How Can Music Be Beautiful

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November 24, 2023

According to research, individuals appreciate music most highly for the feelings it

arouses. However, the idea of musical emotions is still debatable, and academics have yet to

come up with a convincing explanation for them. We contend that underlying processes have

been largely ignored in the research of musical emotions. Researchers, in particular, have

examined musical emotions without taking into account how they were evoked or have

presumptively concluded that the feelings must be founded on the "default" process for emotion

induction, a mental assessment1. The need to understand listeners' responses to music is possibly

the most crucial issue a music psychologist will ever face. Every musical engagement, whether it

entails creating, performing, or just simply listening to music, begins with some kind of musical

experience. According to a number of studies, the main objective of musical encounters is to

evoke feelings2: People listen to music to reduce stress, shift feelings, release emotions, match

their present mood, and enjoy or soothe themselves.

A person's qualitative evaluation of an experience on evaluation aspects including

originality, urgency, teamwork, coping capability, and norm compliance is the foundation of the

appraisal theory's central tenet that emotions emerge and are differentiated. Sometimes, using

some of the same assessment aspects, music may induce feelings. So, for instance, a person

could be attempting to fall asleep at night but is unable to do so due to the upsetting noises of a

neighbor turning on their stereo. In this instance, the music annoys the individual since it

prevents them from achieving their objective, which is to go asleep3. This example may not be

especially "musical," yet it is obvious that music occasionally affects listeners' emotions in this

1
Scruton, Roger. "The aesthetic understanding: Essays in the philosophy of art and culture." (1983).
2
Lachenmann, Helmut. "The ‘beautiful’in music today." Tempo 135 (1980): 20-24.
3
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, and Gadamer Hans-Georg. The relevance of the beautiful and other essays. Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
 2

way. Traditional theories of emotion may readily account for such reactions4. The issue is that

the research suggests that this kind of feeling is not typical of music listening; the majority of

emotional responses to music do not have consequences for one's life objectives, which is why

these emotions are seen as mysterious: There don't seem to be any beliefs associated with

melancholy in the listener's sad reaction.

Since the development of psychology towards the end of the 19th century, research of

music and emotion were done periodically. The bulk of research has been on how audiences

interpret the emotions that are conveyed in the music. Similar to this, the majority of ideas on

how music affects emotion have emphasized the representational qualities of music that allow

listeners to recognize emotions5. However, because the act of perceiving emotions may occur

without any emotional engagement, it is important to remember that it is largely a sensory or

cognitive process and does not necessarily indicate how the listener is feeling. As a result, the

induction of emotions has to be examined separately. We are in a good position to provide a

more conclusive solution to the age-old topic of whether music can really evoke emotions since

more research are being conducted to examine these reactions. However, the response to this

query relies on how one defines emotion.

It is evident that listening to music requires intricate sound interpretation and a variety of

mental processes, such as interval timing and motor control. In fact, the links between the

formants in speech that control how separate vowels are perceived seem to be connected to the

desire for certain pitch intervals in music6. These contextual factors and evolutionary limitations

4
Hanslick, Eduard. On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the aesthetics of music.
Hackett Publishing, 1986
5
Lachenmann, Helmut. "The ‘beautiful’in music today." Tempo 135 (1980): 20-24.
6
Lachenmann, Helmut. "The ‘beautiful’in music today." Tempo 135 (1980): 20-24.
 3

show how important and early in the learning process the interaction between music and action

is. The cerebellum and basal ganglia are thus essential for timing and time perception. Although

expectation is taken into account, there is little any thought given to how events develop through

time, how their timing affects mood and emotional reaction, or where in the brain these

processes are located7. It is alluring to picture a slow dance with a significant other, when speed

and rhythm correspond to motion and emotion, or to consider the distinction between a 3:4 waltz

rhythm as well as a 4:4 marching beat. These instances' pace and timing would seem to be

crucial to the ensuing feeling. One can argue that certain tempos and rhythmic patterns

correspond to particular body parts and actions, which would result in a complicated interaction

between rhythmic motor attunement to music and the subsequent mood.

