Music has a remarkable self-sufficiency. Faltering explanations such as language, symbol, emotion, or expression seem to reflect the preconceptions of the listener, the critic, or the theorist rather than the experience of the music. All claim to explain music in terms of something else. Where is the music in such explanations? Music loses its integrity through translation into similes, metaphors, or its accompanying effects. How, then, can we explain the fascination that music continues to exert on us?