Friday, December 21, 2012

What's so Great About Print?

In a compelling interview a mime was holding forth on the virtues of wordless communication, maintaining that words are simply not up to the complexity of human emotion and the subtleties of intended meaning.

It got me thinking about the parallels between words and music notation.  Unfortunately the notation is, in too many instances, taken for the thing itself.  But sound cannot be written down. 

When we learn to read music does anyone ever introduce the notion that the sound might be other than the expectation of the sound, or are we left to puzzle out on our own the non sequitors that may reveal the most meaningful aspects of a composition?