Catchy music makes you tap your foot. Emotive music catches you off guard and without warning, has your eyes pricking and nose running. So why do we have this physiological response to music?
Think about your favourite piece of music… and then imagine hearing it live for the first time. If you’re having a trouble, have a listen to this beautiful piece of Bach for solo piano:
Or if that didn’t conjure up much, try this – the stirring second movement of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto:
If you felt a lump in your throat or a stinging sensation in your eyes, you wouldn’t be alone. Music can elicit highly emotional responses – a 2017 survey of 892 adults found that nearly 90% had experienced feeling like crying when listening to music.
Outside of musical enjoyment, crying can be a great cathartic release, helping to relieve stress when we’re feeling sad or anxious. Tears contain stress hormones, which are released from our bodies when we cry. But why do we cry to music?
IT can feel like music speaks directly to our hearts. Think of the other emotional contexts music is used in, from rousing hymns at weddings, to poignant elegies at , and rousing marches at graduations as we begin our adult lives.
Shedding a few tears to music is considered a healthy response. It can help us process our deepest emotions in a safe setting – in a concert hall, surrounded by fellow music lovers, at a ceremony, or perhaps at home, listening to a recording.
One of the main purposes of music is to communicate something beautiful for our collective appreciation. So if the music makes you cry, it’s probably doing its job right.
When we feel an emotional response to the music, it can be down to familiarity. Music conjures of memories of the past – of a loved one, a dream or a family member – and hearing great classical music can help connect us to times gone by, creating create a sense of poignancy that this music was also enjoyed by audiences over 200 years ago.
Tears are often invoked when the musical choices feel familiar. In the build-up to the great pianistic climax in Rachmaninov’s concerto, anticipation builds and the reward circuit in our brain is triggered, as the ‘expected’ moment in the music finally arrives and the feeling of tension and anticipation is released.
Our physiological reactions can be down to pure musical appreciation – the feeling of awe we experience at experiencing art performed at a high level.
We might feel awestruck at the virtuosity of the performers, or the intricacy of the musical writing. Techniques like long melodic phrases, harmonic tension and resolve, and changes in intensity can elicit feelings of satisfaction, hope and even hopelessness.
that dramatic changes in dynamics, rhythm and texture can light up the brain, and that satisfying harmonic journeys can trigger the reward-related regions of our brains.
When words are difficult, music can communicate the unsayable – that’s a paraphrase of a quote by Hans Christian Andersen, who once said, “Where words fail, music speaks”.
The point is, there’s also something to be said for the wordlessness of orchestral music. Much like a , the narrative created with music and no words can make us feel on a deeper level that speaks to everyone universally.
Whether you cry or get goosebumps while listening to music can also depend on your personality type. .
