What a question!  My answer is yes--rarely.

There are so many flavors!

Even the definition of sadness is "sad," i.e.  unsatisfying, for it comes
from the root for satiation, not longing or loss.  Ironic.

No one can say the line from musical stimulus to sad response is direct.
Nor is it 1:1; it is correlative.

And the types of sadness!  There is sublimnity, longing, loss, pain,
melancholy, clinical depression, etc.  To me, the music may do a little;
our cultural background, experience and physiology do a lot while our
consciousness tries to make sense of it post facto and perhaps initiate
a feedback loop, i.e., it is rare that I can experience "pure" sadness
in music without thinking about what it means.

It is a fruitless exercise to postulate an elementally "sad" music
philosophically.  We are not far along enough to do it biologically
either, but someday we will.

It is best instead to contemplate the "sadness" of the Barber/Agee
masterpiece "Sure on this Shining Night":

"... I weep for wonder, wand'ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars."

Jeff
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