Why is it that music affects us? What gives music the power to move that it holds? How can a simple series of minor chords make us feel melancholic or reflective whereas a series of majors has the opposite effect? It must be something intrinsic in each of us which is activated by music. But what is this elusive “something”? How does it relate to our propensity for art and is this something which is innate or is it something which is learned and quickly becomes deep seated in our psyche? An intrinsic value cultivated from the outside if you will, something which when learned and developed becomes an inseparable part of us. Why are some people more receptive than others? I don’t pretend to know the answers but I’m sure that some of you can shed some light on this, and so I hand the floor over to you…
I think this is a great question and a good topic for debate. Unfortunately, I have absolutely nothing to contribute. I hope someone else does. Come on, someone here must have taken a course in music theory or aesthetics (or both!). Enlighten us!
This was discussed recently in this thread:
A lot of it is cultural. In Western music, we tend to find combinations of frequencies that are low ratios of integers be the most “consonant” and “pleasing.” Unison at 1:1, octaves at 2:1, the perfect fifth at 3:2, the perfect fourh at 4:3, the major third at 5:4. Other combinations are more “dissonant” or “unpleasing” (although they aren’t so much unpleasing as tense, or calling for resolution to another ratio): the minor second at 16:15, the augmented fifth at 10:9, the tritone at 9:8.
But this is Western music. We learn it, and have learned it this way for hundreds of years, so we automatically associated certain harmonic combinations with feelings and moods and impressions. Eastern music works totally differently–they use microtones, or tones in-between the semitones in what we think of as the twelve tones of the diatonic scale.
So, that’s a partial answer: The human ear and brain are naturally receptive to hearing and interpreting sounds, but what each of us hears as “pleasing” or “unpleasing” is in large part a culturally-imparted value.
I disagree with Phil. I think music is universal.
I’m definitely no music scholar, but it seems to me that other cultures use the same twelve tones.
Oh. Um, well, see, the thing about that is that they don’t. Furthermore, they tend towards time signatures other than 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 and 12/8, the “Big Four” of Western music.
As explained at this site:
This is an ancient argument. The Greeks believed so strongly that music was endowed with universal affective properties that they devoted a whole line of philosophy to its ethical use in society. Certain kinds of music were considered immoral because of potentially harmful effects on the emotions of listeners. Other kinds of music were considered beneficial, therapeutic, etc.
But, as pldennison pointed out, any cursory study of non-western music shows that our sense of what is “pleasing” or otherwise “normal” in music is far from universal. The phenomenon of music certainly is–to my knowledge there has never been a documented culture without music–but its components, uses, and sound are as diverse as are spoken languages. Here in the west we have, for hundreds of years, relied on a codified musical “grammar” that allows us to understand what we hear. Elements of rhythm, pitch and harmony all tend to gravitate towards these familiar formulas. But eastern–especially middle-eastern–cultures have completely different paradigms. Ever tuned in to the international channel in the middle of the night? Some strange stuff there 
I tend to think that there is credence to both viewpoints. A person who tries to dismiss the potential universality of, for instance, the western major modality has not considered that the sonorities available in that mode are exactly those that exist in the natural harmonic series–a basic principle of acoustics. All sounds generate harmonics–it is these harmonics that lend sound its unique tone color. A violin sounds different from a trumpet because they each tend to favor certain “partials”, or harmonics. Anyhoo, if you take the note “c” as an example, the first few steps in the harmonic series are as such (lowest to highest from left to right):
c - c - g - c - e - g - b flat, etc.
Put those notes together, and you get a C dominant seventh chord–the harmonic pillar upon which a ton of music rests–everything from Mozart to jazz to rock n’ roll. Makes you wonder. Art rarely imitates the natural world so closely without reason.
But there is certainly also a learned component to the experience of music. My own experience has been that of going from near musical illiteracy to having a doctorate in the subject. My taste–my basic response to music, based on what I perceive as “good”, “bad”, “beautiful”, etc.–has evolved enormously as has my understanding of the subject and my exposure to different types of music. I believe that we gravitate towards what we know best, and that the cultural roots of musical aesthetics are very strong.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that the most obvious schism in musical style–that between east and west (european vs. asian)–correlates to an equally obvious linguistic schism. Surely a person’s native language (which is for everyone their first musical experience in a sense) has a big effect on what they hear in music. Just a thought.
Thank you for that explanation, ashcrott! I am only an armchair music theorist myself, learning what I can from my own untrained guitar playing and a few books. It helps to have a pro explain it better.