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Philosophy of Music Education Review, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring

2004, pp. 30-42 (Article)
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PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

HOW CAN MUSIC SEEM

TO BE EMOTIONAL?
KINGSLEY PRICE
Johns Hopkins University

PRELIMINARY
Let me make some preliminary remarks about my question. First, the distinction
employed in it, the distinction between seeming and reality, comes in two forms.
The first is inclusive. A thing that really is so-and-so also seems to be so-and-so.
The butler really is guilty and seems guilty as well. The second is exclusive. A
thing that is really not so-and-so seems to be so-and-so. The butler is really not
guilty but seems to be guilty. The distinction that underlies my question is of the
exclusive form.
Second, the music I ask about is not music as read from scores on paper or
held in memory. Nor is it music that contains linguistic elementswords or gestures as in song, opera, ballet, etc. Rather, it is purely instrumental music, and
that as perceived or heard.
Third, the emotions I refer to are not physiological conditions that may cause
them, nor the behavior that may express them, but the conscious feelings we find
in ourselves when we are undergoing emotion.

Philosophy of Music Education Review, 12, no. 1 (Spring 2004)

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THE PROBLEM
Persons (perhaps even the lower animals) can seem to be, without really being, emotional. They are pretending, or we perceive mistakenly. There is no
difficulty, in principle, in explaining the situation. But there would be if they were
sculptured persons onlythat is, if they could not possibly be emotional. A sculpture cannot seem to be emotional by pretending it; nor can we perceive mistakenly that it is emotional when we know that it is a sculpture only.
Much music is like sculpture. Not personal, we know that it cannot really be
emotional. None-the-less, we hear the wedding march from Mendelssohns music for A Midsummer Nights Dream as joyful, the second movement of Chopins
Sonata in B-flat Minor as sorrowful, The Great Fugue as grimly resigned, the
first movement of the first Razumowski as hopeful, etc. How can this be so? How
can music seem to be emotional?
I look for an answer to this question, first, within the perception, the hearing
of music, and then, without it in its meaning. If seeming emotionality is found in
either place, I shall have answered the question. And now, for the first place.

THE PERCEPTION
In sense perception there are two major constituents.1 One is awareness; the
other is the object of awareness. Awareness occurs in all the kinds of consciousnessin remembering, imagining, dreaming, and thinking, for example, as well as
in sense perception. In this last, it is brought about by operation of the senses;
while in the others, that operation plays no direct part. But although it differs in its
cause, awareness in sense perception is precisely the same, considered in itself, as
it is in all the other kinds of consciousness, considered in themselves.
What is awareness? It cannot be explained, as many notions can, by eliciting
its parts. To understand what squareness is, for example, we need only bring forward the parts that constitute it: four straight lines equal in length, four right angles,
and closed plane figure. But awareness has no parts and cannot be explained in
this way. To call attention to its simplicity and its identity in all kinds of consciousness, indeed, is all that can be done to explain it though we might add the simile
that likens awareness to the light that brings things before our minds out of the
dark that conceals them in its absence.
Now, hearing is a kind of sense perceptionthe kind that occurs by virtue of
operation of the auditory organs; and music heard is one of the objects of auditory
awareness. Can we understand how this object can seem to be emotional by appeal to the awareness of it? If that awareness seemed to exist and did not really do
so, the answer would be that we cannot since the awareness of it does not exist.
Better, perhaps the answer that we cannot would be pointless since, if we seemed

