The word "language" connected to Music

In the computing field, a language is an alphabet that determines a set of instructions, which, when organized according to logic and rules by the programmer, constitute a program.

Anyone can invent a new set of instructions and rules to create a new language. I could have an alphabet of invented symbols that, combined according to rules I decide, constitute a word to which I assign a meaning.

Music makes no exceptions; given the alphabet (notes), I organize them according to logic and rules (for example, the rules of harmony) and constitute a musical product. It is therefore, in every respect, a language.

I apologize to Pianothor, unfortunately I accidentally deleted the content of your post; I only managed to recover this sentence, if you send me the text again via private message, I will reinsert it for you. Sorry again. Frank

The fact that contemporary Music (2017, not 1909) does not have the capacity to express happiness makes me think a lot.

pianothor wrote:

Good evening, for a few months I have been tormenting myself wondering if Music is a language or not. If not, what is it? Or, can we still speak of "tonal language", "modal language", "chromatic/pantonal language"?

I hope someone can give me an answer!!

See you soon

in fact music is not a language. It is a form of expression that has many languages, and you have indicated some of them.

Exactly just like the word: it is not a language but a form of expression that has many languages

Exactly, but the question remains: every language I know has the capacity to express both sadness and happiness, whereas atonal language does not seem to me so, or am I wrong?

I beg to differ, Luca. Music is a language that has, if anything, several languages. Language is the macrocategory; languages are the subcategories. Even if we don't know Chinese, perhaps we won't understand a single word, but despite this, we can still understand that it is that language. The same goes for English rather than German. In the same way, music has the same connotations; Chinese musical language is easily recognizable because it evokes sounds that are recognizable.

Language is something unique because it refers, in any case, to the expression of physical or metaphysical realities. Calling a pencil 'pencil', 'karandash', or 'bleistift' does not change the fact that the object is a pencil; it is the language that changes, but the concept of language (an agglomeration of letters that form words to define that object) remains the same.

Premising that the question is already a restriction on the vast subject, I throw the following elements onto the table to be read from left to right:

Collazione | Paratassi | Sintassi

I underlined it not by chance from left to right, as we are all too used to thinking in a Western way and reading linearly; in reality, modular reading also exists (and not only in music) with works written specifically in that sense.

An articulated subject, but I would reflect precisely on these three macro phases which in music can have many points of contact; in short, the boundaries are never so clearly defined.

pianothor wrote:

Exactly, but the question remains: every language I know has the ability to express both sadness and happiness, whereas atonal language doesn't seem to me so, or am I wrong?

A question that is not very clear; atonal language in itself is nothing if not everything that is not tonal (... which means even modality is atonality). It doesn't seem to me that tonality is the only means to evoke emotions; I even get emotional with Gregorian chant... which is a "melody."

pianothor wrote:

- Taking into consideration the languages we speak: Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, etc... each of these languages has phrases (sets of words (sets of letters)) that can express happiness, sadness, and everything that derives from these two macro sets.

No, there is a context where the same words (in the same order) can make you laugh and make you cry, and if combined with a text, there is even music... let's just say that the matter is articulated even more extensively

Let's say that music cannot have meanings but sense. Let's say that music is an asemantic language, but this does not exclude syntax (which has implications) ... but let's go back to the 3 elements I would like to talk about.

pianothor wrote:

The fact that contemporary Music (2017, not 1909) does not have the capacity to express happiness makes me think a lot.

Who said that? It is certainly not syntax that decides it, but the composer. Evidently modern times do not suggest much cheerfulness and artists are indeed an expression of their own time. I hate to self-promote, but I have my own tango for theorbo and violin, "atonal" since people like that term, which evokes everything except sadness. In this context, I was interested in passion and its implications; it transmits "positive" feelings (shall we say so?) despite the absence of tonality.

But there are plenty of examples, just browse the WEB

PS

I like the idea of mentioning 1909, it seems to me another averagely "grey" period... so, why specifically 1909? (curiosity)

TheSimon wrote:

I take the liberty of disagreeing, Luca. Music is a language that has, if anything, several languages.

ok. if that's the case, we are actually in agreement. it's just a matter of terminology and understanding each other.

