A BRIEF NOTE ON MUSIC AND EMOTION

Following are the program notes for a piano recital in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2007. The works are: Beethoven's Sonata op. 81a, "Les Adieux", Schumann's Kreisleriana, Chopin's Fantasy in F Minor, Barcarolle and Ballade No. 4 in F Minor.

This evening's program offers fertile ground for a brief exploration of the links between music and emotion, links that are self-evident to a musicologist such as Deryck Cooke, who asserts that "music is the expression of emotion", and anathema to a composer such as Igor Stravinsky, who states that "music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all".
The descriptive or literary nature of the program's titles suggests such links: Sonate Characteristique: Farewell-Absence-Return; Kreisleriana (a reference to the protagonist of some tales by E.T.A.Hoffmann); Ballade; Barcarolle. The very words denote a narrative or pictorial intention: a drama of departure and return, anguish and rejoicing will be enacted; a musician's misadventures mixed with the autobiography of a tom-cat will be recalled; an epic saga will be told; or, the composer will depict an Italianate scene, a meditation on light, water and song. Can feelings and emotions be divorced from such stories, such tone-pictures? Of course not. But accepting the affective dimension of music immediately begets many questions; whose emotions: the composer's, the listener's the dramatic characters'? And to what exactly will those emotions be attached: to whole movements or sections, to melodies, to harmonies, to rhythms?
In his Sonata Opus 81a, "Les Adieux", Beethoven put his genius at the service of the dominant artistic genre of his time: narrative. In literature, the novel was a writer's favorite mode of communication, and in painting, historical, mythological or religious representations were the artist's sure path to recognition by the Academy. Narrative was the natural mode to convey moral values for the betterment of man. Joyce and Proust, Turner and Cezanne had yet to wield their revolutionary pens and brushes and thus break the hold of straight narrative. Composers had music (other than opera and song) to indulge their fashionable narrative inclinations, and emotions were, inevitably, an important element of the narrative content. But in a story, whether told with words or musical tones, the emotions expressed belong, properly, to the characters, not the artist. In the Sonata's first movement, for instance, after a dolorous introduction in the minor mode, we hear what seems to be a purposeful and not unhappy gallop in the major mode, accompanied by the distant "farewell" call of someone who has been left behind. We seem to have at least two characters and two distinct emotions, one sad, the other perhaps not so. Therefore, we cannot categorically say that the first movement conveys Beethoven's own emotions, even if, ignoring Freud and Barthes, we were to take for granted that an artist could have direct access to his real emotions and affects.
In a "pictorial" piece such as Chopin's Barcarolle, we could argue that its emotional content may be closer to the composer's heart, that its tones may express his reaction to the canals or vistas depicted. But the musical language itself, the rolling rhythms of the left hand that so vividly suggest the swaying of a vessel in the water, the chiaroscuro of the major and minor modes of the harmonies, or the strains of Italian song that color the melodies, do not necessarily carry an unequivocal affective message save for the passionate outburst of the coda. And the same injunction against the intentional fallacy (thinking that tones or words give us direct access to a composer's or author's intentions) would apply. In a sense, we are no closer to capturing the link between music and affect, either, with this kind of work.
What about music's emotional effect on the listener? There we may be on firmer ground because the effect is undeniable. But can we attribute it to a composer's intentional handling of melody, harmony and rhythm at the service of narrative or representation? Or is there something else, something inherent in the movement of tones, in the dynamics of rhythm, in the details of form, that actually moves us? Listening to the opening sounds of the first movement of the Beethoven Sonata-the major third and perfect fifth that follows- the dynamic quality of the notes within the apparent tonality of E-Flat Major leads us to expect an E-Flat Major cadence. Instead, Beethoven pulls the tonal rug from under us and we land on C Minor. Surprise! And what a satisfying, attention-catching surprise to make us listen to the narrative to come! With a masterful stroke Beethoven makes us experience, simultaneously, surprise and expectation. In the following Allegro, the galloping rhythms, short-short-long, short-short-long, have the power to carry us as well as the departing character. And after the uncertainty of the movement's development section, the return to the initial material does offer us a reassurance, a sense of familiarity, while the coda, echoing the "farewell" theme, gives us a satisfying sense of closure. So we have felt surprise, expectation, motion, remembrance of a distant "farewell", reassurance and closure in this movement; clear emotions, yes, but emotions that belong to us, not to Beethoven nor to the characters in "Les Adieux" 's narrative.
So, we may re-formulate our exploration of the links between music and emotion, and, taking issue with both, Cooke and Stravinsky, question their superficial emphasis on the expression of emotion. Perhaps music does not express emotions and Stravinsky is technically right. But music is not powerless to elicit emotions. That capacity is inherent in the movement and relationships of the notes as the composer handles them. And that capacity of tones to move us is the true "meaning" of a piece of music.