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Doctrine of the affections
 
 
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The doctrine of the affections, also known as the doctrine of affects, or by the German term Affektenlehre (after the German Affekt; plural Affekten) was a theory in musical aesthetics
Aesthetics

Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....
 popular in the Baroque era
Baroque music

Baroque music describes a period or style of European classical music approximately extending from Dates of classical music eras. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance music and was followed by the Classical music era....
 (1600–1750). It derived from ancient theories of rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
, and was widely accepted by late-Baroque theorists and composers. The essential idea is that just one unified and "rationalized" Affekt should be aimed at by any single piece or movement of music, and that to attempt more was to risk confusion and disorder.

Lorenzo Giacomini (1552–1598) in his Orationi e discorsi (1597) defined an affection as "a spiritual movement or operation of the mind in which it is attracted or repelled by an object it has come to know as a result of an imbalance in the animal spirits and vapours that flow continually throughout the body."

The doctrine fell out of use in the Classical era
Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1825. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the 9th century to the present....
, when composers and theorists began to find it excessively mechanical and unnatural.

"Affections are not the same as emotions; however, they are a spiritual movement of the mind." (Claude V. Palisca, 1991)








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The doctrine of the affections, also known as the doctrine of affects, or by the German term Affektenlehre (after the German Affekt; plural Affekten) was a theory in musical aesthetics
Aesthetics

Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....
 popular in the Baroque era
Baroque music

Baroque music describes a period or style of European classical music approximately extending from Dates of classical music eras. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance music and was followed by the Classical music era....
 (1600–1750). It derived from ancient theories of rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
, and was widely accepted by late-Baroque theorists and composers. The essential idea is that just one unified and "rationalized" Affekt should be aimed at by any single piece or movement of music, and that to attempt more was to risk confusion and disorder.

Lorenzo Giacomini (1552–1598) in his Orationi e discorsi (1597) defined an affection as "a spiritual movement or operation of the mind in which it is attracted or repelled by an object it has come to know as a result of an imbalance in the animal spirits and vapours that flow continually throughout the body."

The doctrine fell out of use in the Classical era
Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1825. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the 9th century to the present....
, when composers and theorists began to find it excessively mechanical and unnatural.

"Affections are not the same as emotions; however, they are a spiritual movement of the mind." (Claude V. Palisca, 1991)

See also


  • Affect
    Affect

    The term Affect generally suggests an emotion. It is used in various ways in various contexts:* Affect .* Affect , referring to feeling or emotion....
     [for links to articles dealing with related applications of the same general notion]