Jenefer Robinson

“Many listeners have the experience of sharing the feelings that seem to be expressed by a piece of music[.] [T]he listener mirrors the feelings expressed by the music.
[...] The problem is that if listeners mirror the negative emotions they hear in music, then we seem to be landed with a paradox; [...] the "paradox of tragedy[.]" [P]eople apparently take great delight in watching and hearing about people in hideously unhappy situations and undergoing terrible suffering. [...] The musical version of the paradox is this: If people actually feel sad when they listen to sad music, why do they go on doing it? All they have to do is leave the room or flip the switch, and the music would vanish, along with the pain it causes. Yet people continue to listen, apparently complacently, to the most anguished and wrenching strains. [...] There must be some value to experiencing the sadness in sad music, or otherwise people would not do it; but what value can it have?”
― Jenefer Robinson, Music and Meaning

“Because people's experiences differ, what they hear in the music will be different, and how they relate it to broader life experience will also be different.
[...] [I]diosyncrasy in musical interpretation is something to be celebrated rather than condemned. Furthermore, we should think of the score not as the work itself but rather as a useful tool to help us arrive at our individual interpretation of a piece.”
― Jenefer Robinson