Cossette 1

Joshua Cossette

Dr. Drew Schnurr

MUCP 5910

6 May 2020

The connections of Emotions and Music in Audio-Visual projects

In the history of human civilization, music has played an integral part in the lives of

almost every single person. One of the great Greek philosophers, Plato, is quoted as to saying

that “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to

everything.1” (CMUSE 2016) This begs to question two aspects of in the human psyche: Why do

we have such strong emotional ties to music and why do some elements of music tug at our

emotions more so than others? Through many years of research, musicologists have still barely

scratched the surface on why music affects us humans the way it does. However, they have, as

Plato had, discovered that there is a connection between music and the human emotion.

To understand the connection between music and the human emotion, we must first give

an explanation on both topics, to better understand where they come from and how these

connections have formed over time. To put it plainly, music is a form of art whose medium is

sound. One could even say that this is art form is sound art. Music is not just a bunch of random

sounds meshed together creating "noise", however. The sounds, which musicians have

designated as pitches (melody and harmony) and rhythms (tempo and meter), are instead

1
CMUSE. 100 Famous and Inspirational Music Quotes. 27 November 2016. Document. 2020. <https://www.cmuse.org/100-
famous-and-inspirational-music-quotes/>.
 Cossette 2

organized together to create a unique balance between consonance and dissonance. Music is not

just confined to notes on a page, however; modern notation has only been around since 590 AD.

Music varies by culture and region, with each element of music either being emphasized or de-

emphasized. Because of this, each culture and/or region has its own sound and has ties to that

area, physically and emotionally.

At their core, emotions are biological states that are most commonly associated with

behavioral changes within thoughts and feelings. Emotions are usually intertwined with things

such as motivation, creativity, mood and temperament. "During the 1970s, psychologist Paul

Eckman identified six basic emotions that he suggested were universally experienced in all

human cultures. The emotions he identified were happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and

anger. He later expanded his list of basic emotions to include such things as pride, shame,

embarrassment, and excitement."2 (Cherry 2018) Most interestingly, out of all the basic

emotions, it has been shown that "happiness tends to be the one that people strive for the most"3

There are some emotions that run deeper and can be broken down into further secondary or even

tertiary emotions such as love, anger, or sadness.

So how does this tie back into music? The best example of how emotions and music are

connected is to look at audio-visual projects such as films, short documentaries, advertisements

and, more currently, video games. Christmas advertisements are a perfect example of this. When

one sees an advertisement during the winter season, before Christmas, there is a certain

instrumentation that is used that most non-musicians would associate with Christmas like sleigh

2
Cherry, Kendra. The 6 Types of Basic Emotions and Their Effect on Human Behavior. Ed. MD Steven Gans. 23 May
2018. Article. 2020. <https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-of-emotions-4163976>.
3
Cherry, Kendra. The 6 Types of Basic Emotions and Their Effect on Human Behavior. Ed. MD Steven Gans. 23 May
2018. Article. 2020. <https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-of-emotions-4163976>.
 Cossette 3

bells. This, in turn, "ultimately emphasizes the storytelling in terms of Christmas and the

message the project wants to convey"4 (Enhanced Media 2019) and also produces those feelings

of joy and happiness that Paul Eckman had spoken about in the 1970s. On a more deeper scale,

take the film Interstellar by Christopher Nolan with the soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer.

The character Joseph Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, travels through space and ends

up going into the event horizon of a massive black hole. Because of this, he hasn't aged much

past the time when he left Earth to go on this journey but his daughter has aged quite a bit, to the

point of her being on her death bed. When he is reunited with her in the final scene of the film, it

is a very emotional scene by itself. The music helps contribute to this by the building of the

layers that Hans Zimmer has in the scene. This helps connect to the layers of emotions that

Joseph Cooper feels when he has his last conversation with his daughter. Since our brains are

capable of establishing an emotional bond between a piece of music and something either

positive, sad, joyful, negative, etc., the fact that the vast majority audiovisual projects include

music, original soundtrack songs and other musical elements suggests that actually all these

elements help make the storytelling more enticing, digestible and memorable"5 (Enhanced Media

