 An obvious way to connect expressiveness with expression is to argue that pieces of music or performances of them are expressions of emotion—not the piece’s or performance’s emotions, but rather those of the composer or performer. There are two major problems with this “expression theory”. The first is that neither composers nor performers often experience the emotions their music is expressive of as it is produced. Nor does it seem unlikely that a composer could create, or a performer perform, a piece expressive of an emotion that she had never experienced. This is not to deny that a composer could write a piece expressive of her emotional state, but two things must be observed. The first is that for the expression theory to be an account of musical expressiveness, at least all central cases of expressiveness must follow this model, which is not the case. The second is that if a composer is to express her sadness, say, by writing a sad piece, she must write the right kind of piece. In other words, if she is a bad composer she might fail to express her emotion. This brings us to the second major problem for the expression theory. If a composer can fail to express her emotions in a piece, then the music she writes is expressive independently of the emotion she is experiencing. Thus music’s expressiveness cannot be explained in terms of direct expression.