Mechanical Mozart

A Daily Dish reader writes in with an interesting response to a post on David Cope's computer-generated music:

I've wondered myself, too many times to count, why it is that this or that piece of music stirs me so much. I think, I'm being communicated with by a deep soul. Here is Mozart or Mahler or Beethoven speaking to me in a voice that I recognize, and it seems so clear that it must have some meaning. But if it is only notes, then there may not really be anything profound there at all, only my own projections. That's a very lonely thought.

Haven't you ever tried to share a piece of music with someone and felt frustrated by the experience? I have. I've given away CDs and dragged people to concerts, given little parlor lectures explaining how sonata form works, tried to transfer my enthusiasm about particular works to people so they would hear something the way I heard it. And yet, they usually don't. How can they react this way when I feel like I'm in the presence of God just listening to this music? And the answer is, the music itself is wonderful, but the feelings that I experience ARE my own projections. Most people may hear something sad and sweet when they listen to Mozart's Sinfonia K.364 second movement (youtube it [listen below]) but they can't possibly hear it the way I hear it. We are trapped in our own private bubbles projecting feelings and meanings onto patterns of notes and sounds that remind us of things, that trigger feelings.

Music is like a Rorschach test, although a somewhat more reliable, perhaps, in that we assume the composer wanted to convey something that we might have picked up. Cope's programs have no assumption of such intent. That creates a problem for us. And when that music sounds just like something we are used to thinking of as the voice of God, wooWEE, it's cognitive dissonance salad time. You have to give Cope credit for this, whether you care for his music or not.

And here is the second movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante K. 364 which was mentioned above:

(Video link)