I have missed these wonderful discussions--we used to have them all the time! Golly, where to start? There's so much here that I have two windows open, to make going back and forth easier.

Ears are not calculators.
No, but our brains are. Input of sound alone is not enough; there has to be a working connection to what interprets that sound.

musick, if I got this right, you are saying in your opening post that music shares at least four divisions with language: meaning, intent, accent and perhaps even *direction. And that in music, interpretation of meaning (semantics) and intent is pretty much strictly personal.

The rules for music are much less stringent Would you please elaborate on why you said that? I'm not sure at this point that I could agree with it.

I like your comparison between musical style and accent! I'd never thought about that before, but you're right.

we only listen/hear a fraction of the possibilities Mm--you mean like, quarter-tones, and, say, wolf tones? (Hi, insel!) And chords with new nuances to them?

therefore create more anticipation of understanding of it than we do a wonder of its newness. This may speak toward my suggestion of 'direction'...
Do you mean that we get so used to certain patterns that we get so lazy or complacent that we either do not, or cannot, hear/recognize something new for what it is? That we hear what we're expecting to hear? Examples: much music of the Orient sounds odd to us; and when Beethoven's music was first played it sounded cacophonous to people of that day.

As to:
Choice
Emphasis
Arrangement (props to T.S.Elliot, I believe)

With these in mind, are we not composing as we speak?
Yes, but speaking of expectations: I was unreasonably outraged the other day when a crossword puzzle clue was "composer" and the answer turned out to be T.S. Eliot! Grr--he's not a composer, he's a writer!

Helen, that's so cool that you can understand languages you've not studied! I don't think I could do that--not unless it involved a lot of obvious gesturing!

That study of buzzer noises sounds fascinating; and I think it relates to what musick said about anticipation of understanding. Did you, as one of the audience, know ahead of time what emotion the next sound was supposed to represent? If so, do you think it affected your interpretation?

Query: is there a term equivalent to tone deaf for one who has little understanding/appreciation for art? Because that sure fits me. If I like the way it looks, then I "appreciate" it, but I don't look for, oh, what kinds of things it represents, etc. For ex., a friend recently went to a Matisse exhibit and sent me a link to the web site. There was an overall theme to the pictures, but I completely missed it, even though I've studied different artistic styles (a long time ago). For ex., he did one of a seated young lady wearing a green dress; I didn't like that one because all it looked like to me was that someone had in fact painted from real life but didn't quite have the talent to get her just right--I remember her chin in particular looked "off". His abstract ones didn't bother me at all, like that, because I wasn't expecting them to look realistic.