Music as a Content Processing Phenomenon_Magister Thesis 2008

RUHR-UNIVERSITÄT BOCHUM Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft Institut für Musikwissenschaft

Music as a content processing phenomenon: Music semiotic and music semantic approaches to the construction of musical meaning.

Alexandra Jandausch June 2008

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6. Bibliography

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1. Introduction In the 1960s, when musicology became an established academic discipline in universities all over the world, music theory, hermeneutics, and semiotics focussed on problems concerning natural language, imagination and the aesthetic quality of music. The questions that evolved through this focus were about how musical concepts emerge in the human mind, how non verbal aspects of music could be described in terms of natural language, and about the meaning of musical expressiveness, to name but a few of the scientific challenges.

The central points of this thesis are how to define the musical sign with respect to the impossibility of a semiotic reduction of the musical fact, the question of a coherent and unequivocal terminology, the applicability of semiotic and semantic theory to music and their impact on interpretation and analysis of music.

The first part, Musical semiotics is concerned with the historical trajectory of musical semiotics. Exploring how musical semiotics developed as a science independent from musicology, as well as from general semiotics, the thesis shall give an overview over different approaches to the field of music and semiotics, namely the approaches guided by Peircean and Greimasian semiotics. The scientific context is provided as well as the historic context and the status quo of musical semiotics is classified with regard to the problems of terminology and areas of investigation.

The second part Musical semantics is concerned with the application of cognitive semantic theories to music. Mechanisms and processes that are 4

an indispensable part of human cognition in general should also be applicable to the domain of music. The chapter focuses on perception-based theories as well as on theories of cognitive semantics. The presentation of these theories is fundamental for the introduction of the theory of conceptual integration to the field of music. Musical semantics is a relatively new field and there are few if any analyses available.

My approach is deliberately interdisciplinary, with a focus on semantic theory in Chapter 3.4 and 3.5, because there is still no coherent terminology in the realm of musical semantics and musicology's aim still is the search for music universals that make music available to a wider public. The close look at semantic theory may aide in finding a terminology that is precise and unequivocal.

Language is the only way in which humans can express what and how music means. Not always are the opportunities given to perform or listen to a recording. As much of music and music theory is published in print, we need to make use of language. The application of semantic theory allows us to exploit the cognitive structure and thus make available to the public how music means and how music is conceptualized.

One of the basic principles of the musicology of the 1990s was that there is no such thing as purely musical meaning. To solve the main problem, that we are faced with the lack of an adequately theorized conception of how music might support or not support the meaning ascribed to it, is the aim of this thesis.

Adorno assumed, that social structure has some kind of objective existence

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which is represented through homology within the patterns of music. Nicolas Cook claimed, that Adorno's assumption led to the idea that social meaning is inherent in music.1

Musicological analysis of the 1990s focusses on the relation between music and society, yet only develops the former in detail. The unanswered question of the 1990s remained how the linkage between musical and social structure was meant to work. Social constructionism and the then new musicology caused a shift of attention from the question of how particular pieces of music support particular meanings and if there are constraints on the meaning that any particular piece can support.

One attempt of this thesis is to begin to explain the specific manner of the binding that is at work when meaning in music is inextricably bound up with the formal processes and stylistic articulations of musical works. The explanation of this manner of binding remained unexplained until Lawrence Zbikowski published his book "Conceptualizing Music" in 2002. Until then, the only safe model of explaining how music means, the only model that would illustrate the relationship between music and meaning, was the Saussurean conception of the sign. If that was the case, there would not be any room for interpretation, as the Saussurean sign relies on the arbitrariness of the signifier.

A unifying theory cannot be developed in this thesis, but there is the suggestion, that music semantic theory could provide a basis for a unified theory of musical meaning. With the emergence of new branches of musicology, such as cognitive musicology, the question if music can be 1 Cook, Nicolas, (2001): Theorizing Musical Meaning. In: Music Theory Spectrum, Fall 2001,Vol. 23, No. 2, p. 170-195. Further quoted as: Cook (2001).

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examined under a semantic view arose in a different manner. The study of form, and style, or historical backgrounds is no longer the only aim of musicology.2

Chapter 4, The Construction of Meaning, explores how meaning is constructed through the interaction of music and musician, text and context, and how musical meaning will vary according to the circumstances of its reception and production. Specific musical meanings can emerge under specific circumstances, independently from language. The Chapter is divided into two parts, the first part is concerned with how and if the semiotic approach to music can generate new knowledge. We will take a look at an analysis of Beethoven's Ghost Trio by Robert Hatten, and at the analysis of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem by Arjan van Baest and Hans van Driel.

The second part of the Chapter deals with the construction of meaning and generation of knowledge under the semantic approach. An investigation of an analysis by Lawrence Zbikowski of Robert Schumann 's song In der Fremde shall serve as an example of how meaning can emerge from music, and from music and text.

In the final Chapter of the thesis a short overview on how music psychological theories, perception-based theories and semiotic and semantic approaches to music are mutually dependent will be given. This has not been attempted so far, as each of the approaches is regarded as a discipline of its own. There are a few aspects in both approaches, where

2

Cano, Rubén López: From Pragmatics to Enactive Cognition. A New Paradigm for the Development of Musical Semiotics; presented at the Second International Symposium on Musical Language Sciences. Current Trends in Musical Language Sciences, especially on the Language Sciences Web and Transversalities Questions. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. October 14-17, 2004, p. 2. Further quoted as Cano (2004). 7

similarities and scientific common grounds are visible, but the scientific status quo is still that of "either or".

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2. The Semiotics of Music

2.1 Historical perspective



2.1.1 Music as a means of human communication

Music is performed and listened to across national and cultural borders. Many people find it relatively easy to agree about a musical experience at a superficial level, as for example radio playlists or selling charts show.3 The agreement among people in a shared musical experience is not limited to the reaction of the auditory nerves, but shows, that what people perceive as a whole, is a response to information about events in reality. So the perception of music can be regarded as the perception of meaningful events.4

On the scientific level, agreement about a musical experience is harder to achieve. Few semioticians have said or written anything about music. Umberto Eco regards music as a sign system having denotation, but no connotation.5 Yuri Lotman and Algirdas Julien Greimas did not write about music at all. Claude Lévi-Strauss developed a model of myth and music that shows both as deriving from language. Lévi-Strauss has a structuralist frame of reference. His conception of language is Saussurean, regarding language as a system, whose units are divided into the two sides of signifier and

3

Comp. Maconie, Robin (1990): The Concept of Music. Oxford, p.7.

4 Comp. Sloboda, John (2005):Exploring the musical mind: Cognition, Emotion, Ability, Function. Oxford, p. 176. Further quoted as: Sloboda (2005). 5 Comp. Mirigliano, Rosario (1995): The sign and music: A reflection on the theoretical bases of musical semiotics. In: Tarasti, Eero (editor): Musical Signification. Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin, p. 42-61. Further quoted as: Mirigliano (1995).

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signified. For him, music is a language without a signified, whereas myth exists independently of its sounds, that is, the phonemes of the language in which it is told. The structuralist view implies that everything meaningful has its origin in language.6 As a consequence, when we hear music, we feel compelled to fill it with meaning. Other views on music and meaning hold music to be an emanation of values, power relations, ideologies, or abstract axiological entities.7 In our daily lives, we constantly evaluate acts, events, and objects. None of these have any existence for us unless they mean or signify something.

If we assume that music is a sign system in a semiotic sense, then it must be possible to apply communication models, and music must, like any other semiotic system, consist of at least two different levels: content and expression. The definition of a semiotic sign is that "aliquid stat pro aliquo", but if this Saussurean conception of the linguistic sign is applied to music in the sense that signifier and signified are united by arbitrariness, it would mean that the relationship between music and meaning is arbitrary as well. Consequently, if the relationship between music and meaning were arbitrary, then "there is nothing in the music that can constrain interpretation", and it would not be possible to apply any communication model, because there would only be a cultural given instead of an exchange of information which involves at least the three sides of sender or producer, message, and receiver.8 The message would be independent of the sender or producer, because of the message's fixed content. Moreover, this sign-conception

6 Tarasti,

Eero (2002): Signs of Music. A Guide to Musical Semiotics. New York, p. 5. Further quoted as Tarasti (2002). 7

Tarasti (2002), p. 8.

8

Cook (2001), p. 173. 10

would be contradictory to recent findings that meaning is constructed, not unpacked.9

Eero Tarasti proposes a sender-message-receiver model as well as a production-exchange-consumption model. Both of the models automatically involve signification the very moment the listener thinks about what is communicated. The advantage of the two models is that no musical knowledge is needed, the listener only needs to know whether he likes or dislikes what he hears.10 According to Tarasti, music mediates between aesthetic and ideological values, and fixed, ready-made objects, so music as a sign provides a case of something meaningful and communicative.11

Music almost never functions without the support of other sign systems. A sign can only function and be understood against the background of a continuum or semiosphere of signs. Such a semiosphere can be a social context, such as an ethnic or a social group. National anthems are an example for musical signs serving as symbols. Against the semiosphere of the social context, the music is a symbol for a whole people. National anthems are marked signs, because they are only used in a special context, for a special purpose.12

Concerning the word meaning, there is a lot of unclarity, as different kinds of musical meaning can be distinguished. Viatscheslav Medushevsky, for 9

Comp. Ortony, Andrew (1993): Metaphor, Language and Thought. In: Ortony, Andrew (1993): Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, p. 1-19. Further quoted as: Ortony (1993). 10

Tarasti (2002),p.3.

11 Ibid. 12 For the theory of Markedness and Neutralization comp. Schleifer, Ronald (1987): A.J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning. Linguistics, Semiotics and Discourse Theory, London, p. 50ff.

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example, distinguishes between three kinds of musical meaning, and calls them syntactic meaning, semantic meaning, and communicative meaning. The three kinds of musical meaning Medushevsky describes deal with connecting signs with signs (syntactic), signs with aspects of the world, their representations or relationships (semantic), or the signs' effects on perception (communicative).13 Further he states that musical semiotics has "[...] no other choice but to solve its main problem-how 'sound' and 'thought' relate to each other through the basic elements of music and through such formations as 'genre', 'style', and the whole morphological system of a music culture-on the basis of the aforementioned rationalist approach."14 According to Peirce, the word meaning cannot be used the way we are used to in our everyday language.



