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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
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