Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Music and catharsis
Today was a long, miserable day. I get home and the first thing I do is put a CD on, turn the volume up and lie in bed. Forty five minutes, I'm feeling a thousand times better and ready to continue with life. Why? How does a piece of music cause me to feel rejuvenated? For that matter, why do I have such a strong emotional attachment to this album? There doesn't seem to be any rational basis for these things. Frankly, I don't have any good theories on this.
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4 comments:
Well, it really makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, in a movie, the mood depends completely on the music. A scary scene is 100 times scarier if the music is right. Even if the scene itself isn't particularly well done. So it doesn't strike me as odd that music controls emotions so amazingly. But I don't know neurology, so I don't really have any theories as to why either. I guess positive songs just put a positive spin on things.
Also, you probably gave up on my blog during the three weeks I didn't post, then the two and a half weeks after that I only had the one post, but there is lots of new material now! And maybe I will be able to keep it up better. Habits.
I can see how music controls emotions, but I don't know why. Is it biological? Do our brains automatically interpret different intervals as happy or sad or scary? Or is it learned? I know that at least some aspects of it are learned. The Pythagorean scale isn't the only one out there and I'm assuming that the other scales are just as capable of evoking emotions in people.
I didn't give up! I've just had a busy week.
There's a show on Radio Lab you might find interesting. It's called Musical Language & you can find it at their site. All interesting, but what's remarkable is the part that describes the riots at the first performance of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, and what might have been happening in the neurochemistry of the audience that caused them to riot.
Crow
Thanks Crow! I checked out the show and thought it was interesting. I also poked around the website and found an interesting show on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
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