Music and the Expression of Emotion

The viability of the common conception of music as an art in which emotion is expressed is dependent upon the definite form it assumes in response to the problems it immediately generates. There are five main issues that must be resolved. These concern (1) the role of the composer's emotional life, (2) the extent of emotionally expressive music, (3) the value of the musical expression of emotion, (4) the nature of the emotions expressible in music, and (5) the correct understanding of the idea of the musical expression of emotion and the correlative experience of hearing a piece of music as being expressive of emotion. In the first place, there is a question about the composer: In what relation does he stand to the emotion his music expresses? Is this emotion the composer's own emotion, which he has externalized in his music, so that the listener must attribute the emotion expressed by the music to the composer and interpret the music as a form of autobiography? Or is it possible for a composer to assume a position that is not his own and express in his music an emotion he does not feel, as a poet can give expression to feelings that are not his but only those of an imagined persona? A second issue concerns the amount of music in which emotion is ex-