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Good afternoon Firstly I'd like to thank Bob and John et al for this thread, which i am finding very interesting. I'd like also to express a couple of thoughts....May I apologise in advance if what I say is in fact very obvious. I am not as musically expert as many people who subscribe to F-minor! I too (like Bob I guess) am not so sure that music conveys "ideas", or even that an "idea" is always?something that can eventually be satisfactorily communicated by words, because I personally have long been troubled by the inadequacy of language. Words always have to be interpreted in the light of an individuals own experience and feelings, and these can be influenced by so many things: culture, education, his own personal emotions, even the language he uses as his mother tongue. We can never be 100% sure that what we say is interpreted by the listener in the way we intend. Maybe that is one of the reasons humans have invented the arts - to express those concepts that won't go into words. (Yes, there are obviously other reasons, but I wont start down that trrack here....I tend to ramble on enough as it is.) Well, literature and poetry of course depend on words (although poetry may use them in a way that appeals to the non-rational part of our minds; it can be open to varying interpretations.) But arts such as painting sculpture and perhaps, above all, music do not. They can express concepts and feelings that are non-verbal. So given that a composer wants to convey to us what is in his mind, using the medium of music, how can we ever be sure that what we perceive and feel is what he himself intended? Sometimes we are given a clue in the title, but with a lot of absolute music there is no such suggestion offered. Yet we can all react emotionally. But outside broad generalities, (this music is sad/warlike/contemplative/joyful/ agitated or whatever) is there necessarily a general consensus as to what it is "about"? I find I can react to a particular piece in complex ways, with a complex range of emotions - some of which would be hard to explain! - and I suspect that my feelings have as much to do with my own emotional states, memories and associations as they do with the intentions of the composer. Sometimes I react differently on hearing the piece on a later occasion. But that to me is part of the beauty of music. I guess that some of these ideas were in Gould's mind when he spoke of the creation and experience of music as needing three participants; not just the composer, but also the interpreter....and the listener. Kate John Grant wrote: |