Romanticism and late-romanticism, its meaning and psychology

[milk]

In literature, Romanticism actually had its roots at the end of the 18th century, most notably with the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge written in 1798. For an introduction to the tenets of Romanticism, you could read the preface to that work, as they provided a thorough argument for their style and techniques which were considered "experimental" for the time.

Of course, one of the charges levelled against them was vulgarity because of their language (not that you'd think it reading them now!). They hoped to use the vernacular language (the common language of the people) as a vehicle for poetic beauty, unlike their predecessors of the Augustan period who used an upper-class lexicon steeped in references to philosophy and classical civilisation which only a well-educated (and therefore rich) person could hope to understand. It's with the early Romantics that we see art becoming democratised and universal. Is that a bad thing?

Another facet is that it became much more interested with the human as an individual, emotional self. Melodrama abounds because this kind of subjective, quasi-mystical attribute of humanity was praised and explored to its full depths. This is no doubt another reason why it is so accessible (social conditioning isn't everything), though it can also put people off if overbearing.

I think we also have to be wary with what we mean by "nationalism". You can't equate it with the jingoism that we're so familiar with today, although there was undoubtedly some of that, especially leading up to the War in the late-Romantic period. Instead, Romantic nationalism seems more to do with identity once again, and a celebration of culture. One of the things that marks out nationalist works is a use of the country's folk-song - this is, I suppose, the musical equivalent of Wordsworth and Coleridge using the vernacular language. It's not intended as an expression of supremacy, it's a fore-grounding of cultural heritage, and of the common people.

Whenever we talk about artistic movements, however, music is the hardest to pin anything on (compared to literature and the visual arts), and it tends only to be labelled in accordance with labels on the other arts at the time. Absolute music is certainly beyond this kind of philosophical labelling, and much programme music doesn't make it easier. Although we can easily find Romantic traits in the music of many composers of this era, the fact remains that Romantic music is most obviously marked by the tonal language in use at the time and the development of the orchestra. These things can be and were employed without regard to the tenets of Romanticism as an ideal, so it makes no sense to rubbish the period as though it constituted a homogeneous outlook.

The "jingoism that we're so familiar with" relates to the achievements of nationalism of the 19th century. Now I understand what Henk is saying about reality and music. The "fore-grounding of cultural heritage...of the common people" is a construction of what Benedict Anderson called "imagined communities." There is no "common people" in reality. The idea has to be made. And it has been made. And I admit I'm sometimes annoyed by it when I hear it in music.

[JoshLilly]

This guy sounds like Joshua Lilly back in the day when he would only listen to Mozart and everything else was crap.

Do you mean me?
The only problem is that I've never said that, never wrote that, and never even thought that.

[Ten thumbs]

Wordly and idealistic are no opposites. Wordly can mean an ideal. Ideals are wordly.

I'm glad you live in an ideal world. Most of us don't and that's possibly why we can appreciate Rachmaninoff and Medtner.

[xochitl]

hey Henk, do you have asperger's?

you sound like me :lol:

[Superhorn]

   Stravinsky's statement about music  not having the power to "express" anything and being completely abstract are highly ironic, because some of his music is highly programmatic and descriptive , such as  Le Scare, Petrushka and the Firebird , for example.
Right now, I'm listening to the excellent Kent Nagao recording of his  Rake's Progress, and the music is highly descriptive and expressive .
    Music does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot divorce it altogether from the extramusical .

[Ten thumbs]

   Stravinsky's statement about music  not having the power to "express" anything and being completely abstract are highly ironic, because some of his music is highly programmatic and descriptive , such as  Le Scare, Petrushka and the Firebird , for example.
Right now, I'm listening to the excellent Kent Nagao recording of his  Rake's Progress, and the music is highly descriptive and expressive .
    Music does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot divorce it altogether from the extramusical .

I agree entirely. In fact many of the titled pieces that are quoted as being programmatic or descriptive are in fact in classic forms. In particular with piano music, most of the titled pieces from the Romantic era are either abridged sonata forms or ABA structures. All one can really say is that the motifs and texture are suggestive of the title but beyond that it is pure music. Rachmaninov's piano music is nearly all without title, so is surely beyond both the worldly and the idealistic. That is why I don't understand Henk's reasoning.

