Year: 2008
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In order to answer the question of why music moves us emotionally we need to\nunderstand the perception of music. A perspective theory is suggested. A perspective\nimplies a frame of reference. This means that the perspective selects content\n- an implicit meaning. This content is an important agent in the perception of\nform. The general assumption that we judge the content from the form (signification)\ncan thus be challenged. The opposite is also possible: the content makes us\nperceive form. This is a new understanding of the old question of whether music\nis a representative or just form. The meaning is immanent in the form.\nThese processes are pre-attentive. It has been shown that we do not have to\nperceive music consciously to be emotionally affected by it. This has an interesting\nconsequence. We do not always connect the emotion caused by the music to\nthe music heard. This is obvious in the case of film music. The emotion could attach\nto anything that we happen to attend. If we pay attention to film characters,\nthe emotion is ascribed to them. If we attend to the own body, the emotion is\nascribed to the body (as feelings). Only when we focus on the music the emotion\nis ascribed to the music and we experience the music as emotional.\nThe perspectives are discussed in the light of target/source domain theory. A\ntarget domain is typically an abstract and complicated behaviour. Source domains\nare concrete behaviours of survival value. It has been suggested that music is the\ntarget domain of several source domains. I argue that the perspectives are source\ndomain processes. Musical emotions are discussed as functions of these source\ndomains: the perception of sound, identification with the other, navigation, and\njoint action. The perspective theory potentially offers answers to several questions\nin music philosophy.
Author: Björn Vickhoff
Institution: University of Gothenburg
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1480695796