Implications for cognitive studies of musical expressiveness

The collection of papers that form the chapters of this book effectively draws attention to creation, perception, and performance of musical expressiveness in ways that have only rarely been considered in cognitive psychology. As the authors of the collection note, emotion and music have been the focus of extensive psychological investigations, with researchers locating and describing emotion in the music or in the listener. Features of music have been scrutinized, as well as characteristics of the listener and qualities of the listening context. In the majority of cases, the search bas involved examination of western tonal art music played in controlled laboratory settings. Emotion-"perceived" or "felt" -has been described using discrete primary categories (e.g. happy, angry, sad). The present collection offers the cognitive psychologist much more to consider regarding the complexity and multidimensionality of expressiveness, the cultural, social, and historical influences on what it is to be expressive, and the importance of considering diverse musical materials, performance settings, and genres. I shall delineate some of the advances made in the collection, and take up the implications of these fresh ideas for cognitive studies of musical expressiveness.