Awe

Beethoven, a hero of Romanticism: Hoffman, E. T. A. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Leipzig), 1810. Translated by Martyn Clarke. In David Charlton, ed., E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 96–97, 98. This was Hoffmann writing about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in 1810. It isn’t just critics and musicians of “highbrow” music who consider music to be a medium of awe. Musician Nick Cave, lead singer of the post-punk band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, offers one of the best compact analyses of why we feel awe in music: “What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. . . . A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential.” Cave, Nick. “Considering Human Imagination the Last Piece of Wilderness, Do You Think AI Will Ever Be Able to Write a Good Song?” The Red Hand Files, Issue 22, blog post, January 2019. Accessed on February 16, 2022. https://www.theredhandfiles.com/considering-human-imagination-the-last-piece-of-wilderness-do-you-think-ai-will-ever-be-able-to-write-a-good-song/.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

The local flora and fauna: Although “wonder” and “wander” have different etymologies, the first referring to curiosity and the second to walking in a wending and winding way, they both become ways in which we characterize the mind and feeling, no doubt because of their shared connection to awe. “Are ‘Wonder’ and ‘Wander’ Etymologically Related?” English Stack Exchange, May 8, 2013.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/113411/are-wonder-and-wander-etymologically-related.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

“I acquired a strong taste”: Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882. Edited by Nora Barlow. New York: W. W. Norton, 1958, 61–62.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

Scholars of music: In Rentfrow, Peter J., and Daniel J. Levitin, eds. Foundations of Music Psychology: Theory and Research

. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. For a leading voice in the study of music and feeling, see: Huron, David. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. For a classic book in the scientific study of emotion and music: Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. For work more focused on distinct emotions, see: Gabrielsson, Alf, and Patrik N. Juslin. “Emotional Expression in Music.” In Handbook of Affective Sciences, edited by Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer, and H. H. Goldsmith, 503–34. London: Oxford University Press, 2003. Scherer, Klaus R., and Evandro Coutinho. “How Music Creates Emotion: A Multifactorial Approach.” In The Emotional Power of Music, edited by Tom Cochrane, Bernardino Fantini, and Klaus R. Scherer, 122–45. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

“ ‘What? What is this?’ ”: Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe.

Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990, 7.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

“Listening to Beethoven”: Popova, Maria. Figuring. New York: Pantheon Press, 2019, 462. Popova provides revelatory accounts of the roles of many queer women in great intellectual movements very relevant to awe, including Margaret Fuller and Rachel Carson.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

Her face moved through expressions: For new work on some of these expressions, see: Cowen, Alan S., and Dacher Keltner. “What the Face Displays: Mapping 28 Emotions Conveyed by Naturalistic Expression.” American Psychologist

75, no. 3 (2020): 349–64. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000488.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

This neural representation of music: Trost, Wiebke, Thomas Ethofer, Marcel Zentner, and Patrik Vuilleumier. “Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the Brain.” Cerebral Cortex 22 (2012): 2769–83.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

music shifts our bodies: Byrne, David. How Music Works. New York: Three Rivers, 2012.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT