This thoughtful examination compares musical elements to mental processes, showing how harmony, rhythm, and timbre work together to influence perception and mood. Through clear comparisons and illustrative examples, it argues that music can both reflect and awaken emotion, even as it defies a single, fixed meaning.

Gehring traces how words, contexts, and backgrounds color our listening, and how music’s patterns can act as fringe-like accompaniments to thought. The book surveys harmony’s role in guiding melody, the way counterpoint voices join or diverge, and how structural devices like cadences and stretto mirror cognitive habits. It also presents debates among scholars about what music can and cannot express, offering a balanced view of competing theories.

Understand how harmony and melody interact to shape emotional experience.
See how musical form parallels patterns of thought and memory.
Learn about the different ways scholars define “expression” in music.
Get tools for thinking about music that go beyond simple program or story.

Ideal for readers curious about the science of listening, musicology, and the psychology of emotion.

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