An attentive listening to Wagner's Tristan reliably leaves me weeping every time. But the fact that I have a highly charged emotional response to that piece of music, or that I get a like kick out of improvising on the guitar or playing simple pieces on the violin, is not sufficient to show that listening to or performing certain types of music is an ethical good. Maybe it's just a diversion, a waste of time--like playing a video game (which can also be "emotionally charged" in its own way).
That in mind, I'm hoping Kivy will be interested in discussing what it is that makes music peculiarly worth pursuing. Should I spend the next 15 minutes listening to Bach or learning a Charlie Parker head, or are there generally more important things I should attend to?

On the first point, I think the one necessary condition of music is that it's created for the purpose of consumption as music. Something is "music" if it's creator says it is, and by doing so, he or she is asking us to appreciate in a certain way. This may mean we go to a concert hall, we listen on headphones, we view it in the context of other music we have heard. "4'33''" by John Cage, the piece where musicians sit quietly (not playing) for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, is music because it's "performed," the audience knows the performance starts, and listens for the period of time.
这是我最初的想法。
On the point about music arousing emotions, I think that it really is mostly in us, as listeners. Many people have similar emotions in response to music because those people have similar experiences listening to music and similar cultural backgrounds. When I, as a Westerner, hear traditional Chinese music, it sounds "exotic" and "mysterious" to me, and many Western listeners would probably agree. Would Chinese listeners hear the same qualities? Probably not.
我们的大脑可能有一些事实限制我们如何感知音乐。婴儿的哭声可能会让人们普遍感到痛苦，同样，某些声音可能会引起情绪，而与文化背景无关。可能存在一些天生的反应，但即便如此，这些由生物驱动的反应可能会被文化改变。不同的文化不会以相同的方式悲伤。

有趣的帖子,肯。
在他的菲尔。评论论文，“叙述性解释”，David Velleman谈到了一些理论，根据这些理论，早期经验往往会在我们的大脑中留下痕迹，也许是“模板”。这些对应于“情绪”，而情绪有内部结构或阶段。在以后的生活中，当我们听到故事或严格意义上的“叙事”时，这些叙事会唤起情感——不知何故，模板被激活(这里是我的原话)，我们会“重新体验”这种情感。Velleman认为这是叙事和叙事理解的特征——它涉及一种情感理解(“deja senti，而不是deja vu”)。
I think roughly speaking music might work in a similar way. All of this of course is very rough and impressionistic. Music that evokes emotions is typically structured internally in "stages", as it were, and these may be isomorphic to the internal stages of emotions.
Many people find opera especially moving. Perhaps this is because it combines the power of storytelling and music to evoke emotions.

从具身认知的范式来看，音乐和情感有一个有趣的观点。事实上，只有7%的语言交流是由我们使用的语言组成的，这对任何人来说可能都不是新闻。其余的则来自肢体语言和面部表情。(Mehrabian)。所以手势在所有交流中占了高达93% !也许我们能从听觉上识别出演奏音乐时所使用的手势，并想象“如果我们做出这些手势，我们会有什么感觉?”这被称为“模仿假说”(考克斯)。一个很好的例子是，如果你给某人打电话，你很快就能知道那个人是心烦意乱，还是快哭了。但如何?这个理论基本上是说，我们首先听单词，然后我们“想象”我们的声道必须处于什么样的结构中，才能发出那个声音。 The next step is then to 'imagine', how WE would be feeling,if our vocal tracts were in that position. In this way we can infer emotion. Also think about someone playing air guitar. Do they just play it with their hands, or do their faces contort with the 'imagination' of the emotion the guitarist feels? It seems there is some form of mapping going on...from our embodied experiences, to the target experiences. This is known as Metaphoric Logic. Basically it seems that there may be a strong connection between Motion (gestural, postural etc..) and eMotion...What think you all?

41岁的我一直在听高中最后一年的音乐，我发现这些音乐听起来令人沮丧悲伤。为什么会这样呢?

41岁的我一直在听高中最后一年的音乐，我发现这些音乐听起来令人沮丧悲伤。为什么会这样呢?

just some scattered thoughts:
我不相信每个人在音乐中听到的形式或结构都是音乐学校所教或描述的。我相信一种形式被听到了，一种结构被听到了，但非专业的听众可能会用更一般，更主观的术语来构思这些东西，这是可能的，例如，当他们说"我听到了旋律"，专家可以详细地把这个概念及其伴随的经验分成更明显的类别或语言表达/描述，比如和声，母题，对位，等等，这并不是说非专业人士不受这些事情的影响，或不注意它们，但通常无法描述，或用非常主观的术语描述。
i also want to add that what is considered as a non-musical sound still has a form, a structure, and a relationship to other sounds. i might add that in some spaces, non-musical sounds can be quite regular, mechanical even. some non-musical sounds have rhythmic and harmonic, even melodic properties too, if you look at things in those specialized terms...
我也相信，专业作曲家和非专业作曲家可能听到相同的东西，但不属于相同的概念框架。当然，这最终无法被证明……
as for the idea of some sort of "emodied mapping", not everyone knows how to play an instrument or how it feels to play a certain sound...and...not everyone probably feels the same way when they play the same sound. one can uninvested in what one does...i still think there might be something to the notion, but in at least some cases i'd say it might have to do more with the idea the listener has of the composers or musicians gestures (and their relationship to one's mental state) than with their reality.
also, i'm not sure if any music is non-representational, it might just be question of how it is representational. this might differ in some cases on a case to case basis...

oh yeah,
i was just thinking how the official terms used to describe music, while being useful, should not be regarded as the only terms that are useful, or possibly deserving of an official status. there are many ways to listen to and describe something!

