Kivy

Kivy would seem to be a leading philosopher of music, but I don't find him convincing in the least.  For example, he argues that emotions always have an intentional object to them. So fear must have a tiger or some other dangerous object, you have to be sad about something, etc.. So these "garden variety" emotions, as he calls them in his jargon, are not the ones aroused by music.

Yet I often feel sad, anxious, or satisfied, content, as a mood, without an intentional object in sight. It is clear, too, that music arouses moods, like whimsy, tension, triumph, relaxation, melancholy. I can refute his theory by accident just by laughing at a musical joke, or feeling my body tense up at a particular moment. If he doesn't want to call these moods "emotions" or "garden variety" emotions, that's his choice. He wants to just say that we recognize those things as properties of the music, without actually feeling them. But how can we recognize a feeling if we haven't felt it?

He goes on to admit that the object can be missing, but he treats that an unusual case, the exception that proves the rule.  But since it is precisely the absence of that object that leads him to his theory, that seems like cheating to me.  

The whole debate seems not very intelligent to me. He's arguing against someone else who seems to be saying that there is only "sad" and "happy" in music, but it's obvious that there are dozens more moods, like awkward, conclusive, anticipatory, incongruous, graceful, sweet, ethereal, plodding, distracted...