Music that Makes People Sad - Essay Example

Music and Sadness Part One There are many pieces of music which make me feel sad. I often associate music with certain experiences in my life; they pop up in mind when I listed to the particular pieces of music. When I am sad, I tend to listen to the songs which are associated with sadness. They intensify my feelings and help me to express what I feel. However, there are some pieces of music which make me feel sad without any additional life context. One of the saddest pieces of music I have ever heard is represented by the soundtrack to the film Fountain by Darren Aronofski. Tracks Xibalba, The Last Man, Stay With Me, Together We Will Live Forever and Death is the Road to Awe composed by Clint Mansell are incredibly beautiful and sad at the same time. Even when they are removed from the movie plot, they retain their power to express sadness which touches upon some very vulnerable and tender parts of my soul. Listening to this music, I quickly become sad and reserved. The sound of piano and violins in all tracks is so touching that it is difficult to remain indifferent to this music. It is harmonious and meditative in its development. Every time I listen to these tracks I feel out of place. At some peaks I even have goose bumps. There is a need to define exact patterns in this music which make it so powerful in its impact on listeners because it has the same effect on different groups of people. Commentaries on YouTube trace the same idea that people feel this music even though they are very different in their cultures, ethnic groups and music tastes. This observation proves that these pieces of music are good examples to study some elements which make people feel sad when they listen to them. Part Two There are many researchers who are challenged by defining the connection between music and emotional response to it. Most of them focus on particular characteristics of music which are related to sadness. According to Hunter, Schellenberg & Schimmack (2010), slow and minor music represents the pure pattern of sadness conveyed by any piece of music. The same study shows that researchers tend to polarize and generalize the results of their studies; they ask participants to avoid mixed feeling in their attribution of musical pieces with feeling they trigger. Happiness and sadness often serves as two extremes on the scale of musical perception. Soundtracks for Fountain correspond to this sad music definition. All of them are slow and performed in minor mode. According to Schellenberg, Peretz & Vieillard (2008) people tend to enjoy fast and major music more than its opposition. The same pieces performed in different tempo make people like the faster piece more. The study is led by the question why people choose to listen to sad music and finds out that the effect of sad music can be intensified by the corresponding mood of listeners. Some of the selected pieces have faster tempo which makes them more dynamic. For instance, The Last Man is one of the slowest pieces in the list while Death is the Road to Awe is a bit faster. These two tracks are based on the same melody, but they are performed in different tonalities and tempo. Considering these examples of tempo differences in the same musical idea, I cannot say that it intensifies or reduces the feeling of sadness triggered by this music. Scherer and Zentner (2001) insist on the importance of musical structure for its emotions power. Such characteristics of music as pitch, loudness, complexity, amplitudes, unity and diversity of the melody influence listeners perceptions. Researchers state that more complex melodies have stronger effect on people. Soundtracks to Fountain are not too complex I their structure. They are polyphonic; however, they have linear rhythm, predictable harmony and relatively simple structure. Their most powerful element is the depth of the melody. It is played in lower register with expressive bass performed by electronic music instruments and strings. The absence of drums makes the melodies more passive and slow. There are more complicated theories concerning the ability of music to trigger different feelings. For instance, according to Gabrielson (2011) music often triggers not a sole feeling, but a set of negative or positive feelings. Sadness, emptiness, loneliness, melancholy are situated in a negative set. Music can be the primary cause of negative feelings, but it is not always true. People often associate sad music with certain negative events in their life. The end of relationships, death of a relative or a car accident can find their expression in certain pieces of music. In case of Fountain soundtracks, most people would refer to the plot of the movie which is very sad. Some people would add meaning to this music associating it with their life events. All in all, this process is very personal. Gabrielson (2011) divides all feeling into positive and negative in his classification. However, people often experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously. For instance, when I listen to Fountain soundtracks, I label them as sad and beautiful. Sadness is a negative feeling, but beauty is a positive one. Perhaps, some people will not feel sad when they listen to this music deprived of its context. The study by Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira & Okanoya (2013), covers such a situation in detail. These researchers argue that people listen to sad music because it can induce positive emotions. Their study shows that some people feel romantic or inspired when they listen to various sad pieces. Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll & Lundqvist (2010) add even more complexity to music perception experiences analysis choosing valency pairs for different emotions. In circumplex model, sadness-melancholy pair is situated close to boredom-indifference and shame-guilt which means that they are very close to their expression. The pair nostalgia-longing belongs to positive dimension, but it has the same low arousal as sadness-melancholy. If to apply this model to the analyzed sad music, it induces something between nostalgia-longing and melancholy-sadness pairs. Even though the model is quite detailed, it is still difficult to define exact emotions induced by music. Despite the importance of musical characteristics, the most important processes take place in human brain. The study of human brain and music perceptions results in several complex theories which explain what parts of the brain are involved in music perception. Khalfa, Schon, Anton & Liégeois-Chauvel (2005) go further explaining different mechanisms which are involved in feeling induction. For instance, amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, insula, midbrain/periaqueductal