Quotes from Jenefer Robinson

What we seem to perceive influences what we feel, and what we feel influences what we say we perceive

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. Furthermore, idiosyncrasy in musical interpretation is something to be celebrated rather than condemned. [...] [W]e 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.

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.

L]anguage cannot match music's subtlety and preciseness of expression.

Deep emotional response to music typically arises as a product of the most intense musical perception. It is generally in virtue of the recognition of emotions expressed in music, or of the emotion-laden gestures embodied in musical movement, that an emotional reaction occurs.

When we identify with music that we are perceiving - or perhaps better, with the person whom we imagine owns the emotions or emotional gestures we hear in the music - we share in and adopt these emotions as our own [...]. And so we end up feeling as, in imagination, the music does.

When feelings are made available to us isolated, backgroundless, and inherently limited in duration - as they are through music - we can approach them as if we were wine tasters, sampling the delights of various vintages [...]. We become cognoscenti of feeling, savoring the qualitative aspect of emotional life for its own sake.

The undistracted experience of affects of just about any sort, when free of practical consequences, appears to have intrinsic appeal for many of us.