Which brings up another related issue. Language is an organic entity that creates word-meanings by consensus. (The consensus reality of vocabulary, I guess.) Music operates that way to a certain extent as well, in that conventions grow up around particular musical gestures: a plodding minor key passage is perceived as sad, doleful etc. by convention; but just as there's nothing dismal about the collection of sounds that are created by the letters d-i-s-m-a-l other than the collective view of the meaning of those sounds, there's nothing intrinsically sad about a slow minor passage--unless there are imbedded meanings related to our biological rhythms. Still, there are enough examples of young or otherwise naive listeners whose perception of a given passage does not fit the conventional view to indicate that if music has meaning, it's assigned by convention, not intrinsic, or maybe only vaguely intrinsic. (I keep seeing the counter-argument that a sprightly passage from, say, a Vivaldi violin concerto, would rarely be called dismal.) Dave Wolf