Whatever I say here is going to be a gross simplification, if not little more than superficial. There are Professors who build careers around this topic. I just want to explore some thoughts from my perspective.
When I wrote my title, I was (naturally, as I don’t do either) taking the stance of music listener rather than composer or player. And thinking of music as medium of meaning, whereas it’s easy to default to discs as the medium.
The first step to getting a good answer is to ask a good question.
Is there a meaning to music? Some scientists say that it is an essentially meaningless activity! AS I no longer dance to music, and have invested most of my attention outside of employed working to listening to music, I must have an at least partially satisfied need. How do I value music? Am I seeking meaning?
The wrong questions are: what does music mean, and what is the meaning of music? These tend to elicit an attempt at defining what music is. That’s not my query here. What is the meaning in music? How does music mean anything?
In a song, we find meaning in the words, but when there are no words, (how) do we find meaning in the music?
Human communication is for making meaning, so is music a form of communication that expresses meaning or that creates meaning? Whose meaning?
My answer depends on my listening focus – I can listen to the emotional state of the composer and/or performer, or the form of the music.
Does music carry (convey) meaning among us, or does music mean something in itself? Some argue that music is a language. That’s not the same as finding meaning in the lyrics of a song. Especially when there aren’t any!
Music as carrier of meaning is consistent with our ‘engineering’ understanding of communication as the transmission of information.
The Conduit Metaphor names the metaphoric assumptions that enable a range of common expressions such as getting the message across, putting thoughts into words, and getting a lot out of a text. . . .
The conduit metaphor is a dominant class of figurative expressions used when discussing communication itself (metalanguage). It operates whenever people speak or write as if they “insert” their mental contents (feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.) into “containers” (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) whose contents are then “extracted” by listeners and readers.
“[F]our categories . . . constitute the ‘major framework’ of the conduit metaphor. The core expressions in these categories imply, respectively, that: (1) language functions like a conduit, transferring thoughts bodily from one person to another; (2) in writing and speaking, people insert their thoughts or feelings in the words; (3) words accomplish the transfer by containing the thoughts or feelings and conveying them to others; and (4) in listening or reading, people extract the thoughts and feelings once again from the words.”
(Michael J. Reddy, “The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language About Language.” Metaphor and Thought, ed. by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Some argue that music is a language, and that one of the purposes of music is lingual and/or emotional communication.
If music is seen to be similar to the English language, then music must have elements and qualities that correspond to words, phrases, sentences, etc. Musicologist Deryck Cooke (“The Language of Music”) explains that musical notes have emotional connotations similar to the words of a language.
Famed composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein held a series of lectures in the University of Harvard in the 1970s, and he put much attention on comparing music to a language. He discussed the semantics of music at length – notes can be seen as words which form sentences, which form phrases, and so on. Bernstein had a firm view:
“no matter how many times people tell you stories about what music means, forget them. Stories are not what the music means at all. Music is never about anything. Music just is. Music is notes, beautiful notes and sounds put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them, and that’s all there is to it.”
According to Bernstein, music has no meaning because there is no meaning that you can (or should be able to) define. The meaning is instantly recognisable:
“So you see, the meaning of music is in the music, in its melodies, and in the rhythms, and the harmonies, and the way it’s orchestrated, and most important of all in the way it develops itself. But that’s a whole other program. We’ll talk about that some other time. Right now, all you have to know is that music has its own meanings, right there for you to find inside the music itself; and you don’t need any stories or any pictures to tell you what it means. If you like music at all, you’ll find out the meanings for yourselves, just by listening to it.”
Contemporary jazz guru Wynton Marsalis has a view on music as metaphor:
The nature and value of music is examined in the philosophy of music:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/
Philosophers Kenneth Taylor and Peter Kivy discuss music, meaning, and emotion here:
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/music-meaning-and-emotion
David Rothenberg doesn’t like the idea that music is merely another form of language:
David Ludden examines the human construction of complex sound sequences – we have both music and words. That’s highly significant in evolutionary terms.
Does music communicate (anything)? I stumbled upon the Jimmy Wisner Trio album Apperception (1960). Intrigued by the title, I read the sleevenotes for this instrumental (no words) jazz, including this ….
Composer and music theorist Robin Maconie (“The Concept of Music”, 1993) asked “… when we experience a change of emotion as a consequence of being exposed to music, what has actually happened? If something has been communicated, what is it we know as a result and how did it get there? Is it knowledge at all? If it is, how do we recognize that we didn’t know it previously, in order to be certain that we know it now?” (pp. 16-17).
Indeed, does thought have to take linguistic form? Music is another mode of human communication.
This question of music and meaning is not easily answered in a blog post. Even my casual search of published literature has unearthed a huge body of writing. No longer employed as a scholar, but still asking questions, I’ll have to be patient until a clearer answer comes my way. Until then, I’m enjoying the journey. And listening to music.
Music & Hi-fi Appreciations 