Hello, I think your theory is really interesting! I'm curious about what you have to say about instrumental music, specifically orchestral pieces. Though those songs often don't have lyrical content, they're able to convey messages. Or at the very least, it seems to me that people have derived more than just emotional meaning from songs like Holst's planets symphony, Vivaldi's four seasons, and even simpler pieces like Grieg's in the hall of the mountain king. These pieces seem to denote an actual story conveyed through instrumentation alone. Do you think composers can actually try to put meaningful messages in the score, this is just us projecting emotionally, or is this wrapped up in your idea of our tastes in music being "idiosyncratic and culturally bound"? Sorry for any misunderstanding I may have had reading!

I agree that music has primarily emotional meaning, though I don’t know that that needs to be limited to religious contexts.

I see analogues of musical concepts in all manner of time-based phenomena, and I think the first hypothesis about predictability was on the right track. When things happen over and over again people can get bored and annoyed but also sometimes comforted. When patterns suddenly change that can be surprising in either an exciting or frightening way. When things happen in an entirely unstructured way that can be anxiety inducing but then if pattern emerge out of that structure there’s a pleasant feeling of discovery. If multiple patterns interact with each other in different ways that’s likewise a pleasant thing to realize, to feel like you’re noticing the connections between these things.

Sound is all about patterns of changes over time (pitch is just frequency), and all kinds of musical concepts are further refinements upon that (harmony is when multiple frequencies share certain relationships, rhythm and tempo are also all about frequency of notes). Musical ups and downs, breaks and shifts, all all about establishing and then changing patterns over time.

I think we’re wired to have emotional responses to patterns like that more generally, to get bored of repetition but also to fear unpredictable change, to get intrigued by noticing patterns and the relationships between patterns, etc, and music just directly pushes all those emotional buttons in the most straightforward way divorced from any broader real-world context.

Conversely, applying musical concepts to the real world can be a way to make life more pleasant. Comforting patterns but with interesting change-ups, allowing one movement to complete before beginning another, etc. (Likewise, applying musical concepts to other forms of art, like fiction writing, can make it more interesting and pleasant as well).

I see analogues of musical concepts in all manner of time-based phenomena, and I think the first hypothesis about predictability was on the right track. — Pfhorrest

I agree with this, rhythm is basically a repetition, and without rhythm there would not be music. The average piece of music takes a fundamental rhythm and experiments with variations. When you hear music played the variations create emotion and interest. But the artist must stay within a range of acceptability with the variations employed, or else the piece will be rejected by the potential audience as incoherent.

Sound is all about patterns of changes over time (pitch is just frequency), and all kinds of musical concepts are further refinements upon that (harmony is when multiple frequencies share certain relationships, rhythm and tempo are also all about frequency of notes). Musical ups and downs, breaks and shifts, all all about establishing and then changing patterns over time. — Pfhorrest

We could think of frequency as a very fast rhythm, perceptible only subconsciously, and apply the same principle stated above. The average piece of music takes a fundamental frequency (key) and experiments with variations, harmonies. The artist must stay within an accepted range of experimentation or else the audience will dismiss the piece as dissonance.

I think we’re wired to have emotional responses to patterns like that more generally, to get bored of repetition but also to fear unpredictable change, to get intrigued by noticing patterns and the relationships between patterns, etc, and music just directly pushes all those emotional buttons in the most straightforward way divorced from any broader real-world context. — Pfhorrest

Notice, that in my description above, the audience's response to frequency is fundamentally subconscious, while the response to rhythm is more conscious. The subconscious does not "understand" things in the way that the conscious mind does, so it does not enforce the same strict rules or principles of predictability which the conscious mind enforces. Consequently the artist is allowed a lot more freedom of experimentation within a piece, with frequencies than with rhythm.

I believe that emotion arises from the interaction between the subconscious and the conscious, and it often involves agreement and disagreement between the two with respect to what is acceptable in relation to predictability. It may be the case that the subconscious does not require predictability, being incapable of understanding it. But more likely, the subconscious really has extremely rigid rules of acceptability, as evidenced by songbirds singing almost the exact same thing. The subconscious would apprehend predictability only in precise repetition. So it's quite possible that the conscious mind must override the rigidity of the subconscious, allowing the subconscious wide open freedom, as a prerequisite for the enjoyment of music. This would make the emotions involved with listening to music somewhat trained, or controlled at a fundamental level because the conscious mind would then have influence over the development of the subconscious, in this artificial freedom.

