Using the persona to express complex emotions in music

This article begins by arguing for the persona theory of musical experience, which claims that when we hear music as expressive of emotions, we have a sense of a persona that is in some way attached to the emotional state. The author argues that the sense of persona underlies a number of different accounts of musical expression and is generally supported by the essential experiential content of emotions. The author then explores the ways in which the listener's sense of a persona may be exploited to allow the expression of complex emotions, focussing on the emotion of jealousy and, to that end, examining two cases where the expression of that emotion has been attempted by Janáček and Piazzolla.