# "Music escapes from words: that is its purpose and its majesty."



## Guest (Jan 19, 2018)

"Music escapes from words: that is its purpose and its majesty."

I found this in Julian Barnes' _The Noise of Time_. What do you think?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/books/review/the-noise-of-time-by-julian-barnes.htmlh


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

You mean what do you think of the phrase? Or of the Barnes novel? Anyway, I found the novel underwhelming and unrewarding. Didn't add anything to my understanding of the composer or the music, but that might be because I was already too familiar with both.

The phrase, in and of itself, sounds like just another way to say music expresses that which words cannot. Were it said by the fictional Shostakovich of the novel, then that might add other more subtle layers of meaning. Was it?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> "Music escapes from words: that is its purpose and its majesty."


I don't think that is its purpose, to escape from words. Many times it is music which heightens words. But the fact that it can escape from words is its power. As H.C. Anderson said, where words fail, music speaks.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think HW Longfellow said it more accurately: Music is the universal language of all Mankind. That music escapes from words is not the goal I believe, but a characteristic.


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> You mean what do you think of the phrase? Or of the Barnes novel? [...]
> 
> Were it said by the fictional Shostakovich of the novel, then that might add other more subtle layers of meaning. Was it?


Chiefly, what do you think of the phrase, but any comment on the novel (which I got for Christmas and am halfway through) is interesting too.

Barnes was projecting Shostakovich's thinking about the famous phrase that the 5th Symphony was "a Soviet Artist's Creative Reply to Just Criticism." He says that the composer never repudiated the words because they "protected his music. Let Power have the words because words cannot stain music. Music escapes from words..."


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

I agree, but would say, like Phil, that music's transcendence of words is not necessarily its 'purpose' but rather its organic characteristic.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Chiefly, what do you think of the phrase, but any comment on the novel (which I got for Christmas and am halfway through) is interesting too.
> 
> Barnes was projecting Shostakovich's thinking about the famous phrase that the 5th Symphony was "a Soviet Artist's Creative Reply to Just Criticism." He says that the composer never repudiated the words because they "protected his music. Let Power have the words because words cannot stain music. Music escapes from words..."


As the words of a fictional Shostakovich in that context, the statement makes lots of sense: The music is what it is and eventually the words that protect or condemn it will fall into oblivion and it will be free of them. More generally, great music eventually escapes the words of its early detractors and first reviews.


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