Roger Scruton The Sacred Space of Music in The Soul of the World (pp.

156-59)

let us take an examplethe great orchestral tone poem by Rachmaninov that

bears the title The Isle of the Dead, taken from the well-known evocative painting
(or rather series of paintings) by Arnold Bcklin. A nave account of this piece
might tell us that it is a description in tones of the very thing that Bcklin depicts
in oils. But that misses the whole point of the title. Bcklins painting displays a
sepulchral island, set in a still sea, illuminated by the light of a setting sun, and
visited by a shrouded figure from whom all individuality has been erased. This
figure stands erect in a boat rowed by another who clearly does not belong to
this place of no return. The picture is not a depiction of death, but an expression
of feelings about death that are known to all of us. A trifle melodramatic perhaps,
but conveying a sense of bleak and irreversible calamity. That, we might think, is
what death is like, insofar as it is like anything. This is death seen not as an
event in the order of nature, but as the impassable edge of the Lebensweltour
final isolation in a place where only impotent memories can reach us from the
world of the living.
Rachmaninovs piece is not an attempt to depict Bcklins island: how
could music do such a thing? The rocks, the gloomy cypresses, the mouths of
tombs, the strange light of a sun sinking on some unseen horizonhow can
these things find their embodiment in sound? The music can capture the
movement of the boat, certainly, for movement is something we hear in music.
But it is precisely in this connection that Rachmaninov allows music to depart on
a course of its own. He builds the entire first part of the piece out of a kind of
asymmetrical rowing motion in 5/4 timetwo beast followed by three, and
sometimes reversing the cut so that three beats are followed by two. On this he
erects a solemn motive on consecutive notes that gradually takes in the whole
orchestra, swelling a single A minor triad into a kind of bloated corpse of itself.
The harmony changes to D minor, and a hollow call from the horn answers like a
fading memory of life. Then a burst of high diminished chords on violins and
woodwind take flight like startled birds from the rock-like harmonies on the brass.
All this is wonderfully evocative. It points us to contexts in which these devices
have been linked to precise thoughts and events, and later the quotation of the
first four notes of the Dies Irae reinforces these links. But nothing is actually
described , and someone could follow the musical argument and never
experience the evocative power of the music in the way that I have indicated.
You might very well say that this piece expresses and emotion that is close
to that expressed by Bcklins picturethat they exhibit what we might call
expressive similarity or even expressive identiy. But suppose someone did not
get itsuppose he denied that the music evoked for him anything similar to the
feelings evoked by Bcklins painting. Would it follow that he had misunderstood
the music? You might want to say that he had missed something. But suppose he
follows intently the musical movement, and the impressive way in which the
sparse material is developed, to a climax that is purely musical and which has no
equivalent in the painting. Is that not a sign of musical understanding? And
conversely, suppose someone notices all the references to death, makes all the
links with Bcklins painting, but is unable to follow the musical argument, gets
lost in the rhythm, doesnt feel the musical impulse as it builds to the climax
shouldnt we say that he had not understood the piece?
Roger Scruton The Sacred Space of Music in The Soul of the World (pp.156-59)

The point I am getting at is this. If the meaning of Rachmaninovs piece

lies in part in the thoughts and feelings expressed toward the object brought to
mind by Bcklins painting, then understanding the piece should involve
recuperating those thoughts and feelings. [] It is undeniable that we apply
terms denoting emotion and character to music: I have just done so, in
describing our experience of the Rachmaninov. [] The problem, as I see it, is
that all those descriptions are figurative.