How many times have people mentioned the ‘feel’ of the music? Or how it made them jump with joy or tear up with sorrow?

Music has this effect, doesn’t it? It can make one feel happy, sad, angry, anxious, there’s also a myth about a musical piece that stimulates suicidal tendencies in the listener. I’m not going to tell which one it is. Just in case 😉

Musical expression is the art of performing music in such a way that it manipulates the audience’s emotions. How does one do this? Well it’s the way music is performed, the dynamism in volume, touch, timing of the music indicating excitement, energy, playing certain notes which indicate intensity, and color. In great artists, one can feel that it is the soul that is speaking.

Musical expression is about communicating emotions to the masses, and that is why music is such an important department in film making. It’s not just the story and the acting and the direction. it’s also the music in the background, It is a monster of a challenge for a movie to communicate grief, happiness, mystery, horror without music.
As an experiment, one may imagine popular scenes in movies, and then cut out the music. say for e.g. the scene in the end of ‘Pursuit of Happyness’, where the film communicates the ultimate feeling of happiness. If the music is cut out, I seriously doubt that it can replicate the intended feeling.
You may try it in the video link provided below. The film tries to portray the emotion in 1:25 and it builds up till it peaks at 2:51.
see it with the music and without, is there a difference?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsYl63dAZHA]

Music has been the bosom buddy of Film and Theater since the early Renaissance period of Europe, or should I just call it bosom buddy of Theater, as films were still science fiction in those days. But music was equally or maybe more important then, than it is today. When Films finally started in the late 1800’s, technology to play sound was still unavailable, so there were just visuals with facial expressions and live music to communicate those emotions.
Imagine, without music it would just be a room full of silence, black and white visuals and the occasional cough of a fellow viewer. Boring…
The Charlie Chaplin movies were originally played with live music, his movies continued to be popular even after the advent of synchronized audio, so later they added the music to his movies.

Here’s another interesting example: What does the term ‘midi’, mean?
Midi music is music that’s played by the computer. the computer is given certain commands to play notes in a certain time. Midi music was very popular between 1980s to late 90’s with the introduction of personal computers and 8/16 bit video games. Yes computers can play music, but this music is just a series of notes played exactly note to note by the computer, there is no expression in it, no varied dynamics, no rubato. Lets have a contest between computers and humans. 🙂

Computer vs Humans (Soundtrack: Schindler’s list – Title ~ John Williams)

Computer

Human

Result: Who wins?

□ Human
□ Computer