Len writes:

>I wish people would stop using this extremely misleading analogy [that
>music is a language].
>
>So, if music is a "language", what is its grammar? What are its words?  What
>do these words mean? How reliably does music communicate these meanings?

Good points.  I have always thought (and Chopin backs me up - see my
recent posts) that music was a language in that it is thoughts expressed
in sounds.  There is a grammar to harmony in some people's minds, and a
grammar to form as well.  I like to discuss these very things as many of my
posts indicate.  To me it is like Egyption hyroglifics (sp?).  At one time
we knew it was a language we just did not know how to understand it until
the Rosetta stone was discovered.  Surely music as a language is untimately
understandable but, as you say we lack a grammar when we attack it from its
emotions.

It is possible to write bad music, I think, therefore some rules have been
violated (rules of emotions perhaps).  That is, there must be some abstract
rules that are "violatable" yielding bad music to most peoples taste.  I
have searched a lifetime for these.  As we learn from the bad as well as
the good (the bad teaches us what not to do) maybe this is the direction
from which to approach it.  For example,

Confusing or bad harmony produces _______ emotion
Too much thematic material with no development produces _______ emotion
A bad melody produces _______ emotion.
Unstructures music produces ______ emotion

I don't have the answers but I do have my understanding of composition.  I
was hoping the list could point to an approach.  I guess the starting point
is an agreement that music is a language or not.  If not then what is it?

Maybe there are no rules for writing good music, just rules about what to
avoid doing.

Bill Pirkle