Recent research on neural plasticity and the impact of early experiences on the formation

of neural networks, especially between infancy and adolescence, sheds light on how socializing

activities may affect innate musical preferences. Individual and social, natural and learnt, music

has all three qualities8. The foundation for the emergence of musical expectation is provided by

universal human pitch preferences and an intrinsic sensitivity to concurrence and discord. Infants

all over the globe prefer music over speech, especially slower, higher-pitched, and exaggeratedly

rhythmic melodies. Such songs may enhance the newborn and caregiver's autonomic and motor

entrainment, promoting empathic bonding9. These intrinsic musical inclinations and abilities are

directed and expanded into particular cultural forms throughout infancy. By the age of six,

children are able to easily recognize the primary emotions of joy, sorrow, fear, and rage in the

pace and mode of the music from their own cultures. They can recognize and neurologically

7
Collingwood, Robin George. The principles of art. Vol. 11. Oxford University Press, 1958.
8
David, Davies. "Art as performance." Malden, MA: Blackwell (2004).
9
Rohrbaugh, Guy. "Artworks as historical individuals." European Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2003).
 4

react to grammatical abnormalities in their culture's music by the age of ten. But the emotional

reaction to music tends to peak throughout adolescence. This enhanced emotional reaction to

music is probably the result of adolescent brain changes, which also include the development of

the anterior and prefrontal cortices and increased activation of the limbic and dopaminergic

reward systems10. “The amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, cerebral cortex, and temporal

lobe sulcus are among the brain regions that are engaged by music and are also crucial for social

cognition and behavior”. Adolescence is an incredibly sensitive stage of growth for the formation

of associational networks spanning sensory, social, and symbolic domains due to the

synaptogenesis and myelination that take place across different brain areas during this time. The

"evaluative conditioning" process benefits from simultaneous changes in the dopaminergic

feedback mechanism of the teenage brain and increased amygdala activation.

Unlike emotions (which can be named, for example, sad and glad), musical sentiments

may not be easily nameable, need not be about anything, and may or may not have valence.

However, given that they are felt rather than merely seen, they could have an emotive

character11. There are a few musical sensations that don't qualify as emotions; warm is one of

them. Others could be more complex and even ineffable, unable of being well expressed in

words; for instance, musical experience is more subtle than the categories that can adequately

capture it.12 Other musical experiences could include motions that don't always involve items and

are difficult to describe but have a certain feeling. And some could be more transient than the

emotional timescale (minutes to hours). They might be sensory characteristics like a specific

10
Collingwood, Robin George. The principles of art. Vol. 11. Oxford University Press, 1958
11
Lachenmann, Helmut. "The ‘beautiful’in music today." Tempo 135 (1980): 20-24.
12
Erlmann, Veit. "How beautiful is small? Music, globalization and the aesthetics of the local." Yearbook for
traditional music 30 (1998): 12-21.
 5

singer's voice, an oboe's peculiar sound, or a plagal cadence13. In other words, a wide range of

experiences, including emotions, may be evoked by music. Some of the emotional categories

mentioned in the preceding sentence could have an equivalent role to emotions in evaluative

conditioning and episodic memory14. What use may these more nuanced musical emotions have?

They support the purpose of group cohesiveness even if they may not be about anything or be

able to be named. For instance, musical gestures that have been learnt culturally and the

emotions or sensations they arouse (although subtle, transitory, and maybe unfathomable they

may be) may be used to indicate group membership15.

The advantages of synchronization necessitate only that people be experiencing strong

interactions; those experiences need not contain any communicative functionality in and of

themselves, and don't have to be emotional, and they enhance the variety of channels available

for synchronization exceeding happiness, sadness, anger, and so on. In summary, we contend

that the suggested framework represents a substantial theoretical advancement in the study of

emotion. We also think that the framework can accommodate a musical feeling spectrum that is

deeper and more expansive than emotion16. The more important issue is how we explain the role

of all affective experiences, or emotions, in music, not how we explain the function of emotion

in music.

