 
                         20051223.00

     Individuality is, in some respects, an illusion.  We
live by common sense, and we think by consensus; Our thinking
is communal.  Private expression is, its privacy
notwithstanding, the expression in a common language and the
reflection of a common way of thinking.  Publication implies
making visible what is concealed, making public what
germinated and developed in private.  In one sense,
publication is the fulfillment of thought; in another, it is
its dissolution.

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     It is useful to distinguish verbal from non-verbal
music.  Most vocal music is verbal; but occasionally one
hears a work where the voice instead of articulating melodic
words hums like a musical instrument.  (Songs are accompanied
by piano, lute, harp, guitar, organ, orchestra, and thus are
semi-instrumental.)  Vocal music should be interpreted
primarily as language made more insistent by the effect of
the melody on the emotions.  The meaning of vocal music is
conveyed in the words of the text, words, whose emotional
impact will (may) be heightened by the music.  Vocal music in
a language understood incompletely or not at all (e.g. for me
opera in Italian; for many English-speaking listeners, German
Lieder, Bach Cantatas and Passions) provides important
insight into the communication entailed both by music and
language.  In these instances, the listener usually has a
general idea about what the words say, and therefore
empathizes with the human voice even where he/she is unable
to translate the message, but he is not nearly affected to
the degree that he would be, if he understood the words.

     The rhythm of all music stimulates the periodicity of
the human nervous system.  A very primitive response to music
is to tap out the rhythm of a tune.  Harmony.  Then there are
modulation, Symmetry, Counterpoint.  The punctuated accords
with which Beethoven ends his symphonies.  All these are
direct revelations, demonstrations of human nervous system
behavior.  The impulse to dance, to move to the rhythm of the
music.  Language description may point to it; but cannot
adequately describe it.  Verbal description is never a
substitute for the music.

     Compare the emotional effect of prose, of free verse, of
blank verse, of rhymed couplets, sonnets, of words chanted at
a fixed pitch, then modulated in melody and musical rhythm.
Even when one cannot recollect the words, one remembers the
melody, sometime the meaning.  Quite commonly one improvises,
one guesses at words to compensate for a memory lapse.

     The conductor of an orchestra or of a chorus
communicates the meaning of the music in a unique fashion, in
einzigartiger Weise.  He reveals how he believes the music
should sound, by coaxing, cajoling, praising and criticizing
the orchestra or chorus members whom he superintends; as if
that chorus or orchestra were a single instrument which he
was playing. His baton prescribes the beat, the rhythm to the
orchestra. Is is the symbol of the community of understanding
between the orchestra members, the conductor and each other.

     The soloist does not need a conductor.  The soloist is
his own conductor.  A duet, trio or quartet also does not
(necessarily) need a conductor, because the players
implicitly communicate with each other.  When the group
becomes too large, that communication is inadequte, it fails,
and the conductor is needed.

     The conductor's interpretation is expressed in the music
itself.  There is no way other than eliciting the music from
the players, that he can describe what he wants to hear.
This circumstance demonstrates, at least with respect to
music, the limitation of language in establishing or
maintaining access to the reality of experience.


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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
