ABSTRACT
The object of study constructed by musical scholarship, familiarly known as 'the music' or 'the music itself', has traditionally served to maintain a rigid separation between musical knowledge and worldly knowledge, music and the world. Music in the realm of Western listening must thus be described before it can be interpreted: in that respect it is like everything else. But there is also a respect in which music must be described even before it can be heard. Ludwig Wittgenstein's modes of defamiliarization, lapidary writing, and thought-experiment can contribute to the formation of a model of interdisciplinary inquiry both into music and beyond it. The music itself has the force of expression or description without the substance. It is like a seemingly grammatical sentence that says nothing: 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously' is the standard example.