The majority of emotion theorists hold that cognitive assessments are what trigger

emotional reactions, and the right objects of these appraisals are the accompanying emotions'
13
Rudner, Richard. "The ontological status of the esthetic object." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 10,
no. 3 (1950): 380-388.
14
Hanslick, Eduard. On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the aesthetics of music.
Hackett Publishing, 1986
15
Hanslick, Eduard. On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the aesthetics of music.
Hackett Publishing, 1986
16
Sterritt, David. "Revision, prevision, and the aura of improvisatory art." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 58, no. 2 (2000): 163-172
 6

intentional objects17. It is often assumed that music can only evoke moods rather than emotions

since "pure" instrumental music devoid of words typically cannot describe the necessary object.

Non-cognitive techniques may also be used to elicit emotions. However, while being reactions to

the information contained in the music, these feelings are not intended to be directed towards the

music as a cognitive object; rather, they are merely brought on by it as a stimulus object. Sudden,

loud, and discordant noises trigger brain stem reactions. Like the startle mechanism, these

reactions are quick, instinctive, and attentive. In a way, people assess the scenario as one that

requires attention, but the music is not the conscious subject of the feeling; the emotion is

unrelated to the music. Without relying on music, evaluative conditioning also produces its

desired results.

Focus on how internal imitation of vocal manifestations of emotions, such as grief, may

cause the feeling mirrored while talking about "emotional contagion." The internal and visible

mimicking of body movements and action patterns typical of specific emotions would seem to be

a more potent and pervasive process18. Sad music mimics the slow, sluggish motions that sad

individuals have a tendency to make, and if the music causes imitation of these movements, it

may be able to really cause melancholy. 19Numerous studies have shown that creating an emotion

in individuals by getting them to adopt a facial expression, body posture, or movement

propensity really causes the feeling20. Once again, there is no deliberate object present. Of

course, the emotion that was created may later be classified or named using an emotion word,
17
Airy, Samuel, and Judy M. Parr. "MIDI, music and me: Students' perspectives on composing with MIDI." Music
Education Research 3, no. 1 (2001): 41-49
18
Sterritt, David. "Revision, prevision, and the aura of improvisatory art." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 58, no. 2 (2000): 163-172.
19
Hanslick, Eduard. On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the aesthetics of music.
Hackett Publishing, 1986.
20
Powell, John. How music works: The science and psychology of beautiful sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles
and beyond. Hachette UK, 2010.
 7

and an intentional object may then be conjured up to represent the emotion. Unlike these three

systems, which often function subconsciously, emotions resulting from musical expectancies are

the consequence of deliberately concentrating on how the music develops and evaluating it as

either fulfilling or not meeting one's expectations21.

These musical advances are the deliberate targets of the feelings created when the

listener is startled by a shift away from the tonic, perplexed as the music travels into crucial

regions progressively further from the tonic, and happy when the tonic at last returns. They are,

in fact, the subject of assessment as well as concentrated attention, such as whether something is

anticipated or unexpected. While emotions sparked by episodic memories also have an intended

target, in this situation, the main target of the feeling is the recalled event rather than the music.

Only the episode's link with the music may elicit an emotional response22. Additionally, visual

imagery arouses emotions that are later connected to the music. It may be difficult to tell if the

music is evoking an emotional response in me when, for example, it makes me visualize a serene

countryside.

The visual vision we create while listening is sometimes led by the music, as in effective

Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) treatment, yet other times it may be nothing more than free

association with the music, complicates things further. An example is when one listens to music

and see themself relaxing on the sandy beach by the sea, and before they know it, they are back

to their normal work. It is essential to be able to rule out this kind of free association in any

studies intended to examine the images that music promotes, possibly directs, and/or controls.

Additionally, a lot of instrumental music from the Romantic era fosters more abstract forms of

21
Pitkänen, Matti. "How to compose beautiful music of light in bio-harmony." DNA 12, no. 12 (2020): 1-10.
22
Kuehn, Bridget M. "COVID-19 Precautions Help Make Music That’s Beautiful and Safe." Jama 326, no. 17
(2021): 1664-1665.
 8

imagination, such as Beethoven's Fifth, which dramatizes the drama of a battle that ends in

triumph23.

