Imagination, Music, and the Emotions: A Philosophical Study

Articulates an imaginationist solution to the question of how purely instrumental music can be perceived by a listener as having emotional content.

Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousal...