ABSTRACT
The often encountered question of extramusical significations applied to music is basically one of their specificity and involves both both aesthetics and the psychology of musical understanding. Of course, it may be said that it is not the search for a representational effect, whatever it might be, that gives a composition its worth. If it were, other arts and other techniques that fulfill that function more easily (and much more faithfully) would render the kind of representation attained by the totality of musical means useless and absurd. What good would there be in the ingenious imitation of procedures that painting, theater, and photography apply incontestably better than music does? And, if the domain of this art is not to express a given feeling, or signifY the suggestion of a given atmosphere by symbolism, then tme comprehension will not involve seeking them in the works we listen to.