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to be aware of music but really were not, we could really be aware of nothing
about which to ask our question.
This point can be made in another way. If there could be such a thing as
seeming awareness, it would contain two characteristics: one that makes it an
instance of awareness and a second that makes it seeming awareness. But awareness, as we have seen, is always simple, and so there can be no characteristic that
makes it seeming and not real. The distinction between seeming and reality, then,
cannot apply to awareness; and the seeming emotional characteristics of music
cannot stem from the seeming awareness of it. So much for awareness, the first
constituent of music heard.
Music is the second, that is, the object heard. Can it seem to be emotional
because it itself seems to exist? The distinction between seeming and reality does
quite clearly apply to some things. The weary traveler does sometimes see green
trees that really occur nowhere in the desert landscape, and Macbeth sees a dagger that seems to exist somewhere near his hand.2 And we might understand the
seeming green as stemming from the seeming character of the trees that show it,
and the daggers seeming to marshal Macbeth on to murder as stemming from the
seeming character of the dagger that does the marshalling.
But the emotionality of music heard cannot be treated in this way. Music
heard cannot merely seem to exist. What the weary traveler and Macbeth see, if
real, require trees and a dagger in distinction from and independent of them. But
this requirement is not fulfilled; there are no trees in the desert, no dagger near
the Thane of Glamis/Cawdor. Their absence makes the trees and dagger seen not
real but, for that reason, seeming only.
Music heard is quite unlike the trees and dagger seen. Its reality requires no
real music in distinction from and independent of it, however puzzled one might
be by the discovery of such a lack. We cannot understand the seeming emotionality of music by tracing it to the seeming character of the music that bears it. There
can be no such thing.
Within music heard, there are two distinguishable factors. The first is the relation of the music to its seeming emotionalitythe relation, for example, of the
wedding march to its joyfulness. The second is that seeming emotionality itself
the sorrowfulness, for example, of the second movement of the Chopin Sonata.
The relation between music and its seeming emotion is the relation of predication. Can we trace the seeming emotionality to this relation?
We might suppose that there are two kinds of predication: predication that
really exists and predication that only seems to exist. Each kind, we might suppose, is expressed by the verb to be. We say, for example, both that the wedding
march is in C major and that it is joyful. But we mean that it is really in C major
in the first case, while in the second, we mean that the wedding march only seems

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to be joyful. It is true that the wedding march is in C major; the predication of C

Major, therefore, is real. But the predication of joyfulness cannot possibly be true
since music cannot possibly be emotional. The is that joins the march to joyfulness, therefore, must be of the seeming only kind. Our supposition of the two
kinds of predication seems to explain how music can seem to be emotional.
But, can our supposition be true? The wedding march, besides being seemingly joyful, is also loud, in the key of C major, and say, badly performed. These
characteristics do really belong, and do not seem to belong, to the wedding march.
Yet they are related to it by exactly the same relation as is the joyfulness we are
considering. Seeming joyfulness really belongs to the wedding march in just the
same way as do the characteristics loud, in C major, and badly performed. Indeed, there are not two kinds of predicationseeming and real. There is only the
real. Or better. The distinction just does not apply to predication. And we cannot
understand the emotionality of music on the grounds that it is bound to emotionality by a second, seeming predication.
Still, if music cannot seem to be emotional by virtue of its relation to its emotionality, might it not seem so because of some characteristic of the second factor
distinguishable within music, the emotionality itself?
Consider for a moment things that are seen. So far as we know, Lady Macbeth
sees on her hand only one spot.3 And we know, as do the doctor and the gentle
woman also, that it is a seeming spot of Duncans blood. Now suppose that we put
a real spot of blood on the ladys hand and that she sees it along with the first. It is
clear that, though she might see it of a different shape or color from the seeming
spot of Duncans blood, she could see no characteristic of the seeming spot that
makes it a seeming spot and which, being absent from the second, makes the
second a real one. That is why she keeps trying to wash away the first one and
would give the same attention to the second had Shakespeare thought to help this
essay along by embodying our supposition in his play. To vision, spots do not
come in two kindsone made up of those that merely seem, the other of those that
are real; they come in only one.
To hearing, similarly, joyfulness refuses the same distinction. If it did not, we
could hear seeming joyfulness, and it would consist in joyfulness with a second,
audible characteristic which makes it seeming as opposed to real. But when we
hear joy at our good fortune in the voice of a bitter enemy, we hear no such
second characteristic. Our enemy looks sheepish, changes the subject abruptly,
or hurries off. Then we know that his joy is seeming only, but not because we have
heard a seeming characteristic of it, but rather because of an occurrence perceived through vision or some other avenue of perception quite different from
hearing. Joy does not come to hearing in two kindsseeming joy and real. There is
only real joy; or better, just joy unqualified. And the seeming emotionality of

