Emotion in Music

Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. The painting is of five nude caucasian female figures, one seated in the foreground with her back to the viewer, the others standing in different poses. All are drawn with sharp lines and corners and slightly misshapen forms. The figure on the left has a head with a markedly darker complexion, and her right leg is portrayed in an unnaturally cubic shape. The two figures on the right appear to be wearing tribal masks. The 1907 painting Les Demoiselles D'Avignon by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Considered controversial and immoral at its first exhibition in Paris, the work's harsh portrayal of the female human form was one of the first paintings to deliberately eschew standards of perspective and aesthetics.
(Museum of Modern Art | Public Domain)

Through intense rhythms and expressive techniques, music is often used portray deep, primal emotion and explore the broader human experience.

Primitivism

A common theme in music is a fascination with other cultures. Often, musical characteristics of another culture will be referenced or appropriated into an established style with varying levels of fidelity. In some cases, the culture being referenced is implied to be less developed or inferior. In music and other forms of art, this is called primitivism, and can be a element of cultural colonialism.

In Classical Music

In the 18th century, Vienna was a significant European cultural center, and composers working there were influenced by the musical traditions of cultures to the southeast. A popular technique in music of the Classical era was to evoke the percussion-heavy Janissary bands present during the 1683 siege of the city by the Ottoman Empire.

Measures 24 through 28 of the third movement of Sonata No. 11 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The left hand part has grace notes arpeggiating triads on each downbeat.
Figure 1: Measures 24–28 of the third movement of Sonata No. 11, K. 331, a 1783 piece by Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This movement, subtitled "alla turca," features grace notes on the downbeats in the left hand meant to be evocative of Janissary bands.

Composers in the Classical and Romantic eras were also enamored with the Romani culture, and often appropriated its musical styles into all types of works.

In Popular Music

Similar appropriations have occurred throughout the history of popular music. The Mikado, an 1885 operetta by the English composer/librettist team of Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert, features a stereotypical portrayal of Japanese culture as a comic conceit. Minstrelsy was a racist portrayal of Black culture involving music, drama and dance by white performers — often wearing blackface — that was common in early 19th-century America.

Primalism

A form of primitivism explored by some composers is primalism, art which portrays human behaviour or emotion that is unconstrained by societal norms. Relevant subject matter includes pre-civilized cultures, apocalyptic fiction, and psychological distress.

The Rite of Spring, a 1913 ballet by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, portrays a fictional pagan culture participating in the ritual sacrifice of a young girl. The ballet, which utilizes intense, driving rhythms, unpredictably changing meters, and harsh dissonances, was controversial when it first premiered.

Measures 76 through 83 of The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. The strings are playing a dissonant chord on every eighth note of every measure, punctuated inconsistently with accents and dissonant chords in the horns.
Figure 3: Measures 76–83 of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring. The dissonant chords and harsh rhythms of this movement portray a ritualistic dance of an uncivilized pagan culture.

A similar evokation of primal emotion is portrayed in a more modern setting by American composer Leonard Bernstein in his 1956 opera Candide, which includes public execution by burning.

Figure 4: The drum break that precedes the bridge in the 1983 song Owner of a Lonely Heart by the British band Yes uses drum fills, sampled orchestra hits, and yells to create a primal sound.

Expressionism

As represented in various types of art including painting, sculpture and cinema, expressionism involves the exaggerated portrayal of intense emotion through art. A well-known example of this movement is The Scream, an 1893 painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.

German composer Arnold Schoenberg was a notable expressionist composer who combined strict atonality with expressive techniques like sprechstimme and klangfarbenmelodie. Schoenberg, his students and other composers writing in a similar style came to be known as the Second Viennese School.

However, expressionism as a musical idea can be seen to include many other works, many of which portray darker themes such as anger, fear, and societal decay. Notable works in this genre are German composer Kurt Weill's 1928 production The Threepenny Opera and American composer Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, both of which are set amid lower-class, crime-ridden subcultures of Victorian England, and focus on hyper-realistic themes of destitution and murder.

Figure 6: Excerpts from Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg's 1913 musical drama Die glückliche Hand. This expressionistic work calls for a solo baritone, two mimed characters and a chorus performing sprechstimme.

Expressionism in Popular Music

The intense emotion which typifies expressionism can be found in a large cross-section of popular styles. Specific genres which are centered on these ideas include punk, which began as a reaction against the higher production levels of rock music but which coincided with a wider antiestablishment movement.

Metal

Perhaps the most prevalent form of expressionism in popular music is metal, which is characterized by intense, driving rhythms, overdriven electric guitars, energetic and distorted vocals including screaming and growling, and often violent lyrical themes. Even with these defining characteristics, metal has a large number of subgenres, ranging from commercially popular bands like Van Halen and Guns N' Roses to controversial death metal bands like Deicide.

Figure 8: The music video for the 2021 song Forlorn; by American metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada.

Emotion in Music: Summary

  • Primitivism describes music which focuses on a style or culture considered less developed or inferior.
    • In the Classical era, composers were often inspired by cultures that felt foreign to them, such as those of southwest Asia.
    • Primitivism is often considered racist, especially when different cultures are lampooned or stereotyped.
    • Primalism is a type of primitivism which focuses on people or situations which are unrestrained by societal norms.
  • Expressionism involves the exaggerated portrayal of intense emotion through art.
    • Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg was a well-known expressionist who used expressive techniques like sprechstimme, a vocal technique which blends signing with normal speech, and klangfarbenmelodie, the use of regularly changing timbres in a single melodic phrase.
    • Expressionism is common in popular music, most notably in genres like punk, emo, and metal.

Exercises

Exercise 1: Identifying Expressionistic Techniques

Exercise 2: Writing a Primal Passage