How would you trigger melancholy? It's getting harder and harder, huh! There’s a vast literature on melancholy, which greatly overlaps with nostalgia. And therefore with memory, as a musical emotion. It certainly shouldn't be a piece that’s overly activating... from a psychophysical point of view.

Instead, it should be a piece capable of evoking something, some image, some script that is particularly recognizable, probably, or simply a piece that we listened to when something happened to us in the past, so maybe something that belongs to the collective memory of a people. It could also belong to our personal story, but that's precisely because it winks so much at the theme of nostalgia, so something we’ve lost, but that when we think about it now, feels more like pleasure than sorrow. We arrive at vastness, which here is touched upon in the context of Awe. I was struck by several things, including the aspect of sound linked to reverberation, used to open up a virtual space in our minds when we listen, whose boundaries vary depending on what the reverb induces. So a certain type of reverb is able to open up our boundaries, in almost unlimited terms, right? And then there’s the use of note duration, as if the length of the notes were almost a symbol of spatial expansion, corresponding to the unlimited distance of space usage.

The idea of vastness from a spatial point of view has always been expressed through visual symbols. So we talk about something tall, something wide, simply a landscape that is particularly broad, breathtaking views, etc. When we try to extend this dimension to a stimulus as peculiar as music, time becomes, in my opinion, an essential aspect. the possibility of having effects like reverb, in the scientific literature to which in some way also reminds me of other indications that were given evoke this emotion, including the addition of more voices, more choirs, that don't sing in unison— in fact, quite the opposite: some crescendos, even sudden ones... These are all very much in line with the intuition you had... There is no such thing as vastness in absolute terms, it exists in relation to those who see it and those who listen to it.

So it's always necessary to place at the center the subject we expect to be listening to that piece, in the context in which it will be listened to, just like it happens with a work of art. If we were to think of works of Awe, they would always be works where there is some kind of dialectic between the spectator and the work itself. So vastness exists in relation to the finiteness and smallness of the one who observes it. Same thing for music, but from a temporal point of view. So, by evoking images of, for example, symbolic grandeur, we composers could place the listener himself in relation to something symbolically vast. Think also of when you enter a small, isolated church, you raise your eyes upwards and somehow you're embraced by a building that is no longer just a building.

That is, it's a building that serves almost as a bridge to something else. And that's the feeling conveyed through architecture. I believe this is absolutely transferable to the musical context. You mentioned looking upward. There are symbolic mechanisms that allow us to simulate, through music, physical dynamics like looking upward, or being faced with something far below, a chasm... Absolutely, yes.

The first thing that comes to mind is crescendos, obviously for looking upward, but you also reminded me of something else about looking upward. I was in contact with an English colleague, who created a new field of study called Skycology: the psychology of the sky. I found out that the experience of looking at the sky is a unique experience for human beings, both from a physiological point of view, because doing that movement physiologically has an effect on us, from a certain point of view a beneficial one, and from a psychological and symbolic point of view, because you stop focusing on everything that worries you... When people say “to rise above daily worries” it's not just a metaphor—it’s the truth. Looking upward and encouraging others to look upward means changing the symbolic point of view. The symbolic idea of looking upward, accompanied, evoked, stirred and even physiologically supported, is probably central to people’s well-being and to that of those who compose...

you composers are always understudied... If you need some guinea pigs... Maestro Campanelli volunteers! Perfect, I’ll have him sign a couple of documents... release forms, I assume... Speaking of well-being, what comes to mind is its opposite: crying.

Which is also a form of well-being... Exactly, that's what I was getting at. I read that the emotion we feel through musical activation is different from the one we experience in real life. Is that true? That's something we all ask ourselves... Because there are many colleagues who believe that there are actual musical emotions, with features that are completely different from those of everyday life.

