Matt Fields

From Sequenza21/NetNewMusic Wiki

Matthew H. Fields points out that music affects us because it is nonsense, and so, as listeners, we supply personal meanings for it and treat it as if it were very intimate communications in our own personal internal languages. Like the faces we see in clouds, we cannot help but project expression and emotion onto music, but we often see different faces in the same clouds, and project different expression onto the same music. In fact, it is precisely the fact that different people can enjoy the same music while getting totally incomparable messages out of it that makes Fields say music is not a universal language, not a language at all, but a special sort of service we offer to each other which seems to have universal appeal, and through which even warring factions find the ability to collaborate peacefully. Home Page