Doctrine of the Affections
Baroque theory holding that music depicts and arouses specific emotional states (affections) in the listener.
What it means
The doctrine of the affections (German: Affektenlehre) is a music-theoretical concept of the Baroque era, holding that music does not express individual, personal feelings but rather depicts clearly identifiable, universal emotional states—so-called affections such as joy, grief, anger, longing, or fear—and deliberately arouses them in the listener. A piece or a movement was generally expected to be dominated by a single, consistent affection, rather than shifting moods within a short span.
The doctrine assumes that specific musical means—key, rhythm, melodic motion, harmony, instrumentation—can be assigned fixed effects on the human soul, much as specific figures of speech in ancient rhetoric were meant to produce specific effects on an audience.
In the notation
The doctrine of the affections has no notation symbol of its own, but it indirectly shapes the score: tempo and character markings such as Adagio lamentoso, Allegro furioso, or Andante affettuoso indicate the intended affection of a movement. Certain key characteristics, such as associating minor keys with grief or bright major keys with joy, also trace back to ideas close to the doctrine.
Musical use
In Baroque music—especially opera, cantata, and instrumental music of the 17th and early 18th centuries—composers often consciously drew on rhetorical principles to set affections to music. Certain musical figures, such as descending chromatic lines for lament and pain or fast ascending runs for joy and excitement, became fixed expressive devices known as musical-rhetorical figures.
Theorists such as Johann Mattheson described in detail in their writings which musical means should evoke which affections, effectively supplying composers with a vocabulary of expressive devices. With the shift to the Classical era and the growing emphasis on individual, personal feeling in musical aesthetics, the strict doctrine of the affections lost influence, though the idea that music conveys specific moods still resonates today.
Performance practice
When you play Baroque music, first ask which affection underlies a movement, and try to sustain it consistently rather than shifting mood from bar to bar. Pay particular attention to rhetorical figures such as sighing motifs, chromatic lament lines, or energetic runs, and shape them so their expressive character is clearly audible.