Saturday 27 September 2008

Music has no semantics

Most philosophers of music think absolute music has no semantics. The noun "cat" refers to things called cats but sad music has nothing to refer to. Sad people walk slowly and sad music is slow but that is only an isomorphism or a cliché. Pictures on the other hand have semantics. The mapping from pictures to music is always more or less artificial, there is an infinite number of possibilities. LAURI GRÖHN

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