The same strange illusion which we are under when we seem to seek the
something which a face expresses whereas, in reality, we are giving
ourselves up to the features before us,– – that same illusion
possesses us even more strongly if repeating a tune to ourselves and
letting it make its full impression on us, we say, “This
tune says
something”, and it is as though I had to find
what it says.
And yet I know that it doesn't say anything in which I might
express in words or pictures what it says.
And if, recognizing this, I resign myself to saying, “It
just expresses a musical thought”, this would mean no more than
saying, “It expresses itself.” ‒ ‒
“But surely when you play it you don't play it
anyhow, you play it in this particular way, making a crescendo
here, a diminuendo there, a caesura in this place,
etc.”‒ ‒
Precisely, and that's all I can say about it, or may be all
that I can say about it.
For in certain cases I can justify, explain the particular expression
with which I play it by a comparison, as when I say, “At
this point of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon”, or,
“This is, as it were, the answer to what came
before”, etc.
(This, by the way, shews what a “justification”
and an “explanation” in aesthetics is
like.)
It is true I may hear a tune played and say,
“This is not how it ought to be played, it goes like
this”; and I whistle it in a different tempo.
Here one is inclined to ask, “What is it like to know
the tempo in which a piece of music should be played?”
And the idea suggests itself that there
must be a paradigm
somewhere in our mind, and that we have
139.
adjusted the tempo to conform to
that paradigm.
But in most cases if someone asked me, “How do you think
this melody should be played?”, I will as an
answer just whistle it in a particular way, and nothing will have
been present to my mind but the tune
actually whistled (not
an image of
that).