2.1.2 What does music express? Formalist and





Referentialist views on music and meaning

The controversy on the question whether music has any meaning has received much attention from musicologists, as well as from musical semioticians. Concerning the word meaning the lack of a universal terminology becomes evident. First, the use of the word meaning implies that music is a semiotic system, whose signs can refer to a reality.15 Like any other semiotic system, music must consist of at least two components:

13 Comp.: van Baest, Arjan/van Driel, Hans (1995): The Semiotics of C.S. Peirce Applied to Music. A Matter of Belief. Tilburg, p. 8. Further quoted as: van Baest/van Driel (1995). 14 Medushevsky, Viatscheslav (1995): Musical intonation- language of intuition and logic: A contribution to the system of the semiotics of intonation in music. In: Tarasti, Eero (editor): Musical Signification. Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin, New York, p. 198. 15

Comp. van Baest/van Driel (1995), p.8. 12

content and expression. The sign nature, or expression plane of music is taken to be true without questioning it further. Musical events are studied as if they were signs, their sign quality is taken as a natural given. The discussion about the content plane, or semantic level, has led to the two fundamentally different positions of musical formalism and musical referentialism.

The basis of musical formalism was laid in Eduard Hanslick's essay "Vom Musikalisch Schönen". According to Hanslick, music is nothing but moving aural forms and a musical composition is merely the carrier of aesthetic properties of music.16 For him, the content or meaning of music, lies in the grouping of the material in the individual work and in the meaningful relationships of the elements of music.17

In his autobiography "Chronicle of my life", Stravinsky states that music is powerless to express anything at all.18 Stravinsky and Hanslick both regard music as an autonomous structure which is incapable of expressing referential meaning, that is, a meaning that lies in an extramusical reality. Both of them do not claim that music is incapable of provoking associations, but they state that expressiveness is not an immanent feature of music.19

For Hanslick, one reason for music's lack of expressive ability lies in the composers' obligation to think in musical tones.20 Hanslick's focus does not 16 Comp. Nattiez, Jean-Jaques (1990): Music and Discourse. Toward a semiology of Music, Princeton, p. 107. Further quoted as: Nattiez (1990). 17 Hanslick, Eduard (1854): Vom musikalisch Schönen, Leipzig, p. 32. Further quoted as: Hanslick (1854). 18

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 8.

19

Nattiez (1990), p. 108.

20

Hanslick (1854), p. 103. 13

lie on the relationship of musical form and musical content, but on the Beautiful that comes into existence through this relationship. The Beautiful is to be looked for in music itself, not in some extramusical reality. From a formalist perspective, the semantic dimension, or 'meaning' of music, lies in its form, especially in the arranging of the material in the individual musical work.21 Although Hanslick's essay led to musical formalism, there are other theorists and composers, like Schoen, Stravinsky, Varèse or Eco, who attribute an expressive quality to music, but explicitly state, that musical meaning is absolute in the sense that it is intrinsic to the sounds themselves, without reference to an external reality.22

For the formalists, the knowledge of the extent to which music possesses a semantic dimension mostly depends on an ontology of the essence of music, rather than on empirical observation. As a semiotic system, music shows complex configurations of interpretants.23 For the investigation of the kinds of interpretants that are associated with music, Nattiez proposed a cartography that relies on a classification suggested by Robert Francès, who tested musical perception and came to four different kinds of judgements as a result.24

These four judgements that are used for the examination of the semantic aspect of music are normative judgements, objective judgements, judgements about meaning (individual referent, concrete meaning, abstract meaning), and affirmations of interior order that are related to the 21

Comp. Abegg, Werner (1974): Musikästhetik und Musikkritik bei Eduard Hanslick, in: Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 44, Regensburg, p. 53. 22

Nattiez (1990), p. 108.

23

Interpretants are ordinarily called the meaning of the Sign. See Chapter 2.2.2 The semiotics of C.S. Peirce. 24

Nattiez (1990), p. 103. 14

psychological effect experienced by the subject. The objective judgement leads to the essential question of music and meaning: Is music a "play of forms", or "does it inspire external associations"?25

Musical aesthetics is divided by the question whether music is characterized by its capacity for intrinsic or extrinsic referring. The two dimensions of Hanslick's position can be explained with the help of Nattiez' application of the Peircean tripartition.

The empirical point of view as the first dimension would hold the poietic level to reveal that emotion exists in the composer's mind, but this emotion is invisible, except in the purely musical form.26 Hanslick does not negate music's ability to cause emotion, but he sees it as a result of the form's effect on the listener.

On the esthetic level, music itself, as a carrier of aesthetic properties that are made visible through form, is the origin of emotion. The neutral level, or trace, shows that music's content is its form.27 For Hanslick, the empirical claim is that the deep emotions which music can evoke must not be underrated.28

The second dimension of Hanslick's position under the

Peircean point of view, the normative claim, shows the consequences of his conception of music and meaning for music aesthetics. The claim is called normative, because if the "contemplation of something beautiful arouses pleasurable feelings, this effect is distinct from the beautiful as such", which

25

Ibid.

26

For explanation of the Peircean terminology, please see Chapter 2.2.2.

27

The neutral level is the level that is accessible to the five senses.

28

Nattiez (1990), p. 109. 15

means that certain conditions must be fulfilled by music to obey the aesthetic principles postulated by Hanslick.29

On the poietic level, program music, imitative music, or sentimental music should not be written, because the essence of music, and consequently its meaning, is form. In opera, music should occupy the predominating position, not text or performance. The esthetic level shows that perception is not free from emotion, but perception must be elevated to a level where it is concerned with the pure contemplation of forms. If these conditions are met, the neutral level reveals the Beautiful in music to be nothing more than form.30

Musical formalism can be regarded as a reaction to semantic conceptions of music. Nattiez states that there are two convenient classifications of musicaesthetic conceptions. One conception is introduced by Leonard Meyer, the other one by Etienne Gilson. Both of them favor the semantic aspect of music. According to Gilson aesthetic ideas divide into four groups which can, at certain times, coexist, but they mainly each react against the previous one. The four groups are imitation, expressionism, symbolism, and formalism. Whereas the first three groups allow for reproduction, symbolizing, or expression of meaning, feelings, or any extramusical reality, the fourth family holds musical meaning to be revealed by music itself in an immanent and intrinsic fashion. According to Leonard Meyer, musical aesthetics is situated between two extremes. On the one hand there is the formalist-absolutist position which claims that music has no semantic level and therefore means nothing but itself, and on the other hand there is the

29

Ibid.

30

Comp. Nattiez (1990), p. 108f. 16

expressionist-absolutist position which holds music to be able to refer to an extramusical reality.31

The different viewpoints on music and meaning split into two dichotomies: The first dichotomy is between the absolutists, who claim that musical meaning is based exclusively on the relationship between the constituent elements of the work itself, and the referentialists, who state that music has no meaning, except by referring to an extramusical universe of concepts, actions, emotional states and characters.

The second dichotomy is between the formalist, who claims that music cannot provoke affective responses, and the expressionist, who claims that feelings do exist.

The two dichotomies are not exclusive in the sense that the two views on musical meaning contradict each other. Nattiez uses these dichotomies to explain Hanslick's view on musical meaning, and to show its implications for musical aesthetics. According to Nattiez, formalists are always and necessarily absolutists. Expressionists can be either absolutists, if for them the expression of emotion is contained in music itself, or they can be referentialists if the expression is explained in terms of music's referring to the external world.32

While referentialist meaning on the one hand does not require an explicit program for the music, formalist meaning on the other hand does not denigrate program music. It is necessary to distinguish between the 31

Comp. Meyer, Leonard B. (1967): Music, The Arts and Ideas. Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth Century Culture. Chicago, p. 6f. Further quoted as: Meyer (1967). 32

Comp. Nattiez (1990), p. 107ff. 17

extramusical program and musical meaning. Leonard Meyer has been criticized for not showing the modus operandi of referential meaning in music, but this is only because his theory does not involve the construction of meaning in music.33 If we look closer upon Meyer's conception of meaning in music, it is observable, that it is based on Peircean philosophy as well. Meyer quotes the assumption by Morris R. Cohen and George Herbert Mead, who conceive of meaning as residing in a triadic relationship between a stimulus, the object to which it refers, and the individual for whom the stimulus has meaning. The relationship between the stimulus and the object to which it refers is a real relationship existing in the objective world, which can be physical or social in character.34 The idea of music as a referential language exists since the baroque era, when music theory and practice were dominated by the notion of music being the language of affects. In the baroque era, music was used as a sign which stands for something to someone.



2.1.3 Different approaches to music and semiotics

Due to the time of the 1950s and 1960s, when the semiotics of music developed as a science, the frame of reference within musical semiotics was a structuralist one, because it was strongly connected with linguistic models. The application of linguistic models to music had its peak in Deryck Cooke's book "The Language of Music".35 The two main lines among which musical semiotics developed are Structuralism and Pragmatism. The structuralist line

33

Ibid.

34

Meyer, Leonard B. (1967), p. 6.

35

Cooke, Deryck (1969): The Language of Music. Oxford. 18

follows the semiotic theories of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Lévi-Strauss, Greimas, and so forth, whereas the pragmatist line mainly follows the theories of C.S. Peirce.

In Europe, the first application of linguistics to music is the work on the interrelationship of language and music by Nicholas Ruwet.36

Ruwet

developed a paradigmatic method of analysis, which allows to see the distribution of similar musical motives in a musical work.37 Ruwet drew his theoretical approach from the work of linguists such as Trubetzkoi, LéviStrauss, Jakobson and Hjelmslev, and he applied their linguistic methods to the analysis of music.38

Jean-Jaques Nattiez took up Ruwet's method and developed his own method of analysis, based on Jean Molino's notion of the total musical fact and some aspects of Peircean semiotics. Nattiez takes up Molino's notion of the "sign" which is defined as "a fragment of actual experience, which refers to another fragment of actual experience that remains virtual in principle, the one being the sign or the symbol of the other".39

Nattiez' theory is grounded in the Peircean conception of the infinite and dynamic interpretant.40

Nattiez himself defines the musical sign as a

symbolic form: a sign, or a collection of signs, to which an infinite complex of interpretants is linked. Nattiez makes use of the listeners' and the producers' 36

Comp. Tarasti (2002), p. 59.

37

Comp. Ruwet, Nicolas (1972): Langage, musique, poésie, Paris, p. 91. Further quoted as: Ruwet (1972). 38

Comp. Ruwet (1972), p. 38-40, p. 100-102.

39

Nattiez (1990), p. 8.

40 The idea of the infinite and dynamic interpretant is looked upon closer in Chapter 2.2 Theoretical bases of musical semiotics.

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need to fill music with meaning in claiming that the formula of A is to B as X is to Y can be used to explain how listeners and producers create meaning.