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music heard cannot be understood as emotionality that is made seeming by some

additional audible characteristic.
No factor internal to music heard can be a seeming factor; the distinction
between seeming and reality can apply to none of them. For that reason, we cannot understand how music heard can seem to be emotional by considering the
perception itself.

THE MEANING OF THE PERCEPTION

This impossibility may explain why existing literature that bears on our question seeks an answer to it in some relation between music heard and some factor
external to it. That literature hits upon one or the other of two relationsone of
meaning, the other of causality. Answers of the first kind hold that the seeming
emotionality of music heard stems from the fact that the perception means real
emotion; answers of the second, that it stems from the fact that the perception
causes or is caused by real emotion.4 Here, we shall consider only answers of the
first kind.
Preeminent among them is the answer given by Susanne Langer. She holds
that music means emotion in a way that parallels, but also contrasts with, the way
in which language means things other than emotion. That music seems to be
emotional, she holds, stems from its meaning emotion in this parallel, but different way. To make her answer to our question clear, we must consider both her
theory of music meaning and of language meaning.
One assumption underlies both theories. It is that meaning is a function of
terms of three sortsthings that stand for or represent other things, the things that
first stand for or represent, and persons who use the first to bring the second to
mind, that is, to mean them.5 All three are required. Nothing can be meant unless
there is something that stands for or represents it; nothing can be meant unless
there is a thing represented; and nothing can be meant, that is, brought to mind,
unless some person employs the representation of it to bring it there.
The items in language6 that stand for or represent others are noises or marks.7
There is nothing in their nature that makes them do so. The noise, rose, might
represent nothing at all, or Mt. Everest, or the Supreme Court. In English, however, it actually stands for none of these, but for blossoms of a certain sort, and it
does so because a vocabulary rule establishes the representational relation between that noise and those blossoms. Vocabulary rules, and only vocabulary rules,8
make the noises or marks in a language stand for the items they actually stand for.
They record agreement in the language group concerned that noises or marks
stand for certain items in reality and may be employed for that reason to call them
to mind or to mean them. Noises or marks thus singled out by vocabulary rules
are words.9

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Words fall into several kindsnouns and adjectives, verbs and adverbs, and the
like. They differ according as their vocabulary rules make them stand for items of
different kinds. Nouns represent substances like roses; adjectives, characteristics
like red; verbs represent movements like jumps; adverbs, their characteristics like
nimbly. Some of the represented items do not fit together. Roses do not fit together with jumps or with nimbly; jumps do not fit together with roses or red. As
a consequence, the combinations of words that stand for such items cannot make
sense and are no more than lists whose components rest in utter isolation from
one another in language as the items they stand for lie side by side, in reality,
quite unrelated.
In other combinations, words hold together or modify one another. Adjectives
modify nouns, adverbs verbs, etc. Such combinations make unified wholes, not
mere lists. They do so because the items their words represent fit together. The
combination of the words rose and red makes the unity roses are red10 because the item, roses, fits together with the item, red, in reality. The rules of syntax
determine the kinds of words that can make linguistic wholes, and these kinds are
determined by the fit of the items the words represent.
These unified combinations of words are sentences and by considering sentences we can bring forward the last chief feature of Langers theory of language
meaning. Consider the sentence, Roses are red. Think away from it the words
roses and red. What is left is empty places joined by are, the verb to be. It
holds the empty places together in a pattern, that of subject-predicate, which shows
how the words that might fill them must fit together to make a unified whole.
Langer holds that all sentences show, or may be analyzed into those that show,
this syntactical form.
Now consider what our sentence representsthe condition of items in which
roses are red. Think away from this condition the items that occupy it, the blossoms and the color. What is left again is empty places, related as subject-predicate. All the unified conditions of items that sentences represent (Langer calls
such conditions states of affairs) show this pattern or may be analyzed into groups
that show it. It is the form of all states of affairs.
Langer holds that the syntactical form of sentences and the form of states of
affairs they represent is exactly the same formthe form of thought. Every sentence, consequently, means some states of affairsthe state whose components are
represented by words in the sentence; and every state of affairs can be meant by
some sentencethe sentence whose words represent its components. But emotions, Langer holds, are not patterned by the form of thought and cannot be meant
by a sentence. Something other than language or thought must give us access to
them if they are to be meant at all. Music, she holds, performs this service. How
can it do so?

