If a piece of music is composed with an emotional scheme, then the playing should be more strictly controlled. For this kind of music, I prefer the ones with passion to the ones with sorrow, which has something to do with my personality. In any case, I like expressions that are honest and controlled. If it is not controllable, then it is embarrasing to express it out loud with forms like music or poetry. I do get emotional with language sometimes, but I try not to read or use them afterwards. I might do it as a chore to clean up my cognitive space. They are more functional than aesthetic.
Language surely can be a downpour of emotions, but that is bad taste. The Romantists advocate it, but they themselves are decently controlled with their own works. They are trained to a point where their utmost uncontrolled state is still controlled to a high standard.
I enjoy listening to music composed with a strong musical regularity, though I also listen to wild compositions, but they have to be played by someone tethered by a rope. Their task is to realize something that has a tendency to chaos, but they regulate it with their enshrined force of restraint.
You cannot simply go wild with art. That is just insanity. Poetry recently has a fashion to go haywire, which is very unfortunate.
I don’t even think that is a high-brow aesthetic standard, as some might argue. If you go have a lunch in a humble household, you will almost certainly hear the most down-to-earth conversations and eat with the most honest utensils, which have their solemn beauty. On the contrary, I find a lot of art created for the wealthier class going towards flamboyance or hollow, or both.
But when art is created for a much higher purpose, for example, theology, then the hubris is oftentimes much reduced. Although it can be still be played with an individualistic manner and fail the intention of the composer.
Unfortunate event alone is not tragedy. Tragedy is the understanding that tragic events are exactly the same ones that consists of what people might call hope. If tragedy is eliminated, then hope goes away too. The deep sadness exists not in melancholy phrases, but everywhere else. It nurtures hearts, makes people laugh and dance. It is the crucial nutrition.
There is tragedy in vivacity. But there isn’t tragedy in grandiloquence and sentimentality. If any, there hides a lesser form of comedy, something like a farce, forcing you to laugh, like a tyrant.