The Elements of Expression in Music. a Psychological View

Eduard Hanslick, eminent musician-critic of Vienna, set out in mid-nineteenth century to consider whether it was possible to justify the common conception that music’s aim was the expression of feelings. He concluded that while music was capable of stirring emotion, it could not represent specific emotions.1 While he Hanslick recognized the importance of the new auditory sciences of physiology and psychology for the study of feelings in music; but, in the auditory science of his day, he found no explanation of emotions within the complex art of music. A concept of the emotions given by William James in 1890 opened new possibilities. The so-called James-Lange theory proposed that emotions started in the motions and tensions of the body and were only later felt by the brain. Donald N. Ferguson in 1922 recognized Abstract — Résumé