Denis Fodor:

>Admitttedly, this sort of objective meaning is not constructed for the
>toilers across the river from you at MIT.  They're only responsive to an
>objectivity that is falsifiable.
>
>Music gets across in its own way and produces its own sort of effect,
>including that of persuasion, on the conscious.  The Vienna sonata form,
>as an instance, requires an understanding deep enough to qualify as a gut
>feeling for what a Laendler, or a bourrade, should be doing for you.  It is
>also demands that you react predictably to the message of a change in key,
>a change in tempo, and a change in volume.  A brain held in fee by the
>heady lucubrations of modern science needs to be washed in order to agree
>that there's objectivty to be found in the Vienna sonata form--but there
>is, there is, there is--dum dee dum!

Denis, I am an experimental physicist.  When I do experiments and try
to frame explanations, yes- I trust in falsifiable.  I need not check with
the folks across the river.  And of course I love classical music, else I
would not be here- on this list, that is.  And there is no dichotomy between
a love (yes, love) and appreciation of science and a love and appreciation
of music.  many people I know share both enthusiasms.  And certainly one
reason that I love classical music is the structure.  You don't have to
preach to me about the effects of music.  But you are confusing structure
with objective meaning.  Or at least you are rather stretching the meaning
of objective meaning.  The notion that sonata form "demands that you react
predictably to the message of a change in key, a change in tempo, a change
in volume" is quite simply without foundation.  Even experienced and
accomplished PERFORMERS don't agree on these things, as is clearly
evidenced by comparing their interpretations.

Music communicates in a rich variety of ways. That is good enough. It is
not necessary to stretch reality.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University