On Words and Music: Toward an Aesthetic Conciliation
Abraham A. Schwadron · Journal of Aesthetic Education · 1971
In the search for refined descriptions and aesthetic understandings of music, intrinsic and extrinsic factors spearheaded by a linguo-centric predicament are often at loggerheads.1 According to general enlightened wisdom, since language cannot adequately pin down the true nature of or its singular mode of aesthetic expressiveness, and since extramusical representations tend to hinder perception, can only be understood in contemplation of the musical phenomenon itself. Writes one author, Apart from the settings of words and a few descriptive pieces, an art and cannot be described in words ... Music has no ulterior meaning. Music is.2 Considering the previous statement it may well be argued that descriptive pieces can be experienced as abstract art, that the notion music is does not in itself account for intrinsic musical meaning, and that, however shallow and difficult verbalizations of musical abstractions may be, they are nevertheless necessary. But it the actual settings of words that challenge critical intelligence and aesthetic sensibility in rather complex ways. Here meanings, sensitivities, and judgments unique to either or words tend to vie for preeminence. Inevitably the union invites aesthetic confusion by defying abstraction and classification as really