bigideas

It’s Longfellow who’s usually credited with the claim that music is a universal language. He didn’t know much about music but plenty of people who do have expressed the same view, especially musicians themselves. But in what ways is music like a language? Can it communicate emotions, atmospheres or ideas? And how much of what we think of as “universal” is actually very specific to our culture?

Rich Cochrane will briefly introduce some general ideas about languages and meaning, illustrated with musical examples, before we open up the floor for general discussion in the time-honoured Big Ideas manner.