Joseph Sowa replies to Edson Tadeu Ortolan:

>...  Classical music may not be universal, but it is MOST DEFINITELY a
>language.  Therefore, it can express anything.  The difference between
>English and Music is that in English, certain sounds have a definitive
>meaning whereas in music the meaning is more nebulous.  If people wanted
>to, they could carry on conversations with other people in Music IF they
>understood the meaning of what they were singing back and forth to each
>other (i.e.  had a vocabulary of "words).  Thus, it is with Music, and
>thus it is with English.

The term "language" is really not precise enough.  We speak of music as
"language," but if it is language, it's an awfully funny one.  Languages
generally can refer to things outside of themselves.  "Love" isn't love,
but it does point to the emotion we experience.  However, music isn't
all that capable.  I doubt, for example, most of us would think of Till
Eulenspiegel after hearing the Strauss work if we didn't know the title
and the program.  If music can express anything, then you should be able
to draw up a legal contract in notes.  What music lacks is a codification
of conventions necessary to go that extra step - an agreed-upon dictionary.
When we say music is expressive, we mean that it stirs certain emotions or
thoughts within us.  Unfortunately, emotions per se are inarticulate.
Emotions are coos, groans, wails, adrenalin rushes, and so on.  When we
bring them to thought - and in this case thought clothed in conventional
language - then they speak to us.  However, those emotions and thoughts
may not be the same for any two people.  You might think Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony expresses one thing, I another, Beethoven very likely yet another.
We lack a common dictionary.  If the expressive *content*, as opposed to
its power, lay in the music, we would be feeling and thinking about the
same things.  In this sense, the content is extra-musical, although it
may be occasioned by the music.

You can take the analogy of metaphor or image, if you like.  Music can
become the image of emotions in us.  An image, however, is in itself
meaningless, in the sense that it speaks to us precisely.  To take one
example, I really don't know what "delicate cages" means, but I don't deny
its expressive power as an image.  What it expresses to me, I couldn't tell
you without a great deal of thought.  Even then, I doubt it would express
the same thing to you.  If we have these problems over something so precise
as the English language, I suspect the difficulty multiplies over something
so weak in its extra-referential power as music.

>All languages have theory, or grammar; however, all languages, including
>music, exsist in order to communicate ideas.  Is not emotion an idea?

"Emotion" is an idea.  Emotion is not.  Further, "ideas" differ between
music and languages based in words.  Again, languages can easily refer to
things outside themselves.  "Emotion" is a noun and it refers to something
that isn't a noun.  Music is notes and form and pattern and a kind of
rhetoric of its own.  I don't know the piece of music that means "pass the
salt." Brahms's First Symphony first and foremost means itself.  It may
move you and me, and you can put a meaning on it if you like.  But, again,
it's probably not what it means to me.  Actually, I think this is a large
part of music's power - the range of meaning projected on to it that it can
support.

Steve Schwartz