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If it can do so, Langer holds, music must share a form with them.11 What is
this form? Consider it first in emotion, and then in music.
An emotion, Langer holds, shows four characteristics. First, it occupies time.
When Romeo catches sight of Juliet in the hall of the Capulet palace, his feeling
of love for her begins. It persists, subsequently, in the open place next to the garden, in that garden, in Friar Lawrences cell, in the open gallery, and comes to an
end in the graveyard. Think away these items from Romeos love and what remains is a series of empty places that are joined to one another by the relation of
earlier to later.
Second, the feeling items that fill out this temporal pattern are not sharply
marked off, one from another. Their time is duration or passage,12 to use Langers
word. Within each there is the distinction between earlier and later, so that the
later phase of one passes into the earlier phase of the next, allowing for no separation between them. The time in Romeos love is continuous, not a succession of
discrete moments.
Third, in each feeling item there is anticipation of those to comeanticipation
carried forward by the continuity of time in the emotion. Romeos initial attraction looks forward to union with Juliet in the night ended by the larks song, and
the item before his departure for Mantua foreshadows his final union with her in
the cemetery.
Fourth, each item in Romeos love is a feeling whose intensity is determined
by foresight of conditions affecting that emotion. The feeling flares before the
wedding night, subsides when he heeds the larks song, waxes in Mantua, and
diminishes into the anticipation of eternal union with Juliet in the Capulets family tomb.
Any other emotionhatred, jealousy, sorrow, joyresembles Romeos love, and
we may take temporal relation between its items, continuity of those items, anticipation of later in earlier items, and variation of intensity of feeling as conditions
anticipated appear to affect it as determining, on Langers view, the form of an
emotion.
That the emotion form is constituted by these four characteristics is what Langer
seems to have in mind in her all too brief description of the form as a pattern of
motions and rests, of tension and release, of agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfillment, excitation, sudden changes, etc.13
The form of music heard, Langer holds, is a pattern showing these same four
characteristics. First, it is obvious that the items that make it up must be arranged
in the temporal relation of earlier to later. Second, Langer holds that earlier pass
continuously into later items so that the later phase of each passes into the earlier
part of the next.
The third characteristicthe anticipation of later by earlier music itemsdepends upon their internal structure. Those items are sounds and silences, and it

