sadness is an undesirable emotion yet we still choose to listen to sad music. this has puzzled philosophers and musicologists alike and they’ve presented different theories in that respect. this article explores the fact, through a psychological experiment, that how is sadness in artistic appreciation different from sadness in practical life.
the writer and his colleagues test their subjects on ‘felt’ emotion and ‘perceived’ emotion. they were given different pieces of music to listen to; both sad and happy. after listening to different excerpts of different songs they were asked to record their ‘felt’ emotions and ‘perceived’ and emotions on a different scales
the result was as expected; perceived emotion of the songs was stronger than the felt emotion and then a theory is suggested to answer these questions that when we listen to music it gives rise to an emotion that we feel on usual days and it gives rise to those feelings that we have already felt.
the writer then suggests some deep philosophical crap that I hardly understood. its something about emotions that are substitute of some real and direct emotions that arise after listening to sad songs. (there’s a line ‘..while still drawing force from the similarity between the two.’ this line really messes up the paragraph. makes it impossible to understand)
all in all, when we weep at gloomy music and it has a profound effect on us, it all shows our artistic appreciation and the human side of us. yet the question remains unanswered, why we like sad music?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/why-we-like-sad-music.html?_r=0