The fundamental idea behind the postmodern perspective was that knowledge could not

be separated from the viewer. That is, a person's societal and historical background must

influence how they interpret a piece of information. Even though some of these concepts are

hotly contested in the sciences, they unquestionably hold true when discussing music. It is

impossible to completely exclude human input from music. Humans are engaged in every part of

music, whether it is creating, performing, or listening. Because of this, a significant portion of

music theory has started to examine the topic from a neuroscience perspective. Despite this, there

is still value in learning conventional music theory. The human aspect is very much present in

this research, despite the fact that it is not overtly addressed. Take the pitch idea, for instance,

that was previously offered. Pitch, as it was first defined, is only the frequency of the sound

being generated. To a physicist, this concept is ideal; nonetheless, it has little significance to

musicians. Instead, pitch is described in terms of a hearing frequency that is perceived. Because

they are seen as having the same pitch, harmonics that are exponential duplicates of one another

are regarded as having the same pitch24. The A-G notes, often known as "do, re, mi," originate

from this. For this reason, pitch cannot be isolated from the human mind, as Levitin claims. It is

fundamentally a mental construct that the brain creates using the actual physical amount of

frequency. Furthermore, the more complex elements of conventional music theory (such as

23
Kania, Andrew. "Making tracks: The ontology of rock music." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no.
4 (2006): 401-414.
24
Wade, Stephen. The beautiful music all around us: field recordings and the American experience. University of
Illinois Press, 2012.
 9

melody) are likewise products of human perception. Therefore, even if they attempt to disregard

it, the human element is always there in conventional music theory25.

The cognitive music theories use a considerably higher agile approach than this passive

one of adding human complexities into music theory. These ideas acknowledge right away that

human interaction is necessary to fully comprehend the influence of music. One such insight

came from Gill and Purves, who sought a physiologically based explanation for the apparently

ubiquitous usage of scales in music. They discovered that 5 or 7 note scales were often employed

after researching a wide range of civilizations and musical genres and building a library of

typical scales26. They cited the fact that the most frequently used scales closely resemble higher

harmonics of a fundamental tone as an argument. They discovered that this was generally

accurate, which supported their theory27. Then, in order to connect this to the human perspective,

they proposed that it could result from the evolutionary reality that vocal inflection and many

natural elements often occur at harmonics. Although this theory had several limitations, it was a

step toward fusing the concepts of music theory with those of developmental and molecular

biology28.

Numerous research involving human beings are possible when perception is actively

included into music theory. On the one hand, one may imagine neuroscience studies that

examine how different noises affect different parts of the brain29. A social science viewpoint, on

25
Pitkänen, Matti. "How to compose beautiful music of light in bio-harmony." DNA 12, no. 12 (2020): 1-10
26
Kuehn, Bridget M. "COVID-19 Precautions Help Make Music That’s Beautiful and Safe." Jama 326, no. 17
(2021): 1664-1665.
27
Bunting, Robert. "Composing music: Case studies in the teaching and learning process." British Journal of Music
Education 5, no. 3 (1988): 269-310.
28
Jerrold, Levinson. "What a Musical Work Is." Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 1 (1980): 5-28.
29
Randolph, Antonia. "" Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful": Black Masculinity and Alternative Embodiment in
Rap Music." Race, Gender & Class (2006): 200-217.
 10

the other hand, may be used to study human beings via surveys and observations of their

behavior. Both examples shed light on the complex relationships connecting musical sounds and

the cognitive domain30. As an illustration of the latter, a cognitive investigation was conducted in

an effort to determine what causes two pieces of music to sound same. The study's major goal

was to analyze systematic variations on a topic in an effort to determine which variants preserve

the essence of the original work and which variations result in unwarranted changes. Traditional

variational works have a variety of musical changes made by the composers31. Almost all of

these methods fall into one of the three categories of altering notes, rearranging notes, or

manipulating time. These modifications may be combined to produce a sound that is quite close

to the original or one that is very unlike. There are several techniques to gauge similarity in

addition to the different ways a piece might be changed. It is possible to construct a probabilistic

or statistical examination of the connections between the two components. The music, on the

other hand, may be contrasted between two works in terms of rhythm and conceptual structures.

The problem is that none of them measures the perceived resemblance between the two pieces;

rather, they are essentially mathematical constructions for a more evaluative concept 32.

