Steve Schwartz:

>We learn the emotional meaning of music by associating rhythms, modes, and
>so on with non-musical things.  For example, the rhythm, mode, and color of
>Beethoven's Eroica funeral march probably comes from other funeral marches
>and in turn influences the music of other funeral music.

This may be true in a first instance, but there's something else.  Emotion
seems less to be an undivisible state of mind than a process (i.e:  it is
developed in time).  I think that our sense of emotional meaning of music
depends much on this temporal dimension:  our mind, like music, has a
"cursus" of changes and repetitions.  A musical figure may be associated to
nothing in particular, but its development in time provides us a "meaning"
of it.  This is the "quid" of program music:  a theme that represents a
hero may be nothing in itself, but listeners can recognize it as a
protagonist because of its tonal and harmonic "adventures".

Pablo Massa
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