The Metaphor of Music as Language

In an article by Harold S Powers, [included in the text Music Culture and Society as an Overview to Music as Languauge, but originally published as: 'Language Models and Musical Analysis', Ethnomusicology, 24:1 (1980), 1-4, 7-9] three central aspects are considered in examining how music and languauge are related - semantics, phonology, and syntax and grammar.

1. Semantics
This typically refers to the meaning of words or symbols. Powers suggests that meaning in this context is derived from associations 'of specific musical entities with persons, events or things...'. Meaning is gained through the use of particular motives, or features such as rhythms or intervals, which themselves are seen as units of discourse.

2. Phonology typically consists of speech sounds and their development. In this regard Powers suggests that the vocal music of a culture can have an indirect influence on musical sounds, even those with no direct connection to text. Here he provides the example of the development of sitar styles and how these have encompassed the syllabilic and wholistic structure of the language of the environment in which this development has taken place.

3. Syntax usually refers to the arrangement of words in a sentence, and grammar, to the structure and use of language, including the correct use of words. In seeking to develop the metaphor from this perspective, Powers considers that abstract musical analysis can be inspired by linguistic models (in addition to other methods of analysis). Such an abstract analysis seeks to establish the 'parallels between the formal patterns of sound and structure in text and music'. Powers goes on to outline some apparent difficulties with this approach and concludes by noting that the very idea that music can be segmented and analysed and the terminology that has developed in order to do this, has deep roots in the historical language models of western eurpoean culture.

Of the three ways in which the metaphor of music as language is established, I am most familiar with the first, and indeed I think that this is perhaps the most obvious and widely accepted. To give an example: when I began to teach my daughter the piano I explained to her that a major scale was a 'happy' scale and that a minor scale was a 'sad' scale. This is the very basic level of what Powers is referring to. Of course it is often more complex than that; think of how drumming styles can depict war, or even (as I think was mentioned by Scott in the introducted to the text discussed in the previous post) how atonal music has been used to illustrate fear and danager in horror movies. These examples are but a tiny few of the endless ways in which meaning is associated with typical musical features. Indeed music, with or without text, is language, and it is this very metaphor that leads us to the notion that copyright laws and internet regulation directly impact on the free speech potential of music.