Art is an expression of human feeling. People read into the forms of the artwork what they find significant and thematic variation, and development. And they believe the work speaks in somewhat of a mystical manner and evokes an emotional response. It is clear that the aesthetic emotion has nothing to do with the emotions of life, such as joy and sadness. It is a response to formal properties only—in a painting, the complex interrelations of shapes and colors organized into an aesthetic unity. Most people who claim to enjoy paintings do not respond greatly to this aspect and therefore miss the distinctive pleasure that works of art can give them. They are capable of feeling emotion, and feel for them the emotions that they can feel—the ordinary emotions of life. When confronted by a picture, instinctively they refer back its forms to the World from which they came. They treat created room as though it were imitated form, a picture as though it were a photograph. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

Instead of going out on the stream of art into a new World of aesthetic experience, they turn a sharp corner and come straight home to the World of human interests. For them the significance of a work of art depends on what they bring to it; no new thing is added to their lives, only the antiquated material is stirred. A good work of visual art carries a person who is capable of appreciating it out of life into ecstasy; to telescope for reading the news. I work very coldly, without agitation, without emotion even; one must be completely master of oneself to organize that changing, moving, flowing chessboard, orchestration. Whether or not the artist has in some sense expressed one’s own feelings in creating the work of art, if anything, it would seem irrelevant to the question of what, if anything, the work of art is expressive of. The music, I Refuse by Aaliyah, expresses sadness and does not mean the same as the composer expressed one’s own feelings of sadness when one wrote one’s music. If the music is sad, it is so regardless of how the composer felt when one wrote it. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

However, what does it mean to say that the music is sad or expresses sadness? Clearly it is a metaphor, for in the literal sense only sentient beings capable of emotion can be sad, or have or contain any other feeling quality? The music is sad means the music makes me (or other listeners, or most listeners, or a selected group of listeners) feel sad when they hear it. However, if this is what is meant, we already have a perfectly satisfactory word for it, namely, evocation—the music evokes sadness in me (or in most listeners). However, this is a most unsatisfactory analysis. A person can recognize certain melodies as being sad without feeling sad oneself. If hearing the music really made one feel sad, as a person does when one feels sad at the loss of a dear one, an individual would probably not wish to repeat the experience. In any case, the recognition of the quality of the melody is quite distinct from the emotions a person feels when one hears it. One may hear happy music and be bored by it. What a person feels and what quality one attributes to the music are two different things. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

The sadness of I Refuse by Aaliyah, for instance, is phenomenally objective (that is, felt as being in the music), whereas a person’s sadness when one hears it (if such sadness occurs) is quite distinguishable from the sadness of the music; it is felt as being phenomenally subjective, belonging to one and not to the music, and only evoked by the music. There is no reason why the two phenomena should even accompany each another. To say, then, that the music expresses sadness, or simply that it is sad, is to say something about a felt quality of the music itself, rather than about how it makes listeners feel. It is difficult to explicate what it means to say that a work of art contains emotional properties. The andante is not sad in the same sense in which it is so many notes long or has certain rising and falling rhythms. If a disagreement arises concerning its expressive quality, how is one to defend one’s positions? Well, people generally like to listen to music that manifests or reflects their inner states. When people feel sad they exhibit certain types of behavior: they move slowly, they tend to talk in hushed tones their movements are not jerky and abrupt or their tones strident and piercing. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

Now music can be said to be said when it exhibits these same properties: sad music is normally slow, the intervals between the tones are small, the tones are not strident but hushed and soft.  In short, the work of art may be said to have a specific feeling property when it has features that human beings have when they feel the same or similar emotions, moods, excreta. This is the bridge between musical qualities and human qualities, which explains how music can possess properties that are literally possessed only by sentient beings. I was inspired in many ways by her creation. Works of art, then can be expressive human qualities: one of the most characteristic and pervasive features of art that percept (lines, colors, progressions of musical tones) can be and are suffused with affect. Hence, this claim of the expression theory seems quite certainly to be true. The work of art can properly b said to contain or embody feeling qualities. A piece of music is sad; it does not merely evoke sadness. The feeling quality is a genuine quality of the work of art. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5