Is Music a Language?

Rosborne, I would say that it is LIKE a language in some respects. It communicates musical ideas, aesthetic values, and even has a kind of grammar for doing so. A major difference, as you suggest, is that a musical idea is not decoded in the same way by as many people as would be the case with a verbal message. Then, again, not everyone reads a verbal message the same way, especially poems.
Another difference: a sentence of words STANDS FOR (symbolically points to) something other than itself, whereas a series of musical sounds stands only for itself.

music is an art form, and all art forms use an 'emotional' language.
music is also based very much on the 'language' of mathematics.

And, i must say that many composers, living and dead can 'speak' to me in a way that no mere words can convey!

I think music and art are not so much languages in and of themselves as they are mouthpieces to express the language of culture. They don't have fixed meanings like human natural languages do, but the meanings can be fixed in the views of any one culture. Probably no one in our culture would hear a lullaby and think of it in any other way.

rosborne

A super interesting question

All I can say is, it all depends on how susceptible your are to the sounds of music. There are obviously many who like it but there are few who can "visualize" or transduce it into effective meaning. It is true, it is a form of mathematics but of a mathematik transmogrified into feeling and into an "empathy" beyond mere content.

To me, depending on the music of course, it is far more potent than any language can express and that includes all the works of Shakespeare himself!

God exists more in sound than He does in words as do all His works...according to me!

...An interesting question indeed because it helps to define the functions of language, and the relationship between emotion and perception.

We certainly learn musical "tokens" for particular scenarios but I doubt that whether without prior association these can be "understood". (Young children drawing or describing "what they see they see in the music" tend to be completely diverse).

There is music everywhere. When you speak a sentence you have a melody to it (how can you not) so you're in a way singing. The fact that you're singing in quarter notes and whats worse and apparently with no specific melody planned is unimportant. Apparently because the monotone hum really is a musical piece laden with the emotion you're expressing. You're just not operating with the musical keyes and notes. But the musical language, just like the mathemathical language, was not built in a day. It evolved over thousands of years, and is still evolving. Changes have been made within my lifetime.

Another good reminder is that we have many languages, and they all have their corresponding melodies. An american speaks english with an american melody to the words. A person from germany would speak english with his native german melody. You might say he speaks german only using english words. This is what we call accent. In musical terms "accent" means how you clip notes; wether you play it's full worth or extend it or whatever you do. I believe it is the same in language.

So what I'm trying to say is that all languages have their music, and that music is a part of that language. You cannot tell where a person is from by the words he uses, but you can tell where he is from by how he uses it. How he sings it...

I agree. Do you think that the message they 'speak' to you is the same message to everyone who hears it?

For example, I'm wondering how much consistency there is in the emotional response people have to music. Are our emotional responses to music learned through culture, or inate as primates?

On a very basic level, I'd say music is a form of communication. My nephew Cole is learning to clap. He does it when I play a beat on bongos, or anything really. His face lights up like it does when I smile at him, or act silly. At his age, 8.5 months, it's as good a form of language as anything else he's mastered.

as with all art, i see the individual responses being as different as the people who have them; you have the same thing occurring in conversation; while one person will find one meaning in a spoken, or written text, another will find virtually the opposite.

[interpretation is an obscurring 'mist' enveloping 'understanding'!]

Music also has a form of vocablulary. Certain styles of music i.e. blues, reggae, jazz regularly use groupings of notes or phrases which are expecially common to that particular style.

Unfortunately I don't know enough musical theory to back this up with any actual examples - can anyone help here? Pentatonic 5th scales in Blues/Rock rings a bell, but I'm not sure.

This is somewhat similar to vocabulary in language. Possibly.

As i haven't a musical bone in my body (which doesn't stop me from singing if the mood strikes me), i suppose i shouldn't comment. But, here goes . . . my brother Steven has a distinct musical talent. He plays french horn, cornet, trumpet and piano. He has won the first prize in state contests while in high school for all three horns mentioned there (in fact, he never failed to take the first prize in French horn). He accomplished that by playing sonatas, and the horn part of concertos, by Haydn and Mozart.

Which brings us to the part about music being language. Yes, certainly it is, and one universally understood. Not only is this true, but learning to write that language transcends differences in spoken languages. My brother could pick up sheet music, and read it off, humming or whistling the tune, much as i can take a French text, and read out the English version thereof. One Christmas, my brother received a very big, thick book as a present, which was all of the scores of Mozart's music, reduced to fit several pages per page, and complete with a magnifying glass. My brother would take the glass, and sit down to read the scores as one would read a novel.

This is perhaps not what was intended for this discussion, but it is what came to mind when first i saw this thread.

I hear what you're saying, Set, and I like it very much.

You struck a chord here, Ros. One does not have to be a performer to listen. It's as though music is the braille of the blind; the signing of the deaf; the feel of the fingers; the aroma of the dulcet; the taste of multi-tongues; and the sixth sense of discovery.

And in between, there are four beats to a measure (sorry, I always have trouble with the rhythm, cause it came to me naturally.)

p.s. And let's not forget, the black hole that plays B flat:

Black Hole Sings In Key Of B Flat

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2003



An image of a 53-hour Chandra X-ray Observatory observation reveals wavelike features that appear to be sound waves. (Photo: AP)



"We would expect that every cluster and group of galaxies has its own note."
Andy Fabian,
Institute of Astronomy



(AP) The voice of a black hole is a deep, deep bass, 57 octaves below middle C and far beyond the hearing range of humans. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has picked up sound waves for the first time from a cluster of galaxies 250 million light years away.

Astronomers at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England, discovered the sound waves while analyzing the Chandra images of the Perseus cluster, an immense grouping of galaxies held in formation by the powerful tug of a supermassive black hole.

Right, BoGoWo. Understanding IS misty. It's all a matter of interpretation. And it will remain that way until a God makes her appearance and tells us what's objectively and absolutely what.

How about major vs minor chords? Minor has a tendency to sound sad, while major sounds "happy". How can this be? Anyone knows of anyone who would disagree with that?

If you think minor keys can't sound happy, you don't listen to celtic or Jewish music much.

Au contraire rufio, when I listen to klezmer I hear centuries of persecution and renewal. A whole sad history in a single scale.

Ah, Deveron. That reminded me of a great tune; all of it written in a major key:

Every time we say goodnight,
I cry a little,
Every time we say goodnight,
I wonder why, a little.

Why the gods above me
Who must be in the know,
Think so little of me,
They allow you to go.

When you speak there's such a air of spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.

There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change from major to minor.
Every time we say goodnight.