How music is created in the mind and how it works
What is good and what is bad music?
To give an answer to this question, we must first deal with the question “How and why music unleashes emotions within us?”
Emotions such as joy, fear or grief are essential for every human action. The cognitive psychology verifies this with the so-called ‘Diskrepanztheorie’: emotion in response to unexpected experiences. What does this mean? The brain triggers the body’s movements not only by sending commands to the nerve conduction, but also by anticipating the feelings that result from these movements. When we walk for example, we do this seemingly automatically, without fixing our angle of vision permanently to the floor. Only then we can enjoy walking, and perceive our environment. Looking closer, this is only possible because we investigate the condition of our environment before we begin to move. If we determine that there is a smooth, flat surface, start walking without worrying. We continue until the surface changes significantly. Only then will we look back on the ground, to adapt to this change. Not only in the movement of our body, but in everything we do, these expectations are generated in advance and then compared with the incoming sensations. If significant differences appear, we pause in our movements. Another example everyone knows: We go to the fridge at night to take a swig from the bottle of apple juice, but without noticing take the bottle of milk instead. We are so confused that we immediately spit the first sip out. This example illustrates impressively the significance of emotions: fear keeps us from drinking, as the apple juice might indeed be toxic.
Music evokes emotions in the same way: it anticipates expectations only to meet them. Music can hold back the solution and thus increase the expectations even further, in order to finally meet them in a big blow. When the music leaves that path and belies the expectations aroused, we call it “expressive”. Composers deliberately integrate expressive elements in their works. Using too many compositional “experiments” the music turns out to be incoherent and incomprehensible; by using too few, it sounds cold and mechanical.
Good music triggers off an emotional storm within us. It takes us through the constant interplay between fulfillment and violation of expectations on a journey into a world where anything is possible. We feel melancholic without bursting into tears, experience aggression without having to defend ourselves. One could also say that music lets us live in a perfect world for a moment, where you can meet safely even aggressiveness.
Source: Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures our Imagination, Robert Jourdain
