1.3.3 Music, Emotion and Meaning

Film music draws its significance by creating meaning as well as evoking an emotional response in the listener. Humans construct meaning from music in a variety of ways. Cultural significance, peer group preferences, individual experiences, and even basic elements within the music itself are all influences that determine how the individual will construct musical meaning. Music and emotion and music and motion have been linked together by many different theorists and laymen. One theory for the motion association is that our auditory sense also serves as a way of locating the source of a sound, and the source of a sound generally exists in space, not just in time. In terms of music and emotion, Sloboda (2001b) states that research has identified extrinsic (associative, episodic memory) processes and intrinsic (expressive, emotional) processes within the affective response to music.

Schubert (1996) describes the two current theories of emotion in music: the emotivist theory, where the music is thought to elicit a special set of aesthetic emotions in the listener; and the cognitivist theory, where emotion is perceived to be within the structure of the music. Krumhansl (1997) believes that the physiological effects of music observed in her study generally support the emotivist theory. Kivy (1999) ascribes to the cognitivist theory, stating that music is expressive, and that humans perceive emotion, but that music does not cause emotion. He suggests that we are moved by the beauty of music and not by aesthetic emotions caused by the music. For instance, if a person is listening to a "sad" piece of music, for example, Adagio for Strings by Barber, according to Kivy the music does not make the person sad. It will move the person by its beauty. It may make the person cry from the sheer experience of this beauty. However the person does not feel sad, just deeply moved. If, however, that same piece of music is attached to a tragic scene in a movie (Platoon, 1986), the association of a beautiful "sad" piece of music with tragic images will quite probably cause the person to feel sadness. Walker (1999) states that culture and experience are determinants of the perception of meaning within music. Gregory and Varney's (1996) study supports the notion that affective response is determined more by cultural tradition than inherent qualities. Alternatively, Balkwill and Thompson (1999) found that listeners could identify emotions from an unfamiliar tonal system, using psychophysical cues. These cues include tempo, timbre and the perceived complexity of the music. Their findings suggest cross-cultural or universal elements within music relating to the above psychophysical cues.

Karma (1994) suggests that the physical presence of sound is not necessary for musical thinking, and showed that sound was not necessary for accurate rhythmic thinking. Here a note must be made that the only type of musical thinking he investigated was temporal processing, so whilst rhythmical thinking was explored, Karma did not cover any other aspect of musical thinking, such as pitch recognition or harmonic analysis. He says:

Karma refers to Beethoven, who was postlingually deaf, however he used prelingually deaf people in his study. There is an implied assumption that postlingually deaf people (such as Beethoven) can audiate, and that prelingually deaf people cannot audiate (thus the use of these people as a control group). Beethoven is the most often cited example of proof that a human does not need hearing to possess a musical brain.

Humans construct musical meaning and thinking, in terms of their experience, culture, and belief systems. There may also be universal codes within music that humans would interpret in the same or at least a similar way. Memory and the construction of musical meaning form the cognitive processes of the sonic structure of individuals. Audiences interpret a film and its music by way of association. Antheil (1945) says:

Flinn (1992) expresses it in semiotic terms, saying that music is not a denotative sign system and its connotations are usually clichés. Thus film music tends to connote whatever the audience has associated it with (in the case of film music, certain conventions do become clichéd). Cook (1998) says that an image or narrative creates the meaning with the music. It is a mutual meaning-making process, not exclusive to one or the other, where there is a mutual mediation to form meaning.

When considering musical meaning, the first issue that needs to be addressed is that of the definition of "meaning". As Kassabian (2001) has noted, the terms "represent" and "meaning" have somehow come to be synonymous when applied to music. So when theorists say that music is nonrepresentational, it is automatically assumed by others that music is meaningless. This is problematic when considering film music. Film music was always intended to be a "meaning-making system by its producers." (Kassabian, 2001, 7). Yet if music is meaningless, how can it possibly aid in the interpretation of a film by an audience? This is what music does, and is one of its major roles within a film. The "music and meaning" debate is old, long, and complex. The position of this thesis is that music does in fact "mean something". Several theories of how music "means something" exist, and four will be outlined here.