Hi there,
I hope my comment can bring another perspective into this discussion, as I post this as being a songwriter myself.
When I remember my first steps into songwriting (which was at the age of about 10), I can remember that I just felt the need, that I had to express a feeling, a state of mind or whatever you may call it, in a song, in music. I think this was due to the fact, that I had really learned about my feelings through music and songs. The best feeling for a song was, when it just caught me somewhere, where I at that point of time emotionally really was at. Of course, music could also reveal some feelings without having any relation to the actual state of mind/emotion. It can make me sad, even though I'm not sad, when I listen to it. But the really great thing about a song was for me, when it expressed a feeling for me that I had inside of me for such a long time, not being able to name it, not being able to explain it or putting it into words. In these moments I just thought: This is just exactly how I feel!!! When these moments appeared it was so liberating! I felt so thankful for being able to really understand a feeling by the help of a song after such a long time of carrying it around without knowing how to express it.
我记得我自己在想:“嗯，也许这也应该反过来……!”事实也的确如此。我可以用一首歌来表达我自己的感受，我找不到其他的方式来表达我的感受。
And this, of course, also helped me to really see through the emotion better.
从那时起，我就爱上了歌曲创作，从来没有停止过。时至今日，当我创作音乐时，我的想法仍然是它对别人产生同样的影响，就像它在某些特定时刻对我产生的影响一样。它正好描述了听音乐的人的情绪，并帮助他更好地理解自己的感觉，然后有一个表达它的方式。到那时，你就能真正看到这种感觉，而这首歌描述并揭示了这种感觉。
I hope this comment was helpful. I'm so thankful that there is something so beautiful in life as music.
Best,
telstar

1. Music as I've been told is a way of measuring time through sound. Thus even when non-professional listeners (like myself) hear it the patterns such as "repetitions", "layering", "cyclic structures" and whatnot can be detected. True we may not know how to express it in a formal way but the way in which the underlying intuition about music come about, is formal.
2. The power of music, as I see it, is not emotive in that it is not any particular emotion a piece expresses but a sense. Just as words are saturated with sense so is music. They are sometimes ineffable because the content is so abstract but perhaps what a piece of music is trying to express is not emotion of an idea as we experience it. Out of movement and progression, there is sense, and out of sense there is a thought, however abstract. It is the human tendency to superimpose its familiar understanding (of emotions, feeling, whatnot) to forms and beings that they can not quite make out what it is exactly yet.

欣赏音乐是后天习得的行为。在很小的时候，许多孩子接触摇滚乐、说唱音乐或乡村音乐，如果他们从他们信任的来源(父母、兄弟姐妹，前10名)得到积极的强化，那么孩子就会将其同化为“好音乐”。
在以后的生活中，我们开始抵制其他形式的音乐，因为它们似乎与我们喜欢的音乐没有共同的特征。如果你在学校上过普通的音乐课，你可能记得你讨厌古典音乐、歌剧和其他“高级”音乐。这种音乐不符合今天广播音乐的标准和弦、节奏、节奏和器乐，因此，如果你愿意，它就成为一种后天的爱好。我相信莫扎特和普契尼对当代音乐也会有同样的感受!
我在大学里接受了7年的音乐训练，我表演过一些非常奇怪的东西，大多数普通人不会把它们当作音乐来欣赏。我已经学会了欣赏这些作品的智力成分——作曲家们用奇怪的节奏、奇怪的声音写作，或者只是在特定的时间内写出一种情感或戏剧效果。这些都是智力练习，但仍然被认为是音乐(至少被作曲家认为是)。
在我上大学的时候，我爱上了非洲和拉丁音乐——作为一个打击乐手，我能认同节奏的复杂性。音乐以一种对我来说似乎很熟悉的方式“刻骨铭心”，一种巴赫仍在努力向我传递的感觉。这种感觉并没有贬低古典作曲家——它只是强化了这样一个概念:我小时候接触的音乐结构决定了我现在能接受其他形式的音乐的程度。
Is it possible to grow up loving John Cage and hating everything else? I believe it is - it's simply a matter of what we are exposed to early in life, and how we are able to ascribe meaning to other forms of music we are unfamiliar with later in life. Music is sensory input that we identify with at some level, due to our previous experience with it.

"Q" the Enchanter asks if there might be "more important things to do" than deal with music (important in what sense?). I have concluded that unless one is religiously inclined, there can be no more important thing human beings can concern themselves with than art. It is probably the major talent differentiating ourselves from other species, even more than language. Music is indeed a mysterious art.

音乐是灵魂的灵感，让我们重新焕发活力，帮助我们变得更好。We should make many of our daily tasks to the sound of music