Leo Treitler: Being at a Loss for Words*

A review of expressions by early medieval writers about the limited capacity of language to describe music in its “affinity” with the human spirit initiates a wide-ranging inquiry into beliefs about the relationship between what we know, feel, and perceive, and what we can say about our apperceptions. The inquiry focuses on music, but opens out perforce to the relationship between knowledge and language in general. The following skein of themes is pursued critically: the ancient and continuing widespread singling out of music as especially ineffable; the expectation of language’s function and potential to describe or reflect phenomena unambiguously, consequently the expectation that what we can know, we can dependably say; the corollary distinction between literal and figurative—especially metaphorical―meanings of language; the idea that language about music tends inescapably to be drawn into the metaphorical, against the background of the idea that language in general is through and through metaphorical; the idea of a distinction between “scientific” and “poetic” language about music; the suggestion that knowing and saying can interfere with one another as well as being in lock-step; and the suggestion that the making and receiving of language are both creative acts.

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