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Music, all art for that matter, depends on meaning.
The prestige of non-Euclidean geometry has all through this century caused
artists to insist that their work at its best and most “advanced”
is theoretical,
an abstraction comparable to the higher equations. At the same time they
have hoped that within twenty years its acceptance as communication would
make them loved and famous. Actually music does not work like that. The
most novel modern music has always had a public that understood and accepted
it. The battle has been one of obtaining access for it to the existing
mechanisms of distribution. All music is about something, just as all music
that can stand up under concert usage has a sound technical structure.
There is no abstract music. There is only expressive music. This expression
may depict an inner or an outer reality. But it always depicts
something. . . .
Virgil Thomson
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