Music Doesn't Mean Anything

 Not in the sense that words and images refer to specific things.

Of course, songs have words, so the melodies take on meaning based on the words: I Can't Give You Anything But Love.

In opera and musical theater in general, the words give the music meaning, but I often wonder whether, if you played someone a melody of a song unfamiliar to them, they would be able to guess what the song was about. Actually, I don't wonder at all. I'm 100% sure that they wouldn't be able to.

But music expresses emotion, or at least it arouses emotion in the listener. But whose emotion? At this moment I am listening to exquisite music written in the late 17th or early 18th century by Marin Marais. He is certainly not experiencing any emotions now, and we can only guess what emotions he felt when he wrote the music. The musicians who recorded the music certainly had emotions while they were playing it. However, as I know from my own experience, they were also concentrating on a lot of technical matters like playing in tune, together with the other musicians in the ensemble, and getting the phrasing and dynamics right. Strangely, keeping the mind and body active with those technical matters gives the emotions more freedom, because you're not paying attention to them.

Let's give the fine musicians credit. They made the recording in 1996, and by virtue of that, they're still alive (I hope they're alive and healthy now, too). 

Violin : Elizabeth Blumenstock Oboe : Gonzalo Ruiz Viola de Gamba : Roy Whelden & Steven Lehning Archlute : Michael Eagan Harpsichord : Byron Schenkman

But what is the connection between what they felt (which we can only infer) and what we feel when we listen to the music? There lies the mystery!