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Re: Bob's Stupid Musical Question



John Grant wrote:
 
The _expression_-theory of music--that music expresses "ideas"--is but one theory of music and musical meaning.  I personally don't adhere to the theory, although the theory pretty much sums up how most people actually do think about music.
 
J.G.
 
Well ... "idea" here might be the wrong word or concept, because I think an idea is something that eventually can be successfully communicated by words; i.e., an idea is a bundle of communication at a high intellectual level. It can carry a lot of emotional baggage with it, but its core are word-level ideas.
 
(We're getting very close to that stuff they call Meme Theory here -- ideas considered as viruses that have to leap successfully from brain to brain in order to reproduce and survive; where the nature of the idea is far less important than the tricks and strategies the idea uses to leap from brain to brain and fix itself firmly in new brains. The "Godel, Escher, Bach" guy, Douglas Hofstadter, has a very fine introduction to Memes in "Metamagical Themas.")
 
I'm talking more about music as communication of emotional experiences and states. A lot of Ives is intended to communicate not merely the "idea" of the American Civil War, but the individual and communal emotional experience the Civil War left with Americans who had lived through it.
 
So anyway ... the _expression_ Theory of Music ... who first wrote about it, who advocates it? Why are you uncomfortable with it? And if you're not a believer, is there an alternative theory of music that you're more comfortable with, and whose is it, and what does it say?
 
Bob