Dave Wolf wrote:

>Which brings up another related issue.  Language is an organic entity
>that creates word-meanings by consensus.  (The consensus reality of
>vocabulary, I guess.) Music operates that way to a certain extent as
>well, in that conventions grow up around particular musical gestures: a
>plodding minor key passage is perceived as sad, doleful etc.  by convention;
>but just as there's nothing dismal about the collection of sounds that
>are created by the letters d-i-s-m-a-l other than the collective view
>of the meaning of those sounds, there's nothing intrinsically sad about
>a slow minor passage--unless there are imbedded meanings related to our
>biological rhythms.  Still, there are enough examples of young or otherwise
>naive listeners whose perception of a given passage does not fit the
>conventional view to indicate that if music has meaning, it's assigned
>by convention, not intrinsic, or maybe only vaguely intrinsic.  (I keep
>seeing the counter-argument that a sprightly passage from, say, a Vivaldi
>violin concerto, would rarely be called dismal.)

The term Affektenlehre or the theory of affects in music attempted to
use th concepts of rhetoric and speaking to assign emotions to specific
aspects of music.  Yet why do we see a minor key as being potentially
sad vesus a major key being happy.  Slow music can be beautiful or sad
or troubled or like a funeral march. Are there examples where someone
could find something slow to be happy?  Why do we make these associations?
and are they rather universally accepted?

Karl