……………………………………………………………….…………………………………………….. expression of emotion in music

why music lovers aren’t masochists

……………………………………………………………….……………………………………………..

C.H. van Groesen, s102028

Tilburg University

Tilburg, 2012

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Contents

Introduction page 3

Preliminary remarks page 5

Part I: Why do we enjoy negative ? Page 7 contains the main research question along with interesting related topics

Part II: as foundation of expression page 9 presents the two dominant theories of symbolism and metaphors and shows why symbolism is not a viable explanation

Part III: Emotions inside music: causality page 18 outlines two important theories with regard to musical expressiveness

Part IV: Appearance Emotionalism page 22 gives a detailed account of the views of Stephen Davies, and follows the main lines of criticism before adding own elements in the discussion

Conclusion page 32

Bibliography page 33

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Introduction

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno believed that art, in its negative form, was the key in the battle against the instrumental reason which had already manifested itself in the atrocities of World War II (1966, Horkheimer & Adorno 1988). Only by approaching these extreme negative feelings – anger, despair, loss, etc. – through ‘negative art’ could one remember how the sophisticated, enlightened human reason had suddenly sank into barbaric depth. After Auschwitz, the act of writing a (happy) poem was already enough to make people feel sick and disgusted, according to Adorno. Art had become impossible, at least the art we were used to making and experiencing.

Immanuel Kant (2009) thought that the most experiences were found in the objective finality of nature. Scenes which appear to have been designed with a specific purpose, yet having no (apparent) practical use, which go beyond our comprehension make us weak with fear yet leave us also in amazement. If art can recreate these kind of scenes, without being threatening (thus only being recognizable as deserving of our fear), it can be called ‘sublime’.

It does seem that negative feelings in art have a deeper or more profound effect on our experience. We see these kinds of emotions in all kinds of art as well as forms of popular culture. In this paper, we restrict ourselves to the philosophical puzzle of music. A central question is how musical works can express emotions. Since musical works are not psychological agents, the traditional paradigm of expressing emotions does not work and needs to be adjusted. The distinction between expression and expressivity might come in handy, since works of art (and thus musical works) do possess this. Expression is something agents do, namely outward manifestation of an emotional state. An interesting question is the relation between this and expression. A different distinction is made between expressivity and representation. Musical works do not represent emotions, they express them. Emotions in music are no mere descriptions of emotional states, but are more closely related to expressions. However, this remains a troubling (and interesting) question.

Since music plays a large part in many people’s lives, it seems strange that we do not really know why certain music has such a lasting effect on us and our moods. Entire genres of music are full of emotions that we would normally avoid as much as possible: anger, sadness, despair, grief. Still, these kinds of music are also the ones that help us through difficult times. But why would we deliberately seek out and appreciate music that would make us unhappy? Surely not all music lovers are masochists!

In this paper we will explore this issue based on modern day theories in the field of of music. After some preliminary remarks, we will outline the main research questions before splitting into two presuppositions; namely whether the emotional expressivity of music works through symbolism or causality. This is important because the underlying question entails a difference in processing the input we receive from listening to music. Either we actively shape what we hear into known symbols or metaphors, or we are tied to what is inside the music and works as a cause-and- effect structure in our listening. Music’s expressive power can be revealed in its ability to compel us to draw up metaphors describing the musical lines into forms suitable for human interaction. It can persuade us to think that these metaphors fit the music perfectly, but how would they do such a thing? Also, every metaphor would, especially in a scientific context, demand an explanation yet at the same time refuse one, since if there was such an explanation, it would immediately destroy the P a g e | 4 need for the metaphor. Simply put, it would become more of a literal truth. It is obvious that the listener is responsible for creating the extramusical content in this kind of theory. But is representation the same as expression? In the notion of causality it should already be in the music, perhaps put there on purpose by the composer in order to enrich our experience of his compositions. But would this experience contain the emotions of the composer himself, or something distinct from him and a specific part of the musical work, intrinsically bound to that piece and that piece only? We will outline the dominant theories in both cases; presentational symbolism which originated from Susanne Langer and exemplificational symbolism from from the side of symbolism. In this section, we will also take a closer look at the use of metaphors in describing emotional expressivity. For causality, both the expression and arousal theory are considered before diving deeper into the theory pioneered by Stephen Davis, appearance emotionalism. Obviously, the question whether we should find our answers in symbolism or causality determines where exactly we find emotional expressivity in music – the three logical options being the composer, the listener or the music itself. After reviewing criticism from (among others) Peter Kivy, Jenefer Robinson and Jerrold Levinson, we will add our own thoughts and arguments to the discussion, hopefully in order to address some of the weaker points of Davies’ theory.

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Preliminary remarks

First, to make the discussion as clear as possible, I feel the need to give specific definitions of certain terms used in this field. While it is possible for the sake of readability that synonyms are being used, the true meaning of a word should not give grounds for extra discussion in this matter. These definitions are taken from Patrik N. Juslin and Daniel Västfjäll’s excellent work in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2008), ‘Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms’, and while they stem from psychological, empirical research (instead of philosophical research), they fit very nicely into the existing material.

Affect An umbrella term that covers all evaluative – or valenced (i.e., positive/negative) – states such as emotion, mood and preference.

Emotions Relatively intense affective responses that usually involve a number of sub- components – subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency, and regulation – which are more or less synchronized. Emotions focus on specific objects, and last minutes to a few hours.

Musical emotions A short term for ‘emotions that are induced by music’.

Moods Affective states that feature a lower felt intensity than emotions, that do not have a clear object, and that last much longer than emotions (several hours to days).

Feeling The subjective experience of emotion (or mood). This component is commonly measured via self-report and reflects any or all of the other emotion components.

Arousal Activation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Physiological arousal is one of the components of an emotional response but can also occur in the absence of emotions (e.g. during exercise).

Preferences Long-term evaluations of objects of persons with a low intensity (e.g. liking of a specific music ).

Emotion induction All instances where music evokes an emotion in a listener, regardless of the nature of the process that evoked the emotion.

Emotion All instances where a listener perceives or recognizes expressed emotions in music (e.g. a sad expression), without necessarily feeling an emotion.

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Second, I feel it is necessary to make a few general remarks regarding the expression of music. It must be clear for the sake of the discussion that there exists a distinction between the expression in or through music, the latter which may include the composition or performance as vehicle of expressing emotions. Because the lack of a human voice, words, symbolic or literary titles or textual context (see Davies 2006) it seems that the former is the most pure form of expression and thus should serve as a starting point of discussing the problems of emotional expressivity in music. Secondly, one should note that when we talk of music, we mean the ‘pure’ kind, not burdened by words, movements or other expressive elements. Taking these points into account, the difficulty in the claim that emotions may be expressed in music lies in the notion of feeling sad music. In the non- musical cases it generally follows that something that is sad feels sad, or is experienced as sad. Stephen Davies formulates one of the instrumental questions as follows: why does musical expressiveness compel from us emotional responses if that expressiveness is not related to the expression of human emotions? (Davies 1980, p. 67). There has to be a connection between the expressed emotions in music and in daily life, since musical expressiveness takes from and reflects the emotions we experience on a daily basis. There are three major differences between the emotions expressed in music and those felt by people: they are unfelt, necessarily publicly displayed and they lack emotional-objects. Davies researches the secondary use of emotion words in the description of human behaviour and if their use is significantly analogous to those used in describing (pure) music. It will be interesting to see how this line of thought has developed in the field.

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Part 1: Why do we enjoy negative art?

Why would someone voluntarily allow oneself to be made to feel sad? Why would someone value a when it elicits negative emotional responses from him or her? The problem is rooted in the dilemma of the sad response: if we enjoy the emotional response which invokes sadness, it is not sadness in the everyday experience, since sadness is not something that is enjoyed. The other option, which retains the unpleasantness of sadness, is problematic because we do not seek experiences which are not enjoyable. such as Peter Kivy opt to solve this dilemma by claiming that expressively successful sadness in a piece of music does not make people sad, but moves them into admiration and similar positive responses (2002, ch. 3). However, if one claims that music has a direct influence on our emotions, be they positive or negative, he or she must be prepared to solve this dilemma. This question implies a least two kinds of sadness: 'real' sadness and a representation of sadness. We will come back to this.