Nattiez' application of the semiological tripartition follows Molino's approach insofar, as Nattiez also employs the term of the neutral level.41

The underlying communication model of Nattiez' tripartition is a substitution of a producer-> message-> receiver-model. Nattiez substituted this communication model, because he sees the term 'receiver' as misleading. According to Nattiez, the first part of the tripartition is the poietic level.42 In the poietic dimension, the symbolic form results from a process of creation that may be described or reconstituted. The opportunity of a reconstitution hints at the possibility that in music, meaning is not received, but constructed, although the poietic level cannot be read immediately.

The second level is the esthetic dimension.43

Readers, listeners and

producers of music assign one or many meanings to the symbolic form. The esthetic dimension is depending on the lived experience of the receiver of the musical message. At this point, the term receiver starts to be problematic, as the message is not simply received, but filled with meaning individually.

The third and most important part of Nattiez' tripartition is simultaneously the part which is criticized most often: the neutral level. The term was first 41

Nattiez (1990), p.28.

42 In order not to confuse the meaning of poietic and poetic, Nattiez chose poietic deliberately, as it is etymologically related for the greek term to make, or to create. 43 Esthetic and aesthetic are actually two ways of writing the same word. Nattiez chose the alternative spelling, for his purpose. The pronunciation is the same, Nattiez just wants to contrast the meaning.

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introduced by Jean Molino as 'niveau neutre' or 'niveau matériel'. Nattiez also calls it trace. At this level of the tripartition, the symbolic form is embodied physically and materially in the form of a trace that is accessible to the five senses. The analysis of the neutral level plays a major part in the semiotics of Nattiez, as the analysis of the neutral level is the analysis of the immanent and recurrent properties of a piece of music.

The referentialist and formalist approaches to music and meaning developed further and led to different methods of applying semiotic tools to the analysis of music. In the 1970s, Wilson Coker distinguished between congeneric and extrageneric musical meaning.44 According to Coker, congeneric meaning stems from an iconic sign situation, in which an observer interprets one element of a musical work as referring to another element of either the same work or another piece of music. Extrageneric meaning on the contrary is a result of a primarily iconic sign situation in which an observer interprets a musical work or a part of it, as a sign of an apparently nonmusical object. Congeneric and extrageneric meaning are two dimensions of aesthetic meaning, while congeneric meaning is essentially important for aesthetic experience. Coker stands in the tradition of Hanslick, because he also emphasizes the importance of the aesthetic experience for the meaning of music.45 Within a situation of congeneric meaning, Coker distinguishes between intrafluent relations, a relation between the musical sign and its object, and an interfluent relation, a relation between different works.

This approach was adopted by Eero Tarasti, who uses a different terminology and limits the interoceptice meaning to a single piece of music.

44

Comp. van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 43.

45

Comp. Cook (2001), p. 174. 21

He also introduces the notion of exteroceptive meaning. Tarasti follows Coker, as far as the importance of the two aspects of musical meaning is concerned.46 The consequence of neglecting one of the two aspects would either be that the fact of the musical work being an autonomous structure with internal rules of organization is disregarded, or that the fact of the musical sign having an extramusical object would be disregarded. According to Tarasti, both aspects of musical meaning must be considered when analyzing a piece of music.47 Tarasti's approach to music and semiotics is Peirce-oriented as far as the first aspect of musical meaning is concerned. He neglects the exteroceptive aspect and is thus inconsistent with his own theory.48 He also applies some of Greimas's concepts to music.49

2.2 Theoretical basis of musical semiotics



2.2.1 Music as a semiotic sign system

The foundations of modern semiology were laid by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He defined semiology as a science that "studies the life of signs within society".50 A linguistic sign in the Saussurean sense consists of a signifier and a signified. The signifier is a sound image, and the signified is a concept, and the relation between the signifier and the signified 46

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 46.

47 Tarasti, Eero (1987): Some Peircean and Greimasian Concepts as Applied to Music. In: Seboek, Th.A. and Umiker-Seboek, J. (editors): The Semiotic Web 1986, Berlin, p. 445-459. 48

Comp. van Baest/van Driel, p. 46.

49

The Greimasian aspect of Tarasti's approach shall be explained in Chapter 2.2.3.

50

Mirigliano (1995), p. 45. 22

is stable. This conception of a sign as having two sides led to Hjelmslev's concepts of expression-form and content-form. According to Rosario Mirigliano, the Saussurean terms sound image and concept have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts.51 The core of Saussurean linguistics is that the "elements of [language] have no validity independently of the relations of equivalence and contrast which hold between them".52 Attempts of applying the Saussurean notion of sign to music failed not because of the static nature of the sign, but because of the lack of a definition of sign in music.

Musical semiotics differs from other semiotic disciplines not only because of its subject, which is a temporal art, but because of the nature of the sign that is involved in the process of semiosis. The concept of sign is the basis of any semiotic system. Musical semiotics has the problem that musical facts can hardly be reduced semiotically. The borders of the musical sign are not fixed. Due to the lack of a coherent, consistent terminology, it is unclear how the concept of sign in music can be defined. If musicology is seen as an attempt to describe musical communication as a strictly structured system, we are faced with the problem of the sign as the basic unit of every communication system. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the definition of sign is that "aliquid stat pro aliquo". The difficulty that arises from this definition of the sign lies in the aliquo, because the standing for something implies that the sign has to mean something, or to refer to something. The problem of reference can be solved partly by applying the system that Guerino Mazzola introduces. "The cube of musical topography" is a semiotic approach to

51

Ibid.

52

Lyons, John (1969): Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge, p. 50. 23

music that is based on the Saussurean conception of the sign. For Mazzola, music is not reducible to a semiotic dimension alone, but musical semiotics is one of the three pillars of musical ontology. According to Mazzola the three pillars of musical ontology are signs, realities and communication. Each pillar is made of three subparts. Thus signs consist of significate, signifier and signification, as analogous to Saussure's signifier, signified, but Mazzola's sign is extended to the process of understanding, the act of semiosis. Realities are of mental, psychic, and physical nature, so the acoustic properties of music are included as well as responsive and productive behavior by the recipient/producer/composer. The pillar of communication involves the work, its creator, and the recipient.53

53Mazzola, Guerino (1997): Semiotic Aspects of Musicology: Semiosis of Music. In: Posner, Roland et al. (editors).: A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture, volume 3, Berlin, p. 3119-3188. Further quoted as: Mazzola (1997).

24

The Cube of musical topography:54

Significate Signs

Signification Signifier

Mental

Realities

Psychic

Physical

Creator

Work

Recipient

Communication

Umberto Eco described music as a semiotic system that lacks semantic depth.55 Further he states that there are syntagmas with denotative value, such as trumpet signals, and there are completely structured messages with a connotative value that has been culturally fixed with the course of time, such as pastoral music.56 Eco does not claim that music is lacking meaning principally, and thus a semiotic system that is uninterpretable, but he claims that the interpretation of the meaning of music is indeterminate because of the lack of depth in the semantic levels that are produced by musical syntax.57

54

Ibid.

55

Eco, Umberto (1976): A theory of semiotics. Advances in semiotics. Bloomington, p. 11. Further quoted as: Eco (1976). 56

Ibid.

57

Eco (1976), p. 88-90. 25

To be a semiotic system, music must at least consist of the two levels of content and expression. As the sign nature of music is taken as a natural given, musical facts can be studied under a semiotic view although the semiotic approach to music and meaning lacks a fixing of the borders of the musical sign. There are different attempts of defining the musical sign.58 Tarasti takes up George Herbert Mead's notion of meaning as emerging from a continuous interplay of inner impulses and outer responses, and distinguishes three stages of musical signs: pre-signs, act-signs, and postsigns.59 This approach to the musical sign is based on C.S. Peirce's notion of the interpretant.

The definition of sign that Nattiez gives is based on Jean Molino's notion of the sign as a "fragment of actual experience that remains in general virtual [...]".60 Van Driel described the musical sign as a perceptible artifact.61 In Peircean semiotics, a perceptible artifact is a Representamen, which represents the Dynamical Object and suggests an Interpretant, which hints at the direction of the process of semiosis.62 Van Driel's definition of the musical sign works for written music as well as for performed music, although the problem of the smallest element of meaning must be solved differently for performed music. The parameters of the musical sign are pitch, duration, loudness and timbre. In written music, the single note is the smallest element. A single note contains all four elements, because the 58

With respect to the complexity of the issue and the restricted length of the thesis I shall only introduce the approaches by Tarasti and Nattiez. 59

Tarasti, Eero (1997): The Emancipation of the Sign: On the Corporeal and Gestural Meanings in Music. In: Applied Semiotics/Sémiotique appliquée 2:4 (1997), p. 15-26. 60

Nattiez (1990), p. 8.

61 van Driel, Hans (1993): De semiosis. De semiotiek van C.S. Peirce in verband gebracht met het verschijnsel 'film'. Tilburg, p.77. 62 Peircean terminology will be explained in chapter 2.2.2. At this point, the exact definition of the terms is not necessary.

26

score gives the exact pitch, duration and loudness by choosing the appropriate position of the note in the notation system. The parameter of timbre is contained in the choice of instrumentation. The timbre of a violin differs from the timbre of a trombone, so the note will not only be positioned accordingly in the notation system, but also at a specific line in the score, according to the instrument that is to play the note. Although the parameters of the musical sign can be determined precisely, there is still the problem of the smallest element, that is the borders of the musical sign. An analogy to language illustrates the problem of the smallest element with regard to the difference of written music and performed music. While the smallest element of written language is the grapheme, and the smallest element of spoken language is the phoneme, still the smallest element of meaning is the morpheme, independently from the other two elements. In written music, the smallest element is the single note, a sign with a clear cut border. In performed music, the single note cannot be used as the smallest element, because it lacks melody and movement. As music is a temporal art, movement is one basic property necessary for music to exist.

Recapitulating the notion of the musical sign as a perceptible artifact, the smallest element in performed music must be the interval. Van Baest and van Driel suggest that the term intervallum is used for the interspace between two musical elements.63 The intervallum is the smallest element of performed music, because it involves movement, timbre, pitch, duration and loudness.

When music is a sign in a semiotic sense, then it must be possible to understand a musical utterance as such. When it comes to listening to 63

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 21. 27

music, can communication models be used to illustrate this act of communication? How can the relation between musician or composer and the audience be described?

As far as listening to music is concerned, the sender-message-receiver model, as it is proposed by Eero Tarasti, is too parsimonious, because it reduces the listenerʼs capacity and opportunity for understanding music. On the other hand, the production-exchange-consumption model can be used to describe the relation between musician or composer and audience. The problem that occurs when these two models are applied to music or language, is, that they have turned out to be inappropriate, because they are reductive.