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might be supposed that the former are pitches and beats, while the silences are
simple gaps in the series of beats. That supposition is misleading. A pitch, as such,
exists in utter isolation from other pitches, suggesting no other in the array of
pitches from high to low; and a beat, as such, exists in utter isolation from other
beats, suggesting no other in the array of beats from earlier to later. If there were
no more to the items in music than pitches and beats, as such, they would lie in
our hearing quite as unrelated as would the noises in words bereft of what they
stand for. But pitch in music heard is always heard in its position in a scale; that is,
as a tone. As a consequence, it is heard as containing others in itself, and as requiring that those others should followthat the mediant should follow the subdominant, the tonic the supertonic, the tonic the leading tone, etc. Analogously, a beat
in music is never heard as quite unrelated to others. Rather, it is heard in its
position in a measure of the time of the music and, consequently, as requiring that
one beat should follow the first in duple, two beats the first in ternary measure,
etc. Silence in music heard, the rest, is not so much the absence of sound as it is
the heard failure of a tone or beat required by the rhythm in the measures or the
forward reach of the tone before the silence. In monodic passages, it is obvious
that earlier items in this way anticipate later, and with a little attention, it is plain
that in polyphony earlier anticipate later items because of the heard, internal
structure of their tonal and rhythmic constituents. In the items of music, the practiced ear hears more than is sounded; it hears, as well, sounds that are required to
come.
The fourth characteristic of the form of music, the variation of intensity from
one moment to another, stems from the anticipation of some tones and beats by
others, together with two other traitsloudness and duration. Tones and beats are
always heard as possessed of some degree of loudness and of temporal length, and
the loudness and length of musical sounds as they vary from one moment to another, together with the presence or absence of sounds required by scale and
measure, explain the tension and release, preparation and fulfillment, excitation, and motion and rest by which Langer exemplifies what I have described
as variation in intensity.
Suppose for a moment that Langer is rightthat music and emotion exhibit
the same form: items related as earlier and later, as continuous, as anticipatory
(earlier of later), and as varying in intensity. Is sharing this form enough to make
music mean the emotions?
Let us compare this formthe form that music and the emotions sharewith
the form of language meaning, and let us compare them in four respects. First,
the sounds of language meaning are noises that carry representation; that is, words.15
Their nature is utterly irrelevant to their representation. That is determined, as we
have seen, by vocabulary rules. The sounds of music meaning are tones and beats.
They represent nothing at all; there is no vocabulary for music.

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Second, words represent different kinds of items in reality: substances, characteristics of them, and their relations; and they fall into different kinds as they represent different kinds of items. The sounds in music represent nothing, so that
they cannot be classified in parallel with the kinds of items they represent. Rather,
they fall into different kinds according as their internal structures differ and, as
we have seen, according as each requires that different tones and beats should
follow it.
Third, words fit together into sentences, as the rules of syntax require, and the
unity of sentences makes them represent items in reality unified in the same way,
showing thereby states of affairs that may exist. The sounds of music fit together
into unified passages according as those that come later are anticipated in the
internal structure of those that come earlier, the rules of harmony and counterpoint showing how they fit together in polyphony.
Fourth, there is no factor in linguistic meaning analogous to variations in intensity in the form that music shares with the emotions, and the form of a sentence cannot be compared with the latter in this respect.
Notice that the form that combines words in sentences is identical to the form
that combines items in the states of affairs sentences represent. Notice also that
the form that combines tones and beats in a passage of music cannot be identical
with the form of something it represents since it represents nothing at all. Rather,
the form of music itemsthe form music shares with emotionsis something required by rules derived, in principle at least, from the heard internal structure of
its tones and beats.
Since sentences represent states of affairs, they can mean them; that is, call
them to mind. They provide the medium and the instruments for thought or
discourse and Langer calls them representational or discursive symbols. Passages of music can represent nothing, and for that reason, can offer neither a
medium nor instruments for thought. But since they present to the listener the
form that combines the feeling items in emotions, they can mean them; that is,
call them to mind. They enable us not to think about them (one can think only
about states of affairs), but, as one might say, to hear about emotions. To distinguish them from sentences, Langer calls them presentational or non-discursive symbols.
Is the view that music contains presentational symbols of them adequate to
make it mean emotions? The answer must be in the negative, that form in music
cannot make it mean any particular persons emotionRomeos love for Juliet, for
examplesince music has no proper names. It cannot make music mean any kind
of emotionlove in distinction from hatred, for examplebecause it contains no
common nouns. Can it mean the characteristics that are common and peculiar
to the emotions of all kindscommon and peculiar to love, hatred, joy, sorrow,

