Image and imagination in perception of music

Intention of this essay is to analyze the appreciation of music into sequential stages according to inner responses of subject, in particular, to clarify the attribute and relation of sound image and visual image and highlight the impor-tance of imagination in perception of music. Conceptually, appreciation of a melodious artwork can be partitioned into the states, “listening”, “thinking ” and “enjoying”. The sound reacts to the auditory organ, giving a physiological stimulus to the subject. Immediately, imagination brings the feeling into psychological space, thereby sound and visual images generate. In the course of the perception, imagination plays a vital role in the conver-sion of sound and visual images and links the reality de-picted by music and the one rebuilt in the subject’s mind. For the subjectivity of imagination, the reality rebuilt men-tally can’t be the same with the portrayed. Taking part of empathy in appreciation makes the virtual reality be subject to the inner sensation of subject. Such being the case, the relation between the realities portrayed by author and re-felt by audience are not geometrically, but topologically isomorphic