ABSTRACT. Meyer explains that musical styles are more or less complex systems of sound relationships understood and used in common by a group of individuals. Kivy holds that the emotions expressed by music are possessed by the music (they are an essential part of the syntactic structure of music). Montague Lavy presents the foundations of a model of emotional response to music that places the experience of listening to music squarely within the wider frame of human engagement with the environment. Kramer contends that we bring the music close to some worldly circumstance in the faith that the closeness is something recognized.