chapter offers a useful introduction to the subject, although reference to relevant
literature in social cognition and developmental studies is strangely absent.
Chapter 17 concludes Section Three with Stefan Koelschs fascinating examination of the
neurophysiological correlates of music-evoked positive emotions. Koelsh argues against those
who assert that music does not elicit real emotions; that musical emotions have little material
(i.e. biological) effect on the listeners; that music does not involve goal-oriented responses; and
that thus music is not directly relevant to human well-being. He begins by outlining the deep
social significance of musical activity, drawing out seven interrelated functions that assert the
central role of musicality for empathy (or co-pathy), communication, group cohesion and social
cognition. Drawing on a range of relevant literature, Koelsh presents a convincing argument that
music is in fact goal directed as it helps fulfill social needsmusic-evoked emotions are related
to survival functions and to functions that are of vital importance to the individual (p. 232;
contrast with Scherer and Couthino above). Koelsh also takes a somewhat cautious stance
towards the standard mechanistic and inductive approach to musical emotions. Although he
does sometimes use this vocabulary, he wants to avoid the assumption that musical emotions are
necessarily determined by specific musical antecedents (see Kreuger, above). Thus he goes on to
discuss some underlying principles of how emotions may be evoked by musicas opposed to
focusing on pre-given mechanisms and formal induction processes. These include appraisal,
contagion, memory, expectancy, imagination understanding; but special attention is given to how
these relate to the interactive social functions of musical activity. Koelsch concludes with a

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detailed look at the neural substrates of how positive emotions are evoked in musical
experience leading to attachment and forms of social bonding.

Section Three The powers of music

Like chapters 6 and 7, Section Three deals largely with historically related material. As a result, I
offer only a brief overview of each chapter. This has nothing to do with the quality of the research
presented, which is excellent, but rather reflects the focus of this review on current trends in
philosophical and psychological musicology. This said, it should be noted that such historical
perspectives are crucial for understanding the ways we have come to think and talk about
musicthe metaphors we use and the personal and cultural significance we ascribe to it. As
Fantini points out in the section introduction,

Historical analyses provide a sense of how musical activities have been socially embedded,
particularly as such activities reflect alternative conceptions of the nature and power of
music, but also interpret the [current] models based on the concepts, beliefs, and metaphors
present in a given culture.

The importance of such research is echoed by Ian Cross in scientific-philosophical context when
he writes, what we know of music in neurobiological and neuroscientific terms is constrained by
a conception of music that is narrowly shaped by historical and cultural notions of what
constitutes music (Cross, 2010: 2). Thus it is hoped that these chapters will receive the
attention they deserve from reviewers better versed in historical musicology.
In Chapter 19, Fantini offers a look at forms of thought between music and science. This
is taken up in a largely biological context to consider how two important models of life played
a fundamental role in the development of music theory in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively.
To begin, Fantini introduces the theory of fibers developed in the Baroque period. In doing so,
he demonstrates how the power of musicpreviously associated with abstract Pythagorean
mathematical relationshipscame to be understood in terms of vibration, movement and bodily
resonances. This is followed by a discussion of the 18th century interest in elementary organisms,
or cellsagain, Fantini argues for an aesthetic parallel with how music was understood and
constructed in the classical period (e.g. the focus on sonata form). In brief, it is shown how the
appositional, interchangeable and sinuous approach of the Baroque biological-musical view is
replaced with a cellular, hierarchical and autonomous (i.e. formal) perspective in the Classical
period. The chapter convincingly demonstrates close ties between how we have historically

