An 1896 Vitascope poster places moving images and a live orchestra in the same frame. Metropolitan Print Company; Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Restoration by Adam Cuerden. Public domain in the United States.
Why can a song make us imagine a room we have never entered, a face we cannot clearly see, or a road disappearing into darkness? Sometimes the effect begins before a music video supplies any images. A voice establishes distance, a repeated phrase brings something back, and a change in sound makes the imagined space feel suddenly larger. The listener starts to experience the song as a scene.
