Music and emotion

Have you ever cried in response to a piece of music?

I don’t mean from a song; there are plenty of songs with lyrics that can provoke strong emotions. I mean purely from instrumental music. I don’t mean as a result of some mental association either; yes, a particular hymn from a particular funeral might make you sad, but that’s not really the result of the tune. No, I mean have you ever cried purely because of the sounds of a piece of instrumental music?

I was curious how common this was, so I put up a totally unscientific poll on the Fediverse. Results were 50/50, so I’m guessing it’s a fairly common phenomenon, but far from universal.

There are three pieces of music that can make it happen for me.

The first is “Epsilon in Malaysian Pale” by Edgar Froese, from his album of the same name recorded in 1975. It was Froese’s second solo album, and Bowie cited it as “the soundtrack of my life when I lived in Berlin”. The piece was inspired by Froese’s visit to an Indonesian jungle, and it sounds very much of its era, being predominantly performed on the Mellotron. Some might find it dated, but I think the analog tape quality of the instrument suits the music perfectly. It’s lush, warm, imperfect and mournful. I have strong memories of walking along a cliff top in Menorca, listening to the album on a cheap Sanyo personal stereo.

Be warned that Froese completely re-recorded the album in 2005 using modern synthesizers, resulting in something barely recognizable as the same composition. That version is credited to “Edgar W. Froese”, and I’ve always assumed it was done to get back the publishing copyright and get some royalties from Virgin.

It was decades later that I encountered the second piece of music to make me cry: “Turning Towards Us” by Redshift, from the album of the same name. The band was founded by the late Mark Shreeve, and generally followed the “Berlin school” style of Froese and his German contemporaries, with lots of eight step sequences and analog synthesizers. The third piece is also by Redshift: “Halo”, again from an album of the same name. I don’t understand why the two Redshift tracks affect me so much. Yes, there’s beauty there, but I don’t quite understand why or how there’s such sadness.

You might be surprised that I’ve picked three pieces of purely electronic music. There’s non-electronic music that I have a strong response to, of course — I could pick out Ligeti’s Requiem, for example, but that’s terrifying rather than sad. Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1 is another piece of music I find very emotional, but it has never brought me to tears. Perhaps it’s because I grew up with electronic music that I seem to respond most strongly to it?

Music has always been important to me. I have strong memories from the age of 6, listening to records on my grandparents’ Grundig radiogram (a Como E/GB, I believe). Songs are how my subconscious communicates with my conscious mind. I’ll get a sudden urge to listen to a particular song, and when I give in I’ll listen carefully to the lyrics and they’ll turn out to be directly applicable to whatever is going on in my life — sometimes painfully so. Occasionally this happens with songs where I’ve never consciously listened to the lyrics before. Apparently this is something that happens to other people too.

I find these verbal messages from the subconscious interesting because they suggest that we have language interpretation going on at the subconscious level, which generally isn’t how it feels, at least to me. In my head, it feels like the imaginary self is handling all the words, which I suspect is why some philosophers have theorized that consciousness or self are constructed as a result of language. Not a theory I rate as likely, but going into what I do believe about consciousness is for another long article another day. (I keep meaning to write it and not doing so.)

Extreme emotional reactions to music are also, of course, part of religious tradition. Music has always been seen as linked to the divine, from ancient religious chanting to musical religious practice in Rome and Greece. Bach declared that “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” I don’t see music as pointing at supernatural divinity, but it can be an undeniably mystical experience. If you’ve never listened to a piece of music and been brought to tears by it, I honestly hope that one day you’ll have that experience.