In these considerations, it is remarkable that most writers on musical expression do not give enough attention to the questions raised from a philosophy of language perspective. Even in the list of definitions, there is no entry for ‘expression’ itself. There seems to be no reasonable criterion of identity that would permit one to say that an (aesthetic) expression of a feeling or emotion is in fact the realization of just that: a feeling or an emotion, the things that motivate at least our daily lives. Without a criterion of identity a description of a work does not fill in the blanks of expression, because it lacks an answer to ‘expression of what?’. We will try to make clear that this issue needs more clarity in order to avoid discussions based on mere miscommunication. Expression assumes a connection between music and emotions, but can be elaborated upon in three different ways. First, this connection can be a direct one in which we apply mental predicates to musical works. We call Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings sad or brooding and Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys happy and joyful, and understand what these labels mean even though we cannot provide a real theory of their meaning. A second approach lies in the use of affective terms, in which the mental effects of the music are highlighted. Think of Adagio for Strings as ‘depressing’ or ‘tragic’, for example. The third option becomes even more quasi-relational, with the use of words such as ‘resonant’, ‘atmospheric’, and even ‘expressive’. The usage of these terms seems arbitrary at times, though it ought not to be, given that we fully understand the differences between these terms in everyday life (for example, everyone knows the difference between content and atmosphere, but this distinction can evaporate in the use of describing musical works). Peter Kivy is one of the philosophers who do not differentiate between at least the first and third options, making his first writings on the matter muddled (and causing his revision of The Corded Shell (1980) into Sound Sentiment (1989)). Although it falls outside of the scope of this paper, it remains an interesting subject in both general and specific .

The problem of enjoying art itself deserves a small clarification. The problem at stake is not so much why we participate in particular pieces of art which will elicit negative responses, but rather why we seem to take pleasure in the understanding of art that might elicit a negative response to some of the properties present in that work. So why would we find this type of understanding enjoyable? On first glance, there seem to be some immediate points against it: aspects of that understanding might be unpleasant (negative responses), the understanding requires a lot of knowledge and practice and P a g e | 8 the result does not yield very practical results. A simple and general explanation is that we are curious beings who would rather know the worst than live in (blissful?) ignorance. We are interested in what motivates others to act as they do and the complex products that stem from these actions, not for immediate benefits but because these things hold our interest. This curiosity is an immense powerful motivational force even without practical results in the end. Art seems to be the ultimate extension of this thought, since it lends itself perfectly for appreciation and understanding without other, more practical benefits (not saying there are none, but art isn’t usually approached just for certain side-benefits such as a better view on morality or character development). The reason of this curiosity is simple, according to Davies. “We are just like that” (2004, p. 317), he says, stressing the importance of attempting to comprehend works in their particularity to the extent that one can place such a work in the context of its time and artistic school. We do not seek out art for its typicality, but for its individuality. So why do we exactly enjoy music if our response to it sometimes it made up partly by features which elicit negative feelings?

For one, grief, despair, loss, suffering and deprivation are part of the wholeness of life. Sensible navigators on the ocean of existence might give rocky outcrops a wide berth, but these feelings are experienced by every human being in some form. Character is built by both vice and virtue, so perhaps is the less daunting experience of negative feelings through art a more Aristotelian kind of education. Perhaps it is only human to endure negative feelings and emotions in order to reach a greater good – daily life shows us enough examples of people pushing themselves to their limits in intellectually or physically demanding studies and professions, not to mention relationships; at least partly aware of the ‘pain’ needed for the ‘gain’. Satisfaction can be gotten from the hard journey taken towards it; I believe this also follows for music which expresses negative emotions in the same way climbing a mountain must give an enormous thrill when the peak is reached. Appreciation and understanding of music, especially these kinds of music, is an important part of this, not because it would train or prepare someone for what is to come, or even serve as a replacement (as some philosophers have claimed), but because it is a symbolic celebration of human interaction, life, and the significance we assign to each other’s existence and the role one plays in the world.

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Part II: Symbolism as foundation of expression

Most people will see formalized symbolism in the expression of music (as well as pictures or even common speech), but it is a common misconception that musical expression is the effect of a symbol, a connection between music and ideas, language or depiction. There are certain philosophers who think that music might contain a specific system of symbols, most notably Susanne Langer (1942, 1953) and Nelson Goodman (1968, 1978). To be able to comment on this misconception, it is important to fully understand their positions and the implications that follow from the criticism Davies, Hagberg, Budd, Davidson et al. have given in the musical part of their theories. It must be noted that in the modern field of , theories stemming from causality dominate and the distinction between music as an expressive force and as a representational one is usually made beforehand. However, that does not mean symbolism has nothing to add to the debate. Most modern theories are built on presuppositions derived from symbolic ones, and they are still used in general aesthetic debates. So, when we want to find the answer to the paradox that is musical expressiveness, we would do well not to eliminate the alternatives so easily, lest they provide at least hints to a comprehensive answer. First, we will look at music as presentational symbols of emotions similar to Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning. Although we try to communicate our experiences when listening to certain musical works, it never seems adequate enough to capture the full spectrum of what we felt. Perhaps Langer’s nondiscursive symbols can make clear what language cannot. Goodman emphasizes the immediateness of the experience and argues that musical works must exemplify the metaphoric properties they possess. Just like Langer, Goodman does not think the emotions are in the music.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must use symbols

Susanne Langer’s theory can be called presentational symbolism, in which music becomes an iconic symbol of certain mental states (those we identify with emotions). The meaning of music relies on natural elements (iconicity), and does not rely on a certain place in the hierarchy of a general system of symbols. While this kind of semiotic aesthetics has been rejected by modern analytic philosophers (of music), a (continental) hermeneutics’ account remained alive throughout the eighties with the main difference being a more culture-bound significance instead of Langer’s natural position. Henry Orlov, for example, notes the following: “If music is to be considered a sign system, then it is a very strange one: an icon which has nothing in common with the object it presents; an abstract language which does not allow for a prior definition of its alphabet and vocabulary, and operates with an indefinite, virtually infinite number of unique elements; a text which cannot be decomposed into standard interchangeable items. These discrepancies can be reconciled if music is approached in terms of semiotics but without its preconceptions. Music is an icon on the surface, by appearance; it is perceived as an icon. The icon is peculiar, however, since it does not and cannot resemble the object it presents, which is ideal and unattainable to the senses. Therefore, what appears as the icon on the surface acts, behind the surface, as an abstract sign – a symbol, but a special kind of symbol which is unique and otherwise indefinable … The reason for this strangeness is that the reality so symbolized is that of preverbal experience – the reality of immediate mental, emotional, and sensuous life in the human being” (1981, pp. 136-137). Orlov’s comments already show a few P a g e | 10 objections to the idea of symbolism in music, but let us first review the full positions of Langer and Goodman.

Musical works are seen as presentational symbols of feelings by Langer. She comes to this by contrasting art with the discursive symbolism of language (more specifically, the picture theory of meaning as described by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). In a logical formalization of reality, sentences become the pictures and become true when their logical form models reality accurately. If a sentence cannot be empirically verified, it loses all meaning, and because Wittgenstein believed (at that time) that sentences about ethics and aesthetics could not be verified, he concluded the well-known “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (1922, p. 108). Susanne Langer believed in the possibilities of meaning outside the discursive mode of symbolism, and sees these meanings as the birthplace of presentational and nondiscursive symbols. Music in particular flourishes in presentational symbols. Wittgenstein’s famous words have amusingly been rewritten in Langerian language: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must compose, paint, write, sculpt and so forth” (Hagberg 1984, p. 127). Presentational symbols resemble discursive symbols in their derivation of meaning from their picturing of the logical form of reality. Note that the resemblance mostly ends here; while discursive symbols (in linguistics) can be true or false, are rule-governed, definitional, etc. their presentational cousins are not; their significance is altered if elements of its form are altered, they lack reference, and together do not make up a system of symbols (Körner 1955). Obviously, these two modes of symbolism have their own domains of meaning, and we can discover the import of presentational symbols through direct acquaintance. These symbols are vehicles for the conception of a subject – they evoke conceptions of the subject symbolized (Davies 1994a, p. 125). The response will be a thought, a conception or idea of the nature of the subject. Langer emphasizes that music symbolizes concepts of feelings (as opposed to occurrences of feelings, which are found in the views discussed later on) and stresses the need for an aesthetic, disinterested perspective, necessary for the appreciation of the symbolic character of art in general and music in particular.

A musical feature can be a presentational symbol of something because the form of that feature is iconic with the form of the other thing. These forms are the function of the relation between its elements, according to Langer. Nothing included in a feature can be eliminated a priori as irrelevant to its form – the form of a feature can be abstracted via experience yet cannot be described in exact terms, only in examples. It can also not be depicted unless completely reproduced. In this way, a form is unique to the thing it belongs to, even without a unique description of it. The vital relation between elements of two things is defined by qualitative identity, despite all the differences that might exist between these elements. For example, the spatial form of a can be iconic with the more temporal form of a feeling or emotion, because the vital relation between the elements of the sculpture and the feeling can be known to correspond with each other. Also, the acoustic elements of a piece of music can correspond to thoughts and experiences that make up a feeling. A composer who symbolizes a feeling in a musical work changes the relation between the thoughts and experiences of a feeling to one of acoustic elements. Langer states these transformations to be unique to each work, thus disabling an interpretation of her work in which she would allow presentational symbols to be ordered in a system of symbols. This is reimbursed by her claim that the composer does these transformations unknowingly and unconsciously. The same goes for the audience of the work: when they recognize the presentational symbol of a particular feeling in his P a g e | 11 work, they do so intuitively and without conscious effort. Langer notes that we know that it is done, but that we cannot say how we do it.

