Pablo Massa responding to Satoshi:

>>Music as a language then becomes something more of a virtual "a priori"
>>necessary ground without which it is scarcely possible to even begin to
>>think about music - and not just a "useful lie" that helps stop musical
>>theory from sailing off the edge of the world!
>
>Agree.  I've never pointed my gun against that notion, as you can see in
>the last paragraph.  Concerning the "useful lie", I would say that it's
>rather a "useful omission".  It doesn't necessarily stops musical theory
>from "sailing off the edge of the world" (I doubt that there is anything
>that can stops it).  It's simply a matter of awareness: when I want some
>deep insight in what music is and means, I don't read books whose humble
>purpose was to teach how to resolve a little sonata-form scheme or a poor
>inverted canon.  ...

These two learned gentlemen have been arguing in circles - saying that
whatever else, we can't think of music except as language, because we must
think in language, and therefore if we think about music it must be as a
language.

This is roughly like saying that because a scholar writes about a Russian
novel in English, it is impossible to think about Russian in anything but
English, and therefore Russian is English.

stirling s newberry
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