Pablo Massa wrote:

>Ien Feshkens to Karl Miller, regarding a "dictionary of music":
>
>>>Well actually there have been attempts.  Consider the doctrine of
>>>affections for one.
>>
>>There have also been attempts to build perpetual motion machines and
>>transform lead into gold.
>
>Actually, the musical doctrine of affections was a cousin of alchemy and
>astronomy.

   "Affections, doctrine of: An aesthetic theory of the late baroque
   period, formulated by A. Werckmeister (Harmonologia musica, 1702),
   J.D. Heinichen (1711), J. Mattheson (1739), J.J. Quantz (1752), F.W.
   Marpurg (Kritische Briefe, vol.  ii, 1763) and other 18th Century
   writers...these rather trite explanations reveal the difficulty
   involved in any attempt to formulate the doctrine of affections.
   There can be no doubt, however, that musicians of the late baroque,
   particularly in Germany, were fully familiar with this aesthetic
   approach and often incorporated its tenets in their compositions...
   Although the term Affektenlehre is associated with the 18th century,
   the close relationship between music and the human affections has
   often been recognized and emphasized not only in Western music (Plato,
   Aristotle, Isidore of Seville, Ramos de Pareja, Glareanus, Monteverdi,
   Descartes) but also in that of the Orient, especially in the Hindu
   conception of the ragas." Harvard Dictionary of Music

Karl