Composers convey emotion using a variety of cues, including dynamics, timing, and mode. However, they vary their approaches to emotional communication, in part due to differences in the musical conventions of their time. The goal of this study is to build upon recent research examining systematic differences in the musical cues affecting emotional communication throughout different musical eras. Here we supplement musicological work with a perceptual complement exploring how listeners group historical music according to their emotional content. Participants listened to excerpts of the first 8 measures of 24 Prelude sets by either Bach (Baroque era) or Chopin (Romantic era). Each set includes pieces in all Western keys in both major and minor modes. After each excerpt participants selected a label for the piece, representing the five most common categories from Horn & Huron (2015). Complementing previous findings, our results indicate differences in the categorization of each composer’s work. For example, Chopin appears to have structured his pieces so that participants utilized fewer Joyful and Tender/Lyrical labels than Bach, and more Passionate labels. The labeling of Chopin’s pieces are also more strongly aligned with the descriptions of each label provided by Horn & Huron (2015) than Bach. Together with their work, the current research highlights that analyzing “cues for emotion” overlooks that emotion is stylistically specific to compositional context. Our findings present a novel analysis of historic changes influencing perception and is consistent with ideas of great shifts in the use of musical cues to convey emotion between musical eras. Horn, K., & Huron, D. (2015). On the changing use of the major and minor modes 1750–1900. Music Theory Online, 21(1), 1–11. Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.1/mto.15.21.1.horn_huron.html (http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.1/mto.15.21.1.horn_huron.html)