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despondency, and the rest? These characteristics make up the form of emotions
which is also, on Langers view, the form it shares with music. And she concludes
that music means this form that it presentsthat it means the morphology of
feeling16not the feelings or emotions that fill it out.
Despite this conclusion, Langer does not give up the view that music does,
somehow, mean the emotions. She assumes, as we have seen, that meaning is a
function of terms of three kindsthose that represent, those that are represented,
and persons who use the former to bring the latter to mind. This assumption leads
her to modify the view that music presents only the form of emotions, not the
emotions themselves. Since the emotions fill out that form, she holds, they are all
really present in it, but present implicitly, not explicitly, since music has no vocabulary that could represent them. The form that music presents, then, also presents the emotions, albeit implicitly. And music, since it presents the form of
emotions, means the emotions after all.
The presentational symbol in music, Langer suggests, is like the license of
an unconsummated marriage.17 The latter authorizes sexual intercourse between
the licensees though it does not take place. The presentational symbol authorizes music to mean the emotions; that is, to call them to mind, though it does not
do so.
This analogy clearly cannot support the compromise. The license permits
sexual intercourse; it does not require it. And if the symbol were like the license,
it would make it only possible that music should mean the emotions, not that it
should actually mean them.
And the analogy fails for a second reason. What the license permits is altogether explicit and clearly known by the licensees. But what the unconsummated
symbol permits is altogether implicit and, indeed, for lack of vocabulary words in
music, altogether unknown to the listener. Even better! For lack of vocabulary, no
particular emotion can be implicit in the unconsummated symbol that music
presents, and to hold that all are would be to hold that every music passage presents all the emotionsa view which is obviously false. The unconsummated symbol of emotion is not a symbol of any kind and cannot explain how music means
the emotions.

FORM AND SEEMING EMOTIONALITY IN MUSIC HEARD

Suppose we see two tables in a room with exactly the same visible shape.
Suppose we take away from one of them all its partstop, legs, stringers, etc. Are
there now two visible tabular shapes in the room? Surely not. Only one can be
seen, that of the table we did not savage.
Suppose we hear two groups of items in music with exactly the same audible
formthe form of music and the form of emotions. Suppose we take away from

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the form of emotions as we did from the table, all the items that fill it outfeeling
of attraction, intensified longing, temporary union, waning of feeling, and its waxing toward eternal uniona supposition for emphasis only since their being implicit in the form is the fact of their being quite absent from the music. Are there
now two audible forms in the music? Surely not; only one can be heardthe form
of music which we did not savage.
The music form and the emotion form heard in music, according to Langer,
are like the two visible tables. Take away from the emotion form all its components by regarding them as only implicitly heard because not representable and
that form cannot be heard in the music. Only one form can be heard, that of the
music itself, as only one visible tabular shape remains in the room after all the
parts that filled it out in the one were taken away.
The form of music heard cannot symbolize emotions through the medium of
their form because, emotions being absent or present only implicitly, their form
cannot be heard in music. We hear only the music form as we see only the tabular
shape of the intact table. Moreover, we hear the form as a characteristic of the
music, not as a relation between the music and external real emotion. We must
conclude, I believe, that there is no satisfactory explanation of the seeming emotionality of music in Langers theory of its meaning.
A recent author, Laird Addis,18 presents a new version of Langers theory. Music
does not need a conventional vocabulary to mean the emotions because there is a
law according to which human beings find them inherent in its nature. And so,
music seems to be emotional because whenever human beings hear it, they find
them represented in their perception. This law, I believe, remains to be discovered, but it is clear that when and if it is revealed, it will be seen to contain names
for the emotions music means. Their absence from music allows it to show, at
best, only the form of emotions, not emotions that might fill it out; but their presence in music would give it conventional contenta gift it must refuse according
to Langer and to Addis himself.

MUSIC AND THE ILLUSION OF TIME

In Feeling and Form, written later than Philosophy in a New Key, Langer puts
forward a view about music that places its meaning in a context not provided in
the earlier book.19 It is the view that music is an illusion of time. We know time,
she holds, under two different aspects. Under its public aspect, we know it by
describing itroughly with common sense language like the day before yesterday, and more precisely with language that reflects measurement by instruments
that improve upon common sense, like scientific chronometers. This linguistic
description of time can be shared by all persons.

