Current:Home > NewsWhy beautiful sadness — in music, in art — evokes a special pleasure -Prime Capital Blueprint
Why beautiful sadness — in music, in art — evokes a special pleasure
View
Date:2025-04-13 22:31:45
Composer Cliff Masterson knows how to make sorrow sublime.
Take his regal, mournful adagio Beautiful Sadness, for example:
"When I wrote it, the feeling of the music was sad, but yet there was this beautiful melody that sat on top," Masterson says.
Written for a string orchestra, the piece observes the conventions of musical melancholy. Phrases are long and slow. Chords stay in a narrow range.
"Obviously, it's in a minor key," Masterson says. "And it never strays far from that minor key home position."
The piece even features a violin solo, the preferred orchestral expression of human sorrow.
"It's one of the few instruments where I think you can get so much personality," Masterson says. "The intonation is entirely yours, the vibrato is entirely yours."
Yet for all of these conscious efforts to evoke sadness, the piece is also designed to entice listeners, Masterson says.
It's part of the album Hollywood Adagios, which was commissioned by Audio Network, a service that provides music to clients like Netflix and Pepsi.
"There's a lot of sad songs out there, very sad music," Masterson says. "And people enjoy listening to it. They get pleasure from it, I think."
Why our brains seek out sadness
Brain scientists agree. MRI studies have found that sad music activates brain areas involved in emotion, as well as areas involved in pleasure.
"Pleasurable sadness is what we call it," says Matt Sachs, an associate research scientist at Columbia University who has studied the phenomenon.
Ordinarily, people seek to avoid sadness, he says. "But in aesthetics and in art we actively seek it out."
Artists have exploited this seemingly paradoxical behavior for centuries.
In the 1800s, the poet John Keats wrote about "the tale of pleasing woe." In the 1990s, the singer and songwriter Tom Waits released a compilation aptly titled "Beautiful Maladies."
There are some likely reasons our species evolved a taste for pleasurable sadness, Sachs says.
"It allows us to experience the benefits that sadness brings, such as eliciting empathy, such as connecting with others, such as purging a negative emotion, without actually having to go through the loss that is typically associated with it," he says.
Even vicarious sadness can make a person more realistic, Sachs says. And sorrowful art can bring solace.
"When I'm sad and I listen to Elliott Smith, I feel less alone," Sachs says. "I feel like he understands what I'm going through."
'It makes me feel human'
Pleasurable sadness appears to be most pronounced in people with lots of empathy, especially a component of empathy known as fantasy. This refers to a person's ability to identify closely with fictional characters in a narrative.
"Even though music doesn't always have a strong narrative or a strong character," Sachs says, "this category of empathy tends to be very strongly correlated with the enjoying of sad music."
And in movies, music can actually propel a narrative and take on a persona, Masterson says.
"Composers, particularly in the last 30 to 40 years, have done a fantastic job being that unseen character in films," he says.
That's clearly the case in the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, where director Steven Spielberg worked closely with composer John Williams.
"Even now, at the ripe old age I am, I cannot watch that film without crying," Masterson says. "And it's a lot to do with the music."
Pleasurable sadness is even present in comedies, like the animated series South Park.
For example, there's a scene in which the character Butters, a fourth grader, has just been dumped by his girlfriend. The goth kids try to console him by inviting him to "go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is."
Butters says, "no thanks," and delivers a soliloquy on why he values the sorrow he's feeling.
"It makes me feel alive, you know. It makes me feel human," he says. "The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before ... So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness."
Butters ends his speech by admitting: "I guess that sounds stupid." To an artist or brain scientist, though, it might seem profound.
veryGood! (7)
Related
- Are Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp down? Meta says most issues resolved after outages
- ‘It’s just me, guys,’ Taylor Swift says during surprise set as fans cheer expecting guest
- Takeaways from The Associated Press’ reporting on seafarers who are abandoned by shipowners in ports
- Top McDonald's exec says $18 Big Mac meal is exception, not the rule
- What do we know about the mysterious drones reported flying over New Jersey?
- A German court will try a far-right politician next month over a second alleged use of a Nazi slogan
- Medline recalls 1.5 million adult bed rails following 2 reports of entrapment deaths
- What's going on with Ryan and Trista Sutter? A timeline of the 'Bachelorette' stars' cryptic posts
- At site of suspected mass killings, Syrians recall horrors, hope for answers
- Usher, Victoria Monét will receive prestigious awards from music industry group ASCAP
Ranking
- Civic engagement nonprofits say democracy needs support in between big elections. Do funders agree?
- Barcelona hires Hansi Flick as coach on a 2-year contract after Xavi’s exit
- Does lemon water help you lose weight? A dietitian explains
- Not-so-happy meal: As fast food prices surge, many Americans say it's become a luxury
- Which apps offer encrypted messaging? How to switch and what to know after feds’ warning
- Roberto Clemente's sons sued for allegedly selling rights to MLB great's life story to multiple parties
- Police search the European Parliament over suspected Russian interference, prosecutors say
- Renewable Energy Wins for Now in Michigan as Local Control Measure Fails to Make Ballot
Recommendation
In ‘Nickel Boys,’ striving for a new way to see
North Korea fires missile barrage toward its eastern waters days after failed satellite launch
Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Flowery Language
Dolly Parton Says This Is the Secret to Her 57-Year Marriage to Carl Dean
Most popular books of the week: See what topped USA TODAY's bestselling books list
AP interview: Divisions among the world’s powerful nations are undermining UN efforts to end crises
Massive international police operation takes down ransomware networks, arrests 4 suspects
Ukraine army head says Russia augmenting its troops in critical Kharkiv region