"Can music do more that this? Can it do this? And if so, who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing, or a century of hearings? And if it isn't successful, or if it doesn't fail, what matters it? The fear of failure need keep no one from the attempt, for if the composer is sensitive, he need but launch forth a countercharge of "being misunderstood," and hide behind it. a theme that the composer sets up as "moral goodness" may sound like "high vitality" to his friend, and but like an outburst of "nervous weakness" or only a "stagnant pool" to those not even his enemies. Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of "God" may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.
"There is a moral in the "Normalist and Realist" that will "prove all sums." It runs something like this: no matter how sincere and confidential men are in trying to know or assuming that they do know each other's mood and habits of thought, the net result leaves a feeling that all is left unsaid; for the reason of thier incapacity to know each other though they use the same words. They go on from one explanation to another, but things seem to stand about as they did in the beginning "because of that vicious assumption." But we would rather believe that music is beyond any analogy to word language and that the time is coming, but not in our lifetime, when it will develop possibilities inconceivable now- a language so transcendent that its heights and depths will be common to all mankind." ~Charles Ives
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