Music

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

   Music can cast charms in three ways, evoking responses in humans that are cerebral, emotional or physical.
   Cerebral music -- Bach, for example -- can evoke a physical as well as an intellectual response, as listeners tap feet, wave hands or even dance. The response is cerebral, but is manifest physically largely in the extremities.
   Emotional music -- that of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Sousa -- engenders such romantic responses as patriotism or occasionally tears. People attach meanings to the music that the composer may not have intended. For example, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever have been appropriated by Americans and are regularly played with patriotic fervor on July Fourth, Independence Day.
   In recent years, the physical aspects of music, especially Rock 'n' Roll as performed by Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, or Bill Haley's Comets, have dominated popular music. Bluegrass and Country music is also in this category, evoking physical movement -- dancing and clapping -- as responses.
   There are exceptions, of course. Some of the words to pop songs are lyrical, if not poetic. Others, however, are secondary to the beat and the physical response the music can evoke.

   Some music forms, moreover, can overlap in the way they generate responses. The cerebral and the emotional can both be reflected in human response to music, and the physical and emotional can both show as responses. But it's questionable whether the cerebral and the physical overlap strongly. Granted, Bach wrote dance music (the stately minuet, for instance), but the physical response to Bach's music is tightly restrained by the cerebral, and is not manifest as strongly as the gyrations evident at a rock performance.