.

Thought this quote from Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (p 71) might be germane to the discussion:

“Plato’s teaching about music is, put simply, that rhythm and melody...are the barbarous expression of the soul...Music is the medium of the...soul in its most ecstatic condition of wonder and terror. Nietzsche, who in large measure agrees with Plato’s analysis, says In the Birth of Tragedy...that a mixture of cruelty and coarse sensuality characterized this state, which of course was religious, in the service of gods. Music is the soul’s primitive and primary speech, and it is...without articulate speech or reason. Even when articulate speech is added, it is utterly subordinate to and determined by the music and the passions it expresses.”

I like the definition of music as emotional expression. The rhythm mimics and drives our heartbeat, the melody works around the rhythm telling a story.

Together, they capture our attention and can either match, enhance or change our mood. It can make us go from sitting quietly to dancing. Sometimes, the musicianship alone is enough to put us in a trance like state.

Music can convey so much emotional depth and nuance in just a few minutes that would require a writer to use many pages to capture if they only had words to work with.

In utero polyrhythms of mother and foetus-baby's heartbeats (compounded further with twins, triplets, etc), I suspect, deeply 'wires' us (mammals) to synchronize with any repeating patterns - the more varied, the more novel, the more mimetically engaging. 'Musicophilia' (Sacks), in the broadest and most adaptive sense, seems a precognitive bias. Just a guess ...

Look at the original music: singing. What was the original context of singing? Religious and community rituals. — hypericin

How do you know this? Why not percussion first? Could we have sung before we gave meaning? If not, why not?

I believe that music appreciation (along with appreciation of all other art forms) is the result of a mutation. It proved to be supremely helpful in survival, for it aided social cohesion and the submitting of the individuals' selfish will for sacrifice for the common good. This includes of course primarily music's role in mysticism and in relgion. Also in war songs and war cries. "We are the champions" at hockey finals is a permutation of this effect.

The ability to like music was a lucky mutation. We still reap the benefit of it, even if not religious.

I've experienced this :I write black metal music, and my dad heard a song. He knows nothing about the genre, but he said it made him think of a burning red sky. That is exactly what I experienced when I wrote it,(I can only get lucky, I can't deliberately embed an image like this), hence the name, "Extinguish the Sun".
I thought that was great, but I don't think these images are truly "inside" the music. That seems as absurd as saying the concept (ice) is contained in the word "ice". But least within a culture, the emotional piano which music plays in us is similar. And the emotions we feel when contemplating the planets or an apocalyptic red sky are also similar. Therefore, it is possible, but not easy, to communicate images in music.

I really like this elaboration of the predictability theory.
Note that it is not exclusive with mine: they can both be true, and modulate each other.
I also don't think this theory can stand on its own. This way, music might be as much as a fascinating novelty, but no more. It cannot explain how the most dramatic and exalted emotional states we can experience can be evoked by music.

I am glad that someone on this site understands(and makes) black metal music. I enjoy this genre, including bands like Envy and Isis. Perhaps it is an underrated genre. I think that black metal enables us to touch the depths of beauty arising in the depths of chaos and darkness.

How do you know this? Why not percussion first? Could we have g before we gave meaning? If not, why not? — Benkei

Good point, I didn't think about percussion. Note that percussion also serves a spiritual function in primordial cultures. Also it is hard to imagine percussion without at least chanting.

It seems highly unlikely song as we know it came first. We would expect to observe this behavior in at least one nonlinguistic animal.

I think my theory can and does explain how music can invoke such strong emotional states, since it's directly pushing emotional buttons normally triggered by pattern-recognition that evolved for more real-world purposes. It's like adding sweeteners to food, our brains just go "YES YES YES THIS IS THE MOST NUTRITIOUS THING EVER" because we're wired to gorge ourselves on calorie-rich foods whenever we can... even though sweet food isn't necessarily the most nutritious thing ever.