From this point on, difficulties start to arise. Langer has a tendency to allude that what is symbolized by musical works as the common form for all feelings. At the same time, she implies that what is symbolized is the common form of the various occurrences of a particular feeling. It seems this ambiguity seems to stem from the idea that different feelings might share a similar form, while particular feelings also have their unique forms. Also, Langer presupposes an account of emotions of dubious credibility. Emotions and feelings with dynamic character tend to have objects toward which they are directed, particular types of belief about the nature of these objects, behavioral appearances and contexts which are causally formed. In the same way Descartes viewed emotions as complex sensations, Langer unknowingly dismisses emotions as some sort of animalistic spirit, stripping them of their conceptual richness by stating that a musical work symbolizes a feeling because of the iconicity of the form of that musical work with the form of the feeling if and only if one can identify that feeling by its proper form. It seems form, rather than feeling, is presented in music. There seems to be insufficient uniformity among musical responses to support (at least this view of) symbolism as expression in music. Garry Hagberg pointed out the inconsistency of Langer’s use of ‘form’: “Within the theory the word ‘form’ is being employed in some unrecognizable or systematically elusive way … The doctrine of unsayability, at least when given the theoretical formulation, conceals at its core an element of impenetrable mystery” (1984, p. 338).

A different dismissal of the theory of presentational symbolism comes from a historic perspective. Since Langer has developed her view by contrasting it against the theory of discursive symbolism, it follows that exactly that theory stands as the foundation of Langer’s account, which means that if that theory would be rejected, her own account can no longer stand either. It so happens that Wittgenstein himself, among others, has rejected the picture theory of meaning described in the Tractatus by stating that the meaning of sentences relies more on context of their use than on forms; social practice can easily change the meaning of a sentence from that of another even though the sentences share a similar form. This takes away the sole good reason for allowing the indescribability of the symbolic relation typically found in musical works, because the discursive and presentational accounts are no longer strictly exclusive to each other. The inability to describe (in detail) how musical features are iconic symbols of the forms of feelings becomes exactly that – an inability.

Roger Scruton argues that Langer should regard music as referential, despite her opposite view in order to make her theory coherent (1983). In her view music is meaningless (or, has merely formal significance) if it is not a symbol of emotions. Since music has emotional import, it must be symbolic, and musical meaning must lie in (the presupposition of) symbolization. Stephen Davies assumes the following argument for Langer’s account in her stead: “Emotions cannot literally be in music, so, if musical import involves emotional expression (and the relation is not a causal one between the composer’s feeling and the music, or between the music and the listener’s feeling), then some feature of the music (its form) must make a connection to the world of human feeling (if not to occurrent feelings) that lies beyond the work. That relation, since it involves the music’s reaching beyond itself, is properly described as symbolic, even if not referential (since the connection does not depend on anyone’s intending it to hold)” (1994a, p. 130). As we will explore later, Davies does not comply with this account of musical expression. He offers two arguments against this line of thought. His first counter points out that the symmetrical iconicity lacks the immediacy which precedes P a g e | 12 symbolism as meaning. Langer’s explanation for this immediacy comes from the susceptibility of the forms of iconicity to be manipulated. This seems unconvincing: if we accept this, it means that the directionality of symbolic meaning necessarily depends on intentional use, which makes the meaning referential! Directionality of meaning in natural relations such as iconicity is generated by the priorities of our own interests, claims Davies, instead of relying on intentional use of the conventions found in a system of symbols). He also notes that his second counter is more interesting, especially in relation to his own work.

If an expressed emotion is possessed by a musical work, one can allow that the work has import without seeing it as deriving from the ongoing symbolizing in the musical work as something going beyond it. Davies does not necessarily assume that the expressed emotions have no connections to the world, but rather that there exists a connection between (for example) joy as expressed by the music and joy expressed by a human instead of a purely musical form and a form of sadness. With this less formalized conception of (the form of) joy, it becomes easier to see music’s significance through its symbolizing subjects that fall outside its boundaries. Langer seems to recognize that the issue is not the possibility of a referential use (while composers usually intend their works to have the expression they seem to have, it does not mean that it is also true that composers intend certain features of expression to refer to emotions in general), but rather how it is possible that music possesses a natural meaning. In her case, the natural meaning entails that it might be used to evoke a general reference in the absence of the usual social conventions found in a system of symbols. The natural meaning is symbolic in character for Langer, while Davies’ alternative makes it a matter of possession by the music instead of symbolization. I will expend on Davies’ account later on. For now, it seems Langer’s theory becomes incoherent: it seems to grant that emotions are expressed in music, but cannot give an account of how that would happen. This almost counter-academic part of her theory is both the root of the pillars of her theory – indemonstrable iconicity, forms which cannot be described and unconscious and intuitive connections to recipient and emotion – and the root of the mentioned problems. Not only makes it the theory hard to criticize, because a lot of it cannot be explained, it also gives an ultimately unfulfilling account of expression of emotions in music. The symbolic relationship between art and emotions Langer suggests becomes sketchy at best and therefore unattractive. P a g e | 13

Denotation overtakes exemplification

Perhaps a different kind of symbolism can provide the answers that Langer’s ideas cannot give us. Goodman’s theory can be classified as exemplificational symbolism. For him, works of art work as ‘characters’ in systems of symbols. Each particular art has its own descriptive, expressive and depictive elements and as a whole these systems differ from regular symbol systems due to the fact that their symbolic function is only used in itself. He analyzes five underlying features of the symbol systems of art: syntactic density, semantic density, relative repleteness, exemplification and multiple and complex reference (1978). Goodman realizes the importance of social and cultural context in which one takes in a work of art, yet remains true to the immediacy of the experience by arguing in favor of the symbolism perspective, claiming it makes these works opaque (instead of transparent) as object of attention, as opposed to a more distant, signified, ‘cold’ object. Certain usage of a musical work can lead it to denoting a feature (expressing something) by exploiting its possession of the relevant property. Goodman illustrates this with an example of a salesperson’s book of sample swatches which can be used to demonstrate things such as weave and texture. The color of a piece of cloth in the book denotes the color of the matching material of which it is a sample. Reference is in this case made possibly by the sample showing the property in question (note that there is no semantic connection present), the swatch exemplifies the particular color according to Goodman. Denotation makes exemplification more than just the possession of a color (or feature). In general, words refer to qualities, but do not display that unless in the proper context and while properly used. That a word exhibits the property to which it refers does not mean that its display contributes to the reference. However, because the word does possess the quality, it can be used to identify or illustrate the property. This leads to a new reference without attachments to the semantic reference the word has given. A good example can be found in the following piece of dialogue: “Can you give me an example of a multisyllabic word?” “Well, ‘multisyllabic’ already is an example!” The quotation marks show that the word is used outside its normal semantic reference. In this case, denotation happens in the literal exemplification of multisyllabic. Besides literal usage, one can also consider metaphoric methods according to Goodman. To simplify Goodman’s account, we can use the following scheme: P expresses Q if and only if P possesses Q metaphorically and P exemplifies Q. Denotation is found in the relationship between Q as predicate and P. So, a musical work becomes sad if it metaphorically possesses the property it exemplifies, that of being sad. Here the property is metaphoric because music does not feel emotions in a literal sense. In short, this is Goodman’s account for all of the .

What exactly is it that is metaphoric, however? In the case of expression, whether the denotation achieved through possession or the possession itself it is metaphoric remains vague. In the latter case, it becomes hard to maintain that there is a connection between the metaphoric ‘sad’, used in a way of describing the (fictional) act of expression, and the literal usage of ‘sad’ in the case of an actual occurrent emotion. In the first case, denotation remains a much unspecified term, rendering Goodman’s theory immunity from criticism in a Langerian kind of way (see O’Neil (1971) and Savile (1971) for more detailed accounts). In the case of music, Goodman’s theory has a flaw regarding performances. He claims that properties of a musical work have to be properties common to all of the performances of the work (with the side-note of them having to be correct performances). If performances of the same work can differ in their expressive character (Davies 2001, especially part one), expressiveness cannot be a property of musical works, instead, expressiveness becomes a property of a (specific) performance. P a g e | 14

There is a more obvious (and explored) objection. For exemplification to work, an artwork must possess a certain property which can be used. This use is what makes denotation possible. However, if we consider a musical work possessing the property of being sad, expressiveness lies in possession, not in exemplification. A musical work can possess such an expressive property without that property being used to denote the property it possesses, thus without the property being exemplified in the way Goodman wants it to. In the symbolic use of expressiveness, exemplification becomes a necessary condition for referring (due to usage of the property) instead of serving that expressiveness. It seems Goodman presupposes expressiveness in music in order to determine the exact referential use towards which the expressiveness is directed. Musical works do not seem to have to denote anything when they present their aesthetical qualities. Goodman’s reply states that exemplification does not rely on someone’s intentional use and that denotation stems from the position of a musical work (or its properties) within a symbol system. Thus, exemplification depends on denotation coming from the context of the work within the relevant system. Also, works can possess lots of properties but only a few will be aesthetically relevant, so mere possessing of a feature in a work does not enable the full expressive character of a work. The aesthetically relevant features are just those because they have exemplificatory natures.

