Formalists maintain that musical works are apprehended and appreciated solely as formal sound structures and so lack extra-musical content, whereas anti-formalists contend that musical works can be ‘about’ things in some sense, e.g., by expressing or representing them. James Young’s Critique of Pure Music is an extended argument against formalism (mainly the formalism of Peter Kivy), which aims to show that music can represent emotions and thereby provide knowledge or insight into these emotions, and so has cognitive significance or content (terms Young uses interchangeably). His central argument, roughly, is that:
-
(1) by being expressive of an emotion, E, music can arouse E in listeners, which can provide insight into E, whereby the music has cognitive significance;
-
(2) when something has cognitive significance, is intended to have this significance, and this significance is accessible to others, it counts as a representation;
-
(3) some musical works are intended to have cognitive significance (e.g., to express or arouse emotions) and some listeners do register this (e.g., by feeling the emotion or hearing it in the music);
-
∴(C) music can represent emotions (and so has extra-musical content).
In Chapter 1, Young deals with music’s capacity to be expressive of emotions and offers a resemblance theory similar to that proposed by Stephen Davies (Reference Davies1994), on which a musical work is said to be expressive of an emotion in virtue of a resemblance between the work’s audible properties and perceptible properties characteristic of human behaviour expressing the emotion (e.g., slow, heavy music sounding like the way a sad person’s movements typically look). Many empirical studies are cited that show a tendency for people to report hearing the same broad emotion types (e.g., sadness or happiness) in the same musical excerpts; to block the objection that this is due to conventions or learned associations, further studies are cited that suggest humans are ‘hardwired’ from birth to hear certain types of sounds or sound structures as expressive of certain emotions or emotion types.
In Chapter 2, Young deals with music’s capacity to arouse emotion, arguing that it is able to do so in four ways: by triggering brain reflexes, by affecting bodily movements and rhythms, by creating expectations which are confirmed or frustrated, and through emotional contagion. (As in Chapter 1, numerous empirical studies are cited to support the claim that music does arouse emotions in these ways.) Music’s capacity to arouse emotion through contagion is key to understanding how it can be said to represent emotions and provide psychological insight into them. The conclusion of Chapter 2 follows from that of Chapter 1 insofar as contagion can only take place given some perceived expressive behaviour from which the percipient ‘catches’ the emotion; if music did not express emotion by resembling such behaviour, emotional contagion would be less plausible.
In Chapter 3, Young builds on the first two chapters by arguing that—because music is expressive of and arouses emotions in the ways specified, and is often intended to do so by its makers (with a number of historical examples provided to support this claim)—music can properly be said to represent these emotions, contrary to the formalist position. Young’s understanding of representation is more fully explained in his earlier Art and Knowledge (Reference Young2001: 23-64); basically, he holds that a representation must have content/cognitive significance, which for Young means that “it is a source of knowledge about the object represented” (89); it must be intended to have this content; and the content must be accessible to (i.e., recognizable by) someone other than the one who intended it. Since expressiveness and arousal of emotion meet all three conditions, they entail representation (so understood).
In the final chapters, Young explores some consequences of this argument. In Chapter 4, he shows how this account of musical representation solves—or rather dissolves—the supposed ‘problem of opera’ by showing there is no incompatibility between the ways music and words/lyrics affect audiences. In Chapter 5, he argues that his version of anti-formalism best accounts for music’s value, especially since it is able to explain how music can be profound, which formalism cannot do satisfactorily.
The extensive references to empirical studies on the effects of music, and to historical material (e.g., remarks made by composers), will be of interest both to musicologists and to those working in the philosophy of music or on related aspects in the philosophy of art (e.g., artists’ intentions, the arousal of emotions, or questions of expression/expressiveness). How convincing Young’s central argument will be is less certain, as it rests largely on an acceptance of his own understanding of representation, which even other anti-formalists will likely resist. There are a few worries involving this notion of representation. Most importantly, Young’s definition seems not to correspond to what Kivy and other formalists mean when they deny that music can represent, and so his argument may not directly counter theirs. Also, Young’s definition risks being too broad by counting all sources of knowledge that can be intended as such, and all intentional acts that arouse an emotion, as representations. (Consider: I blow a whistle with the intention to frighten people, they are frightened, and they come to know what it is like to be frightened by a sudden loud noise, but I have not ‘represented’ fear in any conventional sense of the term.) Furthermore, there is the question of whether Young’s arguments, if sound, show that music represents emotions, or expressions of emotions, where the latter may not give the kind of knowledge and insight Young wants. Finally, one may wonder why Young needs to maintain that music represents emotions in order to argue that it can have cognitive significance, provide insight, etc. The reason is found in Art and Knowledge, where he commits himself to the view that “artworks have cognitive value only when they represent” (Reference Young2001: 52-53); without this commitment, it would be enough for him to counter the formalist by showing that music expresses and arouses emotions, without bringing in representation.
Despite these worries, Young’s book is clearly and engagingly written and, even if readers are not fully convinced by its central argument, it will make formalist readers account for the empirical data Young cites and provoke anti-formalists who agree with his conclusions, but who do not accept his arguments, to come up with alternate defences for them.
