Why Music Really Does Make You Happier

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The 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed that the truth about life is largely invisible to humans. What we perceive around us is mostly a set of illusions, while reality—the inner essence of the world, or will (Wille, in German), as he conceived it—is generally out of our grasp. Yet he believed in one oracle that could reveal the secret verities: listening to music.

Schopenhauer’s theory was that the will is so ineffable that the nonverbal language of music alone could grant access to this apprehension of reality. Music, for Schopenhauer, thus opened up a unique channel of higher consciousness.

Although Schopenhauer was an atheist, his conception bears a strong resemblance to the idea held by many thinkers who find in music the language of the Divine. For example, the American Catholic scholar Peter Kreeft wrote in his 1989 book, Three Philosophies of Life, that “God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God.”

I am not an expert in the academic debate about the metaphysics of music, but I do find this notion very suggestive—and it captures for me experiences I can’t access in any other way. I learned to read music at the age of five and spent all of my 20s as a professional classical musician. Like many musicians, I am synesthetic: Different pitches and chords evoke in my brain colors and even smells. These sensory effects make listening to, or playing, a great composition into an experience beyond the greatest fireworks show on Earth. To take in a Bach cantata or a Bruckner symphony is, for me, to glimpse for fleeting moments the majesty of creation and grasp why I exist in the universe.

Your experience of music may be a bit more, well, grounded than mine, and you’re thinking, frankly, that I should go get checked out by a neurologist for this issue. Fair enough. But Schopenhauer was onto something: We have plenty of evidence that music truly is one of the greatest ways to understand life more deeply.

[Arthur C. Brooks: Schopenhauer’s advice on how to achieve great things]

Music has appeared in every human society for which ethnographic evidence exists, according to research by a top scholar at Harvard’s Music Lab. Music is enmeshed with all of the important areas of our experience, from sweet lullabies to sappy love songs to hymns of religious praise. Although styles of music vary greatly around the world, the making and appreciation of music are such ubiquitous parts of human life that it can seem as much a phenomenon of our nature as a product of our culture.

Indeed, our brains are built to enjoy music, as scientists showed in a 2018 study conducted through the Berklee Music and Health Institute (part of the Berklee College of Music in Boston). We’re even hardwired to use music to help us heal. For example, when the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease are stimulated by hearing a rhythmic piece such as a march, their symptoms may diminish and they are able to walk more naturally. Alzheimer’s patients who can’t remember family members typically are nonetheless able to recognize familiar songs. And people suffering from epilepsy can experience a dramatic decrease in seizures when listening to certain kinds of classical music—the so-called Mozart effect.

Over the past two decades, neuroscientists have also conducted experiments on the effects of music upon human emotions. For example, one 2006 experiment exposed people to chords that varied in degree of dissonance while scanning the limbic systems of the subjects’ brains, which is where emotions are produced. The paper found that positive emotions generally had an inverse correlation with dissonance. So we might practically deduce that a good way to raise your mood could be to block out the racket of street sounds (sirens, traffic, construction) in Manhattan with headphones delivering your favorite music.

The research findings on which genres of music bring the most happiness are inconclusive. One study found—based on characteristics of harmony, structure, and rhythm—that the world’s happiest song is the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Another study found that grunge rock—known for its distorted electric guitar and nihilistic lyrics—is especially bad for happiness. Grunge not only raised hostility, sadness, tension, and fatigue for its listening participants, but also lowered caring, relaxation, mental clarity, and vigor. As a native of Seattle, where this genre was born, I found that this explained a thing or two about my misbegotten youth.

You might ask why someone would want to listen to miserable music, but obviously we do. You have very likely listened to sad songs after a bad breakup at some point. The function of sad music is not only to soothe you. Scholars also find that when people suffering from negative emotions consume disconsolate music, it helps them understand their feelings and find meaning in them. A sad song can help you feel less alone in your sadness and make sense of it.

In general, music amplifies positive and negative emotions most under two circumstances. First, when it’s performed live. British researchers asked participants to listen to classical music in three ways: live, prerecorded, and in an MTV-style video. Using sensors attached to the subjects’ scalps, the scholars detected significantly more brain activity for the in-person performance, indicating that this elicited the most engagement and focus in the listeners. Second, when one listens by oneself. In a 2018 experiment, researchers showed that happy music seems happier and sad music seems sadder when you listen to it alone, as opposed to listening with others.

[Read: Finding happiness in angry music]

If you want to use music more strategically to heighten your emotional experiences and gain a deeper sense of meaning and self-understanding, here are a few ideas to consider.

1. Decide what you want from your music.
The research indicates that a trade-off takes place between using music to bond socially and using it to intensify emotions. If you want the former result, listen with friends; if you want the latter outcome, listen by yourself. If you want a mixture of both, try going to a live concert with friends. If you want the richest emotional experience, go to a concert by yourself.

2. Follow a recipe.
The effects of music depend to a large extent on its underlying ingredients. For example, the music that typically elicits the most positive emotion has a fast tempo (between 140 and 150 beats per minute), features chords that include the seventh tone to create a sense of expectation, or is familiar to you. You could go study at the local conservatory to learn more about these elements, but the shortcut is just to create a catalog of songs you like. Pay attention to how each one makes you feel and write down its characteristics, in your own words; then look for patterns. You can build a personal music library this way based on emotional effect rather than style or artist.

3. Learn and grow.
Thinking about your music in terms of its effects on you will probably increase your appetite for new genres and help your tastes become more sophisticated. Once you start getting interested in increasing the emotional and cognitive effects of love songs, say, you might want to cultivate an interest in Italian opera. (I’d suggest starting with Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca or La Bohème.) If you like how an electric guitar shredding sick riffs stimulates your limbic system, try taking that experience to the next level with a flamenco virtuoso such as Paco de Lucía.

4. Play it yourself.
Among professional and amateur musicians, opinions differ about whether emotional experiences and life understanding are deeper when playing music as opposed to merely listening to it. Personally, I find listening better, but this may be influenced by having played in symphony orchestras under some of the world’s most tyrannical conductors. In fact, many musicians (including amateurs) find a kind of ecstasy in playing. One 2020 study looked at the well-being effects of playing music and found them to be significant and positive. Take a few lessons on your favorite instrument and see for yourself. I should note, however, that the researchers on that study included a comparison group of knitters—and they derived even more happiness than the musicians. Perhaps the ideal formula for bliss is to listen to music while knitting.

[Arthur C. Brooks: Here’s 10,000 hours. Don’t spend it all in one place.]

Living long before the era of recorded music, Schopenhauer had to get his transcendent musical experiences by going to concerts in Frankfurt, as well as playing his flute in his apartment, which he did for an hour a day. By the end of his life, he dedicated his attention almost entirely to just one composer, the Italian Gioachino Rossini, who was a contemporary (they were born four years apart). When he spoke of Rossini’s music, Schopenhauer is said to have rolled his eyes up toward heaven.

If you do the work, you too can make music a part of your life that goes beyond a pleasant background and becomes a lifelong journey into higher levels of consciousness and self-awareness. In short: Find your Rossini.