[log in to unmask] writes: >Regardless of where this feeling is coming from, the significant thing to >me is that the composer feel the emotion at the time of composition. Actually, I only agree in part. I am a student in composition at the Montreal conservatoire, and one topic we actually fell upon recently was this question about emotion in music. It is a fact that someone who masters the many arts of composition is fully able a creating the illusion of emotion without really "feeling" anything at the time of putting pen to paper, it has always been so. But a bad composer who actually is more emotionally implicated in his work will not necessarily transmit his emotion better. Emotion is very secondary when it comes down to writing good music. And since not all members of the audience have the same receptive memories towards different forms of music, whether you feel emotion or not during composition truly is only a slight bonus. Transmitting emotion is like playing russian roulette, you never know. Mastering your own form of composition, thus liberating any idea you want to transmit to your audience is far more important, the rest is luck. Nick