Others say no, they're exactly the same as those in real life, just with a few more nuances. Others still say: it’s not that musical emotions exist, but rather a broader category of aesthetic emotions, within which we also include musical emotions that relate only to the sound stimulus. Where the truth lies, I really have no idea... I think the point is that we've only just begun to scratch the surface of the nature of emotions. So we’re still very much stumbling in the dark, each in our own field, and we’re still wearing blinders. So many discoveries, many achievements have been made in the field of music psychology regarding emotions...

In another field I work in — which is simulative technologies, like virtual reality, for example — we have problems... We’ve gained awareness of certain questions like this one: are simulated emotions different from real ones? But we don’t have the background and the decades of questions and answers that our colleagues in the field of music have had. So probably the real point is to remember that yes, they are different kinds of stimuli, each with their own peculiarities, but perhaps we should all lift our gaze more to avoid segmenting our knowledge so much and ending up in a deadlock we can't get out of anymore. So the real point is that we still need to study. We need to study a great deal, aware of the fact that once we understand something, if we truly understand it, at least another hundred questions will arise.

That’s the truth. And the answers are never final—another cliché. Clichés express in an extremely simplified way something deep, something difficult, but the moment you recognize that behind a cliché there's something deeper and more complex, you find your own way to apply it, in your personal, professional, and life context. So long live clichés, as long as there’s an awareness of the complexity behind them, and of the fact that complexity does not mean staying still; on the contrary: at some point we have to make decisions. If we’re looking for easy solutions and answers that are offered almost as absolutes, I don’t think that’s the right path... In fact, in these cases even in our discussions I always turn to Freud...

The truth is that science comes after. The real experts in the field are you... we only arrive when it’s time to prove that the different opinion of n people actually works in a specific way. Trying to understand where the majority lies, where the trend lies... but the real experts are always you. We come in to describe, to try to explain the underlying mechanisms that can link music to emotions.

We come after. That doesn’t mean we’re worth less... But that is the order of things... The questions tend to come from you. First there’s a phenomenon, and then it’s studied, simply put... So first there's a definition of the phenomenon, and then we study it.

This brings us to another question, even an epistemological one: does the phenomenon exist regardless of whether I identify it and am able to name it, or not?... For example, an event that happened to me at the Max Planck Institute a few years ago when I was invited to speak at a symposium, was precisely about this. At the time, I had just begun studying Awe, and I asked myself: this Awe, which doesn’t translate well into Italian—does it even exist in Italy like it does abroad, or does it exist in a different way? Also because to measure it, I ask people how much profound awe with all its dimensions they experienced... And a scholar once told me: if you don’t have the word to name that specific phenomenon, why are you studying it? And that really threw me off.

I think he wanted to provoke me, more than anything... From that moment on, I started thinking: this is a real issue, this is a real issue. Don’t keep studying something uncritically just because it’s fashionable and because you feel inside that it’s worthwhile, but ask yourself how you’re doing it, why you’re doing it, and what meaning it has. The fascination that musicians have, comes out in the classic question: “What’s your job?”... “I write film scores”... "I’ve always wanted to do that too!"...

Okay, but people say the same thing about psychology too! The two things aren’t that far apart, because I believe what fascinates people is precisely the non-measurability. Yes, probably what scares people is the idea of encapsulating a phenomenon so beautiful and fascinating that shakes me inside, within a set of indicators. Some colleagues and friends who are jazz musicians told me: when I discovered the structural trigger to evoke that feeling in my listener, I suddenly lost all interest in the phenomenon and I could no longer feel it myself. That really struck me, because I thought: so the moment you reveal the mechanism, people think they lose the poetry. But no, that’s actually the beauty of it.

Knowing that something works that way, but that it still has that effect on you and on others... Compared to the input they gave me, they’re painting the magic. That is, saying: I can’t explain it, and I have that aura of magic that motivates me. I understand that very well, but I would rather raise awareness toward the idea that it’s beautiful to understand how things work. When people ask us “What’s your job?” we should answer “we’re activators”... So, since emotion is considered one of the cornerstones of musical semantics, understanding a mechanism of activation means increasing your own linguistic repertoire.

