As a pianist and composer, I'm going to attempt to offer some sort of coherent opinion on the subject. I do not think that feeling emotion is necessarily required to write emotionally stirring music, or even well-written emotionally stirring music. I think as a whole, the creative process is hard to quantify in terms of how much emotion is required, or when, or what kind, or what depth, and I want to stress that it's different for every artist. Sometimes a mournful (or cheerful) theme that I'll make up will actually spring out of a mood. On the other hand, often, the nature of the music being created is being dictated by lyrics that have already been written by someone else, or the fact that there's a rehearsal tonight and the piece to be played hasn't been started yet. No particular emotion other than worry about the possibility of being yelled at, but that doesn't mean the music that's frantically scribbled down over the course of the afternoon can only convey a sense of being frenzied and disorganized (like its creator).:) Cole Porter said "My sole inspiration is a phone call from a producer."... Rachmaninoff is supposed to have snapped, in irritation, at a woman asking him what inspired him to write all those beautiful melodies in his second concerto: "five pounds." (Anyone feel free to supply the exact quote and whether this story is believed to be true...I do not recall the source.) At any rate, the overall tragic tone of the first movement of that piece, as we all know, did not spring directly from his depression after the disastrous premiere of his first symphony, rather, it was not written until he _overcame_ his depression through intense therapy. One can argue that he was inspired by his previous mood (to use rather rough language, I apologize for my ineloquence); and that is quite possible, and lends credence to the "recall" argument. Others may point out that it while Rachmaninoff may have drawn on life experiences as inspiration (although I thinks that's probably rubbish, this is just for purposes of illustration), this situation illustrates the need to maintain a healthy emotional distance from one's work in order to create well. I think that the vast majority of composers and performers are emotionally involved in their work in varying degrees at different times, and sometimes it has a direct effect on the quality of their work, and sometimes it does not. Emotion can be a positive or negative force when creating or performing or practicing, or sometimes it can be an outside element which we ignore because it is not immediately useful for the task at hand. I do not think that emotion is extra-musical. You do not need to read a critical analysis of Tchaikovsky's Sixth to hear the gloom and despair in the last movement. Different people might describe the emotion conveyed in different terms, and most people will hear it while not necessarily feeling it, but I find it hard to argue that it is not, to use a most generic term, "very sad." To use a much simpler example, minor chords sound sad and major chords sound happy, don't they? An oversimplification, but when teaching music theory I find students have little trouble determining whether an isolated chord in root position is major or minor after having heard this generalization. Apologize for the long post. Let the invective flow... Michael Cooper [log in to unmask]