In this extraordinary volume, building on decades of research and music analysis, Michael Spitzer offers the reader not one but two books. He not only constructs a richer model for the staging and experiencing of musical emotion, but he also breaks new ground in demonstrating, from Hildegard of Bingen to the latest popular music, how music has its own history of changing emotional cultures, and the extent to which we can reconstruct what it was possible to feel or express in each era. It is thrilling to follow Spitzer's masterful arguments as he concisely dissects not only the speculative claims of philosophers throughout history, but also the theories and experimental results of psychologists of our own time, drawing out their positive contributions to forge a theory of breathtaking scope.
Michael Spitzer is Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool, leading the department's work on Classical music. He is former Chair of the Editorial Board of Music Analysis and past President of the Society for Music Analysis. His many publications explore the interactions between music theory, philosophy, and psychology. He inaugurated the series of International Conferences on Music and Emotion at Durham in 2009 and co-organized the International Conference on the Analysis of Popular Music in Liverpool in 2013.