Melodic Line and Emotion: Cooke's Theory Revisited

Abstract

Melodic line as an emotion-carrying attribute of music was examined in an attempt to test Cooke's (1959) theory, which posits the existence of a basic set of melodic lines or "terms" which convey a particular emotional meaning. Four bi-polar dimensions of emotional expression, Sorrow-Joy, Continuation-Finality, Constancy-Outburst and Submissiveness-Assertiveness, were abstracted from Cooke's descriptions of "basic terms" and validated (Experiment 1) as capturing the main features of meaning embodied in the terms. In Experiment 2 participants rated each of the basic terms on each of the four dimensions of emotional expression. Significant inter-participant agreement was found for all terms on all four dimensions, with this agreement generally in accord with theoretical predictions from Cooke's theory. The findings suggest that musical line can convey emotional meaning in a principled way, but offer only limited support for Cooke's theory. The findings are considered in the context of theories of origin of codes of emotional meaning in music.