Using musical structures to communicate emotion
This study investigates the hypothesis that music has the ability to strongly influence emotions in listeners. It begins by challenging the accuracy of this presumption, provides a general psychological and philosophical overview of human emotions and their relation to music, and hypothesises a theory that accounts for the numerous different findings by authors around this topic. The study then attempts to investigate in what manner specific musical structures are linked to the expression of certain emotions; firstly through a literature review and secondly through the execution of empirical tests. These findings are summarised in the Conclusion. An Annexure to this study provides graphic representations of specific musical structures on valence x arousal diagrams that are of value to composers of music.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations