While there are plenty of theories on how music and emotion might be related (see reference below -Juslin & Västfjäll (2008)- for a overview), there is still little empirical evidence to decide on how far music and specific associated emotions - such as happiness, fear, sadness or anger - are merely a result of association and/or culturally determined, or in fact shared and a result of brain mechanisms that we all share.
Last year Current Biology published an interesting study on the recognition of three basic emotions using Western music and that of the Mafa (an ethnic group living in the mountains of Cameroon, and that are claimed never to have been exposed to Western music). Both Mafa and Western listeners listened to short Western piano pieces and Mafa flute music and had to decide which of the three faces (from the often used Ekman archive) fitted best with the perceived music.
The study could show that the basic emotions happiness, sadness and fear could be picked up (above chance level) by both listener groups from each others music.
Below a video fragment reporting on the study:
Fritz, T., Jentschke, S., Gosselin, N., Sammler, D., Peretz, I., Turner, R., Friederici, A., & Koelsch, S. (2009). Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music Current Biology, 19 (7), 573-576 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.02.058
Juslin, P., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31 (05) DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X08005293
This week a video of an event that was moderated by Faith Salie and features author Jonathan Rosen; neurobiologist Erich Jarvis; scientist and noted bird researcher Irene Pepperberg; professor of comparative cognition at Cambridge University, Nicola Clayton; Head of the Laboratory of Animal Behavior at CUNY, Ofer Tchernichovski; and David Rothenberg, professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
This event took place on June 13, 2009 in the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. This is the first of eleven segments (See YouTube).
