M usic , E motion , A nalysis

In this essay I explore the idea that musical passages which are particularly remarkable are so in part because of ways they correlate with the progress and change of emotions. Taking as my point of departure Susanne Langer's idea that music represents a kind of non‐discursive knowledge uniquely affiliated with emotional life, I argue that recent empirical research on music and emotion has not provided a compelling model for the relationship between music and emotion and that Langer's approach, when refined through recent research on processes of analogy, provides a viable alternative. I apply this perspective to an analysis of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata in A major, K. 208, with a special focus on passages which are typically regarded as highly expressive.