Classical Music and the Language Analogy (abstract)

In discussing the relationship between music and other forms of articulation this paper deals first with the question of what the notion of music as alanguage might imply for contemporary composers. Secondly, it considers Albrecht \X/ellmer's thoughts on a constitutive "sprach-Bezug" (speech-reference) of music.t This leads to some final remarks on the aesthetic experience of music in its relation to other forms of human expression.

away from mimesis, Rousseau may not be that far from Rameau's physicalist approach of musical phenomena. Similarly, and in the field of music theory, David Cohen revisits how the binary of melody versus harmony, and Rousseau's conception of melody as the ruling principle of music, do not so much reject Rameau but rather accommodate his own views to Rameau's musical Cartesianism. Finally, Matthew Gelbart and I reconsider the debates on the existence (or lack thereof) of musical universals that have emerged since the Enlightenment. Whereas Gelbart ponders on the depiction of Rousseau as a cultural relativist that resulted from an oversimplification of his understanding of the concept of "nature," I argue that Rousseau's relativist views on music have been distorted through nineteenth-century positivist discourses, the legacies of which are still widely perceptible in the disciplines of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Certainly Rousseau's intellectual output was protean. This explains why so many disparate forms of reception have coexisted (not always in conversation with one another) during the past three centuries. Our colloquy highlights that his writings still encourage a rich diversity of approaches.

Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Arts and Humanities (IJCAH 2020)

The cross-pollination between the two fields is such that it provides a new perspective for people to see what should have been obvious but for some reason was overlooked. Thus, this study proposes the benefits of a cross-disciplinary approach to music and language. It begins with a survey of the parallel between the two then proceeds to observe how language structure and syntax help define musical forms and specific compositional techniques. Moreover, this study also presents how language in the form of lyrics can help explain the difference between the harmonic progressions in art music and pop music. Some type of arts such as drama, mime, poem (Yeats' poem), and song (Four Orchestral Songs) are utilized in this study to show how to see the parallel between the two art forms, whether in terms of large-scale structures or detailed components as when we compare the syntaxes of music and language.

JCLA , 2023

It is easy to refute the notion that music conveys meanings by pointing out how arbitrary it would be to attribute context-independent conceptual meanings to musical elements. For us modern listeners who are used to listening absolute or pure music this all makes perfect sense. However, we should not forget that music was in earlier periods thought to convey meanings which were not conceptual, but more like the gestural meanings involved in speech intonation, gestures and dance. It is this earlier rhetorical tradition with its corresponding performance tradition we must also take into consideration when we judge whether there are meanings in music or not.

2015

Above all, music and language are forms of human communication. Since sensory function is ultimately shaped by what is biologically important to the organism, the human urge to communicate has been a powerful driving force in both the evolution of auditory function and the ways in which it can be changed by experience within an individual lifetime. The ability to extract meaning from sound requires that all aspects of the auditory system work together in concert: by considering human auditory function in the context of communication, we hope to emphasize the highly interactive nature of the auditory system as well as the depth of its integration with other sensory and cognitive systems. Through consideration of relations and dissociations between music and language we will explore key themes in auditory function, learning and plasticity. First we will look to the origins of music and language: we shall not attempt to resolve the ongoing debate regarding their evolutionary status, bu...

The similarities between music and language are often remarked upon. For this reason, many thinkers fall into a linguistic bias in music analysis. Both are unique products of the human mind serving the purpose of expression, although they do not coincide entirely. Meanings conveyed musically and linguistically differ due to physical, conceptual and formal limitations. A closer study of their creation points to the common root of linguistic and musical production, consisting in the human affinity for symbolic transformation of experience, stemming from evolutionary adaptation to the changing environment. Symbolisation not only allows the human being to internally conceive the reality which surrounds them, but also to represent objects and concepts in absentia. This faculty prompted the elaboration of systems of communication and artistic creation, a virtually ludic activity reflecting the inherent cerebral processes.

This chapter describes the structural similarities between music and language, in pursuit of a strong argument for the hypothesis that music and language are not categorically different from one another, but placed on the same continuum. Hence, we propose an integrative model. Analyzing their denotative and connotative levels, a crucial systemic difference emerged: while in language these levels rely on semantics, in music they depend on syntax and semantics, respectively. Thus, musical syntax and semantics are merged into a unique system that cannot be split. Indeed, an analysis of musical intra- and extra-systemic meanings suggests, that music seems to be to a certain degree auto-referential, while language’s main function is extra-referential. This, ultimately, leads to the difficulty of translating different semiotic systems into one another. We argue that a translation is notwithstanding possible in principle, allocating both music and language on the same semiotic continuum based on their structural similarities.

Some have tried to introduce a lexicon of music and a syntax of music and they all have failed because apart from the notes that have been rather stable since the 18th century, and the rhythms that have changed from one century to the next and yet are always the same, binary, ternary and quaternary, two-fold, three-fold or four-fold with all possible combinations with the units of length, once again rather stable across ages, all the rest is the result of the art of the composer, his or her emotions, and the meaning is, altogether on the side of the composer, on the second side of the interpreters and on the third side of the audience, the result of the empathy and feelings of each one person in these three fields. When you add words onto this music, sung or spoken, then these words have their own meaning, their own syntax and these lexical and syntactic combinations are amplified in a way or another, positively or negatively, by the music itself. I celebrate here many composers and many styles, many periods and many genres. Most of the various sections of this document refer to wider, at times a lot wider, documents that may count many dozen pages or even a few hundred pages. Patience and persistence – equanimity in one word – have to be your two bread and butter, bread and water, butter and cheese (with bread if possible), cheese and fruit and I am sure many of you will see many different meanings in my way of looking at things. Enjoy then this forest of many different trees, including Lao She’s reverie trees that only grow on Mars. Some pages are in French, which is good for dreaming. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

Above all, music and language are forms of human communication. Since sensory function is ultimately shaped by what is biologically important to the organism, the human urge to communicate has been a powerful driving force in both the evolution of auditory function and the ways in which it can be changed by experience within an individual lifetime. The ability to extract meaning from sound requires that all aspects of the auditory system work together in concert: by considering human auditory function in the context of communication, we hope to emphasize the highly interactive nature of the auditory system as well as the depth of its integration with other sensory and cognitive systems. Through consideration of relations and dissociations between music and language we will explore key themes in auditory function, learning and plasticity.