Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte
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Just to avoid such cross-purpose misunderstandings that you suggest, S_A, I should clarify that I don't mean that listeners don't experience emotions as they listen to - or even remember - pieces of Music. My own experience of this as well as the descriptions from other listeners - not least on this Forum, frequently and every day - is quite enough to make me think that the experiencing of intense emotions when people listen to Music is as "universal" a phenomenon as we're likely to have. (And setting aside such points as the fact that "boredom" is an emotion. 
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But the descriptions of these emotions also give evidence that these reactions - the specific emotions - originate in the listener, rather than in the sounds of the Music itself. Countless times I have read favourable reactions and responses to a work that I adore on this Forum, which communicate an emotional experience that I find barm ... err ... completely at odds with my own emotional reactions. (So that Music I have found exciting and exhilarating has been described as "terrifying" and/or "nihilistic" by other listeners, for example; or Music that speaks to me eloquently and gently of loss, others have heard - equally eloquently - as optimistic or doom-laden by other different listeners.)
The acoustic fact of the raw clash of pitches a minor second apart creates an energy that grabs people in completely different ways: but the specific emotion is a blank sheet that the listener fills in for him or herself - whether that response meets or is similar to those of others or not isn't important, nor are the non (or Extra-) -Musical "intentions" handy those might be on occasion to stop others insisting that their own reactions - RVW wanting to express his rage over Portsmouth losing the FA Cup in 1934, for example - are the "one true" ones. (It's equally obvious that RVW was a Man City fan, and the work is a jubilant celebration of their victory.)
(This post is dedicated to Edgleyrob, in the hope that it will so outrage him that he will feel impelled to rejoin us very, very soon.
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)But the descriptions of these emotions also give evidence that these reactions - the specific emotions - originate in the listener, rather than in the sounds of the Music itself. Countless times I have read favourable reactions and responses to a work that I adore on this Forum, which communicate an emotional experience that I find barm ... err ... completely at odds with my own emotional reactions. (So that Music I have found exciting and exhilarating has been described as "terrifying" and/or "nihilistic" by other listeners, for example; or Music that speaks to me eloquently and gently of loss, others have heard - equally eloquently - as optimistic or doom-laden by other different listeners.)
The acoustic fact of the raw clash of pitches a minor second apart creates an energy that grabs people in completely different ways: but the specific emotion is a blank sheet that the listener fills in for him or herself - whether that response meets or is similar to those of others or not isn't important, nor are the non (or Extra-) -Musical "intentions" handy those might be on occasion to stop others insisting that their own reactions - RVW wanting to express his rage over Portsmouth losing the FA Cup in 1934, for example - are the "one true" ones. (It's equally obvious that RVW was a Man City fan, and the work is a jubilant celebration of their victory.)
(This post is dedicated to Edgleyrob, in the hope that it will so outrage him that he will feel impelled to rejoin us very, very soon.
)
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