Rick Mabry wrote:

>Case in point: Hearing to 'Taps' today reminded me that I find it to be
>about the saddest bit of music I can think of.  And it is entirely a C
>major chord.

In my humble opinion, this is not the best counterexample.  I believe
that if you took someone from our (Western) culture, fully acquainted
with our mainstream forms of music (perhaps a trumpet player), but who
had somehow managed all his (or her) life to avoid ever hearing "Taps",
and you gave it to him as bare sheet music without indications for
expression and asked him to play it, he would never suspect that it was
meant to be a sad piece.  In other words, I think Taps is sad by specific
extramusical cultural association, not for intrinsically musical reasons.

My two cents,

Richard Tsuyuki