Can music really arouse emotions? If so, what emotions, and how? Why do listeners respond with different emotions to the same piece of music? Are emotions to music different from other emotions? Why do we respond to fictional events in art as if they were real, even though we know they’re not? What is it that makes a performance of music emotionally expressive?

Based on ground-breaking research, Musical Emotions Explained explores how music expresses and arouses emotions, and how it becomes an object of aesthetic judgments. Within the book, Juslin demonstrates how psychological mechanisms from our ancient past engage with meanings in music at multiple levels of the brain to evoke a broad variety of affective states – from startle responses to profound aesthetic emotions, and explores why these mechanisms respond to music?

Written by one of the leading researchers in the field, the book is richly illustrated with music examples from everyday life, and explains with clarity and rigour the manifold ways in which music may engage our emotions, in a style sufficiently engaging for lay readers, yet comprehensive and novel enough for specialists.