Musical as well as linguistic utterances are neither packed by a sender, and then sent to a receiver, who unpacks the message. Instead, there is only one model of communication that seems to fit music and language: the toolmakerʼs paradigm. Michael Reddy argues that the metaphors we use to talk about human communication lead us to view communication in a wrong way. He states, that the metalinguistic resources available and normally used are the result of the conduit metaphor. The conduit metaphor is based on the idea mentioned above, that language is a carrier of ideas and thoughts and that the receiver unpacks the message and takes out what was contained in it. Tarasti's model is based on the idea of the conduit metaphor.

28

Illustration: The conduit metaphor64

Reddy further reasons that the conduit metaphor falsely presupposes a certain objectivity that ignores the inferences the receiver makes from his own knowledge and experiences. He postulates an alternative analogy, which he calls the toolmakerʼs paradigm.65 The receiver does not unpack the message and does not take out what was contained in the message, but the receiver rather constructs meaning. The words used in a linguistic utterance contain instructions according to which the listener constructs meaning.66 The principles of the process of semiosis according to C.S. Peirce can be explained with Peirce's general theory of signs.

64

The 'conduit metaphor' according to a graphic scheme by: Travers, Michael: Programming with agents. 2.1 Theories of Metaphor. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mt/thesis/mtthesis-2.1.html, accessed on July 14, 2008. 65

Ortony, Andrew (1993), p. 1-16.

66

See illustration in Chapter 3.1.2 Communication models. 29



2.2.2 The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirceʼs semiotics can be divided into three branches. The first constituent is the ʻgeneral theory of signsʼ, the second is ʻcritical logicʼ and the third constituent is ʻspeculative rhetoricʼ. In most cases, Peirceʼs philosophy is reduced to the ʻgeneral theory of signsʼ, which deals with the relation between a sign and its object. With this reduction, the philosophy behind the trichotomy and its parts icon, index and symbol are neglected.

In the general theory of signs, there are three phenomenological categories, which are called First, Second and Third. These categories are the three phases through which we perceive and apprehend reality. Peirce's own example of Firstness comes from music.67 When we hear a piece of music as a primal impression, at an emotive or chaotic level without recognizing what the piece is or who composed it, then we are dealing with Firstness. The in this case unexperienced listener does not recognize the form, genre or composer, but merely listens to the music and makes an experience. In Secondness, the listener identifies the piece, e.g. sonata, song, overture or symphony. Thirdness allows the listener to draw inferences about the style or structure of the piece, what other pieces it resembles, or who composed the piece of music. The triad of First, Second, and Third is reflected at all levels of Peirce's sign theory.68

At the level of semiosis, we are dealing with Sign, Object and Interpretant. To understand the act of musical semiosis, we first have to think about the conception of the nature of music as a sign. 67

Comp. Tarasti (2002), p. 11.

68

Ibid. 30

In Peirce's theory the total Sign consists of three entities that are the Object to which the Sign refers, the Representamen, which is the Sign itself, and the Interpretant, which is a secondary Sign by which we mentally link the Representamen to its Object. Behind these three entities there is a Dynamic Object, which is an aspect of the real world, such as i.e. a sonata or a composer.

In Peirce's terminology, the Representamen is the entity that has a function similar to the signifier in Saussure's semiotic theory. Peirce stated, that the Representamen is the effective occurrence, "the material qualities of the sign".69 Further, he describes the Representamen as the "body of the sign".70

The representative function does neither lie in the material quality of the Sign, nor does it lie in the demonstrative application. According to Peirce, the Representamen is something which the Sign is not in itself or in a real relation to its Object, but which it is to a thought".71

For a proper understanding of Peirce's theory of signs, it is fundamental to know that he uses the term "Sign" to refer to the triadic relation that constitutes semiosis as a whole.72 Representamens are Signs, if they have Mental Interpretants. The Interpretant is usually called the meaning of a Sign. Peirce's own definition of Sign is, that a Sign is anything so determined by an Object73 and by being determined by an Object, the Sign determines 69 Peirce, Charles Sanders (1938-1958): Collected Papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts. (5.287). Further quoted as: Peirce. (volume.paragraph). 70

Mirigliano (1995), p. 48.

71

Ibid.

72

Peirce. (2.242).

73

This Object is a Dynamical Object. 31

an idea in a person's mind. The idea is called the Interpretant of the Sign, which is determined by the Object.74 The Immediate Object is an idea, or a mental representation. It is similar to a representative entity, and it is the content of the Sign, the signifying side of it being the Representamen. In music the three entities of the total Sign are, for example, a thing or event as the Object, the music itself would be the Representamen, and the Interpretant could be a category, such as 'sonata form', or a comparison of two works by one composer. The Interpretant need not necessarily be a category, or a comparison, but it can be any mental sign evoked by music, when music is processed by the mind in some logical-rational way.75

There are many different definitions of the terms Sign, and Interpretant, which originate from Peirce's own work. Nattiez states that Peirce's Sign is clearly analogous to Saussure's signifier.76 Consequently the Sign would designate the sound vehicle or sound image. In contrast to the Saussurean view, Peirce does not link the sound image to a signified, which is prototypical in the Saussurean view, but he defines the Interpretant as a secondary Sign, because the process of referring caused by the Sign is infinite. While Saussure's model of signifier and signified as the two sides of a sign is unidirectional and the process of semiosis finite, Peirce's definition allows for an infinite process of semiosis because the Signs overlap, as Signs and their Interpretants create new Signs and Interpretants. So we could conclude that Signs and Interpretants are input sources to new processes of semiosis.77 As far as Interpretants are concerned, Peirce 74

Peirce (8.343).

75 When the term sign is used in connection with Peircean theory it is written with a capital letter at the beginning to avoid confusion. 76

This is the weak point in Nattiez' theory, as shall be explained in Chapter 2.3.

77

Nattiez (1990), p. 4. 32

suggests two trichotomies: in Firstness, Interpretants are immediate, dynamic or final, whereas in Secondness, they are emotional, energetic or logical.

Peirce distinguishes three possible Sign situations for each corner of his semiotic triangle: • Signs in relation to Objects are icons, indexes, and symbols • Signs in themselves are qualisigns, sinsigns, and legisigns • Signs in relation to Interpretants are rhemes, dicents and arguments. The part of Peirce's semiotic triangle which is used most often is the one containing the three basic Sign categories of icon, index, and symbol. The tripartition, which is reflected on all levels of Peirce's semiotics, is also applied to the basic sign categories.

Icons belong to the level of First. According to Peirce, an icon is a Sign that functions by its similarity to the Object. Indexes, or indexical signs, belong to the level of Second, as the relation between the Sign and the Object is one of contiguity. Symbols belong to Third, because here we are dealing with a Sign that has no necessary link between Representamen and Object. Symbols are arbitrary and exist merely by convention, so the relation between the Representamen and the Object is also arbitrary.

The relevance of these categories to music shows, when they are applied to program music, like for example the Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz. The idée fixe is an iconic sign, which stands for the Artist's beloved woman. Moreover the idée fixe causes a certain state of emotion in the Artist, namely a state of love, fear, hatred and so on, depending on the context of the underlying narrative. In the course of the symphony's first

33

movement, the idée fixe becomes a symbol. Once the melody fragment is learned by the listener, he can understand the meaning of this musical sign. One strong point for this argument is, that the repetition of the idée fixe and its variations throughout the symphony would not be recognized by the listener. The melody would be nothing more than separate, discrete tonal events, according to Peircean semiotics.

In this example we can also see, that techniques other than that of semiosis with the help of icons and symbols are at work. Two other techniques that play an important part are those of binding and conceptual integration.78

There is more to the semiotics of music than icons, indexes and symbols and their mere listing or enumeration. Music can internalize all of these external Signs, thus any Sign evoking an earlier Sign as a result of similarity can be called an inner icon of the first heard Sign. So, the idée fixe from Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique is an icon at the level of First, becomes an inner icon at the level of Second, and at the level of Third it becomes a symbol. So far the index-part of the basic Sign categories has been left out. When two musical Signs are linked to each other by contiguity or proximity, the second Sign is called an inner index of the first heard Sign. An example for an inner index could be a modulation from a minor to a major key at the beginning of the B-part in any Jazz-standard. These modulations are made with the help of a cadency, not the classical tonic-subdominant-dominanttonic chain, but rather a harmonic cliché over I-III-VI-II-V-I79 , while the II-V-I80 is the inner index. Symbols need not necessarily be reduced to a state of 78These two techniques shall be explained in Chapter 3, when the conceptualization of music is discussed. 79

A form of the turnaround in major keys.

80

Ordinary cadence. 34

existence within one piece of music, but they can also become universals. A prominent example would be the dies irae, because its single musical elements have attained the status of signifying the whole piece of music.81

The second Sign situation according to Peirce's theory is that of Signs in themselves. Qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns are possible Signs and Signs that can be distinguished on the basis of fixed habits and beliefs.82 The trichotomies of Signs determine the Sign to be represented as Signs of possibility, Signs of fact or Signs of reason.83 Qualisigns are a phenomenon of Firstness. According to van Baest and van Driel (1995), a qualisign is a Sign that must be embodied in order to act as a Sign. The actualization of a qualisign is subject to fixed habits and beliefs. The qualisign can only be assumed and it is related to the notion of reality.84 Sinsigns belong to Secondness and always require the existence of a qualisign. This is consistent with the other parts of Peirce's philosophy, as Secondness always requires Firstness, to come into existence.

A sinsign is a quality of a phenomenon, so the sinsign is connected to the idea of existence. Sinsigns are placed within the network of habits and beliefs. Legisigns are a part of thirdness and they require qualisigns and sinsigns. Legisigns are laws that are Signs. An example for a legisign would be a conventional Sign.

81

This is one reason why Berlioz decided to compose a new dies irae for his Grande Messe des Morts. The Gregorin chant had been used in the Symphonie fantastique and he wanted to avoid a remembering of the symphony during the performance of his Requiem.

82

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 35.

83

Mirigliano (1995), p. 50ff.

84

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 36. 35

The main problem in applying the trichotomy of qualisign, sinsign and legisign to music is, that their status as being ascribed to a particular Sign can only be determined when the act of semiosis is completed, at least at a basic level. In general, we can state, that music semiotics fails to apply the tripartition to music, as musical phenomena are dealt with as if they had dyadic relations only. For instance, the Sign-Object relation is investigated, or the Object Interpretant relation, but there is no theoretic approach yet that involves all sides of the Peircean tripartition.

Van Baest and van Driel use the third Sign situation in their analysis of Lloyd Webber's Requiem. So far, they were the first to apply the third Sign situation to a musical work. Neither Tarasti, nor Nattiez apply the Sign situations of the phenomenological categories of Second and Third to musical analysis.



