[estefan]

> like "odd meters like 5/8 and 7/8 generally evoke intensity and tension" or "brass chorale in a major key sounds triumphant" or "gong crescendo roll is scary"

Can you recommend any books that teach these sorts of general rules, or the emotive feeling generally associated with different keys and modes?

[autarch]

AFAIK there are no such books. As for whether certain keys evoke certain emotions, that's highly debated other than "major happy, minor sad (other modes weird)".

The way I learned about how composition worked was mostly two things. One, listening to lots of music, ideally with the score in front of me so I could zoom in on some particular bit I really liked. Two, writing music and seeing how it turned out in practice.