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5.5.10 Tonal Music: Emotions and Music
Table 32 lists a few emotions found to be associated with tonal music and tonality in general, compared with emotions linked to atonal music and atonality.
Even if you’re playing in what you think is a major key, and are deliberately trying to express positive emotions, your music may unintentionally have negative emotional effects on the audience if tonality is unclear and you don’t realize it.
On the other hand, if you want to express negative emotions musically, you can certainly put unclear tonality (or atonality) to good use.
TABLE 32 Emotional Effects of Tonality
Tonality Characteristic |
Associated Emotions |
|---|---|
| Clear tonality (major or minor mode) | Happiness, sadness, tenderness, joy, peace |
| Unclear tonality (highly dissonant) | Fear, sadness, anger |
| Atonality | Anger |