ABSTRACT
What are we to make of the following opposing comments of two musical giants? Igor Stravinsky said, “Do we not, in truth, ask the impossible of music when we expect it to express feelings?”1 In contrast, Leonard Bernstein wrote, “Therefore, what it is that the composer is telling is never factual, can never be literal, but must be emotional.”2 Clearly, we have a difference of opinion here. Philosophers represent this disagreement as well. Eduard Hanslick stated Stravinsky’s position a century earlier when he said, “. . . is it not a psychologically unavoidable conclusion, that it [music] is likewise incapable of expressing emotion?”3 A few years before Hanslick’s statement, Georg Hegel said that music “finds utterance in its tones for the heart with its whole gamut of feelings and passions.”4 Regardless of their take on the matter, musicians and philosophers alike have had to deal with what has always been a controversial issue. In fact, as we will see in a moment, music psychologists, too, are divided in their conclusions about the role emotions play in music.
