Music as Emotion

The "sacred art" is commonly used to express what cannot be said but only felt. Pressing mute on a Horror film makes the fear more bearable. Chart Hits transport us to a land of infatuation, joy and nostalgia. But what about the role of musicians and composers in a time when music has become a way of emotionalising a neoliberal means of production, a consumable resource used to improve performance? Are musicians no more than slaves turning a cog that helps keep a machine running? "Music as emotion" confronts the image of music as an emotional transmitter dependent upon the subjective perception of a composer, calling into question whether such a clear and reciprocal relationship is possible or indeed at all meaningful. Reinholdtsen’s work allows musicians to overcome these roles, generating material from scepticism of today's musical environment, but never losing the fundamental desire to make music. Such questions are underlined theatrically by attempts to create a space which can overcome stereotypical performance practices, allowing the absurd, the intellectual and the playful to override any neoliberal power grabs.