Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication

This work argues against the widely held view that to understand music the listeners must hear musical works and passages as expressive of emotions. The argument developed in the work arises from Wittgenstein's later account of language. It is argued that if his later account of the meaning and the understanding of natural language is applied to the case of music, then what follows is a version of musical formalism. This is to say that insofar as we can talk about musical communication, i.e., the understanding of musical phrases and their semantic content, then the grounds of this communication must reside in the conventional rules of a musical system.