Len Fehskens <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>The difference is that pure mathematics has little "subjective"
>content; it follows from observations of physical reality (e.g.,
>counting things). Music, on the other hand is quite subjective in
>origin.

I'm not sure I understand this. The beauty of the best pure mathematics
is often intensely personal - I've often heard fine examples described
as "elegant", very much in the way we might describe a Mozart concerto
movement. It's not so much the thought as the expression which counts.
The theoretical basis of pure mathematics is of course no more (or less)
amenable to proof than that of a musical scale.

How does Len know that music was "subjective in origin"? Is he keeping
something from us? Maybe he there in that old ossitorium with Ludwig Van
Caveman? I'd have imagined that music was at least as likely to be
representational ("factual?") in its origins as mathematics - birdsong,
timbre and pitch of wood and bone, the rhythms of wind and rain ...

Ah, nostalgia for those atavistic purities. I'm reaching for the Philip
Glass right now!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"