Karl Miller:

>If such expression is culture-specific...is there any "universal" meaning
>in music?

There is a chain of cinemas, Landmark Theatres, which runs a little spot
before each show with voiceover in several languages saying that "the
language of film is universal." But what do such claims mean?

My initial comments on this thread suggested that music is a kind of
language that communicates through gestures.  Now gestures--such as hand
gestures or direct eye contact--are widely understood but can certainly
be misunderstood between people of different cultures or subcultures
even within the same countries.  Although some simple expressions, such
as smiles, can be immediately and universally recognized as smiles, there
are different kinds of smiles, some ironic or sardonic.  Languages
typically have to be learned.  Additionally, cultures can be understood,
and appreciated, internationally.  This requires openness to human
differences, for a start.

Western classical music, to focus on this, though a minority taste
nearly everywhere, is played and appreciated around the world.  For that
matter, the English language is spoken around the world.  (I recently
learned that there are more people learning English in China than there
are native speakers in the whole world.) So in at least one sense, even
classical music has universal appeal, though not if you mean to each and
every person.  There is surely no greater linguistic spread that that
between Chinese and English.  But the violin can be learned with minimal
clues from any verbal language.  Lots of hard work involved, of course,
but as we know there are quite a few great Asian musicians who play
Western music.  As for the reverse transfer, Harrison and Britten have
each incorporated Balinese musical effects into Western music, with
delightful results.

How do we learn to know and respond to the emotional expression of music
that a piece of music may have?  Is there any hard-wiring in the brain
concerning musical intervals or combinatins of tones?  Is it simply a
matter of convention?  If you asked specialists in linguistics these
questions I think you would find that are an awful lot of open questions
in this area and I am certain that the same is the case with music.

Jim Tobin