Speaking of music getting us emotionally, why do minor and major chords affect us differently?
Well, it certainly seems to us that things in a minor key are rather sad—the slow movements in Mozart symphonies are most often in a minor key—but this is not always the case. If you go back seven or eight centuries, sometimes you find major keys used for sadness and minor keys for exuberance. So it’s probably a cultural thing. Some things are built-in biologically, though: the perception of octaves, things like that. Sometimes when we listen to music from another culture—Hindu music or Chinese music—we may not know how to respond, emotionally. I heard growing up that kids who took music lessons ended up being better at mathematics. Is there any truth to that? Oh, I don’t know, the so-called “Mozart effect” or whatever? Certainly, intensive musical training develops various parts of the brain to deal with music, and there’s probably some bonus effect on other skills. So it has nothing to do with the underlying structure of music? No, it doesn’t, and simply listening to music doesn’t do