[Karl Henning]

Let's go to the tape, shall we?

For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.

Actually a measured, nuanced and intelligent expression; though, goodness knows, it was expressed in a way practically designed to "tease the geese."

Oh! And look! Here we've a goose ripe for teasing ; )

Consider this follow-up:

The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself.

Words, by their nature (fairly direct symbols of meaning), express. A depictive painting, by its nature, can possibly express.

What, exactly, does a descending C major arpeggio express?

TIA

[Karl Henning]

We've been around this topic before on another thread and there seems to be two camps on GMG, yours and the other that admits that music does have characteristics of a language. 

Your C major arpeggio does not express anything in isolation.  However a musical period functions somewhat like a sentence.  A section of a work somewhat like a paragraph and the movements of a work somewhat like chapters in a book.  One of my "favorite purchasers of 2012" was the excellent book edited by Tom Behgin Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric in which several authors build the case that during the 18th Century the idea of rhetoric transcended conversation and argument and also embraced music.  Haydn's audience was educated enough to appreciate the structure of the sonata, rondo or variation forms and could understand the rhetoric of Haydn's compositions.  They appreciated similarities with his string quartets and their salon conversations.

No, the music does not make a statement such as 'I am feeling X" but it does communicate a message, a purely musical message, but one which is interpreted rhetorically nonetheless.

None of this means I disagree with the Stravinsky quote.  I absolutely detest that idea of Richard Strauss I believe who claimed to be able to depict a spoon with music.  And I think Stravinsky would agree that when music expresses itself it does so employing the architecture of language and rhetoric.

Excellent post, thank you!

Agree completely with all what you say, in addition to which I am grateful to have the discussion raised two or three levels above the "even I know better than Stravinsky tone of Supertoot.

From the Haus in particular I have an appreciation for the role of Rhetoric in classical-era music. I'm not sure that Rhetoric fulfills the same role for Music now, as it did then, in something of the way (perhaps) that English now is not what it was in a byegone age.

[Gurn Blanston]

Excellent post, thank you!
From the Haus in particular I have an appreciation for the role of Rhetoric in classical-era music. I'm not sure that Rhetoric fulfills the same role for Music now, as it did then, in something of the way (perhaps) that English now is not what it was in a byegone age.

I agree with you, but I submit that this isn't the fault of musicians so much as it is the fault of society in general. One of the reasons that Haydn's music faded so quickly in the early 19th century is that its very basis of existence; i.e. - that it was a rhetorical discourse, became beyond the grasp of the listener. When "Classical" music became "Romantic" music, and composers took over the entire burden of understanding by removing the onus of being part of the discourse from the listener, then music that relied on that became unintelligible on its own merits. Then, of course, it got the sobriquet "easy listening" because listeners lost the ability to know how to listen.  Haydn's music was far to discursive* for the 19th century, I'm afraid. 



* - 2. (Philosophy) Philosophy of or relating to knowledge obtained by reason and argument

[Karl Henning]

Well, I was not thinking in terms of fault there, but I see your point, truly.

[Karl Henning]

Exactly.  The relationship between composer and audience during the 18th century was of co-equals and an active partnership whereas during the 19th century the was movement towards the idea of the artist as "hero" and the audience became a passive recipient of his genius.

Does the fault there lie with Beethoven, or with the composers afterwards who deeply admired him?

[Gurn Blanston]

Does the fault there lie with Beethoven, or with the composers afterwards who deeply admired him?

Well, your 'no-fault' clause applies to Beethoven. Maybe not to his toadies followers. He was certainly the first to spell things out, virtually everything was 'through composed'. Part of that was his inherent belief that interpreters took too many liberties. SO his motivation was not so much to entrance the audience as it was to stifle the interpreters a bit lot. But in the aftermath, coupled with the huge social changes amongst the listeners (bourgeois, classically uneducated etc.), the cult of the composer reigned supreme.

