Harmony -- Nature or Nurture?

[cuberdrift]

Pondering about the emotional impact chords/chord progressions have on our minds is something that I frequently do.

Today, I had decided to surf a bit about that, and stumbled across this website. One there argues:

Chords don't give us feelings, we give chords feelings.

Do you agree, or disagree? 

Personally, I find this realisation quite disturbing. This would mean that I was TOLD how to feel about music! Outrageous! Shocking! Unimaginably disappointing! 

That means that my ENTIRE concept, artistic vision, and emotional and perhaps even spiritual perception of music has been shaped by OTHER PEOPLE. This feels PERFECTLY unfair!

So this would mean that a minor triad is sad because someone else tells me it's sad? A major is happy because others say so?!

Pathetic. That would be like liking sugar because others say it is sweet and pleasant to the tongue!!! 

I won't deny that there are lots of factors that can affect the way a chord, or chord progression, moves us, in the emotional sense. However, to say that it is purely the work of socio-cultural aspects seems to be disturbing.

What do you think??

[Petter]

I saw some program where they tried this on some remote natural people in Africa with no previous exposure to western music. They were told to relate to pictures depicting happy or sad depending on the sounds they heard and they reacted mostly like anyone raised in the tradition would.
 As for social culture impact in general; I think there is something to it with everything we feel and do, you just can't experience things in a social vacuum.

[cuberdrift]

I saw some program where they tried this on some remote natural people in Africa with no previous exposure to western music. They were told to relate to pictures depicting happy or sad depending on the sounds they heard and they reacted mostly like anyone raised in the tradition would.

This is good to know. Where are these findings from, exactly?

As for social culture impact in general; I think there is something to it with everything we feel and do, you just can't experience things in a social vacuum.

Of course. However, I take that this is still much different from claiming that our responses to music depend on how we are told to feel them, right?

[ted]

I have thought for many years that music comprises wholly abstract entities which communicate nothing at all, the listening brain imposing whatever it feels in the moment. It is not a popular or conventional view but I have yet to encounter a satisfactory argument against it. Emotion, in this context, at least for me, is a small, somewhat inconsistent aspect of the totality of mental states engendered by musical sound. Likewise harmony, taken in isolation from other, probably more powerful properties, has no universal semantic of its own.

So overall I experience some difficulty getting to grips with what the topic question actually means, because music is entirely individual reaction and harmony is an arbitrary surface feature. If the broader question were asked, does music, or any piece of it, have universal, communicable meaning over all human brains, I would come down heavily in the negative.

[mjames]

Not one or the other. It's both.

[outin]

Not one or the other. It's both.

Yes. The studies done on this subject have not been that comprehensive, but the results implied that certain associations are natural to MOST humans (not all though) while others are heavily based on cultural learning. And if we go way back, it may have all be learned when we all lived in the same cave.

[stevensk]

"This would mean that I was TOLD how to feel about music! Outrageous! Shocking! Unimaginably disappointing!"


-Why is it better if nature "TOLD" you how to feel about music?

[cuberdrift]

"This would mean that I was TOLD how to feel about music! Outrageous! Shocking! Unimaginably disappointing!"


-Why is it better if nature "TOLD" you how to feel about music?

I don't like being told what to feel by people. 

[outin]

I don't like being told what to feel by people. 

Don't worry, you don't need to be told...You've picked things up in a much more subtle way growing up 

[stevensk]

Don't worry, you don't need to be told...You've picked things up in a much more subtle way growing up  

-Love that answer! Outin!  

-And love your question Cyberdrift!