"But the ultimate purpose of music is a physiological/emotional response, something utterly subjective and that does not enrich our objective understanding of the world."
You can read about our planet, and see pictures of it, and everyone can agree on the objective understanding of it (even a computer can "understand" it objectively).
But what really enriches our (personal !) understanding of the world is not the objective understanding, but our subjective understanding, and music can enrich this understanding ...
The sun will rise again tomorrow, and it will be a new day, and we all know it....but listen to 'morning mood' in this video, look at the pictures, think, feel, and tell me that this doesn't make you appreciate the wonderful world we live in even more...
"But the ultimate purpose of music is a physiological/emotional response, something utterly subjective and that does not enrich our objective understanding of the world."
You can read about our planet, and see pictures of it, and everyone can agree on the objective understanding of it (even a computer can "understand" it objectively).
But what really enriches our (personal !) understanding of the world is not the objective understanding, but our subjective understanding, and music can enrich this understanding ...
The sun will rise again tomorrow, and it will be a new day, and we all know it....but listen to 'morning mood' in this video, look at the pictures, think, feel, and tell me that this doesn't make you appreciate the wonderful world we live in even more...
Morning mood, by Edvard Grieg:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlnnvz9lJk