ABSTRACT
Music may be used to express emotion, to heighten a drama, to emphasize the meaning of a ceremony; but it is nevertheless an abstract art, with no power to represent the world. The word 'representation' has many uses, and may often be applied to music. A better attempt to prove that music is a representational medium begins by comparing music to painting. In search for examples of genuine musical representation may be led by this argument back to the suggestion that the true subject-matter of music is sound. Sounds have properties which music, being itself sound, may share; so music ought to be able to depict sounds. When music attempts the direct 'representation' of sounds it has a tendency to become transparent, as it were, to its subject. Representation gives way to reproduction, and the musical medium drops out of consideration altogether as superfluous.
