Why We Love Music

Why does a person love his sweetheart, his food, his safety, his social
fellowship, his communion with nature? The answer to each of these is a long
story, involving not only common sense and scientific observation but a
profound intuitive insight, a self-revelation. In all, it will be found that
love is a favorable response, a reaching out for the satisfaction of a
fundamental human need, an effort to secure possession, and a willingness to
give an equivalent, indeed a more or less unconditional surrender...

It is therefore evident that any attempt to account for a specific affection,
such as the love of music, must be fractionated, placing responsibility in
turn upon the scientist, the artist, and the self-revelation of the inspired
music lover at each culture level. It has become the recognized function of
the psychology of music to integrate the contributions from all scientific
sources, such as anatomy, physiology, anthropology, acoustics, mental hygiene,
and logic, in their bearings upon the hearing of music, the appreciation of
music, musical skills, theories, and influences. To account for the emotional
power of music, the psychologist must consider the taproots of the artistic
nature of the individual in relation to the nature of the art object, music.
He must trace the unfolding of the organism as a whole from inherited
reflexes, instincts, urges, drives, and capacities in an integrated pattern;
he must consider the function of the art in human economy and especially the
goals attained by the pursuit of the art. In this task there is room for
intricate specializations and division of labor. It is my purpose here to
present merely a rough skeletal outline of some of the outstanding features
which underlie the love of music from the psychological point of view.

Every impulse has two aspects: attraction and repulsion. All of us love music
in some degree; all of us hate some music; and most of us in the economy of
nature are comparatively indifferent and extravagantly wasteful to the role
that music might play in our lives. Hatred and indifference to music are
important realities in life worthy of serious consideration; but our topic
restricts us to the positive side of musical response, the love of music.