But I do definitely see the connection with religion as well, and I think religions have applied "musical" concepts (figuratively as well as literally musical ones) to other aspects of life exactly like I was discussing in my last paragraph. For example, ritual creates a sense of comfort, because it's a predictable pattern, so religious rituals make people feel comforted. (See also how people under severe emotional distress will tend to rock themselves, because the repetition there also creates a sense of comfort).

It seems highly unlikely song as we know it came first. We would expect to observe this behavior in at least one nonlinguistic animal. — hypericin

I'm not sure exactly how this connects, but apparently the human brain has a different function for singing than for speaking, because there are people with neurological disorders that leave them unable to speak, but they can still sing.

directly pushing emotional buttons — Pfhorrest

But then you are not explaining how music is able to "directly push emotional buttons". The last time you were saying that it is explained by our responses to recognizing patterns. This time, it seems like you are saying music somehow has direct access to emotions.

I meant the pattern recognition thing this time too. By "directly" I mean that music is composed of patterns that are not the naturally-occurring patterns that our brains evolved to detect and react to, but rather hyper-refined patterns in an abstract medium that trigger those same mental responses with much more power and precision than the natural phenomena.

That's why I used the analogy with adding sweeteners to food. Adding a ton of sugar to something can make the experience of it much more enjoyable than any food that you could possibly find in nature. Likewise, producing a bunch of the right kinds of patterns in sounds can make an experience much more intense than the kinds we would often find in nature.

Our first exposure to music, was hearing the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat while in the womb. Rhythmic sounds are everywhere in nature and melodies may be found in bird songs.
The relationship between various pitches is also important. The major keys in music are usually associated as being upbeat whereas the minor keys have more of a sadness to them.
Lyrics added to music may paint a more vivid image in the listeners mind and may become much more powerful then just music alone.

I agree with your theory.

Nietzsche tackled this topic and wrote something similar. Here are some of my notes on Birth of Tragedy


Quoting myself on a previous discussion:

Music is somehow mystical in the sense that it has a sort of universality relative to human emotions and passions. Sad music makes us sad regardless of our race and culture the same way that joyous music make us, welp, happy. This is especially the case for musical compositions without linguistic conflation which I would say is why they are most effective for enhancing scenes in films. Sometimes, lyrics ruin the song but if done right, it actually enhances our experience of it. By "done right", I'm not suggesting a universal structure of lyrical composition that makes all songs good. Lyrics step into culture, so it's a given that it loses its universality, but if songs with lyrics are directed to certain cultures and are consumed by these cultures, then to them it would have been "done right." This is why some westerners may not really appreciate, say, Vietnamese music or why there's even a divide between K-pop stans and the rest of the world.

This is also why I enjoy cute anime music and get shamed for it (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ — Nagel

Every music lover will agree that their favorite music places them in a spiritual, exalted state. This concords with the function of music: to place the listener in a state of spiritual ecstasy, and impart the impression of meaning and significance which the words of the song would not otherwise possess. — hypericin

I doubt this is accurate. I think a lot of people listen to music so they don't have to think. They like the pop music of their time and while the sounds give them pleasure, they never feel a sense of the numinous or much more than a base level tingle.

I think that you are mistaken to see listening to music as simply a means of not having to think. Probably some people use it in this way. I listen to a lot of rock, and alternative music, even some pop and use it as a means of inspiration. I read a lot, but can't do that all day everyday. Just thinking all day everyday, can lead to creating mental knots, or in my case, the creation of endless impossible thread questions. I would say that music, can lead to a certain amount of balance, but also, a way of appreciating, involving the sensory level, hearing, but also invoking other aspects of sensory imagination.

:smile:

@ques

— hypericin

I think we like or dislike music because we were made this way.
A high percentage of water in our body is high and when we are children even higher.
Water is known to propagate sounds and vibrations to great distances, because of this we "feel" sounds and vibrations.

Life was made millions years ago by explosions of stars, planets and collisions with meteorites, asteroids etc .... collisions produce sound waves and vibrations which where "felt and stored" into water .. so practically humans were made by sound waves and vibrations with water and a mix of chemical elements.

There was a documentary experiment where they put 2-3 years old children to listen to music.Because of high water percentage that is present in children, their sensitivity increase .
They started to move and to dance out of nowhere, without being told to do so.
For them the music vibrations is like someone is doing little electric shocks and they need to move :).

