Doctrine of the affections

MUSIC
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• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Alternative Titles: Affektenlehre, doctrine of affects

Doctrine of the affections, also called Doctrine Of

Affects, German Affektenlehre, theory of musical aesthetics, widely
accepted by late Baroque theorists and composers, that embraced
the proposition that music is capable of arousing a variety of specific
emotions within the listener. At the centre of the doctrine was the
belief that, by making use of the proper standard musical procedure
or device, the composer could create a piece of music capable of
producing a particular involuntary emotional response in his audience.
These devices and their affective counterparts were rigorously
cataloged and described by such 17th- and 18th-century theorists
as Athanasius Kircher, Andreas Werckmeister, Johann David
Heinichen, and Johann Mattheson. Mattheson is
especially comprehensive in his treatment of the affections in music.
In Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739; “The Perfect Chapelmaster”),
he notes that joy is elicited by large intervals, sadness by small
intervals; fury may be aroused by a roughness of harmony coupled
with a rapid melody; obstinacy is evoked by the contrapuntal
combination of highly independent (obstinate) melodies. Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach (1714–88) and the Mannheim school were exponents of
the doctrine.
The contemplation of the emotional aspect of music is not limited to
the Baroque era but may be found throughout the history of music. It
is an essential part of ancient Greek musical theory (the doctrine of
ethos), it takes on a particular importance in the Romantic
movement of the 19th century, and it also occurs in such non-Western
music as the Indian raga. It was in the Baroque era, however, that
theorists, influenced by the Enlightenment’s tendency toward
encyclopaedic organization of all knowledge, attempted
to delineate music into affective categories.