Bernard Chasan:

>The "music" we hear is created by physical entities known as "humans".
>The "music" has intrinsic significance because "humans" created it, listen
>to it, respond to it.  Of course it is a "physical" phenomenon, so what?
>It is at best discouraging, at worst appalling to read communications from
>"humans" who, in the face of all evidence, insist on treating music in the
>positivistic hardboiled way that some scientists discuss science- just the
>facts please, no values allowed.

It's not that no values are allowed; it's more like lots of values come
in, each important to the individual but not necessarily to anybody else,
and how do you choose? To get back to my example: Saying that the second
movement of Beethoven's Fourth represents Orpheus taming the wild beasts
is a metaphor for the emotions stirred in one person.  I'm sure a
Freud-influenced listener would come up with a different metaphor.
Who knows what Beethoven thought when he wrote it or whether he thought
anything along those lines? He left no record and we can't ask.  All of
these metaphors point to something in the music itself which is not
emotion, but pure technique.  For example, I more or less agree with Bill
Pirkle that the distinctive dynamics and shapes of the two main thematic
ideas and Beethoven's strongly separate presentation and elaboration of
those ideas have much to do with the metaphors that arise.  But it's a
"one-way function." We can't go solely from our metaphor to Beethoven's
emotional state.

I find amazing that some people have to believe that great art is created
in hot blood.  We see a lot of bad art which is painfully sincere (which
implies something other than passion is required), and, anyway, logically
there are four choices: the previous two, bad art from cold blood, and
good art from cold blood.  Writing music is an amazingly intricate craft,
among other things.  I wouldn't be surprised to find a composer who
calculated so well (rather than felt so deeply) that the music he wrote
moved others.  To paraphrase George Burns, in art sincerity is everything;
if you can fake that, you've got it made.

Steve Schwartz