Goodman seems to have generalized that one can concern himself with the contents of symbolism without having in mind the intended use. A symbol system cannot create the exemplificatory significance Goodman wants without it being used or known, because the system will lack what is its purpose: communication. Public import is possible (independently from intentions) but only if there first exist a connection between that import and the intention. If we must generalize, we should say that in general symbol systems are maintained (and created in the first place) through intentional usage. It does not become clear what exactly differentiates exemplified properties from possessed ones. At first it seems to be the prominence of a property (1968), but he retcons this a decade later (1978) after criticism from Henning Jensen (1973) and does not give another account on this issue. This muddles the distance between his example of the swatch, which seems to be the prime idea of exemplification, and the aesthetic idea of expression, which is what the theory should be about. While the idea of the swatch as sample for (for example) real curtains is a solid way to show literal exemplification, it does not show the necessary parallel with the metaphoric expression of an emotion in our responses to musical works. Because of this there seems to be no reason to view the expressive properties of a musical work as some sort of swatch to greater things. Goodman’s theory remains stuck in this idea of sampling, in the idea of those samples preparing a listener for more when there is no explanation what that ‘more’ might be or how one could reach it. This lack of explanation is the reason why it is hard to see the difference between expressive and other properties. When Goodman only takes aesthetic significance as method of identifying exemplified properties he cannot explain the importance of expressive properties by merely stating that they are being exemplificatory. Expressiveness and exemplification need to be identifiable without depending on each other for just that.

The interesting issue Goodman raises is the way of sorting aesthetically relevant properties from others. He tried to do it via denotation (and exemplification, obviously), but the inability to properly explain this phenomenon does not mean composers cannot use the expressive properties in their work as references. Sadness in a musical work might strengthen the (depressing) subject about which is sung. Several of the more renowned philosophers in the field of philosophy of music have acknowledged that part of Goodman’s theory resonates with their own accounts (most notably Peter P a g e | 15

Kivy and Jerrold Levinson). It must be noted that both these philosophers see expressiveness in possession rather than denotation or reference. Referential use of expressive properties in a musical work might be allowed, but is never critical to music’s expressiveness. Goodman, on the other hand, claims denotation as absolutely vital for this. While there are enough points of criticism in his ideas, Goodman does raise an interesting issue for our purpose. We often use metaphors to describe what we felt during a particular piece of music, so even if that would not be the right way to view music’s expressivity, it would still be useful to take a further look at.

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The description of music via metaphors

In order to describe musical movements, metaphors might be obvious in their use. We must, however, distinguish between two kinds, namely those metaphors which can be eliminated, and those which can’t. One cannot eliminate the upbeat movement in Good Vibrations as a metaphor for joy, but if we were to say that such a movement inspired hope, it would be eliminable. When we talk about music in metaphoric descriptions, we should focus on those central ones in favor of eliminable metaphoric or literal descriptions. One way of defining this distinction is via unavoidable and gratuitous. Next, one can analyze the expression of emotion that underlies the metaphor from the description of the music given by the metaphor. The focus shifts to the idea that the description of music is metaphoric, instead of the idea that music possesses some of its properties in a metaphoric way.

Donald Davidson (1978) and Malcolm Budd (1985, 1989) defend and apply the view that understanding a metaphor means grasping the point it makes. This point can be explained in a paraphrase, so if one manages to explain the metaphor correctly to someone else, he understands that metaphor (Malcolm Budd finds that the paraphrase must be a literal one – I don’t ascribe to this extreme, as long as the paraphrase does not contain (parts of) the metaphor it stands to). The meaning of the metaphor is passed in the paraphrase. If ‘the music is sad’ is a metaphor, it needs an account of why that exactly is, or to phrase it better, it needs an explanation why this kind of description (of music as being sad) has such an attraction. We need to analyze why we use these kinds of words, normally reserved for (sentient) persons, to describe musical works, instead of stopping at this point (as is the criticism of Budd against Scruton (1983)). Budd does not believe there is an account which adequately explains musical expressiveness as being metaphoric. ‘The music is sad’ cannot be paraphrased in such a way as to bring across the point the metaphor wants to make. Sadness cannot be eliminated from the metaphor without altering the metaphor or letting it fail, so in his view the ascription of emotions to musical works is not metaphoric. According to Scruton, these metaphors are ineliminable, while Budd believes they can never be ineliminable. Budd does not deny that expressive terms in themselves are ineliminable, but only that they are metaphoric. In the same light as Budd, I believe the distinction is not between ineliminability and metaphors, but instead between the literal and metaphoric use of language. If ‘sad’ can be eliminated from a paraphrase of ‘this music is sad’ it seems that such a phrase should contain terms describing purely sensible or technical, abstract features (a slow movement, or a minor key). Hanslick (1957, 1986) finds ‘expressive talk’ about music eliminable and rather sees ‘descriptions of sensible features of music’. In his view, emotions used in descriptions of music are figurative and we could always replace them with words from a different order of phenomenon (laidback, cool, sweet instead of terms such as happy and sad). Hanslick does not think anything would be lost in the description if these kinds of substitutions were made. Obviously, he thinks emotions used in descriptions are figures for technical musical features present in the music and that either calling the use of a slow, minor key ‘sad’ or ‘moody’ makes no difference with regard to loss of information. Malcolm Budd is critical of Hanslick’s account. There are enough musical works that possess these musical features without being called sad or moody. Also, outside of music, these properties do not always (or even often) correspond to things being sad or moody. Instead of what Hanslick says, often it seems that the use of emotions in descriptions is vital for an accurate reflection of the music in words and one would struggle to find suitable (moreover, complete) substitutions for those kinds of words. Paraphrasing seems to change the meaning of the description always at least a little bit. P a g e | 17

Another theory for adequate paraphrasing of descriptions comes from Sharpe (1982), who holds that the use of emotions in these descriptions is nothing more than the first step towards the use of technical musical terms. In other words, only beginners use emotions to accurately describe music, simply because they cannot yet draw attention to significant musical features by their professional terms (Sharpe refers to terms such as modulation and chromaticism when he uses ‘significant features’). Once someone’s musical understanding advances, he will stop using emotions in descriptions. Technical terms are in Sharpe’s view preferable because they would be more accurate. He holds that all listeners should master the technical vocabulary of musical analysis in order to eliminate the use of emotions in descriptions. I do think this type of reductionism goes too far. Even if a technical term succeeds in correctly identifying the essence of an expressive property, it fails in getting the full richness of the description given by the emotion. Untrained listeners can easily appreciate the expressiveness of the music (without knowing the technical background), and even if one would recognize technically what is happening (the other way around), it does not necessarily go hand in hand with appreciation of the expressive character of the musical work. It seems the reductionist mistakes a causal relationship for an identity. A technical description might offer the cause of the expressive property, but not the effect. A mere technical description thus cannot explain the expressive description by itself.

Formalized symbolism still is an attractive idea at first glance. Music cannot be literally sad and when we consider the acceptability of descriptions (and conversations) of music containing emotions, it seems obvious that there must exist a relationship between the sadness of music and the emotions people feel while listening to it. Intuitively a referential account seems to make the most sense, in which music works as a (nonlinguistic) symbol of that what it wants to express (emotions). However, we do not understand music as just some sort of vehicle for reference; we locate the feelings we experience as being inside the music, which makes expressiveness aesthetically a very significant property. The difficulty of musical expressiveness is not found in a discussion about which type of symbolism fits best (be it linguistic, depictive, or something else), but rather in the presupposition that expressiveness is to be found in a symbolic relationship at all.

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Part III: Emotions inside music: causality

Symbolism might sound as an adequate, intuitive theory of explaining the expressiveness of music, but as we have seen, that view is inadequate. In short, music gets its significance from its expressive power and stands in a causal relationship to the expressed emotions, instead of a symbolic one. In order to show this more clearly, we need to take a look at the three dominant theories in the modern field of philosophy of music; the expression and arousal theories, and Stephen Davies’ own position, appearance emotionalism. The first two theories will be analysed in a broader sense and will serve as a starting point on which to build Davies’ theory, since he attempts to correct the flaws in both of them. Afterwards, we will see whether or not he has succeeded in doing this.

