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How can music be sad?

During a dinner conversation with friends who had just returned from a trip to Lisbon I asked if they had heard any Fado singers while they were there. They said they’d planned to but one of their Portuguese friends told them the music was very sad so they decided to skip it. My reply was, “But if you don’t speak Portuguese, it’s not sad!” 

That was said partly as a joke because I own quite a bit of Fado music by Amalia Rodrigues, Christina Branco, Ana Moura and others and I agree with them, I don’t speak a word of Portuguese but some of those songs do indeed sound sad. 

But how is it that we are wired so that music stirs that feeling of sadness without words? Or happiness? And how universal is it?


128x128sfar
emrofsemanon's avatar
emrofsemanon
292 posts
 
"once i was" has hardly any minor chords, just one i can tell, but it definitely is a heartbreaking song. a variable combo of minor/diminished chords and sad lyrics plus a lilt/catch/quaver in the singer’s voice, seems to be the valve that turns the waterworks on.
erik_squires
15,914 posts
 
Blues.

Minor Keys

Klesmer.


fertguy's avatar
fertguy
271 posts
 
Only if it talks about mama, trucks, trains, prison, rain or getting drunk...
dwmaggie
222 posts
 
fertguy, David Allen Coe at his best.
snilf's avatar
snilf
195 posts
 
sfar,
A profound question! Many composers and great musicians did NOT think music expresses emotion at all. Toscanini, asked by a journalist if he found the first movement of Beethoven's "Eroicia" symphony "heroic," replied testily: "Heroic my ass! It's allegro non troppo!" And yet, funeral music would be inappropriate at a wedding (one hopes), and dance music is inappropriate at a funeral. Part of the reason is just tempo, obviously, but only part.

I'm a philosopher, and have taught classes about this. If you're curious, the philosopher Schopenhauer has the most famous, and best thought-out theory of exactly how and why music can move us, and what it means that it does. But that theory depends on buying into his elaborate metaphysics of the will.

I was in NYC during the 9/11 disaster, when the Berlin Philharmonic was scheduled to perform. They rarely travel, and have visited NY only a few times in a century. They'd planned a challenging program of mostly contemporary compositions. When the Twin Towers came down, they changed the program: to Beethoven's Ninth. "Alle Menschen werden Brüder...." It brought everyone in the audience to tears. (There are at least two books about the political use of Beethoven's Ninth, by the way.)

Perhaps the larger question raised here is what "emotions" are, what they signify. To deny that music can be expressive is a little like denying that feelings or meaning are real. Which is not an impossible position. In R. Crumb's great Zap Comix, Flaky Foont frequently asks Mr. Natural "What's it all mean?" Mr. Natural always answers in the same way: "It don't mean shee-it!" 
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