If musical sound was incapable of
communicating understanding, then the music part of music would not have any
value as a ministering tool. However,
there is entirely too much evidence that music has the power to communicate
“knowing” to the performer and the auditor for me to ever be convinced that
musical sound is impotent and incapable of having any positive or negative
influence.
Perhaps Roger Scruton’s statement
should be considered at this point in our discussion of musical “knowing’ and
“meaning”. He stated, “If music has
meaning, then that meaning must be understood by the one who understands the
music. Hence the concept of musical
understanding displaces that of musical meaning: we have no idea what musical
meaning might be, until we have some grasp of the distinction between the one
who hears with understanding and the one who merely hears.” Understanding Music by Roger Scruton, p.34. He prefaced this statement by explaining,
“The meaning of a sentence is what we understand when we understand it. Constraints on understanding are therefore
constraints on meaning.” Ibid. p.34 It is a very dangerous thing to take one or
two isolated statements of a music philosopher’s writings and suggest exactly
what is meant by these statements. So, I
will not attempt to lock down exactly all that he meant, but merely use these
famous quotes as a springboard for discussion.
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