7. Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony and the Musical Expression of Cognitively Complex Emotions

2019 ◽  
pp. 154-178
Author(s):  
Gregory Karl ◽  
Jenefer Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Musical Expression ◽  
Complex Emotions

Further Layers

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-187
Author(s):  
Patrik N. Juslin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
Expression Of Emotions

This chapter first reviews the notions of intrinsic coding and associative coding. It then considers how these may be combined to produce musical expression of emotions, both basic and complex emotions. It suggests that there are some prototypical musical emotions frequently expressed in music, which are linked to the ‘functions’ of music in our evolutionary past. It proposes a list of seven ‘prototypical’ emotions which are expressed often in music: happiness (festive songs), sadness (mourning), love-tenderness (lullabies and tender love songs), anxiety (existential fears in life), nostalgia (social/cultural identity), anger (protest and war songs), spirituality-solemnity (religion), and sexual desire (mating).

scholarly journals Expressive Meaning and the Empirical Analysis of Musical Gesture

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Albrecht
Keyword(s):  
Musical Expression ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Expressive Meaning ◽  
Exposure Method ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

Many investigations of the expressive meaning of musical works rely only on the musical interpretations and intuitions of the author. While invaluable, theorists’ analyses are often biased or contradict one another. This paper presents a novel empirical approach to analyzing musical expression, in which the interpretations of individual theorists are balanced with listener reception in a broader audience, in this case a group of 110 music students from two universities. This new paradigm, which I have termed “the progressive exposure method,” presents a larger excerpt in shorter discrete segments. An exploratory case study illustrates the progressive exposure method through an analysis of the expressive meaning of the second movement of Beethoven’sPathétiqueSonata. When the results are amalgamated, a diachronic portrait emerges of cognitively complex emotions blended together as they unfold throughout the movement. This article provides readers with a hands-on, interactive tool for examining all of the results of the study. By presenting short musical gestures to listeners, a bottom-up, data-driven analysis of the expressive meaning of musical gestures and topics in the movement is possible. The consequent analytical results intersect in unique ways with more traditional theoretical and analytical practices, illustrating original applications of empirical methods to existing theories of musical expression as a means of providing converging evidence for those theories. Specifically, the results of this intersubjective analysis are discussed in light of theories of musical meaning by Hatten, Meyer, Narmour, Huron, and Margulis, and the results provide a new opportunity to directly and empirically testing a number of these authors’ hypotheses.

Toward a Theory of Intellectual Entertainment

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
José I. Latorre ◽  
María T. Soto-Sanfiel
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
Typical Sequence

We reflect on the typical sequence of complex emotions associated with the process of scientific discovery. It is proposed that the same sequence is found to underlie many forms of media entertainment, albeit substantially scaled down. Hence, a distinct theory of intellectual entertainment is put forward. The seemingly timeless presence of multiple forms of intellectual entertainment finds its roots in a positive moral approval of the self of itself.

Attentional Engines

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Seeley
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Broad Base ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Perceptual Psychology ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.

scholarly journals Complexes of Emotions in Joseph and Aseneth

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-155
Author(s):  
Tyler Smith
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Emotional Aspect ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
Jewish Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Joseph And Aseneth ◽  
Greek Novel

The ancient Greek novel introduced to the history of literature a new topos: the “complex of emotions.” This became a staple of storytelling and remains widely in use across a variety of genres to the present day. The Hellenistic Jewish text Joseph and Aseneth employs this topos in at least three passages, where it draws attention to the cognitive-emotional aspect of the heroine’s conversion. This is interesting for what it contributes to our understanding of the genre of Aseneth, but it also has social-historical implications. In particular, it supports the idea that Aseneth reflects concerns about Gentile partners in Jewish-Gentile marriages, that Gentile partners might convert out of expedience or that they might be less than fully committed to abandoning “idolatrous” attachments. The representations of deep, grievous, and complex emotions in Aseneth’s transformational turn from idolatry to monolatry, then, might play a psychagogic role for the Gentile reader interested in marrying a Jewish person.

The Origin and Form of Aeolic Verse

1909 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
John Williams White
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
Greek Poetry

The Aeolic dimeter and trimeter constitute so considerable a part of Greek lyric and dramatic poetry that the correct apprehension of their form is a matter of great moment. The Greek metricians comprehended this rightly, in the main, but in the first half of the nineteenth century the doctrine of these learned men was supplanted by a new theory that attempted to apply the principles that underlie modern poetry to the explanation of the undoubtedly complex rhythm of these clauses. Many scholars persistently maintain this theory. It is not difficult to discover why it was invented (it is absolutely new) and why it remains attractive. That the quantitative rhythms and metres of Greek poetry should seem complicated to men whose language is accentual is inevitable, whereas modern metres and rhythms are notoriously simple. The limitations imposed upon poetic form by accentual speech are extreme. No modern poet, for example, has attempted Ionic or Cretic measures. Again Greek music was simple, and both music and dance were under the control of the singers, but modern music is a complex art, and casts language in an iron mould. Nevertheless musical expression must be the basis of comparison, so far as we allow ourselves to institute it, between ancient and modern rhythms. The attempt to conform Greek lyrics to the elementary—and uncertain—rhythms of modern poetry that is merely read or recited implies a fundamental misconception of relations. Greek lyrics were melic. Agathon, in the Thesmophoriazusae, sings as he composes. These Greek songs were never intended to be read by anybody, Greek or barbarian.

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