Chris Bonds writes:

>With all due respect, I don't find this to be especially useful as an
>approach.  I'm not sure there are as many as 10--grief, fear, anger, joy,
>jealousy (although that appears to combine fear and anger)--hey, but what
>do I know? The ones I've mentioned have many "colors", though, depending
>on the external circumstances.  You might get a statistically valid result,
>but then what conclusions would you derive from the result? How would
>knowing there is or isn't a consensus help get more out of the music?

You might be right.

My whole thrust in examining the underlying feeling that motivated a
composer to do this or that is to better understand how to write it
(or have my computer write it).  I am amazed at the difference between
wandering through a museum looking at paintings and taking the tour and
having them explained by experts.  They point out things that I never
noticed and I enjoy the painting more by knowing these things.  I was
wondering if the same thing could be done with music.

I can't help think that the composer's subconscious was actually
controlling the effort, unbeknownst to the composer.  Freud and the now
widely accepted notion of a subconscious occurred at the end of the 19th
Century after all those 17th, 18th, and 19th century composers may have
not themselves understood their true motivations.

Bill Pirkle