Music is an art that touches everyone, evoking feelings from joy to sadness to fear to anger or happiness – it has universal appeal! Music can inspire all our senses; from making us happy or sad, calming down an anxious person or simply helping us relax after work or acting as an energizer at work. Studies have also proven the benefits of listening to classical music before sleeping can improve sleep quality and decrease insomnia or stress. Music also serves to improve concentration when performing repetitive tasks like data entry or reading comprehension comprehension.
Plato (428-348/347 BCE) believed music to be an expression of divine order and harmony, with rhythms and melodies reflecting movements of celestial bodies and reflecting moral order in nature. Later philosophers such as Aristotle agreed, writing that music resembled “the music of the spheres”, having power to shape human character through it.
Modern science has conducted many surveys and analyses of musicians to discover how music affects listeners and performers alike. While music serves many functions, emotional or social ones stand out among them most prominently; research has found that it makes people happy, improves group bonding, promotes relaxation and boosts confidence levels; music has even been discovered as an excellent way of increasing cognitive functioning and decreasing anxiety levels.
Musical styles vary across countries and can reflect cultural and religious traditions. For instance, Gregorian music has long been an integral part of church services since Pope Gregory’s day – some believe that its chants may even directly be taken from Biblical Hebrew language!
Music can help set the scene in movies and television shows by setting the right ambience, whether that means increasing suspense, building to an emotional climax, or emphasizing plot twists. Movie soundtracks also play an integral part in motivating audiences while providing positive emotions such as love or happiness; some famous examples include Hans Zimmer’s work for films like Star Wars, Pirates of The Carribean, and Interstellar.
Given the diversity of musical functions identified over time, there has been much speculation as to whether they might fall under some basic dimensions. Scientists have sought to discover these dimensions using factor analyses and cluster analysis methods. Music serves multiple social, emotional and cognitive/self-related purposes that overlap into four dimensions: social (related to musician identity); emotional (inducing positive emotions), arousal (enhancing sexual arousal) and self-related (such as motivation or escapism). These four functions may explain why many people turn to music.