Music and Emotion: the Dispositional or Arousal theory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-4445/2040Abstract
One of the ways of analysing the relationship between music and emotions in through musical expressiveness.
As the theory I discuss in this paper puts it, expressiveness in a particular kind of music's secondary quality or, to use the term which gives the theory its name, a disposition of music to arouse a certain emotional response in listeners.
The most accurate version of the dispositional theory is provided by Derek Matravers in his book Art and Emotion and in other papers: what I will try to do, then, is to illustrate Matravers theory and claim that it is a good solution to many problems concerning music and its capacity to affect our inner states.