ABSTRACT
The language of review and the experience of hearing the music are widely disproportionate if not altogether disconnected. This chapter explains why this disproportion or disconnection appears, and what significance this has for a discussion of music and death. It is probably simplest to begin by comparing the "musical experience" with experience of all other arts: painting, sculpture, dance, drama, and all diverse forms of literature. The problem of music's referential capability is sharper when the reference becomes more specific. In the case of music bearing texts about death we can attempt an assessment of the adequacy of the music as a vehicle for the text. In speaking of "awareness of death," it should be clear that this awareness can be quite diffuse (e.g., a sensitivity to the ephemeral quality of all things in life) or quite specific (e.g., awareness occasioned by the death of a parent, spouse, child, lover).