Reading what you wrote afterwards, that is exactly what I meant

If by language one means the ability humans have to express concepts, thoughts, and meanings through a complex code, music is not a language because music expresses nothing more - and nothing less - than the music itself. Feelings and everything else are attributed to it by us, but this becomes a matter of a subjective nature and therefore not absolute.

danielescarpetti wrote:

If by language one means the ability that man has to express

So far, that makes sense to me.

Man expresses himself also through music; the rest (concepts, thoughts, meanings) are secondary. Why exclude the emotional sphere?

So much so that it is not easy to express certain things in words, but music does it perfectly. The problem arises when music expresses nothing and remains confined to a sterile experiment. I repeat, sense is already a meaning... the context remains unchanged. I repeat: the same words (in the same order) can make one laugh or make one cry, and it is not enough to prepend other words: like "joke" or "let's be serious" to give meaning to them; sometimes something else is needed which, whether we like it or not, concerns—as it happens—music in a broad sense. Shall we talk about the tone of voice (for example)?

If it were not a language, there would be no rules (even if aesthetic ones, but rules nonetheless) and it would not serve to relate at least two individuals, let's say 3: Composer --> performer --> listener

As can be seen, it seems difficult to speak of language without speaking of meaning, and cyclically on this forum the same old specters seem to re-emerge. Regardless of how everyone wants to see it, I take the liberty of recalling some historically relevant concepts, even if perhaps already done in past discussions. If someone has the patience to read them, and if they do not already know or remember them, perhaps they can find some food for thought.

Formalism in music finds one of its past champions in Hanslick. However, the concepts of language, sense, and meaning have been addressed more completely by logic and linguistics. As already stated elsewhere, and to not go too far back in history, Frege distinguished between Sinn and Bedeutung. What are they? Let's make a couple of examples (they are not the original ones): the various road signs indicating direction and distance from Rome are each a different Sinn towards the same Bedeutung: Rome; the 216th Pope of the Catholic Church or the son of Giuliano della Rovere born in Albissola in 1443, are two different Sinnen that indicate the same Bedeutung. There are at least two things to note here: first, that Sinn is the "mode in which the object is given to us"; second, that a Bedeutung has many Sinnen, while a Sinn generally has only one Bedeutung. For Frege, the field of application of this theory is language, which he essentially distinguishes into natural language and logical language (with two truth values). In this way, Frege can say that "Ulysses landed in Ithaca immersed in a deep sleep" is a sentence with a Sinn but whose Bedeutung is uncertain. For Frege, if an expression contains a term lacking Bedeutung, the entire expression is neither true nor false, meaning it is itself lacking Bedeutung, even if it has a Sinn: this is essentially what Hanslick thought of music.
It is a fact that shortly thereafter Russell communicated to Frege that this theoretical approach leads to an antinomy and in his essay "On Denoting" actually replaces the notion of Sinn with the concept of "propositional function." In short, for Russell, an expression can have meaning even if it is composed of terms that individually denote nothing. Otherwise, following Frege and his example of Ulysses, we would have to conclude that the entire Greek epic lacks Bedeutung, which in Italian (and I say this only now on purpose) translates as meaning. It is, in my opinion, worth noting that initially in English Bedeutung, if I am not mistaken, was rendered as reference and later as meaning. Furthermore, Sinn can also be translated as meaning, just like Bedeutung. In some way, then, the notion of Sinn without Bedeutung is a misleading notion, and it becomes so especially in the Italian translation. Hanslick is actually prior to Frege and his formalism is somehow autonomous from him, even if it becomes quite easy to read him through that conceptual framework. Hanslick, in open opposition to Wagnerian aesthetics, removes all content from music, including the sphere of emotions. Music has many Sinnen, but no Bedeutung: this is essentially the formalist position and changes little even in its "enhanced" version, such as that proposed by Kivy. In Kivy, the semantic value of music is still denied, but the existence of a relationship between music and emotions is strongly revalued. Moreover, Kivy admits that the lack of content is limited to Western instrumental music, while admitting that music can be significant, even Western music, when accompanied by words. This expanded formalist position alone should raise concerns among its supporters: how indeed could music be significant when accompanied by words if it cannot be significant on its own? Either the meaning is only that of the words and therefore music adds or modifies nothing, or music itself must have some potentiality. In any case, obviously, any formalist finds themselves forced, for better or worse, to deny music the status of language: if music has no content, then it cannot be a language, since a language is a conventional set of organized symbols suitable for communicating or expressing something. This position, in my opinion, derives precisely from the initial misunderstanding brought by the Fregean distinction and the consequent induced antinomies.
Obviously, the formalist position is not the only one. From Wagner onwards, passing through Adorno, to arrive, each in their own way, at Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations," to the hermeneutic tradition, cultural studies, gender studies, and even to numerous exponents of analytic philosophy (Danto, Levinson, etc.), today believing that the asemanticity of music is the only doctrine is at least naive. Even neuroscience, for a few years now