2.2.3 The Semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas

The structuralist approach to music and semiotics, which can be applied to music, according to Eero Tarasti, is the one by Algirdas Julien Greimas.85 His work "Sémantique structurale" from 1966, was influenced by structural linguistics, structural anthropology and formalism. In his early works he concentrated on the study of the smallest units of meaning with the help of a text-seme analysis. Greimas states that all meaning stems from isotopies, which are deep-level semantic fields that enable us to read a text as a

85

Tarasti (2002), p. 12. 36

coherent whole.86 We are usually unaware of the isotopies. They only become conscious to us, when they change or when two different isotopies are present at the same time.

Some of Greimas's ideas can be applied to music. The aforementioned isotopies can be regarded as the patterns through which we perceive music. In cadences with dominant six-four chords there is a tension that is resolved to the tonic through the dominant. The dominant-tonic tension is a basic aspect of functional harmonics and forms the isotopy of cadences. An example for a complex isotopy in music is the enharmonic reinterpretation of G flat as F sharp, because the note has two meanings at the same time.

The most important influence on Greimas's semiotics comes from the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp. Greimas adopted his actantial model which comprises of six protagonists and applied functions to the model, which are performed by protagonists.87

Tarasti uses the European approach to semiotics as an example for the narrative character of music. According to his view, music is a narrative art and he views it as "something semiotical par excellence"88 .

In Greimas's theory, all meaning is dependent on isotopies. These are made up from smaller elements. Basic expressions in a language, such as words or short phrases are called lexemes. Lexemes are not fixed entities but they 86

Monelle Raymond (1995): Music and Semantics. p. 99. In: Tarasti, Eero (editor): Musical Signification. Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin, p. 91-107. Further quoted as: Monelle (1995).

87

Comp. Tarasti (2002), p. 14.

88

Tarasti (2002), p. 4. 37

depend on the writer's or speaker's style, work, or utterance. Lexemes group together semes. The semes form a semic nucleus if they are permanent and invariant in a given lexeme. The variables are called contextual semes. Whenever two lexemes appear together, they must have some of the contextual semes in common. If that is not the case, the syntagm is nonsensical. The adding of contextual semes to a semic nucleus determines the meaning of the lexeme.

The notion of the classeme is compatible to the Peircean notion of Thirdness. Certain contextual semes affect areas of meaning that go beyond a phrase or a sentence. These greater areas are called classeme then. They can also be said to resemble a category. Classemes that are persistent through discourse, a work of literature or a piece of music are called isotopies. The persistence of the isotopies thus enables us to conceive of a text or piece of music as a coherent whole.

As applied to music, the theory of Greimas allows for an examination of the distribution of musical lexemes and semes in a musical work. A semiotic description of music under a Greimasian point of view does not necessarily help in understanding or analyzing music, but it helps in the analysis of musical features, as far as their distribution is concerned. This approach resembles the approach Ruwet took in his distributional analysis. Musical signification cannot be properly examined under this view, as the musical sign or, in Greimasian terminology the musical seme, is not yet properly defined. Nevertheless, there are some of Greimas's concepts that are applicable to music.

38

Greimas's actantial model can be applied to the analysis of opera. This is especially interesting with regard to Wagner's operas, as they are built upon myths, as i.e. the Ring of the Nibelungen.89

2.3 C.S. Peirce, A.J. Greimas and the analysis of music

The application of Peircean semiotics to music depends on the approach one takes. In music, it is almost impossible to attribute the notions of qualisign, sinsign and legisign qualities to musical signs without a completed act of semiosis. The application of these sign qualities depends on cultural knowledge, on the fixed habits and beliefs, as van Baest and van Driel suggest.90

The application of Peirce's semiotic theory to music is often merely a mechanical and approximative transfer of some of his concepts to musical phenomena. This becomes evident in the theoretical approaches of Tarasti and Nattiez.

While Tarasti is basically concerned with the classification of the musical sign and the musical situation, he restricts his view to the typology of signs instead of developing a method of analysis and theory that is consistent with Peirce's semiotic theory.

Nattiez regards Peirce's theory as a kind of axiom of his notion of musical semiotics. As mentioned before, the Dynamic Interpretant and the idea of 89

Comp. Tarasti (2002), p. 15.

90

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 49. 39

infinity are most important. He does not apply the Peirce's semiotic theory any further, but instead gives a generic reference to the dynamism of the interpretant. Thereby he reduces the tripartite relations to a dyadic system. Nattiez formulates a hypothesis about an interpretation and possible utilization of Pericean semiotics, but he stumbles over his own hypothesis by stating that Peirce, who had never published anything himself, had not given a final version of his thoughts. Furthermore, Nattiez holds the sign to be analogous to Saussure's signifier. Mirigliano (1995) states that this is the basic misunderstanding of Peirce's theory.91

With regard to music, Peirce introduced the term of the Emotional Interpretant as a feeling produced by the Sign. This has further implications for musical semiotics, as he states that the Emotional Interpretant may



"amount to much more than a feeling of recognition; and in some cases, it is the only proper significate effect that the sign produces. Thus the performance of a concerted piece of music is a sign. It conveys and is intended to convey, the composer's musical ideas, but thee usually consist merely in a series of feelings."92

The semiosis of the musical sign must be incomplete under this point of view, as the chain of semiosis is broken at the level of Firstness then. If the musical sign produces an emotive reaction only, then a semiosis in the sense of gaining new knowledge is impossible. The emotional interpretant cannot be limited to an emotional response, because that would lead to a slip of semiosis into the domain of behaviorism.93 The semiosis can only be achieved if there is a more developed Sign than the Interpretant. Peirce

91

Mirigliano (1995), p. 47.

92

Peirce (5.475).

93

Mirigliano (1995), p. 54. 40

leaves this undetermined, thus the resulting difficulty in defining the musical sign and in applying Peirce's theory to music. The classification of the musical sign in Peircean typology is risky, as semiotic reduction of musical phenomena to Signs with fixed boundaries is impossible.

2.4 Summary

As a means of human communication, music has the problem of the lack of semantic depth. Due to the fact that musical phenomena cannot be semiotically reduced, the definition of the musical sign in the Peircean sense is still missing. Such definition requires the fixing of the borders of the musical sign, which is almost impossible. An actual analysis of music under a semiotic approach is rather complicated, as neither Nattiez, nor Tarasti offer a coherent theory. As stated before, they either classify or try to apply Peircean concepts like an axiom to music. The theoretical debates within musical semiotics are longstanding, and there is no coherent and unequivocal terminology to be found, also due to the fact that Peirce never formulated a final version of his semiotic theory, but as long as there is no actual definition of the sign, It is unlikely that there will be a unified semiotic theory of music.

41

3. The Semantics of Music

3.1 Music as a means of human communication



3.1.1 Analogies between music and language

The cliché claims, that music is the universal language. Human beings need language as their means of communication and reasoning. Music uses some of the mental software that is used by language as well, but "as far as biological cause and effect is concerned, music is useless"94 . If we compare music with language, knowledge of physical law, social reasoning, or visual perception, it could vanish entirely from our species and nevertheless our lifestyle would remain virtually unchanged. All normally developed children spontaneously speak and understand language, despite its complexity, when they are merely exposed to a speaking environment. The mechanisms of learning a native language cannot be applied to music. Although the vast majority of people enjoys listening to music, many people cannot carry a tune, and even fewer can play an instrument. Whereas the acquisition of language seems to be effortless, singers and instrumentalists need extensive training and practice.

The main difference between music and language at the most general level is, that music does not communicate in a referential way, because music cannot narrate even a simple concept, such as 'chair,' or 'tree', or a simple plot, such as 'John leaves the room', in any of its varying idioms. That music generates meaning at all can be seen in the fact that humans are able to 94 Pinker, Steven (1999): How The Mind Works. New York, p. 528. Further quoted as: Pinker (1999).

42

recognize, remember and produce melodies, chords, and entire works of music. Music can be said to mean in a way that is a making sense of musical events. In order to show how the process of making sense, or semiosis, takes place one can draw upon recent theories from linguistics and cognitive science. Human perception is governed by general principles such as conceptual integration, binding, and conceptual cross-domain mapping.

If we view music as a means of human communication, the question of meaning automatically arises. The meaning of music in a semantic context is neither referential nor formal. The understanding of a piece of music means that the listener is able to conceive of a musical experience as a meaningful event, that is, the listener is able to process a given musical structure as a coherent whole in his or her mind. The primal medium of language and music is sound. The human ear is constantly providing the brain with highly sophisticated fine grain information about any sound that it receives. The difference in what we hear result from what the brain does with the information it is provided with. From Gestalt-psychology, there is the theory that the brain always searches for the most stable units, so called Gestalts. The form and the size of the Gestalts depend on experience and background knowledge. An example for these Gestalts are the different musical idioms which exist in one ethnic group. A listener who is used to classical music will remember a theme from a symphony more easily than a listener who is used to listening to folk music. The brain gets used to the complexity of a musical idiom no matter how complex or simple it may be.95 Taking up the notion of music as a semiotic system from the previous chapter, one could argue, that many musical styles, as well as most languages are, at least in principle, describable by a grammar. A grammar is 95 Levitin, Daniel J. (2007): This Is Your Brain On Music. The Science Of A Human Obsession. New York, p. 247ff. Further quoted as: Levitin (2007).

43

a set of rules which is capable of generating or recognizing all sequences that are acceptable and fails to generate, or rejects, all sequences which are not acceptable. 96

Music can borrow some of the mental software from language. John Sloboda drew an analogy between the way in which grammatical features like phonology, syntax and semantics can be used to describe language and music.97 Phonology describes the way in which the brain groups the varying sounds of language into discrete separable units, that constitute the basic building blocks of language, called phonemes. Phonology is learned during the process of language acquisition. Different languages place phonological boundaries in different places, so the perception of phonological categories differs from language to language. Two sounds from a language that are perceived as separate sounds by a native speaker can be perceived to be the same by a nonnative speaker. The lack of categorical perception is caused by the higher internal boundary for a perception flip in a nonnative speaker. Our brain categorizes intermediate sounds while we perceive language and makes it difficult for us to distinguish the sounds. Only when an internal threshold is passed, the sound perceived is noticed to fall into a different phonological category.

