Stirling Newberry writes:

>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.

I must say I was thoroughly bewildered by Stirling's response.  Never
has there been any talk of music being verbal language on the basis of
the fact we are discussing music with a verbal language.  Similarly I
have never said that because aspects of music can undeniably be understood
mathematically that music must therefore be mathematics.  I concede limited
translatability of music to all other languages (mathematics, poetry) but
have insisted that this translatability is strictly relative.  I also
argued that language is shared meaning.  I then proceeded to insist on the
meaningfulness of music while again denying its full translatability to
verbal language:  Music ultimately says what it does musically.

Nowhere does the solipsistic equation "What I am thinking about with verbal
language must ITSELF be a verbal language" ever appear.  If that were the
case I could say that stars (or anything else you care to name) were no
more than a verbal language if I think about them using a verbal language.
Unless I am really missing something here, that simply is not an equation
that has ever entered into my argument.

I should mention that this very argument tipped upside down on its head was
actually presented to Bruno Walter by Gustav Mahler when Mahler insisted
that Walter needn't bother with some cliffs because he "had already
composed them".

If I were unable to think about something verbally and only musical
ideas were to come to mind, does that mean that the thing I thought about
in musical terms BECOMES music? It seems a nice idea but one I wouldn't
care to argue for it.  Composers have also frequently composed music in
response to life events but that does not reduce the composition to an
autobiographical account of that event.  Music must say what it does
musically.  Language is the house of Being.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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