Stirling writes:

>music cannot express emotions

He also writes a great deal of other things, to such an extent as to make
me less concerned about my own few posts needing trimming.  I am afraid I
find Stirling a little too eager declare certain ideas as "false" when they
are not demonstrably so, being subjective in nature.

As for "music cannot express emotion," while I see where he is coming from,
I am inclined not to agree.  Notes are generally not used to express things
such as "The fat cat sat on the mat," (it has been pointed out that one
could create an actual language consisting of notes and conveying concrete
ideas, but AFAIK this hasn't been done, and more to the point, who would
care to become fluent in such a language?) but they can express a good deal
of other things which are abstract in nature.  My friends often can pick up
my general mood just by listening to my improvisations...  That is a highly
individual example, but to speak more generally, if you do find that no
music can express any emotion to you I feel you are a very unfortunate
person.  I doubt this is the case, but I can't claim to know...is it, sir?

And just for levity's sake, music certainly can express non-emotional
things, at the very least by imitating their sounds.  I had a friend with
a fear of stinging insects who was quite affected by the opening of RVW's
"The Wasps"...

I am a musician primarily because of the profound emotional impact that
works of great composers have had on me, and while I'm a rather emotional
individual, I think that most music lovers share something in this regard.
What is music without emotion? Science and math, I would say...  Maybe
that's why I don't care for Eliot Carter, to name just one.  (Sorry for a
tie-in to another thread, Dave, but I think this is the main problem the
general public, even the classical music-listening public, has with modern
composers; the lack of emotional appeal in their music.  I don't mean that
good music must always be expressing heart-wrenching emotion...I find, for
example, the Warsaw concerto to be maudlin and rather tiresome, I'm just
referring to the simple ordering of notes with precision but without
sentiment.  How often are you "moved" by a performance/recording of
Carter's piano concerto? I'm not condemning the entire genre, just
attempting to partially explain away the lack of general interest in most
of it.  Wagner bent the rules to the breaking point, but Schonberg, I feel,
missed the boat when he decided to attempt to completely abolish the whole
system of logic on which Western music was founded, and to create his own,
which did not answer at all to the way in which emotional ideas had
hitherto been expressed.)

All entirely a matter of my humble opinion.

Michael Cooper
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