Professor Bernard Chasan is:

>almost rendered speechless by this elegant cop-out.

 [that music cannot express emotion].

>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?

Of course words can express emotion, and furthermore fairly precisely.
If music does express emotion - as opposed to stir emotion in a listener -
then it does so pretty vaguely.  In short, it lacks the precision normally
associated with "real" languages, for no other reason than emotions all
by themselves are fairly imprecise.  I do believe that conventional
associations have grown around certain kinds of music, mostly that written
in the 19th century.  But even here, there's plenty of abstract work.
I really don't know what emotion the Brahms first symphony expresses,
although I can say definitely that it stirs emotions within me and that's
all I'd mean when I use the word "expressive." Whether these are the
emotions Brahms had in mind is another question, and there lies the
difficulty of calling music a language and saying it expresses emotions.
If it expresses emotion, then the emotions expressed should remain pretty
constant.  However, history shows that these associations between music and
emotion are fairly short-lived.  It's much harder to get the emotional
locus of a Mozart symphony than of a Mahler symphony.  I'd also ask what's
the emotion expressed by the Byrd Fantasia 'Sine nomine.' All of these
things stir emotions, at least in some listeners, but without our
absorption of the conventional associations they really don't mean much
other than themselves and the associations each individual may or may not
make.

What also bothers me about the "music expresses emotion" hypothesis is that
people listen to music in different ways.  Someone trying to learn how a
score is put together doesn't necessarily listen in the same way as a pure
"consumer." Emotions - other than enjoying or disliking the work - may not
enter into it at all.  On the other hand, an "abstract" work like Debussy's
Sonata for flute, viola, and harp may cause deep emotion to well up in a
listener who first heard it with an ex-girlfriend.  I'd like to put in a
word, however, for "abstract" listening to abstract works.  I don't know,
for example, what emotion Hindemith's second piano sonata expresses.  I
do know that the unfolding of its form is to me very beautiful.  I'm not
listening for emotions within the music, but for something fundamentally
technical and beautifully done.

Steve Schwartz