Emotion and Meaning in the Musical Experience-part 1

                Emotion and Meaning in the Musical Experience-part 1

            “Since the music itself is emotionless—a non-living entity cannot feel—it is the case that we perceive an emotion expressed in the music without undergoing it, or do we actually experience a specific emotion?” p.8 A Concise Survey of music Philosophy by Donald Hodges This statement can be taken to mean that music is unable to cause the performer or the auditor to feel an emotion since it is an inanimate object.  A shotgun shell is also a powerless object as long as it stays in the box.  However, those who know its potential will readily admit that it has the propensity to exert great power.   Likewise, if one were to look at a beta blocker, it could be said that it cannot cause one to feel more relaxed or calm.  This is certainly the case if one merely looks at it because the pill cannot express the emotion of calmness.  However, considering a beta blocker in this way is an incomplete view of the power and potential of this medication.   When one internalizes it, it can have great power over one’s emotional state because it actually slows down the heart-beat of the patient. 

            The effect of this non-living entity is often a calming of the patients emotional state.  I suggest that music also has the power to change the listener’s emotional state. Much like the shotgun shell and the beta blocker, music has great power. When one observes the musical score it is benign unless the observer has the ability to audiate its sounds before it is actually performed.  Although some music philosophers deny the fact that music has power to arouse, change, alter (or whatever one wishes to term it) the emotional state of the performer and the listener, there seems to be logical and reasonable reasons to believe that it has emotive power when it is performed.