Joseph Sowa replies to Edson Tadeu Ortolan: >... Classical music may not be universal, but it is MOST DEFINITELY a >language. Therefore, it can express anything. The difference between >English and Music is that in English, certain sounds have a definitive >meaning whereas in music the meaning is more nebulous. If people wanted >to, they could carry on conversations with other people in Music IF they >understood the meaning of what they were singing back and forth to each >other (i.e. had a vocabulary of "words). Thus, it is with Music, and >thus it is with English. The term "language" is really not precise enough. We speak of music as "language," but if it is language, it's an awfully funny one. Languages generally can refer to things outside of themselves. "Love" isn't love, but it does point to the emotion we experience. However, music isn't all that capable. I doubt, for example, most of us would think of Till Eulenspiegel after hearing the Strauss work if we didn't know the title and the program. If music can express anything, then you should be able to draw up a legal contract in notes. What music lacks is a codification of conventions necessary to go that extra step - an agreed-upon dictionary. When we say music is expressive, we mean that it stirs certain emotions or thoughts within us. Unfortunately, emotions per se are inarticulate. Emotions are coos, groans, wails, adrenalin rushes, and so on. When we bring them to thought - and in this case thought clothed in conventional language - then they speak to us. However, those emotions and thoughts may not be the same for any two people. You might think Beethoven's Fifth Symphony expresses one thing, I another, Beethoven very likely yet another. We lack a common dictionary. If the expressive *content*, as opposed to its power, lay in the music, we would be feeling and thinking about the same things. In this sense, the content is extra-musical, although it may be occasioned by the music. You can take the analogy of metaphor or image, if you like. Music can become the image of emotions in us. An image, however, is in itself meaningless, in the sense that it speaks to us precisely. To take one example, I really don't know what "delicate cages" means, but I don't deny its expressive power as an image. What it expresses to me, I couldn't tell you without a great deal of thought. Even then, I doubt it would express the same thing to you. If we have these problems over something so precise as the English language, I suspect the difficulty multiplies over something so weak in its extra-referential power as music. >All languages have theory, or grammar; however, all languages, including >music, exsist in order to communicate ideas. Is not emotion an idea? "Emotion" is an idea. Emotion is not. Further, "ideas" differ between music and languages based in words. Again, languages can easily refer to things outside themselves. "Emotion" is a noun and it refers to something that isn't a noun. Music is notes and form and pattern and a kind of rhetoric of its own. I don't know the piece of music that means "pass the salt." Brahms's First Symphony first and foremost means itself. It may move you and me, and you can put a meaning on it if you like. But, again, it's probably not what it means to me. Actually, I think this is a large part of music's power - the range of meaning projected on to it that it can support. Steve Schwartz