All music does not, necessarily, express "emotion." Howard Beckar (2001) sees music and other art forms as the product of a cooperative effort requiring the skills and participation of many different individuals; these individuals may not necessarily being to the creation of music identical or even substantive emotions. Beckar (2001) further suggests that the emotional responses of audiences to music are the result not of the music per se, but of the conventions that have been established which state or infer that a certain tone "means" a certain thing and should inspire a specific reaction. The emotional response to the music, in Beckar's (2001) view, is generated not by the music, per se, but by the attributions associated with tone, scale, harmony, melody and so forth.
Alan Merriman (1964) sees music as having specific functions that are not necessarily associated with emotions per se. While some music is clearly mean to evoke an emotional response (i.e., love songs, war chants, fu8neral dirges), not all music has such a purpose; some music is meant to inform, to instruct, and to teach. It may be a form of oral history in some instances, or a simple type of mnemonic for instructing children in the letters of the alphabet. Merrimam (1964) believes that music has far more functions than that of simply inspiring or evoking an emotional response in listeners.
Beckar, H. (2001). Art as collective action. In C.L. Harrington
& D.R. Bielby (eds.), Popular Culture, Malden, Ma.:
Merrimam A.P. (1964). Uses and functions of music. In A.P.
Merriman (ed.), The Anthropology of Music. Chicago:
Northwestern University Press, pp. 209 - 229.
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