



Way back when western music was getting started, all music was made for the church (read: Roman Catholic Church). If I remember my music history correctly, the chord and tone qualities that we associate with “happy” (consonance) or “sad” (dissonance) are learned behavior. Animal sounds and such.Īristotle (i think? Could be a different greek dude) even made an entire theory of spheral harmony saying that it's because the universe itself, or as variables in his theory, planets and other celestial bodies vibrate at certain frequency, hence we're used to it. I remember that being the most complicated part of composition theory, and i assume it makes us feel a certain way due to the fact that certain sounds in nature also follow rules of that. Tbf i haven't read that much about it, but from what i understand having been a musician before and being a medic now, the sequences are the most important part. A few other chords - tritone being very discordant causes a bit of anxiety due to its notes not falling on resonant intervals, expanded septachords give this feeling of wonder due to the septima in between the 2 outermost notes - it's not resonant, but due to how far the notes are it doesn't cause the same anxiety as a tritone does. There is a whole syncretic science between musical science and neuroscience called music neuroscience and people work on figuring out exactly how that works. I've read an article recently saying that the chords themselves don't carry that much of a message - major chords mainly pertain "go on" while minors say "stop", the progressions between them and the dynamics of music say much more.
