Melancholy music can be enjoyable, provide comfort or cause pain depending on the listener, a study has found.
Researchers at Durham University and the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, believed the findings could be beneficial for music therapy and rehabilitation and help understand moods.
Musicologists looked at the emotional experiences associated with sad music of 2,436 people from the UK and Finland who identified the reasons for listening to sad music, and emotions involved in memorable experiences related with it.
Popular tear-jerkers mentioned by people responding to the survey included Adele’s Someone Like You and Harry Nilsson’s Without You, with Verdi’s Requiem and Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor mentioned in classic music.
The researchers wrote in the journal Plos One that the majority of people surveyed highlighted the enjoyable nature of such experiences, which in general lead to clear improvement of mood.
Listening to sad music led to feelings of pleasure related to enjoyment of the music in some people, or feelings of comfort where sad music evoked memories in others.
But a significant proportion of people reported painful experiences associated with listening to sad music, which invariably related to personal loss such as the death of a loved one, divorce or relationship breakup.
Lead researcher Tuomas Eerola, professor of Music Cognition in the Department of Music, Durham University, said: “Previous research in music psychology and film studies has emphasised the puzzling pleasure that people experience when engaging with tragic art.
“However, there are people who absolutely hate sad-sounding music and avoid listening to it.
“In our research, we wanted to investigate this wide spectrum of experiences that people have with sad music, and find reasons for both listening to and avoiding that kind of music.
“The results help us to pinpoint the ways people regulate their mood with the help of music, as well as how music rehabilitation and music therapy might tap into these processes of comfort, relief and enjoyment.”