While listening to music, we do not perceive every single change in the dimension of the sound, but the sounds are assimilated to broad categories, such as major and minor. Experiments with major scales show, that the changing of the third in a major chord towards minor does not prompt the listener to instantly recognizing major and minor, but the gradually changed 96

This approach to music was developed by Ray Jackendoff and Fred Lerdahl with the Generative Theory of Tonal Music. 97

Sloboda (2005), p. 177f. 44

third stays major until an internal threshold is passed. Then perception flips and the chord is perceived as a minor chord.98

The next step towards a system of grammar in music would be syntax. At the most general level, syntax is concerned with the ordering of the phonemes. The crucial information is contained in their ordering and combination, not in the mere presence of certain sound categories. A piece of evidence for the handling of language through syntactic structures is that word sequences that conform to grammatical order are easier remembered than those sequences that have an ungrammatical order. The perhaps most prominent example for this claim is the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." versus "Sleep green ideas furiously ideas colorless." The grammaticality of the first sentence is not an innate feature of the human mind, but our recognizing of an utterance as being grammatically correct is acquired by mere exposure to language during infancy.99 The same principle holds for music. Music is easier to remember when it conforms to the conventional rules of tonality. This is increasingly so as one becomes more familiar with a particular musical culture. Like in language acquisition, children build grammatical structures for music through mere exposure to the music of their culture, and they develop their skills further through experience.100

98

Comp. Sloboda (2005), p. 177f.

99

Comp. Tomasello, Michael (2005): Constructing a Language. A Usage-Based Theory of Child Language Acquisition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 94-143. Further quoted as: Tomasello (2005). 100

Theodor W. Adorno once claimed, that one day, as evolution continued, every human being would hear perfect pitch and children would roam the streets, whistling dodecaphonic tunes. See: Cook (2001), p.176. 45

According to Arnold Schönberg's theoretical assumption, musical composition requires insight into how the human mind works. In his regard, composers need to write music in a way that allows the recipient to recognize musical motives and the way they are coherently structured.101 Schönberg stated that musical understanding starts with recognizing the basic musical figures, that is, motives. Motives are the most easily remembered part of music, as they are the smallest recognizable bits.102

The third and last analogy between a grammar of music and the grammar of language is semantics. Semantics is concerned with the meaning of utterances, events, acts and so forth. Semantics can be said to be a systematic set of processes whereby the symbols of a language are able to be mapped onto, or represent, objects, states, and events that are not part of that language. Semantics is the part of grammar that is mastered as the last part of language acquisition. Semantics is mastered when we are able to identify what the individual words refer to, and what kind of event or proposition is being described.103 Concerning semantic aspects of music, research tends to focus on the listener's ability to verbally identify the general character of different pieces of music. This is valid for music psychological tests as well as for musicological analysis: any analysis of a given piece of music is preceded by the author's ability to put into words what he understood, when he listened to the music or read the score. Although the ability to depict music and talk about it is an important aspect of the awareness of musical meaning, it is not primary for an understanding of music. 101

Zbikowski, Lawrence (2002): Conceptualizing Music, Cambridge, p. 27. Further quoted as: Zbikowski (2002).

102

Zbikowski (2002), p. 29.

103

Sloboda (2005), p. 176. 46



3.1.2

Communication

Meaning 2

models

Meaning 3

Meaning 1

Meaning 4

Instructions

Instructions Meaning 5

Meaning 8

Meaning 6

Meaning 7

The Toolmaker!s Paradigm: Words are instructions to create meaning.

The toolmaker's paradigm has already been introduced in Chapter 2. JeanJaques Nattiez concludes from Peircean theory, that meaning in music must be constructed, rather than unpacked. By means of music semiotics, it is 47

difficult to find evidence for the phenomenon of the construction of meaning. Semantics, especially cognitive semantics offers a way to prove the assumption that meaning is constructed in music in the same way as it is constructed in other fields of human perception.

The application of a model of communication seems far-fetched at first sight, but leads to new insights as far as the relation between perception, meaning and interpretation is concerned, because all sides of music perception and production are involved. The debate on referential and formal meaning is no longer necessary, because meaning is individual and independent of language. Furthermore, musicological analysis can be refined. Music has the potential for particular meanings to emerge under specific circumstances, depending on the interaction of interpreter and music. The toolmaker's paradigm is the least parsimonious model and it allows both ends of a musical utterance to construct meaning individually. The paradigm says that an utterance is a kind of instruction for the creation of meaning. In linguistic theory, this means that the underlying structure, consisting of the sentence structure, the image schemas, inferences the receiver or constructor of meaning makes, and the mappings or blends that are made, are the factors on which the resulting meaning depends. The receiver does not unpack and decode, but he has to use his knowledge of the world in order to be able to "make sense" of the linguistic utterance.104

The processes implied by the toolmaker's paradigm are not valid for language alone, but they illustrate the way in which the human mind works. Our ordinary everyday thinking and perceiving the world is organized by conceptual cross-domain mapping and conceptual integration. Music also 104

Comp. Pinker (2008), p. 60, 84. 48

makes use of these faculties of the human mind, and exploits the same mechanisms that are used for reasoning, planning, imagining, and musical understanding is also depending on embodied experience.105

3.2 Perception



3.2.1 Grouping principles

While language sounds are grouped together according to the rules of phonetics, the grouping mechanisms in music work in a different way. When we listen to music, we have to face a complex and fast changing acoustic spectrum that is emitted from various sound sources. The sounds may also superpose each other, which as a result, makes it even harder to distinguish the individual sounds. The human auditory system interprets this spectrum in terms of the behavior of external objects. This view of musical perception is analogous to visual perception and was originally proposed by Helmholtz as a process of "unconscious inference".106 Grouping partly is an unconscious, automatic process. Helmholtz describes grouping as an unconscious process that involves inference about what objects in the world are likely to go together based on a number of features or attributes of the objects. Some grouping factors are inherent in the objects themselves, such as shape, color, symmetry, contrast, or the principles that address the continuity of lines and edges of the object.107

105

Organizational processes in musical

Comp. Zbikowski (2002), p. 72.

106

Deutsch, Diana (1989): Grouping Mechanisms in Music. In: Deutsch, Diana (editor): The Psychology of Music. London, p. 99. Further quoted as: Deutsch (1989).

107

Levitin (2007), p. 79. 49

perception can be divided into two questions. The first question is concerned with the combination of first order elements into separate groupings. The second field of inquiry is concerned with the derivation of higher order abstractions from combinations of first order elements to lead to equivalences and similarities, which form the basis for grouping.

In 1890 the psychologist Christian von Ehrenfels was thinking about a phenomenon which most musicians take for granted: melodic transposition. Melodies can be transposed to any key and still they are perfectly recognizable, as long as the relations between the constituents of the melody are preserved. Gestalt psychologists like von Ehrenfels were interested in the problem of configurations, that is how elements come together to form wholes or, objects that are qualitatively different from the sum of their parts and cannot be understood in terms of their parts.108 The Gestaltists wondered, how a melody could preserve its identity and recognizability, even when all of its pitches were changed. The Gestalt school could never solve this question but it contributed to our understanding of how objects in the visual world are organized.109

Music psychologists searched for a rule that determines the stimulus attributes along which grouping principles operate. When the human auditory system is presented with a complex sound sequence, the brain may group stimuli according to certain rules based on the frequencies of the components of the sound stimulus, on the amplitudes, the spatial location from which the sound sequence emanates, or on the basis of timbre. All these attributes can function as bases for organization and grouping in

108

Levitin (2007), p. 77.

109

Ibid. 50

music. The principles that govern what attribute is followed for any given sound sequence are both, rigid and complex. As slight changes in a sequence can prompt organization from spatial location to frequency, for instance, it is likely that differences in organization can be interpreted in terms of strategies that most probable will lead to the correct conclusion in interpreting our environment.110

There are four principles along which we group stimuli. The principle of Proximity says that nearer elements are grouped together instead of elements that are farther apart. The Similarity principle allows for configurations being formed from elements. The principle of Good Continuation explains that elements that follow each other in a given direction are perceived together. The principle of Common Fate states that elements that move into the same direction are perceived together. When elements or stimuli are grouped together according to the four principles, human beings are enabled to interpret their environment most effectively. The grouping principles are important determinants of grouping in visual perception, but they work for auditory perception as well.111 For example, when elements that are nearer to one another are perceived as belonging to the same object, it is also true that similar sounds are most likely to be emanated from the same sound source.112

One example for auditory grouping is the perception of an individual instrument. Although a violin can emanate sounds that differ in pitch, duration and loudness, the human auditory system groups the sounds 110

Deutsch (1989), p. 100f.

111

Eysenck, Michael W./Keene, Mark (2003) Cognitive Psychology. A Student's Handbook. New York,p. 25-28, Further quoted as Eysenck/Keene (2003).

112

Deutsch (1989), p. 100f. 51

together so that we hear a single instrument. Sound sequences that smoothly change over time are also likely to be emanated from a single source. When perceiving a musical tone, we hear a fundamental pitch, a loudness, a timbre and we perceive the tone at a given location. Each tonal percept can therefore be described as a bundle of attribute values. While some sounds group together, other sounds segregate from each other. Most people cannot isolate the sound of a single violin from the other violins in the orchestra. The violins form a group, they are seated in the same spatial location, they play in unison, that means that the sound they make obeys the principles of Similarity, Common Fate and Good Continuation as well. Even an entire orchestra can become a single perceptual group. In an outdoor concert with several ensembles playing simultaneously, one can focus on one of the ensembles just as one is able to follow a conversation in a room where there are other people and other conversations going on.113

The human brain co-evolved in a world where many of the sounds that our species encountered shared certain acoustical properties. Our brains use the likelihood principle.114 When listening to an oboe, for example, our auditory system assumes that the sound is produced by a single object. Every human being can make these inferences, even those who cannot identify or name the instrument. The inference is made on the basis of the exploitation of the harmonic series. Each musical instrument emanates a certain spectrum of overtones. Our brain constructs a mental space of the instrument and the sound it produces, and thus allows us to recognize it.115

113

Levitin (2007), p. 78.

114

Eysenck/Keene (2003), p. 136-144; Levitin, p. 82.

115

Ibid. 52

Our ability to recognize different instruments by the overtones we hear does not explain why we are able to distinguish different instruments when they play the same note simultaneously, neither do grouping principles explain the phenomenon. There is another grouping process that does not only integrate sounds into a single object or instrument, but also segregates them into different objects or instruments. The principle of Simultaneous Onsets is what our auditory system relies on in distinguishing different instruments when they play in unison.116 The human auditory system is able to detect differences in onset times as short as a few milliseconds. Therefore, the Simultaneous Onsets-principle is a principle of temporal positioning.117

Each tonal percept can be depicted as a bundle of attribute values. When we perceive a sound sequence, the bundle reflects the location and the characteristics of the sound emitted from the source.118 In situations where we perceive more than one tone at a time, the bundles of attribute values may fragment and recombine in other ways, so that illusory percepts result. Perceptual grouping in music is not simply a matter of linking different sound stimuli to each other, but it involves a process of fragmenting the stimuli into their separate attributes to make them recognizable and then is followed by a process of perceptual synthesis in which the different attribute values are recombined.

