2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Musical Emotions Explained
Patrik N. Juslin
Reviews and Awards
"...Patrik Juslin's aim to explain listeners' musical emotions from a psychological perspective is fully achieved. Perhaps designed as a textbook for a course on music psychology, it also meets the needs of scholars from other disciplines; all terms are clearly explained regardless of their disciplinary origin, and little is assumed." -- Stephanie Rocke, Emotions: History, Culture, Society
"Juslin connects music and emotion to all manner of other human processes (e.g., learning, memory, perception) and, most strikingly, to aesthetics. The author's direct engagement with aesthetic judgment helps lift the book from something like an impressive compendium (a list of references runs 45 pages) to something much grander and more important. That the writing is consistently friendly and personal, never clinical, is somewhat surprising. Through some magic discussion remains accessible to almost any mature reader, even as the author marches through his argument with remarkable precision. The book could prove especially useful to musicians and might prompt them to think differently about what they do." -- CHOICE
"Handbook of Music and Emotion, by Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, is an excellent book. It is comprehensive and up-to-date, well organized, well written, and stimulating." -- Music Perception