How does a work of music stir the senses, creating feelings of joy, sadness, elation, or nostalgia?. This is not, however, a listener's guide to any "correct" response to a particular piece. Taking examples from Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt, he traces the use of radically changing intensities in the Romantic works of the nineteenth century and devotes an entire chapter to the key of C minor.