Clearly there’s a distinction between the energy of the sound we hear, the sound that travels through the air as compressions and rarefactions, and the energy it creates in our minds. The SEA theory is interested in both, and the relation between them. The relation between them is particularly of interest because it is obvious that external sounds trigger internal energies. Much of what we discuss about music is the melody-rhythm-words-form set of relations, and that set is pretty securely tied to musical tradition. The energy that emerges from that set I would call intellectual, as expectations develop from knowledge of a tradition, or meaning develops within a piece due to alterations to something familiar/known in the piece, and so forth: very much memory-connected processing.
But what has emerged in the modern era is an approach to music that gets a lot of its impact from the nature of the sound itself (think Ligeti Atmospheres, ambient music, the importance of a singer’s voice or guitar timbre in rock music, etc.), and when we hear music of another culture whose traditions we don’t know, I would posit that aspects of the sound itself – acoustical realities of timbre, volume, register, pacing of events – are the primary factors creating the musical energy in our heads. Of course familiar factors like melody may be present, but would not be fully understood by the non-initiated, relegating their impact to more basic features and contributing a sense of strangeness or otherness.
Certain aspects of sound are important to our safety and survival, thus leading to their deep importance in the processing of incoming sound. Good examples are to be found in the human response to sound level (volume) and quality (timbre), including the ability to hear a whispered warning of danger or to recognize a family member’s voice. Very loud sounds produce fright, and particular sound qualities might frighten or soothe, depending on the real-world phenomena they are connected to in our memories. So we can understand that timbre, dynamics, and more are connected to our safety on a very deep level and that their presence in music will bear at least a tinge of their potential impact. The outcome would undoubtedly be an emotional response.
My definition of musical energy is this: the outcome of the human brain’s processing of auditory events, memory, and hard-wired tendencies, all based on a premise taken by the mind that it is experiencing music. External auditory events are sound energy of course, and the existing mental determination that they are part of a musical experience transforms what might be real fear/attraction/revulsion into a modified experience we tend to call aesthetic.
Sound-Energy Aggregate: the dash in the name is important because it both separates and connects the sound energy – the acoustical stuff – and mental energy that it stimulates.