AW.: Re: The Misinterpretation of Dreams

What is the ontological status of the ratio in a work of music? Is it really
there in the physical world, or do the ears somehow rationalize the
acoustical experience, or is the rational in music located in some ideal,
whether constructed or platonic, world, external to the physical?

If there is a rational element to the musical experience, or perhaps more to
the point, the experience of musical coherence, then the relationship to
mathematics is clearer, if not necessarily more interesting. On the other
hand, the distance or tolerance between the rational substratum and the
actual acoustical event seems to have much music-emotional significance.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt