"Truth implies meaning"
About this Quote
Truth is not a free-floating abstraction; it presupposes a language in which it can be said. To call something true assumes that it means something in the first place. This is a semantic point with ethical and aesthetic weight. A gibberish string cannot be true or false; only statements with sense can take on truth-values. Philosophers from Frege to Wittgenstein insisted on this, and Lukas Foss, a composer who moved fluently between tradition and experiment, reframed it with artistic urgency.
Foss worked in a century when musical language was contested, with serialism, aleatory methods, and collage challenging inherited grammar. He embraced risk and improvisation, but he also believed in communication. If a work aspires to truth, it must offer a path for meaning to arise, even if that meaning is unfamiliar or provisional. A piece may be ambiguous, open-ended, or polysemous, yet still meaningful; it articulates a syntax of gestures, timbres, and relationships that listeners can internalize. Meaninglessness, by contrast, leaves truth with nowhere to land.
The line also clarifies how audiences and performers approach authenticity. When we say a performance is true, we do not claim it matches facts; we say it discloses the work’s inner logic, illuminates intention, and connects parts into a coherent experience. That felt rightness implies intelligibility. Without discernible meaning, authenticity collapses into mere attitude.
There is a caution here for both artists and critics. Claims that art should be pure sensation or pure provocation risk vacuity if they sever ties to meaning. Yet demands for instant clarity can stifle discovery, since new meanings require new grammars. Foss’s insight demands patience and responsibility: creators must craft languages that invite understanding, and listeners must cultivate ears capable of hearing them. When meaning is found or forged, truth becomes a live option again, not as dogma but as resonance between what is made and what is perceived.
Foss worked in a century when musical language was contested, with serialism, aleatory methods, and collage challenging inherited grammar. He embraced risk and improvisation, but he also believed in communication. If a work aspires to truth, it must offer a path for meaning to arise, even if that meaning is unfamiliar or provisional. A piece may be ambiguous, open-ended, or polysemous, yet still meaningful; it articulates a syntax of gestures, timbres, and relationships that listeners can internalize. Meaninglessness, by contrast, leaves truth with nowhere to land.
The line also clarifies how audiences and performers approach authenticity. When we say a performance is true, we do not claim it matches facts; we say it discloses the work’s inner logic, illuminates intention, and connects parts into a coherent experience. That felt rightness implies intelligibility. Without discernible meaning, authenticity collapses into mere attitude.
There is a caution here for both artists and critics. Claims that art should be pure sensation or pure provocation risk vacuity if they sever ties to meaning. Yet demands for instant clarity can stifle discovery, since new meanings require new grammars. Foss’s insight demands patience and responsibility: creators must craft languages that invite understanding, and listeners must cultivate ears capable of hearing them. When meaning is found or forged, truth becomes a live option again, not as dogma but as resonance between what is made and what is perceived.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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