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understood musical and biological processes; and this may well inspire further cross-disciplinary
work in uncovering new connections, such as those between music and more recent autopoietic
and dynamic approaches to biological systems (Varela et al., 1993; Thompson, 2007).
Moving backward in time, Chapter 20 looks at how the power of music was understood in
the medieval and Renaissance periods respectively. Here Laurence Wuidar begins by considering
the profound influence of Ancient Greek thought (Plato and Aristotle) as well as that of early
Christian thinkers, with a special focus on St. Augustine. He then goes on to offer a wonderfully
rich account that weaves together a wide array of figures, highlighting the various moral,
religious, therapeutic, and socio-political dimensions of musical thought in these periods.
Brenno Boccadoro remains in the Renaissance in Chapter 21, offering a look at the
psychotropic power of music in this era. Again, Greek antecedents are consideredwith special
attention given to the ancient Hellenic connection between oenology, music and medicine; as well
as the Pythagorean relationship between music, mathematical ratios, and psycho-physiological/
spiritual states of being. It is then shown how Pythagorean concerns were reintroduced and
developed in the Renaissancevia the thought of Plato, Aristotle and their followers. Here
Boccadoro provides a detailed introduction to the writings of Ficino and, in doing so, gives an
excellent overview of the deep transformative, therapeutic, and bio-spiritual significance of music
in the Renaissance.
Chapter 22 moves the discussion into modernity. Focusing on the early Enlightenment
period, Penelope Gouk discusses practice and theory related to music as a means of social
control. She begins with late 16th-century France, demonstrating how musical practice (psalm
singing) played an important role in galvanizing the emerging protestant (Huguenot-Calvinist)
religious identity. Such musical practice was encouraged by leaders of the new order; and was
countered in turn by the Catholics through punitive anti-protestant musical legislation. Gouk then
explains how the Catholic king, Charles the IX, attempted to establish a music education system,
Baifs academy, based on a Platonic ideal that would lead to the production of musical works
capable of regulating the social body. From here she moves forward some 200 years to the
Scottish Enlightenment to consider the thought of Dr. John Gregory. Gregory also believed in the
power of music to influence behaviour for better and for worse. Like Baif, he drew on the thought
of the Ancients, albeit with a more medical-biological orientation; and he argued that a strictly
controlled musical curriculum should be developed, not by musicians and poets, but rather by
philosophers and medical doctors so that music could be employed to its full extent as a vehicle
for self improvement and social integration. In summary, the chapter draws out and contrasts
two interesting perspectives on music and social control that, despite their differences, both attest

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to the power accorded to music over human development and socialization in the early modern
period.
Chapter 23, by Jackie Pigeaud, draws on a wide range of documents to explore how music
was used to soothe ailments of the body and soul in the 18th centurywith a special focus on the
influence of the ancient tradition of music therapy found in Greek and Biblical texts. In Chapter
24, Jean Starobinski discusses the theme of nostalgia. He begins by pointing out that the naming
of affective states may actually produce new emotions and new conceptions of the forces that
influence how we live our lives, both individually and culturally. The word nostalgia is
interesting in this respect because its entrance into the vocabulary of multiple languages can be
traced to a specific time, place and documentnamely the work of the Swiss doctor, Johannes
Hofer, who, in 1688, wrote a dissertation concerning what has also come to be termed
homesickness. The development of nostalgia is then discussed as a sickness of memory
through various historical documents; and a commentary on the ability of music to both relieve
and exacerbate the symptoms of nostalgia is explored across the modern period.
The final chapter of the volume turns from historical concerns to consider contemporary
problems associated with copyright control. Here Ulrik Volgsten argues that the laws that govern
the distribution and use of music are based on principles that run contrary to what music actually
means for the development of human identity, both on an individual and a collective level.
Following Kreuger (Ch. 14), he draws on recent research that asserts the pivotal role musicality
plays in human ontogenesis, socialization and the construction of culture; he argues that listeners
are not simply as passive consumers; and that likewise, performers-composers should not be
understood as detached owners of intellectual-aesthetic property. Rather both are seen as agentic
interacting collaborators in the construction of musical cultures and meanings. In brief, Volgsten
argues (like Leech-Wilkinson, Ch. 4) that our traditional ontologies of music are wrong-headed
and in the end simply serve corporate interestswhich over the years have come to narrowly
dictate the aesthetic-emotional and economic parameters of the music that gets distributed. While
this chapter, and the volume itself for that matter, is almost completely biased towards Western
music, this last chapter hints at the somewhat ominous consequences of the global corporate
culture that now touches the lives of everyone on the planet. Indeed, although this critical
perspective is bound to generate controversy, it will be welcomed by many who fear that we may
be risking losing an important part of who we are as our musical activities become more about the
private consumption of musical commodities that are mass produced, possessing only superficial
connections to actual cultures, locations, and individual expressions of life and meaning.

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Conclusion
The volume closes with a very brief Coda that draws together key recurrent themes, reasserts
the importance of multidisciplinary projects, and points the way to future research in historical,
social and cross-cultural contexts. In all, The Emotional Power of Music offers an impressive
array of perspectives on music and emotion and can be highly recommend to anyone interested in
the subject. Like its predecessors, it opens up much needed discourse between diverse areas in
musicologyand between music, science and philosophythus affording more nuanced,
embodied, and open-ended perspectives on the meaning of music for the human animal. While it
is hoped that future efforts might offer broader cultural and critical perspectives, the authors and
editors of The Emotional Power of Music are nevertheless to be congratulated for an excellent
contributionone that will remain valuable and relevant for many years to come.
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