Charles Dalmas wrote:

>David Runnion expressed very eloquently that a trained musician can glean
>what the music sounds like from looking at the score.  This is true, and
>something which I never doubted.  What I was implying is, you could net
>get information such as grammatical constructs and definitions of words.

But of course not.  If we define music as a language like Catalan with
verbs and adjectives and things like dangling modifiers, then clearly
music is not a language, and as such can't be understood at all.  But if
you define language as a mode of communication then it certainly qualifies,
and I gain as much understanding from looking at a score as I do reading a
book.

>For example, let's say someone wrote a tone poem on "The Charge of the
>Light Bridgade." We all know that wonderful poem (Half a league, half a
>league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death rode the six
>hundred...etc.  etc.).

To take your example, our hypothetical tone poem (perhaps Birtwistle
might be interested) will never communicate the exact number of leagues
travelled, but certainly will communicate the emotion and movement behind
the details of the words as well as the author, albeit differently.

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

I may not know how many peasants there are, but I certainly have the image
of them dancing about happily.  Same image, different details.

>Anyway, I hope this clarifies my position on this delicate, and not easily
>expressed topic.  I still invite any and all comments...:)

I will still say that by looking at music on the page I can draw emotional,
musical meaning from the music, and understand what the composer wanted to
communicate, as well or better than by listening, even if I don't know how
many dancers there are.

David Runnion
triodeia@retemail
http://www.serafinotrio.com