gray (PAG) and nucleus accumbens zones in brain are involved in music perception and interpretation. People can hardly guess what happens in their brain when they perceive music, but they can observe physiological response caused my music. Certain pieces can increase heart rate, influence respiration or trigger hormone secretion. In my case, soundtracks cause goosebumps which are included in the term electrodermal response mentioned by Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll & Lundqvist (2010). People can hardly guess what happens in their brain when they perceive music, but they can observe physiological response caused my music. Certain pieces can increase heart rate, influence respiration or trigger hormone secretion. In my case, soundtracks cause goosebumps which are included in the term electrodermal response mentioned by Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll & Lundqvist (2010). Activity of different parts of human brain only prove that perception of music is a complex process. Emotional expression is quite different in its representations because it depends on subjective perception of music. In my case, I tend to be serious when I listen to sad music. When I listen to Fountain soundtracks, I become very calm. I have conducted a little experiment and listened to the Fountain soundtracks before meeting with friends. When I arrived to the place, they though I felt bad. There is another mechanism mentioned by Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll & Lundqvist (2010) which is called emotional regulation. It requires people to accommodate their emotional expression to social context. If to listen to the same music in public transport, emotional expression will not be the same intensive; however, the feeling of sadness will be present. These soundtracks have no lyrics. In this way, it is interesting to know whether verbal content of songs intensifies feelings induced by music or not. The study by Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer (2008) shows that classical music has a stronger effect on listeners compared to than rock or pop music. It is the most expressive when it comes to feeling of power, beauty and sadness. The results for pop music follow classical music in sadness expression. However, if to use expanded set of feelings which is often omitted in laboratory research, rock has high scores in melancholy and emptiness scales which are often connected with sadness. Jazz also have a strong effect on listeners when it comes to sadness; diversity of jazz styles makes this music universal in its ability to cause emotional response (Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer, 2008). Part Three Overall, the number of studies devoted to find out how music induces emotions is growing year by year. The complexity of the subject makes every study narrow because researches choose between depth and breadth of their analysis. There are many important issues which have not been studied yet. None of the researchers dwell on the effect on particular musical instruments on listeners perceptions. Most instruments have their characteristics which directly influence the quality of their sound. For instance, I believe that cellos sound is majorly sad even if the melody is fast and major. One can apply the results of the study of Scherer and Zentner (2001) and say that the effect of musical instrument depends on the depth of the sound. At the same time, double bass is even deeper than cello, but it does not sound sad. Instruments involved in any performance are as important as musical structure and their effect needs to be researched in detail. The studies of mixed feelings induced by music also lack clarity. For instance, Gabrielson (2011) provides numerous examples of peoples reflections about how different music influences their emotional state. However, they are not analyzed or properly organized. As far as music perception is a complex process, it cannot result in mere feelings sadness or happiness. The expanded classification of feelings used by Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer (2008) shows that people do experience a wide range of feelings simultaneously. To add to the point, Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira & Okanoya (2013) state that music defined as happy or sad can induce opposite feelings in people. Since there is not clear explanation of mixed feelings caused by music, this issue required deeper research. Finally, there is not common opinion about classification of feelings which is to be used to define the effect of music. Appropriate framework is need to make further research comfortable. Out of all studies used in this paper, circumplex model developed by Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll & Lundqvist seems to be the most appropriate one, but is cannot define feelings exactly. It needs to be developed and expanded further to add clarity to findings of different researchers and remove common polarization and generalization of research results. References Gabrielsson, A 2011, Strong experiences with music: Music is much more than just music, Oxford University Press. Hunter, PG, Schellenberg, EG, & Schimmack, U 2010, Feelings and perceptions of happiness and sadness induced by music: Similarities, differences, and mixed emotions. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(1), 47. Juslin, PN, Liljeström, S, Västfjäll, D, & Lundqvist, LO 2010. How does music evoke emotions? Exploring the underlying mechanisms. In; PN Juslin & JA. Sloboda (Eds). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford University Press, pp. 605-642. Kawakami, A, Furukawa, K., Katahira, K, & Okanoya, K 2013. Sad music induces pleasant emotion. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1-15. Khalfa, S, Schon, D, Anton, JL, & Liégeois-Chauvel, C 2005. Brain regions involved in the recognition of happiness and sadness in music. Neuroreport, 16(18), 1981-1984. Mansell, C 2006, The Fountain: Music from the motion picture. Nonesuch Records, New York City. Scherer, KR 2004. Which emotions can be induced by music? What are the underlying mechanisms? And how can we measure them?. Journal of New Music Research, 33(3), 239-251. Scherer, K, & Zentner, MR 2001, Emotional effects of music: Production rules. In: PN Juslin & JA Sloboda (Eds) Music and Emotion: Theory and research. Oxford University Press. Schellenberg, E. G., Peretz, I., & Vieillard, S. (2008). Liking for happy-and sad-sounding music: Effects of exposure. Cognition & Emotion, 22(2), 218-237. Zentner, M, Grandjean, D, & Scherer, KR 2008. Emotions evoked by the sound of music: characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494. Read More