Emotions In Everyday Listening To Music

Abstract There are several key assumptions underpinning our focus on emotion and ‘everyday’ music listening. Firstly, music is always heard in a social context, in a particular place and time, with or without other individuals being present, and with other activities taking place which have their own complex sources of meaning and emotion. The emotional response to the music is coloured, and possibly sometimes completely determined, by these contextual factors. Emotions should not be thought of as abstract entities such as ‘anger’ or ‘elation’, but rather as actual moments of emotional feelings and displays in particular situations within a particular culture. Emotional responses to music are linked to a sequence of events based on conventions and rules that depend not only on shared understanding and representations, but also a common background of knowledge and beliefs. Music is a cultural material (as is language) that provides a kind of semiotic and affective ‘power’ which individuals use in the social construction of emotional feeling and displays. As such, the impact of music on emotion is not direct but interdependent on the situations in which it is heard. Any meaningful account of music’s role in the emotional response of individuals must involve the recognition of these complex, interdependent social factors.We therefore focus in this chapter on several investigations which attempt to preserve, or take account of, as much of the social context of music listening as possible.