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Under its private aspect, we know time by feeling it in introspection. There,

time appears as a mass of sensations, images, ideas, feelings, thoughts, volitions,
emotions that make strands of development that overlap, intersect, and cross over
and under one another in a tangle that language cannot describe. But each of the
strands in the tangle is made of items that pass continuously into one another
from earlier to later, that anticipate others (the earlier the later), and that vary in
intensity from moment to moment. The private aspect of timetime feltis this
tangle of lapsing strands.
Notwithstanding the tangle, time felt has a form. It is the form of lapse common to the strands: items arranged as earlier and later, as passing continuously
into others, as anticipatory of others, and as varying in intensity. This form of each
strand is also the form of the entire mass and, as we have seen, it is the form of
music. Langer holds that music means felt time and presents what language cannot show; that is, how time in its passage feels as it is experienced in inward life.
She chooses to call musics presentation of felt time an illusiona choice which
I cannot explain.
But it seems clear that the new view of music amounts to this: that music
means the emotions by virtue of the same form that enables it also to carry the
illusion of, that is, to mean felt time. That view does not alter her view as to how
music means, but only adds to it that it means something else as well. Also, it does
not preclude the conclusion that we hear only one form in music, and it does not
explain how music can seem to be emotional because that form can present no
emotions whatever.

CONCLUSION
We cannot find an explanation for the seeming emotionality of music heard
by examining the perception. We cannot find it in the widest known and best
worked out theory that music means emotion, the theory that Langer provides. I
think we cannot find it also in the only place not examined here; that is, in the
causes and effects of the perception of musicin its expressive context. We are left
with the view we were trying to explainthe view that music seems to be emotional and, if I am not mistaken, the seeming emotionality of music is an absolute,
unfathomable mystery on a par, almost, with the Trinity.
I draw a moral from this conclusion. Let us go on discussing the problem. It is
a happy pursuit and it is possible that some theological reasoning might dissolve
the mystery. But most important by far, let us go on teaching our students to
compose and to perform in the art. Let us teach them to listen to music with ears
that are well trained and minds that are well informed. They will hear that music
seems to be emotional on their own and without instruction.

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NOTES
1
Some say that there is always a thirdthe subject that is aware of an object. Here I do
not consider this possible third constituent because answering my question requires no
mention of it.
2
Macbeth Act II, Scene 1.
3
Ibid., Act V, Scene 1.
4
For answers of both kinds not dealt with here see Wilson Coker, Music and Meaning:
A Theoretical Introduction to Musical Aesthetics (New York: The Free Press, 1972); Deryck
Cooke, The Language of Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1959); Peter Kivy, The
Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1980); Jerrold Levinson, Music, Art and Metaphysics, Hope in the Hebrides (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1990); Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge:
Clarendon Press, 1997); Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956), especially chapter VIII.
5
Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 5557.
6
Langer considers only ordinary language.
7
I ignore other linguistic items such as shrugs.
8
A noise or mark may suggest, that is, call to mind any item whatever, but it does not, by
virtue of suggestion, mean that item. No vocabulary rule makes it represent what it only
suggests.
9
Langer calls them symbols. Not all noises or marks stand for items in reality, that is,
the article in English.
10
The verb to be stands for no item in reality. There can be no is-es. It just reminds us
that an adjective like red fits a noun like rose.
11
Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 225.
12
Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1953), 111115.
13
Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 228; Feeling and Form, 27.
14
An indefinite number of other characteristics of sound and beats (some probably
ineffable)their timbre, places in rhythm and dimension of pitch, accent, for example
also play an important role in variation of intensity.
15
Written words have no noise, of course.
16
Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 238.
17
Ibid., 24041.
18
Laird Addis, Of Mind and Music (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999),
Chapter 3, especially 36, and Chapter 8, 105, 113.
19
Langer, Feeling and Form, Chapter 7.