Musical training sharpens the perception of emotions in others
A curious group study led by William Thompson examined the link between musical training and the ability to percieve emotions in others. They recorded a person saying ordinary sentences like "the chairs are made of wood" with different emotions: happy, sad, angry, fearful. Then, by calculating the average pitch of each syllable, the recordings were transformed into musical sequences. What they were using was speech prosody, the musical aspects of speech such as pitch, pace, vocal stress, and duration of pauses. The processed clips were played for two groups - one of adults with no musical training, the other with 8-13 years of music lessons - who were asked to judge whether the corresponding sequence was angry, sad, happy, or fearful. In every case, the trained group came out on top, especially in detecting sadness.
So, it seems that an understanding of musical harmony can lead to insight into social harmony. But then that idea is nothing new. Music training has been emphasized by many, including the Ancient Greek philosopher/mystic Protagoras, Chinese sage Confucius, and Friedrich Nietzsche who said that "without music life would be a mistake".
Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons help? Emotion, 4(1), 46-64.
Music training helps people understand emotions in speech, CognitiveDaily.com