Expressiveness through the composer

As the name suggests, the expression theory explains expressiveness as coming from the artist or composer expressing their emotions in the process of creating a work of art (Robinson 1983). The emotional response to the expressiveness from the audience should be seen as a response to the expressed emotions of the composer at the time of the creation of the work. Crudely, the audience can read off the emotions of the composer from his work in the same way we can determine someone is sad from the tears in his eyes. The expressed emotions are not carefully planned and designed, but violently poured into the work during its creation, resulting in a much closer bond between composer and work. This theory eliminates cognitive dimensions by expressing emotions, moods or attitudes instead of ideas or beliefs. Some drawbacks are immediately clear though; some works are too large or complex to be composed ‘in the heat of the moment’, and there are examples where composers produce joyful works in difficult times or the other way around. This shows that the romantic idea of an enlightened composer at the time of the work’s genesis fails as a general account. Mozart was known as a frivolous composer, while Beethoven was much more calculated. The theory emphasizes so-called primary expressions of emotion (Davies 1994a, p. 173); raw, natural manifestations which cannot be adopted in an intentional way. Emotions are expressed in these primary expressions, while they are usually expressed through either secondary or tertiary expressions (see Casey 1971). Indifference in the face of primary expressions is rare and unsuitable as a reaction; they convey the emotions from the work directly into the listener. As Davis puts it; “emotional indifference to music’s expressiveness might properly be seen as evidence of a lack of appreciation and understanding” (1994a, p. 177).

Music does not seem to be a primary expression of the composer’s emotions, though (for a more detailed account, see Benson 1967 and Davies 1994a). Instead, if composers indeed consciously contrive expressiveness, the expressed emotions would be from the secondary or even tertiary category. The expressiveness of a work is not gone when we learn that a composer wasn’t particularly sad during the creation of the work, which should happen in the case of primary expressions. Also, listeners mirror their response to the expressed emotions; they do not respond emotionally to art as they would to primary expressions of artist’s emotions. There seems to be a difference between ‘real’ expressions of emotions and the act of merely venting emotions (primary expressions, basically). But there are more difficulties with the expression theory. Most listeners do P a g e | 19 not have any knowledge of the composer or artist’s intentions and emotional states when they hear their music (this kind of extramusical expressive content isn’t readily available anyway with the contemporary ways of hearing (new) music), thus making the expressions of musical works more along the lines of tertiary ones, which in turn makes those independent or not relevant to the central expressiveness (Sircello 1972, ch. 2; Tormey 1971, pp. 117-120). Objections hold that music isn’t merely the vehicle by which we can discern a composer’s feelings, but has inherent amounts of emotion which gives it tertiary expression. However, this would mean that the inherent emotion is appropriated by the composer, but this already assumes expressiveness – the very thing the theory set out to analyse. The expression theory fails both as music as primary expression of the composer’s feelings and as simulation of primary expressions of emotions not actually felt. The connection between the music and the feelings of the composer has to be both primary and tertiary in either version of the theory, which leads to a circular reasoning in which expressiveness is assumed instead of analysed.

There might be a last line of reasoning: what if a musical work is sad if it appears to be the output of a primary expression of sadness? Or similarly, what if a work is angry if it would be believable that someone who is angry would produce that work? This version sounds at least intuitively right; sad or angry music sounds the way sadness or anger feels. The emphasis falls on the characters of the music instead of (the earlier emphasis of) occurring emotions related to primary expressions. Again the theory fails to explain the expressiveness by neglecting how music could be a bearer of emotional expressiveness via the primary expressions. It emphasizes the expressive power but does not offer a reason for that vitality in the musical work. The immediacy in the experience of sadness or anger is not explained in an academic sense; we do not know what it is that makes us experience sad or angry feelings when we listen to that particular piece of music, a problem all three (crude) versions of the expression theory we have seen seem to suffer from. Music can be used by composers to express their personal feelings, but do we actually see such a use very often? It detracts from the expressiveness music seems to have in itself, not necessarily connected to a composer or an audience. Stephen Davies sums it up nicely: “What is artistically relevant is the expressive character present in the music, not the fact (if it is one, which usually it is not) that this expressive character has been created and employed because it matches a mood to which it gives secondary or tertiary expression” (Davies 1994a, p. 184).

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Emotions in the listener

The arousal theory (or arousalism) holds that music expresses emotions when the musical work evokes that emotion in a listener. What makes it true that the music is sad is that it arouses sadness in the listener; the listener’s response is not to some expressive property possessed independently by the music. “The music is sad” is true if and only if the music disposes a suitably qualified and interested listener to feel sad. This theory simplifies the idea of expression to the power to move listeners, but can we attribute an emotion to the musical work? If we think in terms of perceptual experiences, we could make the theory work in a broad sense by shared validation (Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings would have a shared validity of sadness and despair, while The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations would definitely not qualify in that regard). Stanley Speck concludes that although the experience of the expressed emotions belongs to the listener, the expressiveness belongs to the music as a dispositional attribute because responses to music (can) have a shared validity (1988). The question now becomes which underlying principle or process in music is responsible for the expressive power. These musical properties should be observable without the need for a listener’s response; it should be an independent, causeless property within the music itself. One can imagine the difficulty in finding these processes or properties given the numerous questions concerning the role of (for example) culture and context in emotional responses in music.

The theory can be defined as evoking a certain emotion in the listener in virtue of its possessing properties a, b, c, which might be specified in musically technical terms without reference to the emotion. It shows a few interesting things: first, the response must be relevant to the feature of the work. This allows for a broad context in which, for example, one could feel sad while listening to Good Vibrations because it is connected to the death of a loved one. Secondly, there are also more cognitive and cultural features in the same broad context to consider. Arousalists in general think of the connection between these features and the following emotional response from the listener as unmediated and direct. A smaller group tends to follow the association version, in which the mind mediates and triggers memories or other kind of associations in order to offer a fitting response to a piece of music. Speck belongs to the former group and discerns the difficulties of the association account: the immediacy, vividness and potency of the musical expression set against the arousal of affect are proof of the deeper connection than mere association. Other critics include Zuckerkandl (1959), Cooke (1959), Kivy (1980), Osborne (1983) and Allen (1990). Their critique is mostly aimed at the simplicity of the chain between music and response; one can only grasp the musical context if one moves with it, experiencing the emotion.

General arousalists, especially John Nolt (1981), advocate a modal definition of their theory, in which music tends to evoke an emotion in the listener attending the music in the appropriate manner unless the effort was sabotaged by a certain inhibiting factor. There is no comprehensive list of these factors (it would be a daunting task to list them all), but one can imagine both general and specific examples, both in favor and against the arousal theory. A simple yet solid objection to the theory however comes in the form of different reactions which cannot be attributed to the piece of music because it was not expected as such. A happy pop song might make me sad because the technique and composition are very cliché and poorly done. The response I experience is defined by my attention to the piece of music, but there are no inhibiting factors present which sabotage the effort. In other words, the response follows the modal definition of the arousal theory, yet shows a different result. John Nolt’s reply to this argument deals with the idea that it is a different kind of response, P a g e | 21 yet fails to support his analogy of responses in the context (for more details, see his ‘pile of newspapers’ example and the counterargument from Robert Stecker (1983)). While Nolt maintains that the response is not a proper response to the music, it also presents further problems with defining the right circumstances in which one can listen to music and experience the proper response. It is obvious that a theory which has to adapt in such a way to these objections fails to give an accurate analysis of the expression of emotion in music.

The theory holds that the aroused responses are ‘objectless’; these responses are caused by the music and it is their perceptual object, yet neither the music nor anything else is the intentional object of the response. However, if the music isn’t the intentional object, the response does not indicate the expressive character of music at all, a problem we have seen earlier with this theory. Music with a sad intention can never make people feel objectlessly sad; if it did, people would not listen to the music in the same way we do not actively seek other things or situations which make us sad. Since we can avoid listening to (sad) music, this is a realistic option. Also, (negative) emotions such as sadness must take to intentional objects, because as we’ve seen both the objectless and the other-than-music responses in the arousal theory fail on multiple points. Third, the theory requires the listener’s response to be identifiable without the required appropriate characteristic behavioral expressions to negative emotions such as sadness, which is not possible under those circumstances (for detailed accounts of these three arguments, see (among others) Peter Kivy (1980, 1987, 1989). Stephen Davies does not fully accept these arguments to refute the arousal theory, but considers some of the points in light of his own theory. An important detail is their similarity in allowing people to be affected by music both in positive and negative ways. According to Davies, it is possible that a listener feels no emotions, or responds to the music without an appropriate emotional reaction (mirroring the expressed emotion). The music becomes the emotional object in the latter case, thus eliminating the idea of an objectless response as put forward by the arousal theory. John Nolt tries to counter cases such as this one with the example of the overly sentimental violin piece, but fails to recognize that both a sad and a ludicrous response can co-exist, and that the explanation of the absence of the listener’s mirroring response is due to the fact that the expression of sadness in the piece is simply inept, thus triggering the other (ludicrous) response.

Both the expression and arousal theory assume that all expressions of emotions, regardless of their actual form, should be expressions of occurrent emotions. They assume a vehicle or agent in order to be able to locate the emotions in (pure) music, be it the composer, the listener or someone (or something) else. As shown, the conclusions for these theories are negative. Expressiveness, in accordance with Davies’ view, seems to be located in the music itself; the possibility of expressiveness lies in the qualities of the sounds and for that reason must be independent of the feelings of both composer and listener. Music differs from other forms of art because it does not have depictive content or comprises a non-discursive symbol system aimed at denotation. Davies locates the significance of music as internal to the piece, stemming from intrinsic properties, and claims emotions expressed in a work of music are properties of that work: “It is because music can express sadness that composers sometimes write such music in expressing their sadness; it is because music can express sadness that it sometimes leads us to feel sadness as listeners. The music itself is the owner of the emotion it expresses” (Davies 1994a, p. 199).