they would claim to have demonstrated that music promotes meanings in a manner analogous to other languages (if anyone is interested, perhaps I can find some excerpts from these studies).
What should we actually mean today when it is said that music has many senses and no meaning, given that people insist on using such a proposition? If it is not to remain a formula learned from someone or read somewhere, one should be able to justify it. If it is understood according to the notions of Frege (and Hanslick), it risks appearing to be a true misunderstanding. Indeed, what would be the many senses of a piece of music? As Sinn [sense], sense is nothing but an expression, a way of saying something; therefore, as Sinn, every piece of music should have only one sense, or rather should be "a" sense, not a multiplicity, unless by sense one means a performance—not that which is given by a performance, but the performance itself—but then one would move even further away from an explanation.
What other connotation could be given to the term sense, perhaps that of spoken language? In the Italian language, if I say "Pippo è un cane" [Pippo is a dog], someone outside the context can quite easily ask me "ma in che senso?" [but in what sense?]. I might indeed have indicated a dog named Pippo, or addressed my friend Pippo disparagingly, or even reminded someone that the namesake comic character is a dog. His question can therefore be easily replaced by "what are you referring to?" In Italian, therefore, a content toward which the sense of an expression refers is somehow presupposed, so much so that in common language (and not just Italian), sense and meaning are easily interchangeable. To think, then, that the many senses of music should be read in the connotation of spoken language cannot again explain the issue.
We could proceed at will, and there are indeed numerous semantic models, too many even, but the fact is that we are nonetheless dealing with a reality that we want to describe in some way, and to do this it is necessary that we establish terms that are effective for the purpose. In itself, there is no problem in calling sense 'meaning' and meaning 'reference' or vice versa, but in the end, it is the description as a whole that must hold up as well as possible, even if it will always be only an approximation. Perhaps it is therefore worthwhile to recover at least in part Russell's objection to the use of the term Sinn, whether used by Frege or by Hanslick. Or perhaps one could also acquiesce to the suggestions of Wittgenstein who, in addition to contesting the validity of reference theories, also opposes the very idea of the possibility of "pure" music: to understand a musical work, we use categories that we derive from non-musical experiences (and thus musical understanding and expression are not closed).

These are all things already said. The only thing I can emphasize is that before apodictically pronouncing this or that conclusion, it would be better to ask oneself some questions and have some doubts, of the type, in no particular order:

-what interpretation can I give to something that has no meaning?
-what connotations can be had for the terms language, sense, and meaning?
-does language come first or does meaning come first?
-if meaning is a sign of something outside the signifier, must this something necessarily be univocal and determined?
-if sense is the way in which this something is indicated, in what way is it possible to indicate something that does not exist?
-to have a semantics, must that which is indicated be unitary or can it be multiple?
-could the way of indicating something itself be something?
-can there exist an expression of thought devoid of content and full only of form?
-etc. etc..

Frank wrote:

Man expresses himself also through music,

So far, that makes sense to me.

Frank wrote:

Why exclude the emotional sphere?

