A New Theory of Music: Correspondences of Language, Emotion, and Sound

"This model has implications for music, language of emotions. For the psychological content reflected in the MNS and regulated by SES is emotion - primarily the feeling of personal safety in the presence of others, and secondarily, the eudaimonic or positive feelings made possible by such safety. The musical dimension of this maybe intuited when we consider the musical cadence - the 'descent to the tonic' - as a decisive feeling of arriving safely home, 'there's no place like home.' Music's ability to qualify feelings of mild apprehension - i.e. 'dissonance' - may well understood as maneuvers to heighten feelings of stability ('consonance') and homecoming ('tonic'), the essential feelings of personal belonging upon all other eudiamonic feelings are built."
From the Introduction