2. A system of social values

- Recognition of music within a system of social values. Music is then linked to a social function, which also has an emotional aspect. Music is capable of causing evident changes in the neurovascular system. These changes are collective, meaning they are not linked to individual reception of music. Experiments have shown that listeners tended to synchronize either their heart rate or their breathing to the music. Such synchronization, stimulated by a strong pulse, as evident in techno music, march music, and certain types of film music, can increase arousal, but may also arouse feelings of communion (e.g., ‘feeling connected’) and ‘emotional bonding’. - Perception and recognition of music through personal memories and the concomitant emotional and rational response in the brain.3 - Perception of quality. This is a not very complicated subject, even though it is treated as such in our Western, egalitarian societies. The difference in perception between the expert or nowadays scornfully called the elite, being those who have built up a broad frame of reference, and those who have not bothered or miss the intellectual capacity, is at odds with the laws within a thoughtless consumption of culture in which everything is measured by its commercial success. And equally at odds with the fact that in a democracy political success happens to depend on the number of votes for a party or politician and not on the qualities of an individual who speaks up. 2. A SYSTEM OF SOCIAL VALUES

In the present chapter I focus on the second area: the recognition of music within a generally accepted value system. The field of cognitive neuroscience of music and the emotional and rational response in the brain are areas that are better studied by scientists and psychiatrists. I freely admit that this means that the chapter about the listener is incomplete, but it is the price I have to pay to keep the size of my book somewhat manageable. In the area of recognition and function of music within a general value system that is accepted within a culture, I distinguish three models. FollowingCarl Jung. I call these ‘musical archetypes’.

An archetype is an idealised primal model that is the basis of later variants. Such a model is present in man’s subconscious as a symbolic representation. An archetype is often also linked to emotion, such as the archetype of the Mother, or the Sad Clown. Cf. Carl Jung, Archetypen (1954).

3 This is somewhat contrary to the ‘collective bonding’ . The emotional response is depending on the memory, stored by the individual. For instance, for a victim of the Nazi regime, the music of a military band can be unbearable. An interesting book on this topic is: Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, by

Oliver Sachs (2007).