Music and Meaning

I have to address the issue I have with music and meaning. Throughout the article on Music and Social Ordering, there is much mention about the meaning of a piece, or the feeling of a piece. As the article says, "music as aesthetic intention." My issue is this--how can music--an intangible thing, have one meaning?

There are many notions about music and meaning. One is by Susanne Langer, who believes that a piece of music is not a "happy" or "sad" piece, but rather the emotions evoked from listening to that piece are "happy" or "sad." The emotions evoked from any given piece could be different depending on the person (though in the article, the "chick" pieces played did evoke romantic emotions). But I just had to clear up my discontent with saying a piece is "happy."

Also, to go along with this, there is also the idea of the Intentional Fallacy. Many times we will listen to a piece of music and say, "Oh, the artist is saying this." The Intentional Fallacy says that it is not the artist or composer's intention that counts, it is what the listener gets from it, and the interpretation of the listener. So it bothered me a bit when the girls in the article kept referring to certain intentions of music, because music has no intention--the girls do!

Then again, I could just be getting way too philosophical over this, and I apologize if I am not making any sense!!!