In our most recent assignment in book II, I found Schopenhauer's view that the music is more powerful than the words interesting. At the beginning, he repeats his belief from Book I that music is the most powerful of all the arts because, "music does not, like all the other arts, exhibit the Ideas or grades of the wills objectification, but is directly the will itself; we can also explain that it acts directly on the will i.e., the feelings, passions and emotions of the hearer, so that it quickly raises these or even alters them" (448).
From this belief, Schopenhauer comes to the conclusion that since poetry is a lesser form of art, the effects of the musical tones in a piece are much more powerful to the listener; the words are a secondary value. He even says that some inspiring musical pieces have uninspiring lyrics.
I agree with Schopenhauer's conclusion to some extent. When listening to most songs, the musical tune is what catches my attention. For example, when listening to AC/DC, I'm not always sure of the actual lyrics, but Angus Young's catchy, offbeat guitar playing and their lead singer's emotional, raspy sounding voice (Bon Scott and now Brian Johnson) put me in pretty good mood.
However, in some music such as rap, I believe the words are more important than the music--an Eminem song would be quite different, almost boring, without his words. So, my conclusion is that it depends on the genre of music whether the music or the words are more powerful.
Nice comment - in rap, it's the musicality of the words themselves that's carrying the ball, as it were, for the song, and there's no reason that couldn't be true in older vocal music as well.
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