On Hearing the Music in the Sound: Scruton on Musical Expression

Abstract

Consider the lovely moonlight sequence from Smetana's Vltava. This is not a representation of the Vltava in the moonlight.... But it wears a certain expression, and predicates like shining, silken, shimmering, suggest themselves as an apt description of it.... It does not seem strained to suggest that Smetana's music expresses the shining and silken qualities that we hear in it, just as the opening chords of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto in G Major, Op. 58, express a tranquil gratitude.