Because everyone's emotional sphere is personal, and the same music can convey—depending on the subjects listening to it, but also for the same subject listening at different moments and circumstances—different and completely contrary feelings.

The most striking example in this sense is given by Kubrick in "A Clockwork Orange," where the Ode to Joy becomes an anthem of violence. It is the same music, and whoever listens to it loves it just like everyone else who loves it, but the feeling it provokes is diametrically opposite to what is usually associated with it.

Therefore, I think that music expresses only itself, and all the feelings that: the composer, the listener, attribute to it are subjective; and Hanslick in his "On the Musical Sublime," complicit with the times in which he wrote, was partly wrong and exaggerated—but his writing must be contextualized within the Romantic era and as an anti-romantic function—but he was also partly right.

And as Massimo Mila reminds us: A fifth doesn't mean anything at all and has nothing to do with pastoral horizons, deep calm, and boundless serenity, but conversely, since Beethoven made use of the fifth in this way within the context of the Pastoral, we are induced to irresistibly associate this chord with this complex of sensations.

If only for a moment we could free ourselves from so much descriptive rhetoric, we would understand that Vivaldi's Four Seasons are nothing more than four beautiful musical concertos like many others composed by him and that's it; no heat, rain, wind, thunderstorms, cold, etc., etc.

Like Paintings of an exhibition, it is a suite of piano pieces—or orchestral, or pop, or electronic depending on the versions—united by a leitmotif..

A friend always tells me:

"That which cannot be said
and cannot be kept silent,
Musiс expresses it..."

A discourse too complicated but

danielescarpetti wrote:

If only for a moment we could free ourselves from so much descriptive rhetoric, we would understand that Vivaldi's Four Seasons are nothing more than four beautiful music concerts like many others composed by him and that's it; no heat, rain, wind, thunderstorms, cold etc. etc.

Let's just say it would be like ignoring the composer; whether we like it or not, Vivaldi was thinking specifically about the seasons. You have chosen an example that is absolutely not exemplary.

AbateFaria wrote:

Too complicated a discourse but

Dlet's say it would be like ignoring the composer; whether we like it or not, Vivaldi was specifically thinking about the seasons. You have chosen an example that is not at all exemplary.

In aesthetics, there are precise references to this discourse, and this work by Vivaldi belongs to the figurative, i.e., to musical semantics in relation to images (some examples: storm, pastoral, seasons, etc.); let's say that they come from different semantic categories (...acoustic suggestions also play their part)

AbateFaria wrote:

A friend always tells me:

"What cannot be said
and cannot be kept silent,

Music expresses it..."

Too complicated a discourse but

Let's just say it would be like ignoring the composer; whether we like him or not, Vivaldi was thinking specifically about the seasons. You have chosen an example that is not at all exemplary.

Let me explain myself better. I do not want to ignore the composer and his intentions, of which I take note. I am simply saying that if a person could listen to music without knowing what the composer intended to "describe," they might think of completely different things or even nothing at all, limiting themselves to judging the music.

In other words, music acquires an extra-musical meaning if someone—the composer, the publisher—attributes it. If not, it is neutral... it is just music, even program music.

danielescarpetti wrote:

Let me explain myself better. I do not want to ignore the composer and his intentions, of which I take note. I am simply saying that if a person could listen to the music without knowing what the composer intended to "describe," they might think of completely different things or even nothing at all, limiting themselves to judging the music.

In other words, music acquires an extra-musical meaning if someone—the composer or the publisher—attributes it. If not, it is neutral... it is just music, even program music.

Kubrick's example is a bit particular and, in my opinion, the director wanted to emphasize a form of contrast, perhaps to highlight the mental imbalance of that group of "jokers"... Let's take the concept even further. Would you use the Funeral March from Chopin's second Sonata as the theme for an advertisement for an amusement park like Mirabilandia?

If we maintain that music is not a language but is just music because it only acquires extra-musical meaning if attributed by the composer, then this should always and in any case be true, regardless of the composer's indications and the final intended use, and not just in specific examples where it actually finds confirmation in Kubrick. In essence, it is either always a language or it never is one.