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Part IV: Appearance Emotionalism

“Music just does not seem the sort of thing that could possess emotional properties”

The view on the expressiveness of emotion in music of Stephen Davies is characterized by the theory of appearance emotionalism, which holds that a piece of music expresses a certain emotion in appearance in the same way the posture of a person tells you of his current emotions. For example, a piece of music is not sad because it feels sadness, but because it expresses the emotion. This appearance can be recognized by us due to certain shared characteristics that we know from previously experienced expressions of emotion. We might call a weeping willow sad because it appears like something we already have experienced; namely the face of a crying person. “The resemblance that counts most for music’s expressiveness […] is between music’s temporally unfolding dynamic structure and configurations of human behaviour associated with the expression of emotion” (Davies 2006, p. 181). This shows that language should not be considered the prime carrier of meaning in musical pieces; even if emotions are not expressed verbally, we can still make them out in appearances. Music recalls an appearance of sadness by a slow and quiet downward movement, underlying patterns of unresolved tension and thick harmonic bass structures, according to Davies.

Appearance emotionalism does not claim universality or even general resemble between musical movements and human behaviour, but instead that the majority of musicians and listeners share this perception of similarity, and it is this connection that is crucial for what constitutes the expressiveness of music. According to Davies, expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective in the (Kantian) sense of being projected into the music by the listener. An immediate problem arises when we consider that music is non-sentient, while emotions are often expressed in behaviour and thus require an agent to be expressed. As Davies put it, “music just does not seem the sort of thing that could possess emotional properties” (1994a, p. 202). The responses from the field can, in general, be arranged into two separate ideas. First, there is the view that emotions in music are sui generis and explaining them is not (yet) within our grasp. Second is the view developed by , which states that emotions are not expressed in music; its is purely a formal matter. Of course, Davies rejects both these views in favor of the theory of appearance emotionalism. Music’s expressive ability presents the aural appearance of what he calls emotion characteristics.

In his earlier work, Stephen Davies describes three points which emerge from the relationship between certain behaviour that enables emotion-characteristics in appearances and behaviour which expresses the corresponding felt-emotions (Davies 1980, p. 71). Music which behaves in an expressive way is seen as expressive because it identifies the emotional-object of a person’s emotion. This behaviour is naturally expressive; it expresses emotions without further knowledge of emotional-objects or emotion-appropriate desires (which can lead to emotion-characteristics in appearances). Davies adds this because many emotional states lack specific characteristic modes of behavioural expression; he distinguishes between ‘proper’ emotions (which can be recognized without knowledge of the emotion’s emotional object, cause and context) and feelings, which do not have emotional characteristics in appearances. A second point Davies makes is that not all behaviour which might naturally express an emotion is as likely to correspond to an emotion-characteristic in P a g e | 23 appearance. He mentions the example of a weeping person, who appears sad, but offers that sad- looking persons often tend to frown instead of weep. There exists a difference between consciously attempting to adopt a certain emotion-characteristic in appearance and adopting such an emotion consciously. Davies’ third point focusses on the absence of necessity when identifying felt-emotions uniquely based only on the behaviour that expresses those emotions if it gives rise to emotion- characteristics in appearances. We are able to identify several categories of felt-emotions such as happiness or sadness, therefore the appearance of either joyous or happy gestures will lead us to identify the expression of happiness instead of assuming the expression of sadness. It seems logical that identifying an emotion-characteristic requires the recognition of (at least an aspect of) the appearance which contains it. Note the distinction between perceiving with or without belief about an emotion-characteristic; the first case does not involve the willing suspension of belief thus making our beliefs about feelings irrelevant. It is not a convincing argument, but it follows from the fact that there cannot be generalizable rules for these kinds of identifications (e.g. “Whenever the ends of the mouth droop the person is sad-looking.” (p. 73)).

Davies argues that there are certain aspects of music that resemble human behaviour. Music is perceived as having certain characteristics which are similar to those in human behaviour; this enables emotion-characteristics in appearances. Also, the dynamic character of music resembles behaviour with its lack of teleological movement; there must always be a context to properly identify either emotion-characteristics or notes within behaviour or musical movement. The crucial part of this reasoning relies on intentionality, however. Intentionality in behaviour goes beyond the simple sum of adding all movements together to create emotion-characteristics in behaviour and is not limited to specifications of causal mechanisms and perceived intentions. The way we talk about it distinguishes just the movements and the intentional behaviour. A very musical example of intentionality is the description of the experience of the emotion of ‘pride’, which is always aimed towards something. Or, if music is perceived in such a way that it sounds ‘right’ in our ears then that rightness must be seen as an appreciation of the course of the musical movement and the choice of the composer or musician. Since there always exist many alternatives, even when we just look at the notes, no causal mechanism can determine the musical movement. Compare this to the mechanical movements in (non-intentional) behaviour, which are determined by causality. The reasons we can give for the current musical movement also can explain the alternative options and variations of the musical work. As Davies points out: “At any moment a musical work could pursue a number of different courses each of which would be consistent with and explained by the music which preceded that moment” (1980, p. 75). From this, his claim becomes as follows: “Our claim is that, because musical movement can be heard as making sense and because that sense is not determined solely by the composer’s intentions, musical movement is sufficiently like the human behaviour which gives rise to emotion-characteristics in appearances that musical movement may give rise to emotion- characteristics in sound.” There aren’t many cases of this, but if something can wear an expression or act in a similar way as human behaviour in these things, then it can show an aspect of an emotion- characteristic in its appearance. According to Davies, the experience of emotions in music is seen to be analogous to the experience of emotions in human behaviour: one would experience a musical movement in such a way that it becomes analogous to movements of human behaviour; if the music is experienced as playful, eager and gay (because of certain musical structures: the fast tempo, the use of , etc.) one will see the happiness in the music in the same way one would recognize behaviour as wearing the happy-characteristic in its appearance. This is not conclusive, since there is P a g e | 24 already a distinction between what can be expressed in and through music (i.e. ‘sad music’ and (someone’s) sadness (p. 78)). Davies does mention exceptions: one can experience his felt-hope expressed through the music, but music itself cannot be hopeful.

Composers can use any of the gradient feelings in their work to articulate emotions with more depth and detail, since emotions know some sort of natural progression. If a composer orders his emotion- characteristics in such a way, he can express much more emotional depth than just those which are noticeable in appearances. Because of this, the expression of emotion in music exceeds the range of emotion-characteristics that can be worn by appearances, but also depends on the less complex emotion-characteristics in order to be able to be expressed at all. ‘Hope’ can only be expressed in music when the musical work has ‘progressed’ enough. Davies intends to strengthen his theory via the listener’s emotional response to the expressiveness of music: “[..] we can only understand the listener’s emotional response as an aesthetic response, as a response to the musical work which may be justified by reference to features of the music, when we regard it as a response to an emotion- characteristic presented in the sound of the music (p. 79)”. Davies claims that emotional responses to emotion-characteristics in appearances tend to invoke the feeling of the emotion that is worn by the appearance.

Responses as both emotional and aesthetic

Davies’ theory relies on a consideration of the listener’s emotional response to the musical expressiveness. This response is both an aesthetic (a response only justified by reference to features of the musical work) and emotional one (a response to the emotion-characteristic that is perceived in an appearance in the music), and, as Davies put it; “we can only understand the listener’s emotional response as an aesthetic response, as a response to the musical work which may be justified by reference to features of the music, when we regard it as a response to an emotion-characteristic presented in the sound of the music” (p. 79). Typical emotional responses have the following form: External factors aside, an emotional response to an emotion-characteristic in an appearance will evoke the emotion that is worn by the appearance. Davies mentions the simple example of surrounding yourself with happy people in order to become happier yourself. This also shows that the mood of an appearance can be different from the felt-emotion; a happy-appearance is extremely evocative of happy-feelingness. However, this doesn’t justify the typical response to an emotion- characteristic in an appearance, since there is no object which possesses emotion-relevant features. The appropriateness of that response contains an appearance which wears the emotion- characteristic which is mirrored in the emotional response. Because an appearance can wear more than one emotion-characteristic, multiple responses might be appropriate. In reverse, a response which does not mirror the emotion-characteristic in the appearance is an inappropriate one.

It seems music wears expressiveness just like a person’s appearance may wear an emotion- characteristic (p. 82). The emotional response is the feeling of the emotion heard in the music. The aesthetic response shows in what way the listener is using his experience and knowledge to understand the music. It obviously deals with those features of music which can be seen as features of art in general. The paradoxical issue Davies explores concerns the non-representational character of music (Scruton 1976) which fails to provide represented emotional-objects for the emotion the listener perceives, while at the same time provides thoughts about the work of music which make it P a g e | 25 the emotional-object of a response and understanding of the work. As Davies puts it; “If emotional responses to musical expressiveness are non-emotional-object-directed then how could they be subject to justification and therefore aesthetic?” (Davies 1980, p. 82) His theory allows an emotional response to a work of music to be both aesthetic and non-emotional-object-directed (see above). Emotional responses make the expressiveness in music unique because they are both subject to justification and non-emotional-object-directed.

