“Music is a language” is a phrase one can encounter often when following the conversation about music and it’s meanings. Many believe, that one of the purposes of music is communication – whether it’s lingual or emotional.
If music is seen to be similar as language like English, then surely music has elements and qualities than correspond to words, phrases, sentences and such?
Many believe this to be the case. For example British musicologist Deryck Cooke wrote in his book “The Language of Music” about the subject. According to Cooke, musical notes have emotional connotations similar to the words of a language. The late composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein held a series of lectures in the University of Harvard in the 70’s, and a big part of his lectures was dedicated at comparing music to a language.
In his lectures Bernstein discussed the Chomskyan semantics of music, where possibly notes can be seen as words which form sentences which form phrases and so on so forth.
I don’t think it’s quite so easy to draw the comparison between language and music. In the case of Bernstein and Cooke, they both had a very Western-centric view of the matter, where only the great composers of the white western canon of classical music was concerned.
The same word can in different languages mean different things, and sometimes the same word (and similar sounding vocal sounds) can have different meanings inside one language. So that would mean that a C would have different “meanings” and “functions” in different musical cultures and contexts.
One of the reasons why the great Bernstein entertained the idea of music as a language similar to something like English was clearly the theory of “20th century problem”, that is to say, how atonal music changed the environment of classical music. Both Bernstein and Cooke draw comparisons with the revolutions in society in the 20th century to the revolutions in classical music at the time.
To defend my dear idol Bernstein, he has also spoken for the more rational side of the issue. In his popular “Young people’s concert” -television series he held a episode titled “What does music mean”, where he was adamant to his young audience members that music doesn’t have to mean anything; it can just be a collection of different tones.
I personally think empirical and rational views on music have managed to gather something true about the nature of music: it does create emotions and it does operate on a intellectual level, and it does have characteristics similar to language. But at the end of the day I think music without sang words is like painting, but in this case it’s painting with tones. It doesn’t have to have any intrinsic meanings of it’s own, but it can have them if that is the intention. It is then up to the listener to interpret that message how they will.
Sources:
Martin, P. J. (1995). Sounds & society. Themes in the sociology of music.
Manchester: University Press
Leonard Bernstein – The Unanswered Question 1973 3 Musical Semantics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IxJbc_aMTg
Leonard Bernstein – What Does Music Mean? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NarfmBpSfLE
Music, Mind & Technology 