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Psychoanalytic studies of music can come from several directions, of course: one can concentrate on the process of composition, the formal production of music; on the life and work of an individual composer—Gluck, Grieg, Gershwin; on the performance of music, the rendering of a piece in front of an audience, or alone at home; on an individual composition, the psychoanalytic essence of a particular concerto, or symphony, or opera, or cowboy song; and finally, one can concentrate on the psychodynamics of listening. What are we doing anyway, when we indulge ourselves in music? What are the key affective feature of such an experience, and how do they stand in relation to a person's overall psychic economy? The note to follow is interested primarily in this last item, although it will touch perforce on musical forms as it goes about its business.
What follows, however, does not take all music as its investigative province. What an idea! There are so many kinds of music worldwide—from acid rock to Swiss yodels, from East Indian ragas to Talmudic chants, from Andean flute tunes to Polish mazurkas, from Schubertian lieder to “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” shouted by drunken troops in the back of an army truck—that one despairs of making any meaningful generalizations. Yet, if I were pressed on the matter, I would probably suggest (and note the high level of generalization on which the next chunk of the sentence moves) that all music: (1) reaches down into the preverbal realm of the listener, composer, and performer; (2) engages his/her emotive life in some way and to some degree; and (3) appeals to his/her