 Early in his life, René Descartes (1596–1650) devoted a treatise to music, the Compendium Musicae (written in 1618 and published posthumously in 1650). This work is dominated by scientific concerns rather than philosophical ones, but the very start of the treatise is characteristic of its age, as Descartes states that music’s goal is “to please and to arouse various Affections in us” (Descartes 1650). But Descartes’s most important impact on philosophy of music is actually due to his treatise on emotions, The Passions of the Soul (1649). In this work, Descartes defines emotions as the result of the action produced by external objects on the animal spirits, a thin air-like substance that stirs our passions whenever it is set in motion. Descartes also distinguishes six basic emotions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness.