Meaning and Emotion - Lesson 3

Expression in Music Performance is extremely important because it 'shapes how listeners experience Music' (Juslin and Sboda 2001) ) and therefore connects you to your audience. Juslin and Sboda argue that there are two types of people when listening to Music and this is absolutist and referentialist. An absolutist is someone who analyses the theory behind the piece, the technical building blocks such as the key and dynamics and musical elements such as that. A referentialist focuses on the emotive state and how the piece makes you feel and what expediences it relates you back too. However this theory can be argued because it can depend on the piece of Music and can also overalp which is a problem of putting things into boxes like this theory does.  In this session we looked at three different pieces and explored what musical techniques allowed them to express the emotion in the song which I will then use to help with my Independent project of composing my own song. It has allowed me to understand how the building blocks can influence the emotion of a song such as key, dynamics, texture and so I will focus on these when composing my own piece.