Question It is said that good art communicates things. Music, though, doesn't appear to communicate anything beyond vague aesthetic-emotional sensations (if we ignore experimental music that communicates about itself by, for example, playing Beethoven's 9th using only objects taken from a lower-class family home). Yet people also say of music that it is a "universal language". I'm not a musical expert, though, so I'm not clear on all this. Does music communicate anything beyond sensations/emotions? What can it communicate? How does that communication take place?

Accepted:

March 15, 2011