Intercultural (Mis)Understanding Of Mood : Westerners Listening To The Turkish Art Music
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | When forced to accept the empiric fact of people being emotionally moved by music, formalists turn to „music arouses moods that are associated to emotions“ explanation in order to refute the direct connection between emotions and the beauty of music. While within the European context such „communication of moods“ claim raises no significant doubt, the situation changes when non-European music is taken into account. I shall focus on the moods that are sought to be aroused by composers of instrumental Turkish Classical Music since 16th century at the latest. The dynamic (tempo and volume) part of Turkish music works in a very similar way in respect of mood arousal, most probably because of the worldwide shared similarity of mood-qualities of slow/fast and silent/loud speech, which is the most the most explicit sonic expression of mood or emotion to which a musical analogy can be drawn. However, the way the tonal (melodic/harmonic) mood arousal works is not so commonly agreed upon. It can be a matter of convention like meaning of the words, or there can be „something“ in certain tonal combinations or progressions that provokes a physiological reaction. The focal centre of my paper will be 1) the question what kind of moods are most usually intended to be aroused and how, 2) examples of Turkish Classical Music that will practically demonstrate how different or similar is the understanding of moods in European and Turkish music, arguing in favour of the claim that the tonally based mood arousal is a matter of convention, adhering to the theories of formal aesthetics of music. The formal aesthetics of music theories in general deny music to be understood as „a communication of emotion“. When forced to accept the empiric fact of people being emotionally moved by music, formalists turn to „music arouses moods that are associated to emotions“ explanation in order to refute the direct connection between emotions and the beauty of music. |
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