Sad Music Evokes Positive Emotions

Do you get a peaceful pleasure from listening to sad music?

Well, it turns out you're not alone, according to a recent study led by Japanese researchers.

Lead researcher Ai Kawakami and colleagues from Toykyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan asked 44 volunteers--both musicians and non-specialists--to listen to two pieces of sad and happy music. Each participant was required to use a set of keywords to rate their feelings regarding the music.

According to a press release, the sad pieces of music included Glinka's "La Séparation" in F minor and Blumenfeld's Etude "Sur Mer" in G minor. The happy music piece was Granados's Allegro de Concierto in G major. To control for the "happy" effect of major key, they also played the minor-key pieces in major key, and vice versa.

The researchers said that the sad music evoked contradictory emotions for various participants.

"Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion," the authors wrote, via the release. "And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music."

The sadness experienced in both daily life and through art actually had a pleasant feel to it for some of the participants and didn't pose any type of negative feelings.

"Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion evoked through daily life, sad music might be helpful to alleviate negative emotion."

How do sad songs make you feel?

More information regarding the study can be found in the Frontiers in Psychology.