19 mai 2011

Music and Emotion (closing lecture)

Music is often considered to be the most expressive of the arts. But what does it mean to say that music scores higher in this field than other arts do? How is the activity of the composer (or: the performer?) different from the work of the painter, or the poet?
The typical object of musical expression is supposedly emotion. But how can music, not being of a human or animal nature and therefore not suffering from the kind of experiences that may be considered as the cause of our emotions, be a vehicle of such expression?

Albert van der Schoot (Groningen, 1949) studied musicology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and music pedagogy at the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest. He is an associate professor in ‘Theory in the arts’ at the ArtEZ Academy of Arts; he teaches Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the University of Amsterdam, and Philosophy of Music at the University of Antwerp. Together with Erik Heijerman, he edited Welke taal spreekt de muziek? (Damon, 2005).