Chapter 27 Further Reading: Emotion, Tension & Release — The Physics of Musical Feeling

Foundational Texts

Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. University of Chicago Press, 1956. The founding text of expectation-based theories of musical emotion. Meyer's argument — that musical meaning arises from the relationship between musical events and the expectations they create and fulfill or violate — remains the most influential single framework in the psychology of musical emotion. Still readable and stimulating after nearly 70 years.

Huron, David. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. MIT Press, 2006. The most comprehensive and empirically grounded development of expectation theory, introducing the ITPRA framework and reviewing experimental evidence across multiple domains: melody, harmony, rhythm, and emotional response. Essential reading for any student of musical emotion. Huron's writing is accessible and intellectually engaging.

Juslin, Patrick N., and John A. Sloboda, eds. Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications. Oxford University Press, 2010. The standard reference work for the psychology of musical emotion. Contains authoritative chapters on each of the major theoretical frameworks (including Juslin's full development of the BRECVEMA model), on neuroimaging evidence, on cross-cultural perspectives, on developmental aspects, and on therapeutic applications. Essential for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art. Harvard University Press, 1942. The foundational philosophical text for the view that music expresses but does not cause emotion — that it has the "form" of emotional experience without producing it. Even if one disagrees with Langer's conclusions, her argument is beautifully articulated and provides the essential alternative to experiential theories of musical emotion.

Berlyne, D.E. Aesthetics and Psychobiology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971. The foundational text for applying arousal theory to aesthetic experience, including music. Berlyne's "inverted-U" hypothesis — that aesthetic pleasure is maximal at intermediate levels of complexity/novelty — anticipates the information-theoretic approaches discussed in the chapter. Historically important.

Key Research Papers

Juslin, P.N. (2013). "From everyday emotions to aesthetic emotions: Towards a unified theory of musical emotions." Physics of Life Reviews, 10, 235–266. The comprehensive paper presenting the full BRECVEMA model, with experimental evidence for each mechanism and a theoretical framework for their integration. Essential primary reading for understanding the most complete current account of musical emotional mechanisms.

Salimpoor, V.N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., and Zatorre, R.J. (2011). "Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music." Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257–262. The landmark dopamine study, directly relevant to the BRECVEMA musical expectancy mechanism and to the account of tension and anticipatory pleasure.

Eerola, T., and Vuoskoski, J.K. (2011). "A comparison of the discrete and dimensional models of emotion in music." Psychology of Music, 39(1), 18–49. An empirical comparison of models for describing musical emotion, including the circumplex (valence × arousal) model discussed in the chapter. Good empirical grounding for the dimensional approach.

Witvliet, C.V., and Vrana, S.R. (2007). "Play it again Sam: repeated exposure to emotionally evocative music polarises liking and smiling responses, and influences other affective reports, facial EMG, and heart rate." Cognition & Emotion, 21(1), 3–25. A study of how repeated exposure to emotionally evocative music affects emotional responses, with implications for evaluative conditioning and the temporal dynamics of musical emotion.

Rickard, N.S. (2004). "Intense emotional responses to music: a test of the physiological arousal hypothesis." Psychology of Music, 32(4), 371–388. An empirical study testing physiological arousal responses to emotionally intense music, providing evidence for the bodily reality of musical emotional response.

Film Music and Emotion

Lissa, Zofia. Ästhetik der Filmmusik. Henschelverlag, 1965. A foundational analysis of the functions and emotional effects of film music. The framework for analyzing music-picture interaction remains influential in film music scholarship.

Cohen, Annabel J. (2001). "Music as a source of emotion in film." In Sloboda, J.A., and Juslin, P.N. (eds.), Music and Emotion: Theory and Research. Oxford University Press. An accessible chapter-length treatment of how film music modulates emotional responses to visual content, with experimental evidence for the congruence effect (emotional alignment of music and picture amplifies response).

Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press, 1994. The most influential theoretical treatment of the relationship between sound and image in cinema, introducing concepts like "added value" (the meaning that sound adds to an image) and "synchresis" (the synchronization of sound and vision). Essential for understanding film music's emotional mechanisms.

Musical Tension and Harmony

Lerdahl, Fred. Tonal Pitch Space. Oxford University Press, 2001. A rigorous computational model of tonal tension — how far chords and notes are "from home" in the tonal hierarchy — that provides a formal account of the tension-and-release phenomena discussed in this chapter. More technical than most readings here but deeply relevant.

Krumhansl, Carol L. Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch. Oxford University Press, 1990. The foundational empirical work on tonal cognition — how listeners develop and use implicit knowledge of tonal hierarchies. Essential for understanding the statistical learning basis of musical expectation.

Sad Music and Negative Emotions

Eerola, T., Vuoskoski, J.K., and Kautiainen, H. (2016). "Being moved by unfamiliar sad music is associated with high empathy." Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1176. A study finding that empathy (particularly "affective empathy") predicts being moved by sad music, with implications for the emotional contagion mechanism and individual differences in responses to music expressing negative emotions.

Taruffi, L., and Koelsch, S. (2014). "The paradox of music-evoked sadness: an online survey." PLOS ONE, 9(10): e110490. A large-scale survey study examining the paradox of pleasurable sadness in music, finding multiple distinct types of sadness experienced through music and associated with different rewards.

Embodied Music Cognition

Leman, Marc. Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology. MIT Press, 2007. The most comprehensive academic treatment of embodied approaches to music cognition, arguing that music is understood through the body's coupling with sonic events. More theoretical than empirical but provides the strongest philosophical foundation for the embodied account discussed in Section 27.10.

Phillips-Silver, J., and Trainor, L.J. (2005). "Feeling the beat: Movement influences infant rhythm perception." Science, 308(5727), 1430. A striking study showing that infant rhythm perception is influenced by how adults bounce them — felt movement shapes auditory rhythm perception, providing foundational evidence for the embodied account of rhythm.

For Advanced Students

Huron, D., and Margulis, E.H. (2010). "Musical expectancy and thrills." In Juslin, P.N., and Sloboda, J.A. (eds.), Handbook of Music and Emotion. Oxford University Press. A focused treatment of the relationship between musical expectation and the frisson/thrills response, applying the ITPRA framework to explain specific acoustic triggers.

Numminen, J., Salmelin, R., and Hari, R. (1999). "Subject's own speech reduces reactivity of the human auditory cortex." Neuroscience Letters, 265(2), 119–122. A foundational paper on the relationship between motor and auditory systems, relevant to the embodied simulation account of musical emotion.