116

Eysenck/Keene (2003), p. 138, graphics p. 139.

117

Comp. Levitin (2007), p. 80-82.

118

Spitzer, Manfred (2006): Musik im Kopf. Hören, Musizieren, Verstehen und Erleben im neuronalen Netzwerk. Stuttgart, p. 169-212. Further quoted as: Spitzer (2006). 53



3.2.2 The Four Stage Theory of Musical Awareness

To be able to recognize a melody, at least four requirements must be met. At first, the relevant units of the sound, such as frequency, amplitude, and timbre must be attended to. Then the listener needs a method of coding or categorizing the individual sounds, which means that the listener must be able to listen to the sound as a coherent unit. Furthermore, the listener must be able to hold the various sounds together in some structure or pattern, which implies, that he is able to recognize a melody. According to Gestalt psychology, the grouping of the sounds in a structure or pattern corresponds to the forming of Gestalts. The last stage would be the translation of the perceived sound into some form of response. These four steps are called the Four Stage Theory of Musical Awareness.119

The various sounds that music comprises of can be measured as far as their physical dimensions are concerned. What music and language have in common in this regard is, that the physical characteristics such as pitch, amplitude and timbre in language can be measured as well. The difference between the two is that the sounds in language are, in themselves, just sounds. What makes these sounds become language, is what the human brain does with them. According to John Sloboda, it is probable, that the human brain attempts to map the sounds onto internal structures. When the sounds match the patterns of the internal structures, language can be said to have come into existence.120

119

Sloboda (2005), p. 176f.

120

Ibid. 54



3.3 Music and Language - adaptation versus technique

Music can borrow some of the mental software for language. According to Steven Pinker's theory of mind, the difference at the conceptual level is, that music is a technology, not an adaptation.121 The Dual Inheritance Theory shows that human beings as opposed to e.g. ants, are not only adapted for specific preexisting structures in their environment, but we are adapted for acquiring completely new skills and knowledge from our sociocultural environment.122 According to this assumption, music must be a technology, because no child spontaneously starts to sing. Rubén López Cano claims that music also is an adaptation, like language, but he misses the fact, that the children who took part in his experiments had been exposed to music before.123

Another point that supports the assumption that music is a

technology is that people of the Western World do not readily understand the musical idioms of Asia or India, but they are, to a certain extent, deaf to this kind of music. If music were not a technology, but an adaptation, the differences in preference for certain kinds of music, e.g. classical, baroque, pop, jazz, opera, heavy metal, and so forth, would not exist.

Language is an evolutionary adaptation, that helps us in memorizing, reasoning, categorizing and decision taking. All of these abilities have a clear evolutionary purpose, that is, helping human beings to survive and spread their genes. Sometimes we find a behavior or an attribute in an organism that has no clear evolutionary basis. This phenomenon occurs, when evolutionary forces propagate an adaptation for a particular reason and

121

Pinker (1999), p. 528.

122

Tomasello (2005), p. 283-295.

123

Cano (2004). 55

something else comes along as a kind of byproduct. This byproduct is called spandrel.124 Conforming to Pinker's assumption, language is the adaptation and music is its spandrel.125

Daniel J. Levitin cites a study by David Huron from Ohio State University. According to Huron's results the key question for an evolutionary basis of music is what advantage might be granted to individuals who exhibit musical behavior versus those members of the species who do not show such behavior.126 Pinker suggests that music is pleasure seeking behavior.127 This view is problematic since if music were a non-adaptive pleasure-seeking behavior, it would not last very long in evolutionary time.128 Basically, there are two points that support the theory of music as an adaptation. First, if music was a non-adaptive, the specimen that perform musical behavior must be at some evolutionary or survival disadvantage. Second, if music was of low adaptive value, it should not have been present in our species' history for such relatively long time, or consume a significant portion of an individuals time and energy.129

Musical instruments are among the oldest human made artifacts found by archeologists. Excavations showed that music predates agriculture, furthermore there is no tangible evidence that language preceded music, but

124

Birds' feathers are a spandrel: they developed to keep the birds warm. The co-option for flying is a byproduct of the feathers' design. See: Levitin (2007), p. 260.

125

Comp. Pinker (1999), p. 529ff.

126

Levitin (2007), p. 261.

127

Pinker, Steven (2002): The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York, p. 405. Further quoted as: Pinker (2002).

128

Levitin (2007), p.261.

129

Ibid. 56

physical evidence suggests the contrary.130 Levitin states that "genetic mutations that enhance one's likelihood to live long enough to reproduce become adaptations".131

The evolutionary log shows adaptions after a

minimum of 50.000 years. Since music has been present in our species' history for more than 50.000 years, it is possible that music has become adaptive behavior, that means that our ability to perform and listen to music has entered the human genome.132

3.4 Musical Concepts and Categories

According to Arnold Schönberg's theory, musical composition requires insight into how the human mind works.133 In his regard, composers should write in a way that allows the recipient to recognize musical motives and the way they are coherently structured.134 He claimed that musical understanding starts with recognition of basic musical figures. Schönberg stated that motives are the recognizable bits that are most easily remembered. For him, musical coherence reflects properties that are shared by collections of motives in a particular work. Furthermore he stated that coherence is a precondition for the recipient to complete the process of semiosis.135 That view is consistent with the Four Stage Theory of Musical Awareness. In order to process musical phenomena, they must be stored as a stable unit.

130

Reznikoff, Iegor: On Primitive Elements of Musical Meaning. In: The Journal of Music and Meaning. Volume 3, Fall 2004/Winter 2005, Section 2.

131

Levitin (2007), p. 263.

132

Ibid.

133

Zbikowski (2002), p. 28.

134

Zbikowski (2002), p. 29.

135

Ibid. 57

Zbikowski refines Schönberg's idea, and claims that musical motives and motivic relationships are essential to the coherence of music as well as to the rhetoric of music. According to Zbikowski, the role that motives play in musical understanding leads to some unique challenges. First of all, if the recognition of motives is central to musical understanding, the process of recognition must be very fast. Second, the coherence of musical motives is an emergent property involving active comparison and evaluation of a number of motive forms, so as a result, musical motives are explicable through theories of category perception and categorization.136

The forming of categories by the human mind is a method to prevent mental life from being chaotic. Memory cannot keep track of all the different stimuli our senses receive. The human brain is not short of storage space, but it is urged to organize.137 The processes of perception and conceptualization are almost effortless and often entrenched, so we do not recognize them. Since these processes occur rapidly, the mind must have some benefit from organizing and forming categories. The ability to infer is the benefit from the brain's need to organize and categorize. We constantly make inferences as we perceive the world around us. We draw inferences, because we cannot know everything about every object, but we can watch some of the properties and then assign the object to a category and further predict properties that we did not observe in the first place, so we infer how the object will behave in a given situation.138

136

Comp. Zbikowski (2002), p. 25-27.

137

Pinker (1999), p. 307.

138

Pinker (2008), p. 228f. 58



3.4.1 Categories and prototypes

The objectivist claim is that we can understand and define objects in our environment with the help of a set of the object's inherent properties. The problem with this view is that some of the properties are interactional and the properties do not exist as a fixed set of characteristics, but as a structured gestalt with features that emerge from our individual experience.139

In the 1970s, Eleanor Rosch developed a theory of categorization that states that we categorize things in terms of prototypes. 140 The categories through which we organize our knowledge are structured into hierarchically arranged taxonomies.141 Categorizing as a process never starts at the most general level, nor does it start at the most specific level. For instance, if presented with a dog, no one thinks about this particular dog as a mammal, because that would be too general. The classification of the dog as mammal of the canidae family of the order carnivora would be too general as well. On the other hand, the identification of the particular dog as Waldo, Mr. Miller's three-year-old Golden Retriever would be too specific, as the person confronted with the dog might not know neither Mr. Miller, nor the dog's name. Instead, the person will simply put Waldo, the three-year-old mammal, of the order carnivora, belonging to the family of canidae, a domesticated subspecies of the wolf, by its precise biological name a canis lupus familiaris, as a pet dog. The features of the dog category, that any person would come to know are, that dogs have four legs, a tail that is wagging, that they are furry and can bark.

139

Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1980): Metaphors we live by. Chicago, p. 122. Further quoted as: Lakoff/Johnson (1980).

140

Turner Mark (1996): The Literary Mind. The Origins of Thought and Language. New York, p. 24. Further quoted as: Turner (1996).

141

Ibid. 59

The prototype any person bears in mind when thinking about the category dog varies, as the prototype also partly depends on experience and cultural learning.142 . Consequently, there will be members of the category that resemble the prototype closely, and those members of the category who do not. A shepherd is a good example for a prototypical member of the category dog in Western Europe.

In other parts of the world, the prototype may vary, so that the typical dog could also be a Chinese Crested hairless. As the example shows, categorizing never starts too general, nor too specific, but at an intermediate level, called the basic level. As categorizing as a process is primarily a means of understanding the world, it must serve the purpose of understanding in a sufficiently flexible way.



3.4.2 Basic level categories

Research on basic level categories focusses on the internal structure of categories and on the relationship between the taxonomic structures that emerge from the process of categorizing and the process itself. The basic level is the level at which we parcel out our environment into objects that we interact with in small spatial stories.143

142

Comp. Pinker, Steven (1999), p. 309.

143

Small spatial stories are an indispensable part of human cognition. They are a part of narrative imagining, that is, story, which is the fundamental instrument of thought. Our rational capacities depend on narrative imagining and it is our main tool of looking into the future, predicting, planning and explaining. Parable as defined by Mark Turner is a literary capacity which is essential to the human mind. The motivations for narrative imagining and thus executing small spatial stories is as strong as the motivation for color vision or grammar or the ability to "hit a distant object with a stone". Comp.: Turner (1996): p.3-16. 60

The basic level is the highest level at which category members share overall perceived shapes and the highest level at which members of the category require similar interactional motor patterns. These overall shapes and interactional patterns are called image schemas.144

The categories we form around prototypes can have a biological or a physiological foundation. As can be seen from the dog-example above, category membership can be contemplated as a question of degree, where some members of the category are better exemplars than others, as for instance, the above mentioned Chinese Crested would be a less good exemplar for a Western European observant.

