Music and Emotion: Part One

By Elias Lopez

Have you ever thought about your emotions and their relation to music? Would you consider music to be a key part of who you are? In this series of articles, we’ll be focusing on the connection between music and our emotions.  This topic breaks down into separate stages in the musical process, including the composer or composers and their emotional states, the emotions felt on a public level by an audience, and the emotions felt on a personal level by individuals.  All these levels connect to give music a power to help define our sense of self and who we are.

The influence that music has on our emotional state is equivalent to how our emotions play a role in music; the two are intertwined. Some of the most momentous events in our lives such as birthdays, weddings, holidays, or funerals, to name a few, are all usually accompanied with different forms of music. On the other side of the coin, a lot of music throughout history, Pride by Kendrick Lamar, Adiós Amor by Christian Nodal, Hungarian Dance no. 5 by Johannes Brahms, have emotionally charged stories behind them, for better or worse. Music can be a healthy tool used to express ourselves, who we are, and how we feel emotionally (Courtney, 2014).

One composition I’d like to bring up first is “The Windmills of Your Mind” by French composer Michel Legrand, lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and originally recorded by Noel Harrison (1968). This piece can be broken down to two sides, the instrumental and lyrical side, but for now we’ll focus on the instrumental side. The reason I bring this up is because of how this piece, while still having the same keys and notes, can be performed so differently with a range of melancholy moods.

We can compare two performances: The Windmills of Your Mind by Michel Legrand and The Windmills of Your Mind by Eyran Katsenelenbogen. We can start with a physical analysis.  The Legrand performance is filmed on a lighted stage with an entire orchestra compared to the Katsenelenbogen performance, which centers on the single pianist with one beaming light down on him.  The two different stagings establish a major difference in how we can expect the performance to go on.

CD cover for Michel Legrand's "The Windmills of Your Mind"

Then there’s the performance itself.  Looking at just the two pianists, the way Michel Legrand plays is fast and hard, inviting the orchestra to go with him on this piece, which he plays with an almost jazz-like performance on the keys. It’s a mix of emotion and grandeur, a display of skill and thought in every movement with a mix of jazz and “quirkiness.” Eyran Katsenelengogen, plays alone, beginning with gently playing the keys, the quiet onset of what is to come. As he progresses, the way he plays becomes more intense, almost like how Micheal Legrand plays, but it’s not out of the same grandeur and feel from the first; it’s preformed in a way as if he’s rushing to something, trying to catch up with something realized a little too late, yet he still clings on to hope. As the piece continues, he plays alone, slowing down by the end to how he first started, gently pressing on the keys, evoking that feeling of longing turned to sorrow or dread before finishing on that final note like the final teardrop hitting the floor, the end of something beautiful.

Eyran Katsenelengogen plays "The Windmills of Your Mind"

The reason I write all this down is to set the tone of how important emotion is to music as well as how important music is to emotion. Even the lyrics of “The Windmills of Your Mind,” while not mentioned in major detail, carry a story of longing for someone, missing them yearly over and over like a circular pattern, or the chords set in a circling manner similar to a windmill.

Music can be seen as an extension or expression of oneself and can even be a representation of music itself.  James O. Young (2013) writes, “In the seventeenth century, composers such as Caccini, Cavalieri, Monteverdi and Barbara Strozzi, masters of the stile rappresentativo, explicitly took themselves to be representing the expression of emotion” (324). Every piece of music has a reason for existence, being born from some emotional experience, whether tragic or comic – it all comes from somewhere and from some feeling. It’s incredible how much music and emotion can influence each other, whether you are the composer, the audience, or just yourself alone with your favorite song. 

Hello, I’m Elias Lopez. I’m from Stratford, Connecticut, and I’m currently majoring in English at the University of Bridgeport. I plan to graduate in 2028 to go on to earn a degree in Civil Engineering. I’m a big fan of writing, especially fantasy and poetic pieces, as well having other hobbies such as roller skating, crocheting, drawing. Though I’m still beginning, I hope the work I do can eventually inspire others and show the joys that come with writing.