UCLA Center for the Study of Women

In music studies, scholars have often explored music as a metaphor for emotions,thoughts, and life. In the 19th century, music critic Edward Hanslick recognized the inherent metaphorical sense of musical discourse. As he stated in 1891, “what in every other art is still description is in music already metaphor”, (Hanslick 1986: 30). When verbalizing what music is, from representation to technique, one cannot avoid using figurative language, metaphors in particular, because a verbal description of sound is, of necessity, an interpretation.