Music's ability to express and arouse emotions is a mystery that has fascinated both experts and laymen at least since ancient Greece. The predecessor to this book 'Music and Emotion' (OUP, 2001) was critically and commercially successful and stimulated much further work in this area. In the years since publication of that book, empirical research in this area has blossomed, and the successor to 'Music and Emotion' reflects the considerable activity in this area.
The Handbook of Music and Emotion offers an 'up-to-date' account of this vibrant domain. It provides comprehensive coverage of the many approaches that may be said to define the field of music and emotion, in all its breadth and depth.
The first section offers multi-disciplinary perspectives on musical emotions from philosophy, musicology, psychology, neurobiology, anthropology, and sociology. The second section features methodologically-oriented chapters on the measurement of emotions via different channels (e.g., self report, psychophysiology, neuroimaging). Sections three and four address how emotion enters into different aspects of musical behavior, both the making of music and its consumption. Section five covers developmental, personality, and social factors. Section six describes the most important applications involving the relationship between music and emotion. In a final commentary, the editors comment on the history of the field, summarize the current state of affairs, as well as propose future directions for the field.
The only book of its kind, The Handbook of Music and Emotion will fascinate music psychologists, musicologists, music educators, philosophers, and others with an interest in music and emotion (e.g., in marketing, health, engineering, film, and the game industry). It will be a valuable resource for established researchers in the field, a developmental aid for early-career researchers and postgraduate research students, and a compendium to assist students at various levels. In addition, as with its predecessor, it will also attract interest from practising musicians and lay readers fascinated by music and emotion.

Where most of the literature in the psychology of music has focused on the processes involved when listening to music, little has been written about the processes involved in making music. Reissued by popular demand, and for the first time in paperback, Generative Processes: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation, and Composition brings together leading figures in music psychology to present pioneering studies of the processes by which music is generated. The book looks at the generation of expression in musical performance, the problems of synchrony in ensemble performance, the development of children's song, rehearsal strategies of pianists, improvisational skill in trained and untrained musicians, children's spontaneous notations for music, formal constraints on compositional systems, and compositional strategies of music students. Edited by the leading authority on music psychology, the book will be of great interest to cognitive and developmental psychologists, as well as music educators and musicologists

The question: `From where, and by what mechanisms, does an individual's musical ability originate?' is a subject of major interest both to music psychologists, and musicians, heightened by the recent research into prenatal perception of sound. The Origins and Development of Musical Competence brings together authoritative reviews on central issues, beginning with prenatal auditory experience, through infancy and early childhood. The chapters chart the developmental process with reference to the child's changing environment: from the uterus, through the intense and semi-exclusive mother-baby bond, to the wider contexts provided by the family, school, and society at large, making this the most up-to-date integration of music and developmental psychology.

In the 20 years since publication of John Sloboda's landmark volume The Musical Mind, music psychology has developed as a vibrant area of research - exerting influence on areas as diverse as music education and cognitive neuroscience. This new book brings together 24 selected essays and reviews written by an internationally acclaimed authority on music and the mind. Chapters are grouped into four main areas of study. These are, cognitive processes (including music reading, memory and performance), emotion and motivation, talent and skill development, and music in the real world (including functions of music in everyday life and culture). The book ends with a newly written chapter on music psychology and social benefits. The books brings together in one place a range of influential writings, whose links to one another provide a compendious overview of a subject that has come to maturity during the author's career, a career which has significantly contributed to the development of the field.