I'm not a big fan of Romantic music, honestly. I do like a lot of the tunes, of course, but by and large I am a Classicist. Can't be helped, can it.

 

[Florestan]

Ah, I see that one of my favorite topics (the shift from the "active" interactiveness of Baroque & Classical music to the "stiff and still" passiveness from the Romanticism onward) has popped up again... 

My 2 cents run as follow.

@ Karl & (indirectly) Stravinsky

"I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all"

Karl, I'm very sorry, but to me this is sheer nonsense...  Had music been essentially powerless to express anything at all then nobody, and I stress: nobody Stravinsky included, would have bothered to compose anything at all. I consider this statement of Stravinsky on a par with his another famous one to the effect that there is more melodic invention in "La donna e mobile" than in the whole Ring cycle: purely provocative rhetoric aimed at shocking the public and maintaining thus the 'tacit and inveterate agreement" about geniuses being weird... 

"What, exactly, does a descending C major arpeggio express?"

Taken in itself, isolated from any context, nothing but a succession of notes. But then again, what does the word "nevermore" express? Taken in itself, isolated from any context, nothing but the all too prosaic time adverb "never again". Now read Poe's The Raven, and I ask you: what does "nevermore" express in that specific context? (actually, contexts, because there are many: the general context of the poem and the many sub-contexts generated by (a) the specific rhymes Poe uses for it and (b) the specific stanzas). Or, let's take Byron:

She walks in beauty, like the night   
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies

Take each word above by itself; start with in, like, the, of, and --- what do these words express by themselves? Not too much, if anything at all. Then we have: she, walks, beauty, night, cloudless, climes, starry, skies --- what do these words express by themselves? Very prosaic things, nothing to move one's heart or spirit, for sure. Now let's read them again put together in that specific sequence:

She walks in beauty, like the night   
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies

Aha! There's something here which is more than the sum total of the individual words. Something that urges us to read on:

And all that 's best of dark and bright   
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Again, a collection of prosaic words which taken individually would hardly stir any emotion in anyone.

See? What really matters is not the words, but the way they are put together in a sequence that is guaranteed to... well, exactly, to express something, to stir us emotionally (in this case) or spiritually or intellectually (in other cases).

IOW, what matters is rhetoric.

And this brings me to :

@ sanantonio & Gurn Blanston

Yes, gentlemen, I do 100 % agree with you about the "interactiveness" of the Classical era (as a Baroque fan I would certainly add that era) and the "passiveness" of the Romanticism. What I want to stress is an idea that Gurn repeatedly expressed (pun intended): the bourgeois audience, for all its admirable qualities, lacked 2 essential ones: (1) in general, a well-rounded classical education and (2) in particular, a good musical education, performance-wise included. Let's face it: Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and to some extent even Beethoven (to name only the greatest ones) wrote many works specifically dedicated to cultivated amateurs who could understand and perform them; can anyone imagine Liszt, Chopin or Schumann (let alone Berlioz or Wagner) dedicating their works to non-professional musicians? 

What was irretrievably lost in this transition was the connection between composer and audience/performers. Let's put it this way: Romantic pyrotechnics a la Liszt (which was, IMO, instrumental in bringing about the shift) were inconceivable in earlier times when the audience was composed of musically knowledgeable people; okay, maybe not inconceivable (Locatelli and Tartini were (in)famous for their "devilish" violin technique) but at least something entirely open to criticism --- in those times nobody would have ever thought of upholding virtuosity for its own sake as something commendable and no audience was impressed by the mere technical prowess; composers were required to express something (oh the horror of Stravinsky!) in a manner that involved the audience's experience and education. And this is the single most important difference between the Baroque & Classical (ie, essentially aristocratic) audience and the Romantic-and-beyond (ie, essentially bourgeois and proletarian) audience: the latter was not required to have any musical experience and education whatsoever; all that was asked for was the willingness to submit to the musical genius of the composers and performers and to acquiesce to whatever these last fancied to offer to the audience. Prince Nikolaus Eszterhazy was able to suggest that Haydn correct this or that score here and there and Haydn obliged because he knew the prince, as a knowledgeable musician himself, might have been right; whereas Chopin or Liszt didn't make any such change in their scores at the request of Mme Sand or Mme D'Agoult because these last could not understand or perform a iota of their music. And so, little by little, having no corrective whatsoever and no truly understanding audience for their music, composers have accustomed themselves to think that nobody can, or has the right to, judge their music save themselves, they the geniuses... and from that moment on there was but a small step --- soon to be taken --- to thinking that the more abstruse, esoteric and unpopular music is, the better and high quality it is. And so, the rift between composers and audience deepened more and more... until these days when we witness Gurn and Mirror Image as the two extremes the audience split between: the one listening to nothing but pre-1850, the other one to nothing but post-1900...