Music appears to be one of the most essential components of human nature, second only

to language. Every culture has it, and it affects every individual on the earth on a daily basis. The

fact that all music tends to elicit an emotional reaction remains a universal truth despite the

diversity of music heard across the globe. All music has the ability to evoke strong emotions in

us, whether it's a movie soundtrack telling us how to react to a situation or a tribal song honoring

30
Wade, Stephen. The beautiful music all around us: field recordings and the American experience. University of
Illinois Press, 2012.
31
Powell, John. How music works: The science and psychology of beautiful sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles
and beyond. Hachette UK, 2010.
32
Jerrold, Levinson. "What a Musical Work Is." Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 1 (1980): 5-28.
 11

the harvest33. What about music elicits this reaction? What is it about a music that makes some

people find it lovely while others do not? Music is really just a gathering of air molecules

vibrating, that our ears then pick up on. A Fourier expansion may further condense even these

vibrations into a group of plane waves. So, it would appear that by only looking at the piece's

Fourier components, any concern regarding music might be resolved. There is no possible way

that this is true. The totality of music's pieces cannot be used to understand it. The complexity of

music is a result of various collective effects and temporal variation. In addition to this, there is

the natural relationship between the complexities of the human mind and the intricacy of music.

It is evident that music is very complicated when looking at contemporary efforts to

analyze its complexities as well as the history of music theory. It is not sufficient to merely

categorize music into a variety of distinct traits and assume that these traits would adequately

capture the intentions of composers or the reaction of listeners34. It would be like to attempting to

taste a peach pie by reading its ingredient list; this is not conceivable. Even while contemporary

research in cognitive neuroscience has come a long way, there is still much to learn about the

unique qualities of music35. In an effort to respond to the intended question, why is music

beautiful? The intricate process by which vibrating air molecules are created, transferred,

recognized, and experienced by humans is what makes music lovely.

33
Wade, Stephen. The beautiful music all around us: field recordings and the American experience. University of
Illinois Press, 2012.
34
Jerrold, Levinson. "What a Musical Work Is." Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 1 (1980): 5-28.
35
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, and Gadamer Hans-Georg. The relevance of the beautiful and other essays. Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
 12

Bibliography

Airy, Samuel, and Judy M. Parr. "MIDI, music and me: Students' perspectives on composing
with MIDI." Music Education Research 3, no. 1 (2001): 41-49.

Collingwood, Robin George. The principles of art. Vol. 11. Oxford University Press, 1958.

Bunting, Robert. "Composing music: Case studies in the teaching and learning process." British
Journal of Music Education 5, no. 3 (1988): 269-310.

David, Davies. "Art as performance." Malden, MA: Blackwell (2004).

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, and Gadamer Hans-Georg. The relevance of the beautiful and other
essays. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Hanslick, Eduard. On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the
aesthetics of music. Hackett Publishing, 1986.

Jerrold, Levinson. "What a Musical Work Is." Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 1 (1980): 5-28.

Kuehn, Bridget M. "COVID-19 Precautions Help Make Music That’s Beautiful and
Safe." Jama 326, no. 17 (2021): 1664-1665.

Kania, Andrew. "Making tracks: The ontology of rock music." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 64, no. 4 (2006): 401-414.

Lachenmann, Helmut. "The ‘beautiful’in music today." Tempo 135 (1980): 20-24.

Powell, John. How music works: The science and psychology of beautiful sounds, from
Beethoven to the Beatles and beyond. Hachette UK, 2010.

Pitkänen, Matti. "How to compose beautiful music of light in bio-harmony." DNA 12, no. 12
(2020): 1-10.

Rohrbaugh, Guy. "Artworks as historical individuals." European Journal of Philosophy 11, no. 2
(2003).

Randolph, Antonia. "" Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful": Black Masculinity and Alternative
Embodiment in Rap Music." Race, Gender & Class (2006): 200-217.

Rudner, Richard. "The ontological status of the esthetic object." Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 10, no. 3 (1950): 380-388.

Scruton, Roger. "The aesthetic understanding: Essays in the philosophy of art and culture."
(1983).
 13

Sterritt, David. "Revision, prevision, and the aura of improvisatory art." The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58, no. 2 (2000): 163-172.

Wade, Stephen. The beautiful music all around us: field recordings and the American
experience. University of Illinois Press, 2012.