ABSTRACT

The two epigraphs tell my story in miniature. No one doubts the formidable power of music to communicate on its “own” terms, but to communicate about it you have to use words. When words are added, though, they are commonly felt to say the wrong thing, no matter what they say. In one sense they say too little. Many would agree with Nietzsche ([1901] 1969, 428) that “compared with music all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and brutalize; words depersonalize; words make the uncommon common.” Music that fails to cultivate its difference from language betrays “the law of its being” (441). In another sense words say too much. They are specific where music is suggestive. Words carry more meaning than music, which “has no meaning to speak of,” can bear.