(To be continued)

[Gurn Blanston]

It's a fair cop....   

[Karl Henning]

Pfff

(Sorry... just had to luxuriate in "a James moment.")

[some guy]

Some questions: what are the analogues? Is an arpeggio a word or a phrase? A word, by itself, does mean less than a word in a context. (Does a note, however, mean less by itself than in a context? I.e., does context always add meaning in all cases all the time?)

Let's say, for the nonce, that a note is analogous to a word. We can see right off that even a preposition like "in" or an article like "a" already mean quite a lot more (express a lot more information) than any note. But of course, we have already gotten past the whole issue of music conveying precise information. Or at the very least, sanantonio has gotten past that. But what is it that music conveys? "She walks in beauty, as the night" conveys quite a lot, and most of what it conveys is not by any means information. So music, maybe, is more like poetry than discursive prose. Fair enough?

But still, sit twenty people down in front of the Byron line and there will be basically one idea about what it's conveying. The line has a lot of room for interpretation, of course, but it's not too far a stretch to imagine that those twenty people will agree that there's something attractive about night that is being used to describe a beautiful woman.

Take a short phrase of a piece of music, however. The opening of Mozart's 40th. Take the first twenty notes and the same twenty people. How many ideas do you suppose there will be? How many people won't even be able to come up with anything? How many people will only be able to say something along the lines of "two phrases of ten notes each, same rhythm."

But maybe we're all going about this backwards. Try this thought experiment. Take language as the subject. That's the thing we're going to find out about. And let's use musical metaphors to do it. Suddenly everything seems much easier, doesn't it? Makes much more sense, seems much more natural. Language has lots of musical elements to it. Nice, obvious musical elements. And not just poetry, either, but the most mundane kind of language. Like this wee essay, say!

Sure, you can say that music is like language. You can even write a whole book about rhetoric and music. But it's a bit of a stretch, no? And it seems forced, somehow. Where it doesn't seem forced is in the very places where language resembles music. That's what I find distracting about this particular debate. Not that music doesn't have some sort of relation to language but that this debate consistently has the relationship backwards.

Unfortunately, since music is no less mysterious no matter what anyone says about it, and since the language metaphors have been used for so long to try to understand some of those mysteries, I don't see this debate as ever going away. And while I don't think looking at things wrong way round is ever going to produce any light, just heat, I also don't see anyone giving up the idea that seeing music as a kind of language is a good way to understand music. I don't think it is. And I've spent over fifty years listening to music and studying language, too. I just don't see that the language metaphors explain anything about how music works.

[Florestan]

(Continued)

@ Karl

Now, if Stravinsky is right then the whole musical Romanticism, with its countless tone poems, programmatic symphonies, nocturnes, barcarolles, piano suites etc,  is just one giant quackery, Liszt, Schumann, Berlioz, Mahler and Richard Strauss being the greatest charlatans the art history has ever seen. Stravinsky himself seems to have succumbed to this deceit by making us believe we hear a Firebird's Lullaby (imagine that!), a Procession of the Sage or The Death of Petrushka when what we hear in reality is just a succession of notes essentially powerless to express anything at all.

And now I'd like to ask you 2 questions, if I may:

1. Is there any relationship between the titles "Out in the Sun" and "Mousetrap" and the corresponding music, or did you just allocated them arbitrarily?