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‘Our song’, fictional Mozarts and intentionality

A lot of responses, while being real cases of real music arousing a garden-variety of emotions in listeners, have no aesthetic or artistic relevance at all. Peter Kivy names two examples, the ‘national anthem’ and the ‘our song’ phenomenon (Kivy 2002, p. 111). In the first example, a US soldier returns home after a tumultuous conflict and breaks down at hearing the Star-Spangled Banner, experiencing a mixture of joy, grief, sadness, etc., taking in all the experiences he had and combining those with his already emotional state. The ‘our song’ example is more familiar and contains the association which allows joyful music to be sad in the experience of the listener – one might, for example, associate a happy song with a funeral of a loved one, or with his divorced wife. The emotions these examples arouse have nothing to do with aesthetically or artistically significant emotive qualities in the music, they are brought into existence by the non-musical context of the listeners. In this light it becomes obvious that the focus should lie on emotions featured in the music (as Davies argues), not dependent on either listener or composer: “So the proposal is: music makes us melancholy because it is melancholy, and we recognize it as such; music makes us cheerful because it is cheerful, and we recognize it as such; and so on. The music is deeply moving because it does this” (Kivy 2002, p. 113).

One reply comes in the form of the persona theory (as made famous by Jerrold Levinson in e.g. 1982, 1985 and 1992), which allows for the imagination of a fictional persona whose emotions the listener is experiencing (be it a fictional Mozart, for example, or just an unknown and unnamed agent). The difficulty in this account lies in the fictional status of the persona. Why should we believe anyone is experiencing the emotions we are supposed to be responding to? Kivy describes this problem in more detail and shows that solutions seem difficult. A second reply to his question, however, comes in the form of the ‘tendency theory’ he describes, which has strong connections to Davies’ appearance emotionalism. The difficulties Kivy finds here are obviously more interesting to our account. He describes a part of the theory as follows: “Nonetheless, it surely is ‘common sense’, in no need of argument or experiment, so the theory goes, that the cheerfulness of yellow has a tendency, to make people cheerful, and the somberness of black as a tendency to make people somber” (Kivy 2002, p. 119). This common sense applies also to the expressive properties of music. Kivy makes comparisons to his yellow and black with respectively Haydn and (the somber part of) Brahms. Also, because of this tendency, it speaks for itself that the expressiveness sometimes occurs. If he assumes the premise of tendency, he immediately brings to the light the problem of ineffectuality. Davies gives the example of the well-known sad masks, and their tendency to evoke sadness. However, there are enough people who have these kinds of masks as decoration in their homes, and never suffer from an observable depression in their lives. Similarly, people who visited a concert in which sad or melancholic music was played do not get depressed afterwards; on the contrary, if it was a good performance, they might even be joyful and exhilarated. Even if the tendency theory is granted to work under certain circumstances, it seems that no listener would find this to occur in their musical experiences. They would have to completely saturate the listener’s experience which isn’t likely to occur in daily life.

A different line of criticism follows the line of music as not being the ‘proper’ object of a listener’s response, resulting in no corresponding ‘correct’ behaviour. A non-musical example shows, in a simple way, how music can be the object of a person’s emotions: imagine lying in bed, trying to get some sleep, and hearing the disturbing sounds of a neighbor playing loud music at his party. Here, P a g e | 27 the music becomes the object of the person’s irritation because it prevents the listener from doing what he wants: sleeping (Juslin & Västfjäll 2008). While the example is clear, it does show that there is an underlying cause which is the real one preventing sleep: the fact that the neighbor is having a party (or simply, ‘the neighbor’). The music is playing (loudly) because he’s the one who is having a party. While Juslin & Västfjäll argue that emotions aroused by music have the music itself as their intentional object, Jenefer Robinson, in her reply to them (‘Do all musical emotions have the music itself as their intentional object?’), underlines the criticism of Kivy (1990, among others) that 1) music can arouse only moods, not emotions proper, and 2) responses to the information in the music are caused by it as a stimulus object, not directed towards the music as cognitive object. Inducing people to adopt a certain stance, facial expression or particular action associated with an emotion induces the emotion itself, which shows a lack of intentional object involved. It is possible to categorize the feeling of the emotion and confabulate an intentional object from that, but that is not the goal Davies set out for. The same goes for emotions aroused by episodic memories and visual imagery. Robinson notes that this holds for both pure instrumental music (e.g. Beethoven’s Fifth as a struggle leading to victory) and ‘modern’ music (which include vocals and lyrics). Robinson however, seems to confuse certain mechanisms that take music as its object with conscious awareness of an intentional object. Nick Zangwill reflects Robinson’s criticism as follows: “Consider, for example, that we might plausibly describe some passages of Shostakovitch's Fifth Symphony as “exhilarating,” where that is meant in the ordinary sense in which we feel exhilarated after running. It is true that this exhilaration is not a sophisticated thought-dependent emotion. However, this is only because there is also exhilaration in the music that is not felt exhilaration of a Robinsonian sort. If we feel Robinsonian exhilaration—though it is surely contingent that we do—then that feeling is consequential on our recognition of the exhilaration that inheres in the music. The music is not exhilarating because we are exhilarated; rather, we are typically exhilarated because we hear exhilaration in the music. The exhilaration we feel derives from the exhilaration we hear (2007, p. 395).”

Peter Kivy is also a proponent of another argument against the views of Davies. While the latter claims that music is expressive and thus generates an emotional response, the former turns it around and says that the response is not the expressive, generative power of music (1993). Kivy’s response is far more cognitive in nature (instead of a mirroring kind), relying on a qualified and attentive listener in order to experience music’s expressiveness, one who can properly identify musical features and structures which cause the responses.

Music is part of being human

Stephen Davies argues that the expressed sadness in music is an intrinsic property and thus must elicit something in the emotional response which make people come back for more. In his view, emotions such as sadness do not have the strength of a true form of felt-emotion-sadness, in which someone would (for example) be crying constantly. Instead, it seems that the vivacity of expressed sadness in music tends to be more in the way of a constant downcast demeanor. As argued earlier, this stems from the difference of behavioral expressions of felt emotions on one side and emotional responses to emotion characteristics in appearances on the other. The latter are more limited in type and aren’t all relevant when we consider the repertoires of behaviors corresponding with the felt emotion. This explains why we experience the expressed emotion, but are not drawn into the P a g e | 28 corresponding behavior which comes with the real felt emotion. As Davies puts it; “Emotion characteristics in appearances lack the power of the more dramatic forms of behavioral expressions of felt emotions [..] Sad-lookingness might lead, in others, to sad-feelingness, but their sad feelings are not of the desperate variety that wrings tears from them” (Davies 1994a, pp. 306-307). Davies compares the response to a perceptual-object-directed-mood, which does not include the beliefs which normally spurs one into action and which add the intensity of the felt emotion. These emotion characteristics in appearances influence our feelings, but do not affect those internal, intentional parts which give felt emotions their strength.

Negative emotions in music (e.g. sadness, despair) must somehow be less unpleasant than their real world-counterpart. Some view these emotions as separate from the actions to which they lead, thus enabling us to savor the unpleasantness present in our response (see Levinson 1982, Putnam 1987). Others focus on the more Kantian aesthetic explanation; music which expresses sadness is most fitting to experience the more tragic aspects of life without the ‘danger’ of felt emotions. This distanced view obviously claims that the real life implications of sadness are not present in the response of the expressed emotion of the work of art. Also, there’s the matter of control. One can safely break away from the music and the sadness whenever he or she feels they had enough. This security enables us to focus on the perceived beauty in negative emotions, whichever way that might be. It seems a reasonable argument. Levinson (1982) gives a few reasons in favor of this appeal of control. In our imaginations, we can assign the musical expression to an anonymous agent, following its journey and conclusion with a sense of dominance or mastery over the powerful emotions which might be expressed. Alternatively, we can imagine those emotions in music as our own, thus grabbing hold of the power to express and control them. Lastly, we can ascribe these emotions to the composer, which brings us into harmony with his emotions without being in danger of the full exposure. Levinson does not seem to consider the illusion of control one might have though, since the course of the artwork is already determined in the cases we are considering (one can imagine certain improvisational pieces are exempt of this, but it would require a different kind of theory anyway). The amount of control is limited to pausing; otherwise the musical course is determined and can only be ignored. However interesting these considerations are, they focus either on sadness as something else than real sadness, or not on the music in any case at all. A more music-like explanation deals with resolving the negative tension in a happy-sounding ending; negative emotions are ultimately conquered by happy ones. However, there are two simple counterarguments to present here. One, which Kivy brings in, we do not experience a sudden rush of satisfaction at a happy ending, and two, what about works such as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, which ends without a happy conclusion?

