Steve Schwartz responds to Satoshi Akima:

>>I feel strongly that it is simply not true to say that a language must
>>consist of words in order to be a language.
>
>The idea of music as language gives all sorts of permission to say
>that this kind of music is incoherent, because it hasn't a grammar.

The notion of music as a language began when someone called music the
"language of the emotions." Some music is eloquently expressive of some
emotions, many of us would agree, at least for those within a common
cultural community (an international one.) Perhaps if we speak of music
as--in part--a form of nonverbal communication, rather than as a language,
then the linguistic objections would fall away.  (Others will arise, I
know.)

Jim Tobin