Panaiotidi, E. G. Musical Expression: Feature or an Irremovable Metaphor?

Abstract: There is quite a wide consensus that the semantic grounds of music are made up out of the subjective sphere, emotions and feelings of a person. But what exactly do we mean when we describe music as ‘jolly’ or ‘sad’ while music is not an alive creature? Powerful and original conception introduced by a British scientist Roger Scruton offers the following answer to this question. Emotive characteristics of music are very metaphoric, and these metaphors are ‘irremovable’; they are correlated not with the objective features of music but with a special state of mind which is not describable. Critical analysis of Scruton’s conception helps to make a conclusion about insufficiency and argumentativeness of provisions about the constructive role of metaphors in music perception and their correlation with the metal state described as the ‘recognition of expression’ by Scruton.

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