Homer'sProphecy:anEssay onMusic'sPrimaryEmotions

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn hisOdyssey, Homer described a particular kind of music‐evoked emotion, a tapestry of wonder, dazzle, entrancement and enchantment which has been largely ignored in recent work on music and emotion. In this article, our work on the characterization and classification of music‐evoked emotion, which allowed us to identify 45 emotion terms relating to emotive states typically and recurrently induced by music, will be recapitulated. A model with nine emotion clusters, sometimes referred to as the GEMS model, provides a higher‐order representation of the interrelationships between these emotive states. Strikingly, the first of these basic music emotions, ‘wonder’, is akin to the emotion described by Homer 2,800 years ago. After elucidating the other primary music emotions, I will turn to the question of how emotions are elicited by music and will present our ‘induction rule model’ as an explanatory frame. This will be followed by a brief overview of measures of music‐induced emotion, where I will present some new findings on the neurobiology of the GEMS emotions. In the final section these empirical findings will be contextualised within current psychological and philosophical views of music and emotion.