A Little Mood Music: On the Relationship between Musical and Psychological Moods

Abstract

We regularly talk about music as if it has moods or, at least, expresses moods. However, the relationship between psychological and musical moods remains mysterious. Music doesn’t have feelings, so how could it have moods? To make up for that, many philosophers have provided theories of expression that don’t rely on music actually possessing anything mood-like. In this paper, I argue that if we take seriously an account of psychological moods that includes patterns of attention as part of the mood itself, we can explain how music can, in fact, have moods; namely, by having a structure that resembles the structure of a mood. I then explain how this not only solves the puzzle of how music expresses moods but also helps us explain how we interact with musical moods.