A History of Emotion in Western Music: A Thousand Years from Chant to Pop

Jun 23, 2026

Michael Spitzer’s study traces how emotion is expressed, theorized, and interpreted across a millennium of Western music, moving from chant to modern pop. The work frames 1,000 years of musical change as a unified long arc, shaped by scholarship and international exchange in the field of music and emotion. Acknowledgments detail the author’s research journey between Durham and the University of Liverpool, editorial support from Oxford University Press, and contributions from numerous scholars and conferences.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages432

Reading Time11 h 5 min

Acknowledgments

Research journey and scholarly influences

Conferences and academic community

Publication support and permissions

FAQs

What is the book’s overall scope of time and musical genres?

The book spans roughly a thousand years of Western music, tracing developments from chant to pop.

How does the author justify treating Western music as a single unit?

The author notes that this “gambit” draws on an example set by earlier scholarship and would not be possible without it.

What role did academic collaboration play in the project?

The author credits many friends, colleagues, editors, and anonymous readers, as well as international conferences on music and emotion, for shaping ideas and drafts.

Jun 23, 2026

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