When reading Isserlis’s comment about “telling the right story” 1 it made me think of Hume on aesthetic disagreement. What if two people have differing accounts of how a piece should be played and both think their story is the right one? I remember a video I watched where Barenboim describes two eminent pianists, both of whom he greatly admires, describing the same passage of music in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 7 in D major 2 . One was adamant he felt it was a tragic sounding passage whereas the other felt it expressed humour and saw a comical joke being expressed in the way a pattern of notes were disrupted by pauses 3 . So Barenboim concludes that ascribing adjectives to music is perhaps the most problematic approach! 4 He suggests we should “explain music through sound” instead 5 . Given this common type of aesthetic disagreement, I am inclined to agree with Barenboim. His example of difference in aesthetic judgement reminds me of Hume’s famous example of wine tasting in Don Q...