2019)

In a research study based on emotions in film music done by Ivanka Pavlović and

Slobodan Marković, they stated that film music is "almost exclusively and directly related to the

modulation of emotional meaning of film scenes: music has the potential to highlight the

emotions, to make the mood darker or lighter, to sublime feelings, to prolong or alter an

4
Enhanced Media. The Emotional Impact of music in Movies. 26 February 2019. Article. 2020.
<https://medium.com/@enhancedmedia/the-emotional-impact-of-music-in-movies-3fd49f254c13>.
5
Enhanced Media. The Emotional Impact of music in Movies. 26 February 2019. Article. 2020.
<https://medium.com/@enhancedmedia/the-emotional-impact-of-music-in-movies-3fd49f254c13>.
 Cossette 4

impression, with its rhythm and color, and so on."6 (Pavlović and Marković 2011) The research

study was based off of 4 different groups of polar emotions. At the conclusion of the study they

had found that " ..one can say that the effects of music background on emotional appraisal of film

sequences depend on the quality of emotions. The adaptive and functional specificities of

interacting emotions, such as hedonic tone, arousal and behavior response, define the directions

and the intensities of their conjoint effect."7 (Pavlović and Marković 2011) However, they also

found that while comparing the polar emotions of anger and fear, it wasn't unusual to see that

angry music can induce feelings of fear, but joyful music wouldn't induce feelings of sadness. As

stated before, this would depend on the quality of emotions that are present within the viewer at

the time. Another research study done on peak emotions, specifically targeting 2 phenomena

known as "chills" and "music-induced tears" was conducted in 2017 by Kazuma Mori and

Makoto Iwanga. "Brain-imaging studies have also suggested that chills activate reward-related brain

regions, such as the ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Furthermore, music chills are accompanied by rewarding dopamine release in the caudate nucleus and

nucleus accumbens in the striatum. Therefore, the experience of chills seems to produce physiological

arousal and reward for the listener."8 (Mori and Iwanga 2017)

6
Pavlović, Ivanka and Marković,Slobodan. The effect of music background on the emotional appraisal of film
sequences. Research. University of Belgrade, Serbia. Serbia: Serbian Psychological Association, 2011. Article.
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266610762_The_effect_of_music_background_on_the_emotional_ap
praisal_of_film_sequences>.
7
Pavlović, Ivanka and Marković,Slobodan. The effect of music background on the emotional appraisal of film
sequences. Research. University of Belgrade, Serbia. Serbia: Serbian Psychological Association, 2011. Article.
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266610762_The_effect_of_music_background_on_the_emotional_ap
praisal_of_film_sequences>.
8
Mori, Kazuma; Iwanga, Makoto. "Two types of peak emotional responses to music: The psychophysiology of chills
and tears." Science Report. 2017. <https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46063>.
 Cossette 5

It is no doubt that much more research has been done on this subject and much more will be

conducted for many years to come. The various techniques that a director uses in a film to

capture emotions from the audience are all important but it is argued that music is potentially the

most vital. In fact, the 1933 film King Kong directed by Merian Cooper and the score done by

Max Steiner, prove just how pivotal it was and how emotions and music became intertwined

through film. Actress Bette Davis "recognized the immense power of music and how, if done

correctly, could outshine even the best acting even going so far as to saying that ' Well, either I

am going up those stairs or Max Steiner is going up those stairs, but not the two of us together,'

in reference to the Academy Awards."9 (Bussey 2019) Film music, however, isn't the first

venture for composers when it comes to bringing a story or work of art to life. During the

Romantic era of music, composers were providing "a basic vocabulary for film music"10 (Paris

2018) and "wrote 'programmatically'—they were explicitly setting out to tell stories and evoke

specific moods using carefully chosen instrumentation, harmony and melodies. What we now

associate with as heroism, tragedy, romance...were all tropes established in the concert music of

the late Romantic period."11 (Paris 2018) Modern day film composers such as John Williams,

Hans Zimmer, James Horner, and older film composers such as Bernard Hermann and Jerry