2. If music is essentially powerless to express anything at all then what's the purpose of making it?

@ sanantonio & Gurn

As for myself, I love Romantic music just as much as I love Baroque and Classical. I am even partial to "saccharine" composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff (Speaking of which, what are we to make of his Etudes-Tableaux? The very title implies not mere expression, but also depiction...). 

@ some guy

A word, by itself, does mean less than a word in a context. (Does a note, however, mean less by itself than in a context? I.e., does context always add meaning in all cases all the time?)

I am of the opinion that yes, it does. Play an isolated G, it means nothing. Then play an isolated E, it means nothing again. Then play an isolated F, it means nothing. Then play an isolated D, it means nothing. Then play this:



Et voila! The context!

If you want the analogy here it is: just as poetry is not about words but about organizing them in a structure and establishing specific relationships between them, so music is not about notes but about organizing them in a structure and establishing specific relationships between them. In both cases there is a purpose: to express something, to convey something, be it only the structure itself and its relationships.

One can even extend the analogy to painting. Is it about color or about their relationships? Take deep black and dim yellow, for instance. Do they express anything by themselves? Then how about this relationship between them?

We can see right off that even a preposition like "in" or an article like "a" already mean quite a lot more (express a lot more information) than any note.

I'm not so sure about that. What does "in" express? What information does it convey? At most we can say that expresses an abstract spatial relationship; as for information, it conveys none whatsoever. It will have information value only in a specific context, e.g. "the fruits are in the basket", whereby the abstract spatial relationship has been made concrete. Once again context pops up.

we have already gotten past the whole issue of music conveying precise information.

It seems to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you confuse "expression" with "information", nay, "precise information". "Expression" applies to feelings, moods, states of heart and mind; "(precise) information" is all about facts. One can add "depiction", which deals with objects, events or persons. These are truisms, I know, but I think that in speaking about music the differences need to be stressed, because obviously music can "express" and "depict" but it cannot "inform".

But still, sit twenty people down in front of the Byron line and there will be basically one idea about what it's conveying. The line has a lot of room for interpretation, of course, but it's not too far a stretch to imagine that those twenty people will agree that there's something attractive about night that is being used to describe a beautiful woman.

If and only if those people have a fairly good knowledge of English. For, say, a Russian or a Spaniard who knows not a iota of English the lines will convey nothing... nothing, that is, except some recurring rythm --- and lo and behold!, there you have what, a fundamental element of music? 

Take a short phrase of a piece of music, however. The opening of Mozart's 40th. Take the first twenty notes and the same twenty people. How many ideas do you suppose there will be?

It depends. If the twenty people were Mozart's contemporaries I think they'd basically agree that it's about a question and an answer. As for what exactly the question is and what answer is given, only the context of the whole symphony will tell.

When Haydn said that he need not know English because his language was understood worldwide he was expressing a fact. More than 200 years later and Haydn's world and culture gone, the fact seems incomprehensible yet this doesn't make it less true.

How many people won't even be able to come up with anything? How many people will only be able to say something along the lines of "two phrases of ten notes each, same rhythm."

That I really don't know. Do you?

music is no less mysterious no matter what anyone says about it

Strictly speaking music is no mystery at all: it's just organized sounds. What is mysterious is the power it has over our souls and minds. (And actually this is valid for any other art).

I don't see this debate as ever going away

The pleasure is in the debate itself, at least for me. 

[Karl Henning]

(Continued)

@ Karl

Now, if Stravinsky is right then the whole musical Romanticism, with its countless tone poems, programmatic symphonies, nocturnes, barcarolles, piano suites etc,  is just one giant quackery, Liszt, Schumann, Berlioz, Mahler and Richard Strauss being the greatest charlatans the art history has ever seen. Stravinsky himself seems to have succumbed to this deceit by making us believe we hear a Firebird's Lullaby (imagine that!), a Procession of the Sage or The Death of Petrushka when what we hear in reality is just a succession of notes essentially powerless to express anything at all.

And now I'd like to ask you 2 questions, if I may:

1. Is there any relationship between the titles "Out in the Sun" and "Mousetrap" and the corresponding music, or did you just allocated them arbitrarily?