The first theory is that of enculturation (Burt, 1994; Gfeller, 1990; Sloboda, 2001b; Radocy and Boyle, 1997). Within western societies, convention has it that (generally) major key signifies a happy or majestic mood, minor key signifies sad or melancholic. Lanza (1994, 62) says "Anyone growing up with the movies carries a sound library of tunes and leitmotifs that, in turn, get superimposed on the "real" world." Film music shapes our perception of meaning in music, which in turn aids us in interpreting films. Children as young as five can recognise these conventions (Trunk ,1981; Slattery, 1984). Some aspects of music, such as tempo, timbre and complexity, may in fact be universal and interpreted the same way across different cultures, which would suggest an inherent representational quality within the music. However, most studies support the enculturation theory, that a society conditions its members to interpret and respond to music through general stereotypes of musical meaning.

The second theory, explained by Jourdain (1997) is that music mimics experience, rather than symbolising it. He says:

Sloboda (2001b) calls this an iconic relationship, and Berlyne (1971) and Meyer (1956) also acknowledge the iconic properties of music. This theory holds that the meaning is intrinsic in the properties of the music itself, rather than relying on external and arbitrary associations.

The third theory corresponds to the discrepancy theory of emotion, and is called a symbolic relationship by Sloboda (2001b). Jourdain defines the discrepancy theory as believing that emotion is a reaction to unexpected experiences. Therefore, music can cause an emotional response because it sets up anticipations and violates or fulfils them. This is also perceived as intrinsic, because it relies on the properties of the music, and although a listener must be familiar with certain styles and genres to construct a symbolic relationship with music, the listener responds only to the structural form of the music.

The fourth theory this paper will discuss is that of contiguity (Burt, 1994; Gfeller, 1990). This is where music, through repetition, becomes linked to a referential image. Through classical conditioning the music is associated with a particular feeling, person, place, object, or time. Contiguity is related to enculturation, but contiguity is usually a highly personal and subjective meaning-making process. For instance, to the vast majority of Americans, "The Stars and Stripes" will engender feelings of patriotism and pride. In a contiguous association, a person might have received particularly bad news while hearing "The Stars and Stripes", and now the song represents or symbolises the bad news rather than, or in addition to, stirring feelings of love for America.

Musical symbolism is discussed in Lippman's book The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Music (1999). At its most basic form, symbolism consists of a relation between two different kinds of experience, one pointing to the other. He says that symbolism based on previous association is an extrinsic process, where meaning has been imported into a piece of music and the musical material has come to represent something, whether emotion, event or abstract conception. Music can only represent something nonaudible indirectly, and the recognition of this type of symbol is an "act of intellect." (Lippman, 1999, 8) Music can certainly come to symbolise images and concepts. This symbolism, however, is dependent upon experience (enculturation, contiguity). If a person knows the movie Jaws, the interval of a minor second comes to symbolise not only the shark, when one is watching the film, but also the entire film, when one hears it outside of the film. It represents the film.

The way in which audiation is used by an individual depends upon how the individual constructs meaning from music. Audiation is triggered by a variety of external and internal prompts, and many of these relate to music, meaning and emotion. For instance, a contiguous audiation occurrence would be where a situation prompted a lyric or style. Enculturation could also be responsible for a situation prompting lyric or style, and could also decide what type of music would be audiated from a mood trigger. An iconic relationship, where music mimics experience, may also be a mood trigger, where the individual audiates a piece of music that "feels" like their emotions. Unless the individual lives in a vacuum, music will mean something to him/her and audiation exploits this facet of the sonic structure.

The terms "meaning" and "represent" have been scattered throughout this section with no clear delineation between the two. Therein lies the problem. When applied to film music, perhaps theorists should approach the problem in a different way. For instance, in the film 10 Things I Hate About You, "the music means Patrick and Kat are falling in love," compared with "the music represents Patrick and Kat's love". There is little of difference between the two sentences, but points of difference are vitally important. If the music represents the love, then the music must be a theme or leitmotif which the audience member associates or perceives. It is a symbol. It must be repetitive, recognisable even when Patrick and/or Kat are not in the scene, and specific to the film. If the music means that they are falling in love, then the music conforms to the conventions the audience member recognises as signifying love, but the instance of this music is not enough to mark it as "Patrick and Kat's love". So what the music 'means' and what the music 'represents' must be distinct in film for an accurate analysis. To understand where the concept of musical symbolism in film originated one must trace its history back to the leitmotif.