Goldsmith studied these composers intentely so that they could carry on this tradition of

emotions in their music as well. An example of a scene in a film that raises many different levels

of emotion is the ending scene to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets directed by Chris

Columbus and scored by John Williams. To summarize what has happened up to this point, the

9
Bussey, Zach. Music And Emotion in Film. 18 February 2019. Blog. 2020.
<https://www.epidemicsound.com/blog/music-and-emotion/>.
10
Paris, Olajide. Know The Score: The Psychology of Film Music. 27 August 2018. Article. 2020.
11
Paris, Olajide. Know The Score: The Psychology of Film Music. 27 August 2018. Article. 2020.
 Cossette 6

students at Hogwarts were under attack by a Basilisk, who petrified many of the students

including a very good friend of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger. Because of

these attacks, the groundskeeper, Hagrid, was accused and sent to the Wizard prison Azkaban.

Leading up into this scene is the reuniting of Harry, Ron and Hermione and the speech by

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. The music here expresses many levels of happiness, joy and

also hinting at a level of cute awkwardness between Ron and Hermione. The music picks up

when Hagrid comes through the doors of the Great Hall which becomes grand but also playful as

he makes a comedic remark about his release papers. It then comes down to an intimate moment

between Hagrid and the trio, where the theme is played by a solitary instrument with soft

backgrounds. It continues to grow emotionally as people start clapping and this exemplifies the

true feelings of happiness, joy and friendship.

In conclusion, there still is not enough concrete evidence on why music does what it does

to the human emotions. However, it has been proven that there are definite connections between

the science of how the brain works and stores memories, music and emotions. These memories

carry over into how people react in real-time life scenarios and, even after years of listening to

something, music can invoke emotions that somebody once felt. Music will continue to do this

and research will still be conducted on why and how. As Keith Richard said “Music is a

language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones,

it’s in the bones.”12 (CMUSE 2016)

12
CMUSE. 100 Famous and Inspirational Music Quotes. 27 November 2016. Document. 2020.
<https://www.cmuse.org/100-famous-and-inspirational-music-quotes/>.
 Cossette 7

Bibliography:
1) Bussey, Zach. Music And Emotion in Film. 18 February 2019. Blog. 2020.
<https://www.epidemicsound.com/blog/music-and-emotion/>.

2) CMUSE. 100 Famous and Inspirational Music Quotes. 27 November 2016. Document. 2020.
<https://www.cmuse.org/100-famous-and-inspirational-music-quotes/>.

3) Enhanced Media. The Emotional Impact of music in Movies. 26 February 2019. Article. 2020.
<https://medium.com/@enhancedmedia/the-emotional-impact-of-music-in-movies-
3fd49f254c13>.

4) Hoffman, Robin. What is the Function of Film Music. 12 July 2018. Tutorial. 2020. <https://www.robin-
hoffmann.com/tutorials/what-is-the-function-of-film-music/>.

5) Kania, Andrew. The Philosophy of Music. 2017. Encyclopedia . 2020.

<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/music/>.

6) Pavlović, Ivanka; Marković,Slobodan. The effect of music background on the emotional appraisal of
film sequences. Research. University of Belgrade, Serbia. Serbia: Serbian Psychological
Association, 2011. Article.
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266610762_The_effect_of_music_background_on_
the_emotional_appraisal_of_film_sequences>.

7) Mori, Kazuma; Iwanga, Makoto. "Two types of peak emotional responses to music: The
psychophysiology of chills and tears." Science Report. 2017.
<https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46063>.

8) Paris, Olajide. Know The Score: The Psychology of Film Music. 27 August 2018. Article. 2020.

9) Porter, Scott. The Undeniable Emotional Impact of Music in Film. 2 October 2015. Blog. 2020.
<https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/the-undeniable-emotional-impact-of-music-in-film/>.

10) Cherry, Kendra. The 6 Types of Basic Emotions and Their Effect on Human Behavior. Ed. MD Steven
Gans. 23 May 2018. Article. 2020. <https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-
of-emotions-4163976>.