It seems I am being forced to correct some misunderstandings creeping in
here.  Len Fehskens writes:

>Satoshi makes a case for music's value in addressing the human condition,
>but is this a measure of utility?

Nowhere did I argue the case for music as a language on the grounds of it's
utility.  Utility is the worst and weakest possible grounds for arguing
that music is a language.  Nor did I ever talk about "addressing" the human
condition.

>What would this utility be?

In some ways you should ideally ask those who seem to advocate the position
that the concept of music as a language is no more than a useful metaphor
to illustrate certain concepts.  There are two instances in which you will
encounter discussion about musical language.

Some examples of usage the first instance in analysis might be:

   1.  Schubert's diatonic-homophonic musical language is susceptible
       to Schenkerian analysis whereas Wagner's highly chromatic musical
       language is resistant to Schenkerian analysis or analysis a la
       Rameau.

   2.  Monteverdi's musical language is a highly madrigalian modal
       musical language.

   3.  Webern's dodecaphonic musical language differs from Schoenberg's
       in that Webern derives the entire harmonic, thematic, and
       contrapuntal structure of his works strictly from the tone row.

Examples of the second instance involve its use in the discussion of
musical rhetoric found in some music of the past.  I take my next examples
exclusively from a collection of essays by Nicolaus Harnoncourt ("Baroque
Music Today:  Music as Speech"):

   1.  What is essential [in musical performances] is the small dynamics,
       which means pronunciation, since it makes the "tonal discourse"
       clear...  Dotted rhythm is particularly important in connection
       with articulation and musical "pronunciation".

   2.  If we carefully look at individual figures used by Bach, we
       clearly recognize their origin as figures of speech...in Bach's
       hands the rhetorical components are particularly clearly expressed
       and are in fact, consciously based on classical rhetorical theory.

>what value does the metaphor have beyond its poetic imagery?

As illustrated by my above examples, the traditional notion of music as a
language is not poetic but strictly analytical.  Allegations of the music
as a language being a "useful fiction" could only seem meaningful in an
analytical context.  However I have taken pains to reject any false
advocacy of the idea of music as a language on the basis of it's utility.
It is for the same reasons that I will oppose the notion of music as a
language being poetic fancy, justifiable on the grounds of esthetic
license.  Whether you dismiss the notion of music as a language as a
"useful fiction" or dismiss it as a poetic and pretty white lie, it makes
little difference.  In both instances it still ends up being every bit a
lie.  Utility and beauty make poor substitutes for truth.

>...the music I love "says" enough to me personally that I don't really
>care if it says the same to others only approximately.

I think there can be surprising unanimity in a positive or negative
response to a performance or composition.  The verbal translations of the
shared musical meaning may be so completely contradictory as to make a
thorough mockery of words.  Yet in spite of this, any profound response to
music often retains remarkable universality in its shared PURELY musical
meaning.  I must repeat such MUSICAL meaning need not even be translated to
(or even translatable into) another language in such a fashion.  It is thus
superfluous to write out a translation into English of a Mahler Symphony
("the hero struggles valiantly but is brought to his knees in a crushing
defeat by the hammer blows of Fate blah blah...").  Mahler said something
to the effect that if he wanted to tell a story he would have just told it
instead of writing the symphony.

>Even as a "private", if not quite secret, language, it has value to me,
>and apparently to many others.

There is nothing secret about what music says.  There is no subordination
to a secret verbal "program" external to it.  Its musical meaning is
self-sufficient and independent of other languages, open and not secretive
at all.  Notions of "secrecy" only creep in when there is a hidden
non-musical language encoded within it.  Never have I argued that music
is a surreptitious code for saying something encrypted within it.  I admit
that the number 3 can take on mystical significance in Bach (3/4 time etc)
and that DSCH in Shostakovich can point to possible autobiographical
elements in his works, but the real question is whether such things exhaust
a composition to the point that the music is rendered superfluous once the
appropriate de-encystations has been performed? I say that it does not, and
that a work must retains its musical meaning quite independent of such
elements if it is to remain worthy as a composition.  Music must say what
it does musically.

>I suspect for me is the sharing of that valuation, rather than the sharing
>of any consistently transmitted "meaning", that forges the bonds between
>me and this community.

That may be true for you but every concert is a communion of musical
meaning.  Without this communion of meaning no valuation can take place,
for then there would no music, only meaningless noise.  No word need be
uttered in that communion.  I think that performers can sometimes sense a
particularly profound sense of musical rapport and intimate communication
with the audience.  The performer intuits with remarkable sensitivity that
the composer's musical utterances "speak" to the audience.  I will say it
again as I don't think it was understood the first time around:  language
is the house of Being.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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