Mark Knezevic wrote:

>For instance, how you say that a 'word' is a concept is somewhat
>fallacious.  Frege, Quine and other language philosophers have dealt
>with the matter and to my knowledge they come up with no such conclusion.
>
>...  If so, that does not really give us a clear idea, still, of what you
>may be witnessing [you are saying a word defines a word because, as you
>stated, 'concepts are words'].

Well I did not want to get into a linguistics discussion on this music
list so I was a bit simplistic.  But CAT is a word and on hearing it, our
minds recall everything we know and/or associate with cats.  That is what
I meant about a word being (or standing for) a concept.  Likewise, HARMONY
in a word which on hearing or seeing causes us to call up the things we
associate with harmony, like perhaps colors that seem to go together.  When
we experience a situation that involves a tail, mice, purring, the word CAT
is likely to come to mind.

>Anyway, I don't understand really what you are trying to achieve here,
>and I don't see why it needs t be achieved.  I haven't been following the
>thread from where you started.

No particular reason for achieving an understanding or this relationship,
except for a better understanding of art, music, ourselves, our minds,
emotion, imagination, the universe, etc.

I thought I would take one more (last) shot at music vs paintings by
listing some of the thoughts I found in my notes from 20 years ago when
I first explored this (by paintings I exclude portraits and modern art)

I music, certain notes in a melody may be played louder that others,
the rhythm accompaniment may be softer than the melody, notes inside the
octave (piano) may be softer than the octave notes, and a conductor may
have certain voices playing louder or softer than others.  In black and
white drawing, certain lines are drawn darker than others and some are
extremely lightly drawn.  This seems to give depth to music and drawing.
Recording studio engineers can not only place sounds in the left/right
spectrum but can place the instruments closer or farther from the listener
using volume and bass/treble equalization giving a distinct 3 dimensional
effect - perspective- especially when heard through headphones.

In art, colors can clash.  I music harmonies can clash as dissonance.
In art there is the color wheel that defines complementary colors and
contrasting colors.  In music there are rules for consonance and
dissonance.

A good painting always has an easily identifiable subject.  In music there
is always an easily identifiable melody.

The scene in a painting implies a tempo, that is, the speed of the
action being portrayed.  A battle scene is assumed by the mind to be
happening rapidly while a country setting gives one the sense that
things are moving slowly and peacefully.  Music is played at a tempo
where peaceful is slow and exciting if fast.Paintings can be thought to
be grave, dolce, espressivo, leggiero, maestoso, tranquillo and con fuoco
by their subject and its treatment.

Components in a painting are deliberately placed in juxtaposition with each
other for both balance and to emphasize the relationship of the components.
In music, passages are placed in juxtaposition with each other for both
balance and to emphasize the relationship of the melody, development, etc.

Musical instruments differ in their attack and decay of sound, and on the
hardness and softness of their sound (consider a French horn vs.  a flute)
Composers can choose which instruments play what to add a dimension of
texture to the sound of, for example, the melody.  In painting, the artist
can use brush strokes to make images blurry (a slow attack), sharp (a fast
attack -with an edge), and to give a texture to the painting.

In painting the light source causes shadowing of objects that act as
a echo of the object.  In music, a wholeness is achieved by repeating
(echoing) musical fragments in different voices and/or registers.  The
repetition can even begin before the fragment ends allowing the fragment
to overlay its echo the way an object in a painting overlays its shadow.

Goethe said "I call architecture frozen music".  Could any well done
painting be frozen music as well? Then is music a fluid painting.

Debussy said "Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry
of light"

Hollywood composers are able to write a piece of music that "goes with" a
visual scene (even one without dialog) indicating some relation between the
visual and the aural.

These are the highlights of my notes on this.  These are not conclusions,
just thoughts on the subject.  Please take these thoughts for what they are
worth (possibly nothing) and do not pick them apart for I do not have the
time nor the interest in defending them in subsequent posts.  They were not
offered as statements, just ideas.

But I will offer this interesting point from aesthetics - Immanuel Kant -
Is a fine painting of an ugly face still beautiful? If yes, is there a
parallel to this thought in music?

>Carnap attempted to form a new language in his 'Aufbau' but he failed.

So what.  The astronomer tried to find a model for the movements of the
planets that placed the Earth at the center on the universe and failed as
well.  A composer in the future might start a composition my first making
a sketch of the country side, who knows.  Students may be taught about
music's abstract concepts by using examples from great paintings.

Bill Pirkle