Music, whether vocal or instrumental, consists of varying degrees of pitch, volume and duration. It is nothing other than a reflection of greater or lesser degrees of tension in the human organism, a direct reflection of human feeling. The logical structure of music is self-sufficient and it does not refer to outer reality directly in a logical way. Its components are formal and pseudo-mathematical. Its pseudo-logical rigour of scales and chords replace the logical rigour of external meaning. Musical sound is pseudo-external reality related to an external meaning and so musical sound is pseudo-external reality related to a logical external world by its qualities of space and time. Space is created by the movement of the scale so that melody describes a curve in space as well as enduring time. Harmony enriches and gives depth to melody and is as much a temporal element as is a scale and a chord. Harmony and melody individualise music of various periods by its degree of complexity so creating new qualities in its development. In real terms the technical development was made possible by the development of instruments and the increased capacity of communication necessitated by the expanding population and exploration by mankind of his environment. Thus the world of harmony changed and developed with the world generally at the same rate as man contemplated and his passions moved him to write music.

The above only deals with music as an abstract phenomenon using the interpretation of feelings as the solid basis of its development. One cannot deny that some composers do not use human experience as a basis for artistic abstraction. They choose to substitute cerebral processes and so abstract and create a different type of reality from the traditional musician. This process, however individual, still uses and extends the basic vocabulary of a traditional composer as a basis for his composition.
Ultimately, emotions are the behaviour of feelings through conscious or unconscious stimulation of the senses. As music has already been defined as a reflection of human feeling, it is clearly seen that emotions and music are inextricably linked.

Ron Tendler Jan 2015