B) Stephen DAVIES: the 'contagion' theory
Stephen Davies named his theory about emotional stimulation as 'Appearance Emotionalism'. For him, the expressiveness in music is almost solely responsible for provoking emotions. The relationship between the music and the expressiveness is then one of resemblance: “[…] between a piece of music and the emotion of which it is expressive as one of resemblance, with properties of the music resembling expressive human behavior” (Collins, 2021, p. 74). For Davies, this comparison with human behavior is meaningful, as you will see at the end of this section.
CONTAGIOUS MUSIC. Kivy refers to this theory as the 'Contagion Theory' (2005, p. 140). Besides the idea of resemblance, whose final consequence is a probable copy of the emotions displayed by music, Kivy also pays attention to Davies' comments about the environmental conditions: if we saturate the environment with elements identified with sadness or joy, we will probably be 'infected' by it (in other words, sadness or joy would be 'contagious') (Kivy, 2005, p. 140). Therefore saturating with expressive elements the music or just the context in which it is listened to would transfer us several emotions.
Davies (1980, p. 67) considers such a difference between the emotions inherent to music (emotions in music) and the ones felt or displayed through the music. He focuses on the first ones, which in his point of view are exclusively part of the music itself, and not part of the intention or activity of any other agent (composer, performer...).
FEELING (sad) or LOOKING (sad). For Davies, there is no doubt about the relevance of emotions in music. He defends they have such a huge significance because we connect them with current human emotions. His starting point to explain the process in which we finally feel (or not) those emotions is expressing a paradox. Since we use emotion words in daily life to express both feelings and looks, it is not always clear when we talk about music. As an example, when someone is sad, he feels sad and looks sad as well. When we refer to music as sad music, we want to express that it looks sad, but not that music itself feels sad (for Davies this idea of music 'feeling' makes non-sense) (Davies, 1980, p. 67-68). To clear up this problem, Davies suggests a secondary use of emotional terms, applicable to both current and musical emotions. Named by himself as 'Emotion-characteristics in appearance', he considers that an emotional word could be only used with the intention to refer to appearances or the looking. If we say that someone is sad, we could only want to say that he looks sad or is sad-looking. An analogous application of this secondary use in music seems to be the one that works out. Davies warns that these emotion-characteristics in appearance are only possible with proper emotions and not feelings because these last ones do not entail intrinsic behaviors (Davies, 1980, p. 68-71).
TRUE EMOTIONS? The other sore point is if we feel true emotions after identifying these emotions in music. First, Davies points out the keys of musical emotions: they are unfelt, have to be publicly displayed, and lack emotional objects. This lack causes in his view a weakening of the emotions felt while listening to music (Davies, 1996, as cited in Kivy, 2005, p. 146). Kivy adds that if expressiveness is solely responsible for experiencing emotions, there are no beliefs behind music, so there will not be any emotional response.
HUMAN RESEMBLANCE. Returning to the previous discussion, Davies tries to indicate why human behaviors are so relevant in this topic (“[…] to demonstrate that music is experienced as having features displayed in human behavior [...]”) (Davies, 1980, p. 73). Music and behavior are both dynamic and as James Young (2014, as cited in Collins, 2021, p. 76) points out, there is empirical evidence that people constantly perceive dynamic structures or contours of movement. Davies agrees that human beings tend to anthropomorphize their environment: ‘‘Our interests shape how we see the world, thereby making some resemblances more salient than others and giving them the direction they take.’’ (Davies, 2006, as cited in Robinson & Hatten, 2012, p. 75). Davies concentrates then on elements of the dynamic character of human behavior such as “gait, attitude, air, carriage, posture, and comportment” (Collins, 2021, p. 74).
If Davies's proposal for an unfelt human behavior was the emotion-characteristics in appearance, his proposal for the musical movement is now the 'Emotion-characteristics in sound'. If the dynamic character of music is connected with objective parameters such as tempo, dynamics, or rhythm, we could then experience musical movement as human behaviors, and finally, we could feel emotions (Davies, 1980, p. 75-76).
TENDENCIES. Davies only dares to talk about tendencies: “One will tend to respond by feeling the emotion that is worn by the appearance” (1980, p. 80). This means that the conclusion is that the 'lookingness' could be evocative of the 'feelingness'. In other words, 'lookingness' (or expressiveness if we talk about music) is just contagious (Kivy, 2005, p. 153).