2. If music is essentially powerless to express anything at all then what's the purpose of making it?

Mon cher Andrei, I should really need to go back and address earlier points : ) For it seemed to me that you started (a little like Supertoot) by objecting to the opening remark, and yet by a number of perfectly reasonable points, in fact ended by underscoring ideas which Stravinsky himself made.

But since I shortly need to beetle along to the train station, brief let me be:

Before the questions. Stravinsky was indeed speaking in an era when he typified an artistic reaction against the prior epoch. Obviously you and I adore a great deal of the Romantic repertory, so we are at odds with such an opinion, but Stravinsky made the art which he did, in part, out of an artistic opposition to what were viewed as Romanticism's excesses.  One point at which his opinion scores a factual hit, is the success of the Romantic conceit that there can be a close, nay intrinsic correlation between musical tone and meaning.

Question 1. Not arbitrary, but without my telling anyone what I had in view with the title The Mousetrap, probably no one would independently divine any connection to Hamlet. A lot of the outrage against Stravinsky's remark completely overlooks the point he is making about the meaning of express, and Stravinsky is not denying musical powers of suggestion or resonance.

Question 2. 'Tis a truncated thought: Music is by its nature powerless to express anything apart from the music itself. The purposes then are at least three: (1) that musical expression itself, (2) aesthetic pleasures derived from the musical expression, and (3) derivative, suggested emotional resonances inspired by the musical expression.

[Karl Henning]

The pleasure is in the debate itself, at least for me. 

This.

or: Word.

or: + 1

[Florestan]

Thank you for your kind reply.

Before the questions. Stravinsky was indeed speaking in an era when he typified an artistic reaction against the prior epoch. Obviously you and I adore a great deal of the Romantic repertory, so we are at odds with such an opinion, but Stravinsky made the art which he did, in part, out of an artistic opposition to what were viewed as Romanticism's excesses.  One point at which his opinion scores a factual hit, is the success of the Romantic conceit that there can be a close, nay intrinsic correlation between musical tone and meaning.

I don't subscribe to that correlation either. Of course there is no certain, mathematical correspondence between musical tone and meaning. One cannot program a computer to produce sad music, or joyous music, or music that depicts a sea storm. But that sad music, joyous music and sea-storm music do exist is a fact that must be accounted for.

Now, the irony of it all is that for all Stravinsky's fierce anti-Romantic outlook he thinks exactly like the Romantics, for he says:

The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions.

What is this idea of supra-personal and super-real music if not Romanticism gone wild? 

And then there is this:

It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation.

Here he's really beating hard a strawman.  In vain I try to think of a (Romantic or not) composer who supported that implication. In vain I try to think of a (Romantic or not) composer who proclaimed that his music is the musical incarnation of a transcendental idea. But perhaps you can show me one such Hegel of music and then I will stand corrected.

Question 1. Not arbitrary, but without my telling anyone what I had in view with the title The Mousetrap, probably no one would independently divine any connection to Hamlet.

True, but here's another question: when you set out to write that piece did you already know it's going to have that connection, or was it something that occurred in the process of writing it?

A lot of the outrage against Stravinsky's remark completely overlooks the point he is making about the meaning of express, and Stravinsky is not denying musical powers of suggestion or resonance.

Well, I think outrage is too strong a word. Disagreement would be more appropriate.

Allow me to be bad (for the sake of... expression ) and say: had Stravinsky said "My own music is essentially powerless to express anything at all" I'd have wholeheartedly agreed: apart from his ballets his music tells me nothing at all and I don't care much for it. 

Question 2. 'Tis a truncated thought: Music is by its nature powerless to express anything apart from the music itself. The purposes then are at least three: (1) that musical expression itself, (2) aesthetic pleasures derived from the musical expression, and (3) derivative, suggested emotional resonances inspired by the musical expression.[/font]
[/quote]

I agree but how can one separate them? Stravinsky seems to imply that the aesthetic pleasures and the emotional resonances are mere by-products, absolutely non-essential to the musical expression itself. Now to counter quote with quote, here's one from Sting: I don't subscribe to this point of view.