Probably some people use it in this way. — Jack Cummins

That's all I said and this corresponds to my experience of many others.

Sad music makes us sad regardless of our race and culture the same way that joyous music make us, welp, happy. — Nagel

I used to agree with this idea that the emotional charge of a given piece of music was "obvious" or "objective" for all to hear but it is not the case. There are tunes that one listener finds sad and another finds happy. It still surprises me when it happens. So counter-intuitive!

Another interesting experience is the sharp differences of musical taste that can exist between friends. You get to ask yourself: how could anyone in his right mind find this beautiful? Like Collingwood who found the Albert Memorial ugly and struggled to understand how one could find it beautiful.

How right you are! There definitely is a link between if not religion per se at the very least spirituality and music. Both subjects (spirituality and music) being vast and complex it becomes rather difficult to pinpoint with precision how and where their relationship begins, goes through ups and downs, and even ends. Your hypothesis, if one could see it as such, that it's got to do with spiritual ecstacy and how music can put us in the right frame of mind to experience it is quite plausible. After all, music is, as you say, all about emotion which maybe elicited from the listener either through a particular combination of notes or through words if vocals also figure in the equation and if there's a feeing that's worth it all it has to be ecstacy, spiritual ecstacy being just one example.

I suppose with the decline of religion and spiritualism and the rise of the materialstic spirit musicians have had to adapt and explore other avenues of clicking with their audience - politics, social issues, romance, philosophy, etc. all are now game so long as there's a willing audience ready to listen and, most importantly, ready to pay the price for the performance.

Quite possibly this is a sign that a sizeable number of people have come to some sort of realization that spiritualism isn't necessarily a divine affair i.e. god(s) maybe, in a sense, "photoshopped out of the picture" with no downsides to the overall aesthetics of the human story.

I suppose with the decline of religion and spiritualism and the rise of the materialstic spirit musicians have had to adapt and explore other avenues of clicking with their audience - politics, social issues, romance, philosophy, etc. all are now game so long as there's a willing audience ready to listen and, most importantly, ready to pay the price for the performance. — TheMadFool

Yes, and I also think that marketing - which has infested everything, including religion and spirituality - plays an instrumental (no pun intended) role.

Yes, and I also think that marketing - which has infested everything, including religion and spirituality - plays an instrumental (no pun intended) role. — Tom Storm

I don't see it that way. Marketing is the business analog of what we recognize as rhetoric in philosophy. I recall coming across an article or video, I forget, about how people aren't really listening to or paying attention to arguments when they decide to lend their ears to a cause/proposition. People, according to this source, are swayed more by the persuasive power of a speaker/writer than by how good/bad the arguments are if any have been offered in the first place. I don't have an issue with marketing tactics if that's what you're alluding to because one, a competent adversary is a good thing, keeps us on our toes ,and two, good arguments when well written/spoken are a treat to listen to or read through.

I think that there is definitely a spiritual and ecstatic side to music, including the shamanic one. This includes the whole of psychedelic and dance culture too. Okay, people may say that substances play a role, but not for everyone and the music is essential.

I even find a spiritual side to metal music, because it is about living with aspects of selves which are often repressed, and explore our own black holes, but not get stuck in them, hopefully. Prog music and psych-rock can also help us to voyage into inner space. Of course, it is quite possible to get into dangerous territories, as indeed has happened to some of the rock stars...

There are also some possibilities for meditation and music, especially the musician, Tim Wheater, who has developed and performed sound healing.

Marketing creates... markets. Often for things of dubious quality. Hence the money spent on it. I learned early on with children that if they see it on TV they want it. If they hear it on the radio, they want it. If it has a cool clip, they want it. If it is in a movie, they want it. Etc.

Marketing creates... markets. Often for things of dubious quality. Hence the money spent on it. I learned early on with children that if they see it on TV they want it. If they hear it on the radio, they want it. If it has a cool clip, they want it. If it is in a movie, they want it. Etc. — Tom Storm

That's the downside. See any benefits? Material that are a pleasure to view, read, listen to? Yes, in the wrong hands, "marketing" can be dangerous, lethal even but, in the right hands it's the proverbial cherry on top. I hope I got that right. Food for thought...why are educators so bent on making learning "fun" and why does "fun" in this case resemble marketing tactics?