And if it’s learned are stage/film/television the main devices it’s learned through?
If you could go back maybe 150 years and find folks who’ve never been exposed to live music and played them some instrumental passages denoted as suspenseful, sad, triumphant, etc. would they have any emotional connection to them?
You don’t need to go back 150 years, just find a baby.
They aren’t very good at talking, but pre-verbal babies are perfectly good at conveying that they like bouncy music. Outside of that, individual tastes vary: some kids find loud noises scary whereas other love them, and that includes the 1812 overture.
Yes, I think “music” is universal and innate. I also think the emotional connotation is pretty much universal. I know for myself that I can listen to foreign music and know whether it’s happy or mournful or whatever. Just go onto YouTube and sample music from tribal peoples. Maybe you only get the most superficial meanings out of it, but you know the basic intent. There’s no way for something to be purely learned when it is so consistent.
What is learned is a preference for specific instruments or styles.
Is it possible, 150 years ago, that there wasn’t a person that heard a live guitar, harmonica, drum beat? I don’t think so.
But, i think a lot of it is learned. But some people have blockages. My daughter says she hates jazz. Well, jazz is a huge world. There has to be something that one would like, no?
But, she likes the Beatles. But then again, she grew up with them.
She could hate jazz and still have an emotional connection to it, though. If she can listen to two different pieces and say “I’d play that at a party, and that at a funeral” then she’s still feeling something that I think is pretty much universal.
(As someone who “hates jazz” myself, I eventually figured out that it’s brass instruments in general and saxophones and muted trumpets in particular. Piano jazz is not half bad.)
I’d say it’s innate, based simply on observing my daughter’s response to music. At 22 months, she responds strongly to music of many genres, and her emotional response is pretty clearly different for different things. Happy, cheery, bouncy music gets one response, and Ravel gets another.
I don’t think she’s had time to learn much, if anything, certainly not enough to predetermine her emotional response to a given piece of music.