Aaron Copland was a famous American composer who was born in NY. He had won multiple awards like the Pulitzer Prize for Music and was often referred to as “the Dean of American Composers” by his peers. In his book “What to Listen for in Music”, he talks about how Beethoven doesn’t give a definite meaning, but rather points towards a general meaning and the rest is left up to the reader’s interpretation, while Tchaikovsky gives you a more specific meaning of what the song is about. Upon listening to both musical pieces I felt the same. When listening to Tchaikovsky, I felt like I could almost picture a particular story in my head and narrate it to someone. It felt like it’s a love story kind of sad theme, wherein they go through a lot of unforeseen struggles, therefore, giving the suspense music. We don’t even need words to figure that out. Furthermore, yes, it is kind of predictable, as now it has a story. One could anticipate what’s going to happen next in the story and how that will be shown in a melody format. But on the other hand, Beethoven’s music was a bit peculiar. I got the feeling where the meaning would almost change at every second of the music. It’s like at one moment it is suspense, at another its peaceful, at another it is energetic, at some point it is a bit sad. You just can’t seem to figure it out. At that point I realized that it doesn’t need to have a meaning. And this is also when I figured out what Aaron meant by when he said that some musicians even go as far as saying that all music just has a purely musical meaning. And in some sense it makes so much sense. Music is a piece of art so gracious that you don’t want to label it with a specific meaning. I feel like that would bring its abstract meaning of unreality to the mere level of nothingness. So, yes music could have a meaning, but it doesn’t have to have one. The meaning could be as one wants to interpret it. And even if you don’t want a meaning, it is fine. One could just enjoy it for a purely musical meaning.
