Bernard Chasan writes

>Denis, pick the Viennese sonata of your choice and tell me what objective
>meaning it conveys.  That this music is rich in content and form is not
>in question.  That this richness is communicated to the listener is
>likewise not in question.  But to me, "objective meaning" is NOT what is
>communicated.  Perhaps I am being too literal minded, but to me objective
>meaning requires that some definite message is received by all qualified
>listeners, who all AGREE on the message.  Denis, what am I missing here?

Bernard, when you hear a Viennese sonata, and provided you have sufficient
experience/training with the form, you'll recognize it as one.  It will
be analyzable into movements, keys, tempos, spirit, instrumentation and
derivations from other forms.  It may contain novelties.  That's really
all you need to deduce an objective meaning.  Admitttedly, this sort of
objective meaning is not constructed for the toilers across the river from
you at MIT.  They're only responsive to an objectivity that is falsifiable.

Music gets across in its own way and produces its own sort of effect,
including that of persuasion, on the conscious.  The Vienna sonata form,
as an instance, requires an understanding deep enough to qualify as a gut
feeling for what a Laendler, or a bourrade, should be doing for you.  It is
also demands that you react predictably to the message of a change in key,
a change in tempo, and a change in volume.  A brain held in fee by the
heady lucubrations of modern science needs to be washed in order to agree
that there's objectivty to be found in the Vienna sonata form--but there
is, there is, there is--dum dee dum!

Denis Fodor