Fred,

There's at least one stooge here, and I’m sure it's you. Music is a selective recreation of emotion - with the emotion conveyed by means of specific patterns of sound which engender or re-create human emotion in the listener. As Rand said, this process is intimately related to the listener’s own sense-of-life; the listener responds in a process akin to "I would feel this way if ..."

But I suspect you know all that and you're just trolling. Again.

An interview with Alexandra York in which she discusses why classical music is so important in education is instructive:

Because [classical] music deals with broad abstractions—triumph, defeat, love, loss. In this way, it allows a young person to personalize what is universal in the human condition, to feel on a grand scale both the hope and the hurt that necessarily accompany an individual life fully lived. For teenagers, in particular, such music unlocks gateways to mature excursions into the ecstasy and the vulnerability, the headiness and the hazards of love, for example. And the puissance of these experiences is heightened by the complexity of structure found in classical music, not cheapened by the flailing and screaming incited by rock. I have found that, once young people understand what is in classical music, they naturally turn to it in moments of emotional need to help them experience deep stirrings that may not make it to the surface of consciousness by themselves. Repressed boys, especially, can benefit immensely from music study.

The nub of what [Schopenhauer] has to say is that, as far as we are concerned as listeners, music proceeds by creating certain wants which it then spins out before satisfying. Even the most simple melody, considered as a succession of single notes, makes us want it to close eventually on the tonic, no matter how widely it may range before it does so, and provokes in us a baffled dissatisfaction if it ends on any note other than that; indeed, the melody has to end not only on that one note but on a strong beat in the rhythm at the same time. [S. obviously hadn't heard much jazz at this stage. :-) ]
If it fails to do both these things together we usually feel something harsher even than dissatisfaction, we feel outright rejection: 'This can't be the end, It's got to go on. It can't just stop here.' If the music is more than a simple melody, and has harmony too, the harmony does the same thing: the chords create in us a sense of dissatisfaction followed by a desire for them to resolve, if only eventually, in a certain direction, and only if they do finally resolve on the tonic chord is the longing in us stilled. Schopenhauer sums this up by saying: 'Music consists generally in a constant succession of chords more or less disquieting, i.e. of chords exciting desire, with chords more or less quieting and satisfying; just as the life of the heart (the will) is a constant succession of greater or lesser disquietude, through desire or fear, with composure in degrees just as varied. Thus music directly corresponds to our inner states,and its movements to the movements of our inner lives.

Suspension does indeed create suspense. In its ordinary use it comes as the penultimate chord of a piece of music, when we have just heard what we thought was going to be the penultimate chord. This is nearly always a discord. I am using the word 'discord' here in its technical sense of a chord in tonal music which is not self-sufficient but requires resolution on to a concord - which is what we now confidently expect to happen. but instead of this the discord we have just heard moves to another discord - which only then, and perhaps after sounding extendedly, resolves on the tonic. In that instant when discord moves unexpectedly to discord we feel, figuratively, an intake of breath, a gasp of surprise. The tension we had assumed was about to be stilled is, on the contrary, prolonged, and not just prolonged but screwed up an extra notch. This means that the resolution, when it does come, is all the greater  - we so to speak let out our astonished intake of breath in a sigh of  heightened satisfaction. And says Schopenhauer, 'This is clearly an analogue of the satisfaction of the will which is enhanced through delay.'

Peter,

I enjoyed your response to Robert; it was informative and genuine. Tristan's connections to quotes are fascinating...the affects of musical phenomenon and how Wagner worked a grand scale work on that, magnificent.

You have got to tell us (or perhaps only me) if you work with architectural forms or spaces, or what certain forms create what emotional tensions and how you work with them.

I am fascinated how flat paintings don't register very well the next day on people and how someone will not forget a Rembrandt for days or years having only seen it for a few minutes--has to do with the form and space and the color vibrations that make that possible...mastery of technical execution for the purpose of entering into the viewers psyche.

I am puzzled by Fred and Robert...its something like a chess game for them when for us it is nothing like that at all. I think I speak for you too when I say its like constructing a passionate monument...and all the knowledge in the hand and eye, and aesthetic discoveries about how things work from psychological reactions to engineering of structures and the anatomy of paint..it’s not about winning an argument but about expressing knowledge.

Hi Robert,

I believe you quoted Peter here: "Anyway, you say that you can't experience the broad emotional abstractions in classical music?"

And then you wrote: "I experience emotions from classical music just fine. but emotional abstractions? what are those? the very concept seems self contradictory, as emotions are inherently a preconceptual faculty of the mind. your emotions can't form abstractions any more than raw sensory perception can."

One broad emotional abstraction would be "happy" and there would be as many as emotional states.  And you could have subtle overlapping emotional states...that can create emotions of extreme nuances.

No one here is saying that your emotions form abstractions rather the mind identifies emotional states. Artists use these states all the time: that color makes me feel this;  that opening gives me the same feeling of a burst of sunshine; etc.

This is the basis for Rand's psycho-epistemology, an aspect that is inherent in art creativity and appreciation, a method of emotional connections. For many artists and enthusiasts feeling the emotional themes of work is what art is about.

Michael