When I was an undergraduate, I was fascinated with the question about whether music had meaning, was moral, and whether it was effective in communicating meaning or morality. I wrote several papers about this, but when I crossed over into the world of composition, this question became even more important to me. I remember my composition professor expressing that music is not terribly effective in communicating a specific idea but rather the effect of that idea, especially on a person’s emotions. Needless to say, this helped me in choosing subjects for composing.
When I was reading Music and Imagination by Aaron Copland, I noticed he tackled this question as well. On the subject of what a listener understands when listening to music, he writes,
Were you absorbed? Was your attention held? That, then, was it; for what you heard were patterns of sounds that represent the central core of the composer’s being–or that aspect of it reflected in the particular work in question. One part of everything he is and knows is implicit in each composer’s single work, and it is that central fact of his being that he hopes he has communicated.
Copland then goes on to tackle the deeper question:
Are you a better person for having heard a great work of art? Are you morally a better person, I mean? In the largest sense, I suppose you are, but in the more immediate sense, I doubt it. I doubt it because I have never seen it demonstrated. What happens is that a masterwork awakens in us reactions of a spiritual order that are already in us, only waiting to be aroused. When Beethoven’s music exhorts us to ‘be noble,’ ‘be compassionate,’ ‘ be strong,’ he awakens moral ideas that are already within us. His music cannot persuade; it makes evident. It does not shape conduct: it is itself the exemplification of a particular way of looking at life. A concert is not a sermon. It is a performance–a reincarnation of a series of ideas implicit in the work of art.
I feel I must let his words speak for themselves. I hope this gives you something to think on this week.
