Does Music Arouse Emotions? How do We Know?

Abstract

Many researchers consider emotional reactions to music to be of major importance. However, the notion that music arouses emotions has been the subject of controversy — much more so than the notion that music is heard as expressive of emotions. The first part of the book defined emotion partly in terms of various ‘components’ that together constitute an ‘emotion episode’. Any attempt to answer whether music can arouse emotions should then proceed from this definition: To what extent might listening to music produce reactions in the different components of emotion? This chapter examines the components one by one: feeling, expression, psychophysiology, neural activation, action tendency, and regulation, also collectively referred to as the FEPNAR components.