All of these arguments show that there might be some merit in the first solution of the dilemma, despite the counterarguments already presented. The aesthetic environment might be responsible for a lessening in vivacity and impact of the expressed emotions. Sadness might be less dramatic and feel less real in unpleasantness than its real world counterpart encountered in non-aesthetic situations. While an aesthetic of artistic context can strip emotions of their vitality and the need to act upon certain desires, it cannot strip them from the unpleasantness as a fundamental feature of those negative emotions.

Solutions to the second approach of the dilemma are characterized by exploring the benefits that might come with experiencing negative expressions. These benefits should then outweigh the P a g e | 29 negative experiences in order to make the net sum positive. Davies mentions a rough first line: “artworks are a source of knowledge and deep enjoyment, so, if they happen also to make us feel sad sometimes, that is a price we might pay willingly for the sake of other values” (Davies 1994a, p. 310). Aristotle, in the Poetics, mentioned a kind of cleansing effect of negative responses; they purge our emotions, thus making us feel relieved at the end of the experience of a work of art. A hasty counter could be that while a victim of a crime might feel better when it has passed, he would not have chosen the experience as some sort of unconscious form of therapy in any case. One can imagine that both stronger and more weakened versions of the emotions do not make much of a difference when we consider the questions of why anyone would deliberately seek out these responses. Simply more relief than catharsis cannot explain this phenomenon in a convincing manner. Levinson argues that these responses deliver more significant knowledge than mere propositional knowledge. Its heuristic value comes from the reassuring of our humanity and emotional sensitivity and it provides material to build our characters or to train us for similar real life experiences. Davies and Kivy are skeptical of this view. There is no evidence to support the claim of deeper knowledge of negative emotions, for example. Their conclusion seems to be that the Levinson account explains at best why one would resign oneself to certain experiences, but fails to address the problem adequately. People do not seem to differentiate tragic or sad works of art more than other types of artworks.

To answer the question of why people would want to listen to sad music even if it makes them sad, it might help to observe the bigger picture: why do people listen to music? Happy music actually comes with the same problems when we consider explanations for people’s listening behaviour. The simple fact that a piece of music expresses happiness is not strong enough an explanation for listener’s commitment to it. Pleasure can come in being able to analyze or understand music in an aesthetic sense, or in being able to let such considerations go when a work demands it. Music can have different levels of content, some requiring a greater sense of understanding, which deliver more enjoyable experiences when more of them are unlocked. From this perspective, sad music becomes part of the whole, not especially favored or discarded but admired for the different kind of satisfaction it delivers in one’s comprehension. The negative responses become one of the many experiences, balanced in the end by the total process of understanding. However, it must be noted that this approach intuitively seems much too clinical, as if music doesn’t tug the emotional strings in the way we experience it every day. But, if negative responses are no less valued as a way of artistic expression, and if we take aesthetic understanding before emotional fulfillment, and if that understanding requires commitment to whatever is expressed, even negative emotions, then the narrow focus we started out with is insufficient in order to properly formulate an answer to the dilemma. We do end up with a new problem, however, namely to determine what exactly is ‘enjoying art’, and to find the proper role of negative feelings in it.

Enjoying art seems to be a combination of aesthetic understanding and emotional responses. We do not seek happy or sad works more as we do their opposite works, but tend to ignore or avoid works which are boring, clichéd or even banal. These types of works do not repay our investment in understanding and appreciating enough or might even put us off completely because they interfere with our moral standards. By now it should be clear that at least one answer to the main question contains that negative emotions are not sought after for their value of enjoyment, but as an integral part of the understanding and appreciation which we seek in works of art. A response cannot be improved in any way when this aspect is missing, it will in fact devalue the amount of understanding P a g e | 30 and appreciation we can collect. Nelson Goodman sums it up as follows: “In aesthetic experience, emotion positive or negative is a mode of sensitivity to a work. The problem of and the paradox of ugliness evaporates” (1968, p. 250). Another consideration can be to enjoy exploring the artist’s power to approach these more extreme emotions. Goodman however makes his statement with narratives and representations in mind. The case of pure music lacks certain imaginative or symbolic content as we’ve discussed earlier. Also, musical works often provide sequences which enable richer expressive elements. These layers do not merely depend on a listener’s almost mechanically mirroring certain sequences, but also on the recognition of the build-up of (temporal) connections, leading to (for example) a heightened general mood of sadness after a more frenzy joyful part. Listeners can easily reflect on the appropriateness of the mirroring response in a broader context.

I do not share Jerrold Levinson’s rejection of the resemblance between typical behavioral expressions of an emotion and the contours of such as emotion as expressed in music. His critique aims at the lack of concrete criteria – in which manner and to what extent must there be a resemblance in order to count a passage of music as expressive? – and claims that because of the vagueness in Davies’ theory on this part, everything can be made to be expressive or not depending on what the listener or author wants. Expressivity instead is found in the disposition of a piece of music to elicit the imaginative response we have when we hear that music as a literal expression of an emotion. From this it follows that the imaginative response requires some kind of agent, something I do not agree with. While the right type of listener is required for the most complex cases of expressivity, his experience is one of resemblance. In a philosophical sense, Levinson’s enquiry about the criteria for resemblance stops at that which is deemed necessary in order to make a listener experience an emotion in the music. I believe the scientific answer to that question should not be found in philosophy, but rather in the neurosciences. Levinson’s claim about the imaginative agent or persona (2006) in the music becomes difficult when we consider that different listeners must construe the same kind of narratives around the same agent and the fitting emotion (and the progress in the music). Also, there is a problem with repetitive hearings, since it is not clear whether we memorize the agent we imagined earlier, or imagine new ones every time we listen to a work of music. Expressive music does not hold such strict control over our powers of imagination that every qualified listener comes to the same, shared conclusion (or at least something in the same vicinity). Instead, we see various responses to a piece of music, dependent on more than just the imaginative persona.

So, for one last time, let’s go back to the dilemma of the sad response. It is not the case that we revel in feeling hopeless, sad, and grief-struck, etc., and that we would want to experience more of these emotions in daily life. In the closer look we’ve taken on Davies’ theory, we conclude that these emotions are in fact present in the music, thus merely calling the negative emotions ‘metaphoric’ would be to basic a solution. However, we do not enjoy sadness, despair and such in the form of occurrent emotions (at least, most of us don’t). What we do enjoy are the experiences of the described features of these emotions as part of the larger context of the music. These are what ground our pleasure. The dilemma of the sad response is rooted in the presupposition that our being must copy the emotion we’re experiencing the whole way, instead of merely mirroring it as Davies describes. The pleasure we derive from the experience of these emotions is found in a more meta- experience, in which we have time to place all of the occurrent emotions in their correct position of the context. It seems that Davies’ theory needs this component in order to avoid the paradox of P a g e | 31 negative emotions. It is this pleasurable experience that allows us to describe what we’ve experienced (literal or metaphoric) and we see no reason why this experience must be a detached, analytical one. It seems as much part of the whole ride of expressivity as the mirroring response is.

P a g e | 32

Conclusion

It seems true that musical experiences have features in common with many emotions. These experiences have intentional content and they are felt by the qualified listener, directed towards something in the world and qualitative in nature. It is clear that the effects of such a mental state do not resemble the ones we experience in non-musical context – anger or grief can have very destructive outings of which we do not feel the need to reproduce them after listening to, for example, the latest Metallica album. However, listening to music is not a cool or detached process of analysis. Instead, it is an immediate experience, in which our response is a mirroring one, while at the same time we revel in the understanding and appreciation of what is happening in that moment. We have seen that symbolism, although intuitively a sound option, fails to coherently explain why we would deliberately seek out music with negative emotions in it. While the answer is to be found in causality, both the expression and arousal theory have pitfalls too deep to climb back from.

Stephen Davies’ appearance emotionalism seems the most viable theory on hand, yet is not without faults. We tried to overcome the biggest one, best summarized in the dilemma of the sad response and the problem of enjoying art. People report that sad music gives rise to negative emotional responses, but also praise the work for exactly that. We have tried to show that if negative experiences, or parts thereof, are indeed unpleasant, and if that would normally give us cause to disregard whatever those experiences stem from, are indeed crucial to the musical work as a whole. We accept this if we, as qualified listeners, truly want to gain an understanding into the musical work, because the work cannot become better by eliminating the negative half. This part is to be accepted and should not be seen as a non-rational process. As we have seen, there seems to be two sides to the coin of the listener’s experience. One is the immediate mirroring response in which we acknowledge and experience the emotion as expressed by the music, while the other gives us the necessary understanding and appreciation needed to downplay the effect of the negative emotions. Of course, this does not mean people cannot become literally sad of a musical work, but it seems this is a different process – for example, a case of association (a negative version of the ‘our song’ phenomenon). These experiences influence our feelings, but do not affect those internal, intentional parts which give daily life emotions their strength. With the words of ; “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence (1966).”

P a g e | 33

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