“The Black Box” of Musical Feeling: Facts and Fiction

Is it necessary and is it possible to look at musical emotion from the angle of both experimental psychology and musicology? Having in mind musicological theories and experimental data the author is making a description of psychological origin and actual contents of emotional response to music as well as emotivist and cognitivist approaches to it. There are two main sources for the discourse presented here: they are experimental psychology of music and theory of music perception by Vyacheslav Medushevsky. Main candidates for the status of scientific facts are empathic nature of musical feeling as connected with imagined persona of musical narrative and communicational essence of music perception shaped by the most basic non-notational features of sound. This paper is the first out of two on the subject. The second one carrying the attempt of modeling a working pattern of music perception is planned for publication in the coming issues of the journal. Keywords: musical communication, basic emotions, non-notational performative features of sound, empathic contents of musical emotion, emotivists and cognitivists, the imagined persona of piece and style