Dave Pitzer writes ...

>But his piano concertos, piano sonatas, symphonies, etc.  were certainly
>not programmatic and it is silly (in my opinion) "

Certainly the Pastoral (#6) is Program music (in fact, an ingenious
combination of both)

>This is an age-old pastime.  And it's not even interesting.  Music does
>not have to "mean" anything.  It's somewhat childish and certainly "wrong"
>to try to place a picture or scene with non-program music.

Since many people on this thread seem to think that music does cause the
visualization of scenes in the mind of the listener, evokes memories, and
emotions, it seems a bit strong to tell someone how their mind works is
"wrong".  Many right-brain oriented people can't help it if their mind
assigns a vision image to aural input - they were just born that way.
A painting can actually cause some people to think of a piece of music.

>The middle movement of Beethoven's 4th concerto is a dialogue all right.
>But it is not representative of the struggle between a man and a woman or
>even mankind and womankind.  It can even be called a "struggle" but it's a
>struggle between solo and tutti.  Tutti comes on strong but is gradually
>overcome by solo in a beautiful MUSICAL interplay.

It seems to me that the tutti/solo is only the "mechanism for the
struggle".  I think that many great thinkers in the field of the arts
would disagree that this famous movement is simply a musical mechanism.

>"Music does not have to "mean" anything!!!"

You are right it does not have to.  As a string of pearls does not mean
anything to an ape.  Indeed, some music does not mean anything at all.
But surely some music was meant by the composer to mean something.  The
2nd of the 4th is surely, at the very least, a struggle between power and
gentleness.  The only question is the power and gentleness a metaphor for
something else?

Bill Pirkle