Chris Bonds on emotion in music, quoting Stravinsky:

>My copy isn't available to me at the moment but I recall the sentence
>reading something like "Music is powerless to express anything at all."
>In spite of my attempts to refute this over the years I have not been able
>to do so.  But I think there is a way out of the impasse (not an original
>thought by any means--see Langer, Cassirer, Zuckerkandl et al.) and that is
>to suggest that while music doesn't EXPRESS anything it can nevertheless
>REMIND us of things--and therein lies much of its power.  I mentioned
>*orgasms above.  The Tristan prelude is not itself so much an expression
>of an orgasm as a piece of music that works powerfully because it imitates
>a very basic human psychophysical process.

I am almost rendered speechless by this elegant cop-out.  And I would
ask Chris and all the other deniers that music can express emotion:
what in tarnation DOES express emotion in your opinions? Can words?
Gestures? Poems? All this is supports my theory that when people start
(over)analyzing almost anything, emotion falls through the cracks.  And
that fact itself is a powerful sign that your reductionist fervor (music
is, is not a language !!!) is misplaced.  Chris' idea that imitation and
not real expression is going on is an excellent example.  Are we so secure
in our understanding of emotion that we can rule out imitation as a part of
its expression?

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University