28 Jun /16

Frisson

Frisson – Word of the day - EVS TranslationsThink of the goose bumps and shivers down the spine which you get when something “hits you right in the feels”… That weird physical expression of an emotional response, let us say, when you are listening to a musical piece that speaks to you in a certain way.

Did you know that there are people, who feel it so intensely that they would describe the feeling as “skin orgasms”? In fact, goose bumps are just one of the physical symptoms, but there is a special term to describe the whole palette of sensations, and it is called frisson, which happens to be, but of course, a borrowing from the French language (oh, la laa!).

Frisson can be best defined as a ‘fleeting moment of emotional excitement, an emotional thrill.’ A loanword from French where it means ‘thrill, fever, shiver, illness’ and which etymology can be traced down to the Latin verb frigere ‘to be cold.’

The first mention of frisson in English comes from the letters of Horatio Walpole, an English art historian, who in 1777 writes that: “I tore open the sacred box with..little reverence… No holy frisson, no involuntary tear warned me.”

And ever since, many studies have been conducted in order to demystify frisson and find answers why some musical pieces have more impact on us than others. There are entire play-lists featuring frisson-inducing tracks, based on listeners’ responses. People listening to the said tracks, reported getting chills down the spine, fluttering in the stomach, a racing heart, trembling and sexual arousal – an altogether intense aesthetic experience. Evidence of similar phenomenon have been found in studies of certain dimensions to deep music listening in Sufis.

Musical frisson elicits a physiological change that is locked to a particular point in the music – sudden changes in harmony or dynamic leaps, for example, seem to be particularly powerful. It has to do  with the way our brain monitors expectation – if all the rules to create a musical piece are observed too closely, then the piece is kind of boring and does not catch our attention. To get the frisson reaction, there must be an anticipation, violation, and resolution of our expectations that tease the brain to releases dopamine and give us a thrill.