Charles Dalmas wrote:

>You realize what the music sounds like from the printed page, but any
>program attached would be dificult to glean without hearing the realization
>of the printed notes.

? What we hear when seeing the notes IS a "realization" of the printed
notes very similar to what people hear when they play the music on a
player.  If you can glean whatever from a 'program attached" while 'hearing
the realization of the printed notes" then you can from reading the printed
page too, as long as you are able to 'hear' the pitches you see, which many
musicians can do.

>That's 100 peasants dancing around in circles in the field.

Can't do that from listening to a player anymore than you can from reading
the score.

>I teach clarinet professionally, and I tell all my students that a page
>full of black dots isn't music, and is, in and of itself, meaningless.
>Musical expression comes from the heart and soul (you can have as many

Or, from the composer's heart and soul and then translated by your own
heart and soul, or even mind.

But, I find this notion that music cannot express emotion very odd.  For me
it's a given that it can.  At least, it's expressing emotion that the human
-may have- felt while composing it or would like others to feel.

Lots of music, especially nowadays, is written from an intellectual,
analytical basis and those won't express much on an emotional level, but
that doesn't mean you can't translate, if you want, what a certain mood
into a sequence of melodic, harmonic combinations that will communicate to
others a sense of that mood due to a strangely common understanding of note
and time combinations.

If you're elated over something wonderful, you're not likely to sit down
to write in a descending 4/4 line G---| Eb--- | C---- | ---- and expect
anyone else to sense your elation.  They're more likely to think that
you're feeling rather low or are at least intentionally expressing
something mildly melancholic or plain old ruminative.

Andrys in Berkeley
http://www.andrys.com/books.html
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