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Date: | Thu, 13 Jul 2000 19:03:05 -0500 |
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Len Fehskens replies to Karl Miller:
>>I guess I honestly don't see any problem with the use of the term language
>>in music.
>
>Well, I do. It leads to the notion that music reliably communicates
>specific meanings. No, much as I love Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet
>doesn't communicate love to me.
I don't think that it necessarily communicates meanings and we could
always quarrel over the word "specific." You certainly doesn't usually
can't denote something. However, if this were strictly the case, movie
music wouldn't work at all. There'd be no affective difference between
using the music Bernard Herrmann actually wrote and Schubert's "Ave Maria"
to accompany the Pscho shower scene.
>When I was an undergraduate at MIT, I was privileged to take a course on
>Eastern Religions taught by Huston Smith. He told us "an analogy is like
>a bucket of water with a hole in it; you can only carry it so far". The
>"music as language" bucket is riddled with holes. It adds nothing to our
>understanding of music or language.
But, keeping in mind the caveats, it *is* convenient. Now, I'm not sure
exactly why the objection came up, since no one in this thread (so far as
I remember) has claimed that a piece of music specifically means X.
Steve Schwartz
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