Emotional Storms, Passion and Melancholy when Symphonic Music is Legitimated as an Emotional Resource

Abstract

In some contexts, classical music is described as capable of evoking powerful emotional experiences in listeners, while in others it is associated with a restrained response on the part of the audience. Against the backdrop of this observation, the article aims to apply a discourse-analytic approach to investigating how symphonic music is constructed and legitimated as an emotional resource, and how listeners’ reactions are articulated in relation to ideas about the emotional qualities of music. The material comprises texts and a small number of images taken from concert programs of two leading symphony orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO).

The results demonstrate variation in both the feelings that are highlighted in the concert programs and the conceptions or ideas about musical meaning that are referred to in the descriptions. While some descriptions draw on a formalist artistic ideal, emphasizing the music’s independent esthetic value, others exhibit a romantic understanding of music, emphasizing its metaphysical qualities. Music is furthermore legitimated as an emotional resource by being characterized as a bearer of specific feelings, in other words, in line with a conception of musical meaning as representational. When it comes to audiences’ listening positions, it is shown that two contrasting listening ideals are articulated in the concert descriptions, one introspective and one that involves the manifestation of powerful emotional experiences.

The variation in listening ideals and conceptual assumptions is found to agree with the individualized understanding of musical meaning that is typical of neo-liberal consumer culture. At the same time, however, because emotional extremes are given space alongside traditional esthetic ideals, historically formed ideals are perpetuated.