open mind

and this whole lot of stuff isn’t something I’m saying, but it’s the theme of a symposium that would really do you good, very good.....

John A. Sloboda
The "sound of music" versus the "essence of music":
dilemmas for researchers of musical emotion (Commentary)
The potential relationships between contemporary musical emotion science and social and economic trends within dominant industrialized cultures are investigated. It is argued that these trends have the effect of diminishing the individual, personal, complex, subtle, and unrepeatable elements of the musical experience, while instead emphasizing the communal, public, simple, evident, and replicable ones. A review of the conclusions reported in the articles of this special issue demonstrates that factors attributable to individual musical events and individual listeners, along with the beliefs and attitudes added by listeners to the musical experience, are crucial in determining the nature and level of the emotional response to music. Every seemingly certain statement about the emotional effects of music is constrained by many risks and limitations that significantly hinder the prospects for a schematically commercial exploitation of these findings.

Daniel Västfjäll
Induction of Emotions through Music: A Review of the Musical Mood Induction Procedure
This article reviews research aimed at demonstrating that music can alter people's mood states and emotions. The so-called "musical mood induction procedure" (MMIP) relies on music to produce changes in the affective processes experienced. The fact that music can have such an influence on subjective experience has been utilized to study the effect of mood on cognitive processes and behavior by a large number of researchers in social, clinical, and personality psychology. The extensive literature on the subject, although still little known among music psychologists, will provide them with further assistance in understanding the affective responses to music. To this end, this article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the methodology underlying numerous studies conducted with the MMIP. The effectiveness of music as an emotional induction stimulus is discussed in terms of self-descriptions, physiological, and behavioral indices. The discussion focuses on how the conclusions drawn from the MMIP literature can extend to current research and debates on the complex interaction between music and emotional responses.

Klaus R. Scherer, Marcel R. Zentner, and Annekathrin Schacht
Emotional States Generated by Music: An Exploratory Study
on Music Experts
A group of music experts (n = 98) was asked to report (by responding to a questionnaire) their affective, cognitive, and psychological reactions to a recently listened-to musical piece that had struck them, producing an emotional response. Additionally, the participants were asked to evaluate the relative importance of a list of musical and extramusical factors that might have contributed to their reactions. A coded system was developed to organize and quantify the reactions that had been freely described. Regarding bodily symptoms, the most frequent reactions included semi-physiological variables such as tears and chills, cardiovascular symptoms, as well as stimuli for motor action, for example, to jump or dance. Concerning subjective experiences or sensations, descriptions such as feeling nostalgic, fascinated, moved, or stimulated were more frequent than reports of "basic" emotions such as sadness, anger, joy, or fear. The musical structure was assigned the highest value on the list of potential determinants, but technical, acoustic, and interpretive aspects also received high ratings. The authors discuss how such results and their conceptual processing can provide guidance for a more systematic investigation of emotion induction through music.

Perceived emotion and felt emotion: the same or different?
A distinction is made between emotional perception, which involves perceiving an emotional expression in music without necessarily being personally involved, and the induction of an emotion, which refers to the emotional response to music by listeners. This distinction is not always observed in everyday conversations about emotions, nor in scientific articles. Empirical studies on the perception of emotion are briefly reviewed, with particular attention to the agreement among listeners regarding the emotions expressed; this is followed by a selective review of empirical studies on the emotional response to music. Possible relationships between the perception of emotion and emotional response are discussed and exemplified: positive relationship, negative relationship, non-systematic relationship, and absence of relationships. It is emphasized that both the perception of emotion and, in particular, the emotional response depend on an interaction between musical, personal, and contextual factors. Some methodological issues and proposals for future research are discussed.

1) The musical expression always involves sound characteristics that must be taken into account. (2) If musical stimuli from the "real world" are used, one may encounter phenomena of associative interference. (3) The context will often cause an emotional expression to be isolated, transforming a simple emotion into a higher one by providing an intentional object. (4) There is no simple linear relationship between the intensity of a musical parameter and the intensity of a musical expression. (5) Some highly valid musical expressions of emotions may not evoke those emotions in the listener; however, it would not be correct to call such passages "uninexpressive." (6) Certain emotions evoked by musical listening, although similar to those occurring in non-musical contexts, will nonetheless show a number of important differences.

Justin London
Some Theories of Musical Emotion and Their Implications for Music Psychology Research
The work of musical aesthetics on meaning in music is important for psychological research on musical expressions of emotion. Distinctions are made between simple emotions, higher-order emotions, and moods, and debates are summarized, for example on what types of emotions or moods music may be capable of expressing (given its semantic abilities and limitations). The question of how music can express such emotions and moods is then considered. The article concludes with some guidance for researchers in music emotion psychology:

Patrik N. Juslin and Marcel R. Zentner
Current Directions in the Study of Music and Emotion:
Opening Address
The study of musical emotion is experiencing a renaissance today. However, the literature on music and emotion still presents a confusing picture. Its conceptual terrain is still undergoing exploration, and there is a considerable need for refinement in the methodologies used to study music and emotion. In the abundance of research currently dedicated to this subject, it is all the more important to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of progress, in order not to reinvent the wheel. To this end, the authors of this issue organized a symposium during the Sixth International Conference on the Perception and Cognition of Music (Keele, UK, August 2000). Their intention was to bring together various researchers who had contributed theoretical and empirical work to this field of study, in order to showcase the "Current Directions in the Study of Music and Emotion." This special issue collects some expanded and revised presentations from that symposium, along with a number of additional contributions. This article provides an introduction to the topic: it discusses the historical context, illustrates the main contributions in relation to the content of the other articles, and finally considers the existing rift between art and science.

I don't know either Kern or Hawkins, I admit it, so what? I have other interests outside of the jazz masters (are they jazz masters?) and other listens... and also my knowledge allows me to identify...

It's true that I don't know anything about music theory, so what? This doesn't stop me from forming opinions that are completely opposite to yours (I specify not about Metheny.....) and the way you talk, at best, "kills" musicians, it doesn't "heal" them.... I swear I would have never believed that there were people with an approach to music like yours.... and this is without discussing your musical abilities which I deduce are truly remarkable.... you can't say, I repeat, that music is 5% emotional, you simply can't..... I hope you've kept this thought to as few people as possible....