Of course. We could’ve talked about the whole symbolic plane and the symbolism of hierarchy and degrees of attraction as a reference to the distance from the mother... to the dynamics of all accommodation schemas, to control mechanisms... But instead we didn’t go deep into that symbolic plane, because we want to understand with you what, from the perspective of scientific practice, we’ve managed to identify in the genesis of this particular language — music— which has no referent... If I say “computer,” the person forms the meaning in their brain— the image of a computer. Music, with a sequence of notes, cannot point to a real-world object, so what does it point to?

It points to a set of things that refer to other things symbolically; there are those who find a connection with depth psychology (Freud and everything that comes from it)... There are those who, on a sociological and structuralist level, linked it to myths... But we were curious to understand what we have scientifically established in the activation of this emotion. So, in the activation of this emotion we’ve managed, with scientific certainty, to capture its psychophysiological profile. So what happens inside us when we experience an especially intense moment of Awe? What happens is: our sympathetic nervous system, which governs our alert responses, is activated— but at the same time, we also have activation of the parasympathetic system, which balances the activation of the sympathetic system, and immediately afterward our sympathetic system decreases its activation.

It's as if this emotion triggered a kind of freezing response... as if we were frozen in front of a certain stimulus... Something vast, something that can overwhelm us, something that activates another dimension that we haven’t discussed yet: the “small self,” meaning the feeling or perception of ourselves as small entities— sometimes even annihilated... It’s a rather peculiar emotion, because generally emotional responses It’s something that mimics there were a surprise, but at the same time also the realization that there's nothing we can do about it. Or maybe it’s not even that dangerous... Kind of like what happens with the sublime: observing danger from a place of existential safety.

very closely this kind of psychophysiological response, so I realize that something has triggered me, has surprised me, has violated my expectations, and has shaken me so much that I am being challenged, but psychophysiologically there’s also something that calms me. We’re at a level, in my opinion, higher than the classic literature on frustration and gratification. What intrigues me is that it maintains a parallel with the use of dynamics that shift the threat into a controllable field. From an existential point of view, something threatens us, but we observe it as spectators. Like at the zoo? A dangerous animal, but behind bars?...

Yes, or a cliff edge but behind a railing. Which is something I experience in front of great heights. I don’t think it’s just you… And with a friend of mine we always used to wonder: if from the 13th floor we threw down a watermelon, what would happen? This watermelon makes us identify with the watermelon itself... And so it makes us feel the thrill of being the watermelon that explodes from a height. That thrill has a name— Goosebumps— which is another of the indicators of this emotion.

Not all studies agree, but goosebumps seem to be another psychophysiological correlate of Awe, especially musical awe. I sometimes feel a shiver here on the back of my neck, and those few times that it happens, I know for sure that I’m in front of something that has truly touched me deeply. So, to give goosebumps to listeners, we should try to induce a bit of Awe. In the meantime, we could suggest that they buy and read the book, which might be revealing of something truly important. I hope so, because I begin this volume by saying that this is a sea almost entirely unexplored. Twenty years after the first model that was published about this emotion, there are many studies, but the truth is we haven’t understood very much.

So I always hope that studying this emotion—whether through this book, a musical listening, thoughtful and mindful— actually ennobles us, because the fact of dealing with these dimensions of our existence reminds us that they exist and that it’s not a given. Because when we were kids, it was all much more simple: the dimension of enchantment, the act of wasting time, was something we were able to allow ourselves. Now, probably, we have to flip through a book to remember it, or be guided by excellent composers… activators… to be led toward this type of sensations. So, you know you’ll be back for something specific—namely, how to induce that state of flow— which is my first love in research— that’s able to make this creative-emotional output more effective, capable of evoking what we want. They should pay us those 5–10 million euros, because that’s the Holy Grail! But that’s exactly what we’re after… We’re locked in here for that reason.

In the next video there will be a sudden interruption... The secret to flow is... and below, an IBAN... Well, it was a long conversation, very interesting, full of content. We thank Alice for coming to visit us. Write in the comments, as always, let us know what you think, and we suggest once again you read the book.

See you next time.