In Response to Jacob's Second Question (Week 9)

In my opinion, I do not believe that it is true that because music lacks any visual or verbal component it cannot represent something. Music is capable of having both a visual and verbal component, although it is not always evident in certain at first glance to many musical works (i.e. arguably, classical music). Music is capable of having a visual component by means of the written music. Written music provides a ways in which a musician is able to glance at the notes written on the page and play the music properly according to the notes he or she has read. Here the musician does not need to have any prior knowledge to the musical work. He or she may have not even heard the piece before but is still perfectly capable of executing the exact notes as intended by interpreting the written work of a musical piece. All music can be transformed into notes on paper so it does not seem plausible that music cannot be visually representative. I also disagree with the notion that music lacks a verbal component. In today’s society a lot of the popularly know music has lyrics which often clearly indicated a specific intended emotion or content from which the listener is able to hear, comprehend, and make inferences off of. Even for music which does not contain a direct verbal component such as lyrics, it is unreasonable to deny the possibility that it does have a verbal component. Interviews conducted with the composer of the music should be considered to satisfy that component because the composer could clearly state the content or emotion that he or she was intended to convey in the creation of the musical piece. How do you think Hanslick would argue his theory that music speaks only through sound from the perspective of written music, music with lyrics, and interviews with composers where content and/or emotion is made clearly evident?