[log in to unmask] writes:

>How do you know that the emotion conveyed by the music is conveyed because
>of the emotion felt by the composer or the performer(s)? How do you know
>that the emotion conveyed by the music is not your own emotion skillfully
>elicited by a composer and/or performers who know that, in some kinds of
>music, emotion can be produced in the listener by this and that techniques?

Or to reposition the mirror's frame so it glances elsewhere in the room:
Lawrence Olivier supposedly once said, "The most important quality for an
actor to possess is sincerity.  And once you can fake that on stage, you're
a guaranteed success."

As a writer (fiction/nonfiction/poetry), one of the things I want to do
is create a visceral response in my readers.  I want them to feel certain
emotions at certain times.  I can't achieve that if I don't carefully
polish my prose of poetry, cold-bloodedly calculating the balance of two
phrases or the rhythm of several optional words.  This applies to both
works in which I reveal my emotions directly to the reader (usually
poetry), and those in which I tell a story.

Further complicating matters is the fact that my story may contain six
different major characters, each of whom has their own viewpoint, none
mirroring my own.

I want you to feel, to learn, to be entertained, to have an experience that
breaks open your ego wall and shows you the universe and shakes you a bit
by the shoulders before helping you settle slowly back inside yourself.
And possibly all of the above.  What I feel personally shouldn't be
relevant to you.

Similar remarks apply to many composers I am aware of.  Beethoven, for all
the apparently direct, full-throttle angst of his Symphony #5, nonetheless
worked on its themes and development for several years, polishing and
finetuning for form and effect.  A sketch of Verdi's Rigoletto, published
in 1941, consists of 56 pages which are filled with isolated ideas, worked
and reworked to create the score's emotional punch with apparent
spontaneity.

Which isn't to say that music, like literature, is devoid of spontaneity.
But it seems to me that the act of artistic creation is (as I just wrote
another lister, here), a continuously eruptive/reflective internal dialog.
Ideas must be shaped, and the composer, like the writer, is a cold-blooded
master shaper of his/her own creations.

Barry Brenesal