The point is, that whenever we come across new items, these are judged against the prototypes, and categorized among gradients of their category membership. Category members do not have to have all of their attributes in common and boundaries can be fuzzy.145 The fuzziness of category borders allows for a change of category structure over time. The process is dynamic as we constantly evaluate potential members relative to existing members of a category. The existing members define a standard of typicality, so categories with a variable membership are showing typicality effects.146

Schönberg's claim, that musical understanding begins at the level of motives is supported by the notion of basic level categories. Musical coherence does not start with four or eight bar phrases, neither does it start with individual notes, instead, according to Schönberg's theory, musical coherence starts at

144

Image schemas will be explained in detail in Chapter 3.5.

145

Comp. Lakoff, G./Johnson, M. (1980), p. 123-125.

146

Zbikowski, Lawrence (2002), p. 48. 61

the intermediate level of musical motives, similar to the categorization process in basic level categories.147 A motive is the smallest recognizable part of a musical work. A motive is made up of still smaller parts, such as pitches, durations of notes and intervals between the individual notes. The cognitive salience of the motive mirrors the salience of the basic level in categories.148

The focus always is on the whole phenomenon, not on its parts in the first place. The process that is at work here, is called binding. If we, for example are presented with a car, we do not recognize each single part the car is made of. We do not think, that because there are four tires, a steering wheel, lamps, a horn, it is made of metal and has a shiny surface, the object moves, and people sit inside to get from A to B, we are dealing with a car, but through metonymic projection, we understand the thing in front of us as being a car. The same holds for any other item we see. Binding is guided by the Grouping Principles. As auditory perception is guided by the same principles as visual perception, we can assume that the perception of musical phenomena is also guided by binding.



3.4.3 The application of basic level categories to music

Musical motives and basic level categories share some of their features. Shape is important to both, and a certain amount of experience with category members, or in the case of music, with musical motives is required. Basic level categories maximize efficiency and informativeness and help us to 147

Zbikowski (2002), p. 27.

148

Zbikowski (2002), p. 58. 62

organize our environment. The process of categorization must therefore be fast and effortless. The same is valid for musical motive. As music is a temporal phenomenon, the recognition of motives must be fast and effortless. Schönberg's assumption, that musical coherence starts with motives proves to be correct in this regard: the motivic level maximizes efficiency and informativeness, and it is consistent with the Four Stage Theory of Musical Awareness.

Zbikowski claims that musical coherence relies on the variability of musical motive forms. The similarity between different motive forms is emphasized by variability.149 This claim is analogous to category structure. Membership in a category is not fixed, but graded through a dynamic process in which the attributes of potential category members are compared to the attributes most typically within the category.150 Graded membership is pervasive among natural categories.151 Thus, natural categories are built around a prototype that shows the statistically most widespread features of category members and against which potential category members are compared.152 Zbikowski cites a method, which has been developed by Lawrence Barsalou, of showing the relational structure that is inherent in most categories. Barsalou introduced the notion of a frame to represent category structure.153 The model is directly applicable to music, as the following examples show.

149

Zbikowski (2002), p. 39.

150

Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 124-125.

151

The perhaps best known example for graded membership is the "bird" example. The prototype bird resembles a sparrow or a finch in most cases. A penguin would be a less good example for a bird, respectively a penguin would not be a prototypical bird, except in areas where they live. Also compare Pinker (1999), p. 308-313.

152

Pinker (1999), p. 126-129.

153

Zbikowski (2002), p. 42. 63

Example of Dog Frame according to L. Barsalou:

attributes

values

individuals

small size large

color

Westhighland terrier

white

black Dog brown

Shepherd

sniffs sound barks

runs locomotion jumps

Tail wagging

64

Labrador

Example of frame for Jazz standard "Angel Eyes" by M. Dennis and E. Brent:

Saloon song

Intended as part of a soundtrack, performers use improvisation and variation

Ambiguous key, melodic and harmonic minor, fake change to major in B-part Angel Eyes The lyrics for the verse

The lyrics for the B-part

Alternative ending for the singer

Performed in two different moods

65

We can handle the conceptual model for dog as well as the conceptual model for "Angel Eyes". The dog frame lets us see, that cultural learning, or experience, matters for the ability to categorize an individual member of the category "dog". We do not have to directly experience a dog, but it suffices if we are told about dogs or read about them.

The same holds for music. The above example is a frame for the song "Angel Eyes", written in 1946 by Matt Dennis and Earl Brent. Actually, the song was part of the soundtrack for the movie "Jennifer". Frank Sinatra started to sing the song on his show regularly and later, in 1948 Ella Fitzgerald started performing "Angel Eyes" on her shows and created the definite version of the song by adding an alternative ending with a simple improvisation.154 The song has a common A A B A form and is written cminor. The A-part starts in harmonic minor, but in order to preserve the melody over the harmonic cliché of II-V-I, the mode changes to melodic minor in measure three, on beat three and four. Measures six to seven, 14 to 15, and 30 to 31 contain chromatic changes that move parallel to the melody. Further, the use of applied dominants at the beginning of every phrase adds to the dark character of the piece, as the movement of chords and melody implies a downward movement.155 The B-part contains a fake modulation to Ab-major. The key just looks like it were major, because of the Abmaj7 chord and the diminished A chord, which as a matter of fact is the dominant F7/9 without its root. The phrase is stated again this time a half tone lower. The harmony changes over an applied dominant to a II-V-I cliché in g harmonic minor. The A-part reestablishes the c-harmonic minor and ends with the tonic. The chords of the alternative ending vary, depending on 154

See Disc 2, Track 1. The track is a live version from 1948. Ella Fitzgerald performed on Frank Sinatra's show.

155

Comp. Disc 2, Track 1: Guitar voicing highlights chromatic line. 66

the singer. They may never contain a turnaround, to preserve the mood of the song.156 Moreover, the lyrics of the ending do not fit a turnaround. The verse "scuse me, while I disappear", is sung without any accompaniment, except for one chord on 'me'. The accompaniment begins on the last syllable of disappear. The communication between singer and instrumentalist is crucial for the ending of the song, because the ending is sung in rubato style. Therefore a detailed description of the ending, or harmonic analysis is not necessary.

The creation of meaning, or the handling of the conceptual model of the song depends on cultural learning. First, the listener must be able to understand the text of the song and he or she needs to know about the tradition of saloon songs. Saloon songs were usually intended to be stories that a protagonist tells a bartender in a saloon. The protagonist is always a person who is misfortunate and unhappy. The setting thus is already gloomy. Secondly, the key, in this case a minor key, must be recognized by the listener as well. The difference between major and minor key must be known, the inferences are drawn automatically as the listener has cultural experience with the two modes.

156

A turnaround is a cliché in Jazz normally used to indicate the end of a piece of music or the end of a phrase or part. The turnaround consists either of a IV-II-V-I chain or a III-VI-II-V-I chain. The scale normally used to build the chords for the turnaround is the major scale, thus the chords for a turnaround in C would be Fmaj7-Dm7-G7-Cmaj7, or Em7-Am7-Dm7-G7-Cmaj7. Accordingly for harmonic minor the turnaround will be Fm7-Dm7b5-G7-Cm7, or Ebmaj7#5Abmaj7-Dm7b5-G7-Cm. 67

Angel Eyes, original key157

157

The New Realbook Vol. 1. Petaluma, CA. 1988, p. 9. 68

The importance of cultural learning for the comprehension of music does not only show in the listener's need to be able to distinguish major and minor keys, but it also becomes evident in the composers' play with listening expectations. One example for the effect of cultural learning on listening expectations is the deceptive cadence. The listener indeed expects the tension to be resolved, but the chord progression goes on to the subdominant instead of the dominant-tonic, which would state the key of the piece and take away the tension of the dominant seventh chord.158

A more complex example is the violation of rhythmic expectations. Usually, the standard rhythm in rock music consists of common time with a strong downbeat on the first and third quarter note and a snare-drum backbeat on two and four.159 The song "Spirits in the Material World" from the album "Ghost in The Machine" by The Police is a good example for such a violation of rhythmic expectation.160 The Police had the general tendency to combine rock with reggae in order to create a new sound. Reggae as opposed to rock is always played offbeat, that means that the bass line is played in a manner that it smoothes the stresses. As the group's bassist, Sting tried to avoid standard rock clichés, and in this particular song, the equalization of the rhythmic stress is so strong that the downbeat is hard to find.161

Listening expectations are a means of handling musical standard situations. They depend on the individual's experience and cultural background knowledge. In any given musical situation, the elements that are common to

158

Comp. Zbikowski (2002), p. 121, 151-152,299. Levitin (2007), p. 112f.

159

Levitin (2007), p. 114.

160

Comp. Disc 2, Track 3.

161

Levitin (2007), p. 115. 69

multiple situations are extracted and compared against the musical prototype, or basic level category, for instance a cadence. A framework is created and the elements are placed within that framework.162 Levitin calls these frames schemas.163

The schemas, or conceptual models, as

Zbikowski calls them, are elaborated every time we are exposed to music. The existence of conceptual models in music can be observed when a citizen of the western world listens to Indian or Pakistani music. The scales deviate from the scales used in western music and the impression of strangeness from the eastern scales shows the existence of frames, or conceptual models.164





3.4.4 Musical concepts

Usually, we think of concepts as small packages of meaning that are stable and localized. Meaning is, according to this view "secondary, marginal, special, or parasitic", if we find it distributed over many mental spaces.165 Concepts are default connections that look stable and fixed, because they are entrenched. Concepts are not mere reflections of the outside world, but they are formed by mechanisms of parabolic projection.166

Zbikowski states that categories are organized around conceptual models, that consist of concepts in specified relationships, whereas each model

162

Comp. frame for "Angel Eyes" above.

163

Levitin (2007), p. 116

164

Levitin (2007), p. 39.

165

Turner (1996), p. 106.

166

The notion of parabolic projection will be explained in 3.5. 70

belongs to a specific domain of knowledge. The notion of conceptual model involves mental models, idealized cognitive models, cognitive domains and frames.167 Zbikowski does not define the term concept, but he evades the definition by employing the even broader term of conceptual model.

A concept can be viewed as a kind of rule that is used in order to be able to decide if a certain object or event falls into a certain category. Concepts are thus results of processes of constructing meaning.

According to Zbikowski, conceptual models are central to reasoning and inference.168 He states that the conceptual model provides the frame along which we reason about accepted and potential members of a category. Conceptual models, as shown in the examples above, reflect information that is summarized in frame diagrams and they represent what is most typical of the category they belong to.169 Musical concepts, in compliance with Zbikowski, can be said to own three characteristics. They are a product of the process of categorization, they form an essential part of the means through which we guide our present and future actions and therefore are indirect evidence for a temporary cognitive structure that is similar to music, and musical concepts can be related to other concepts, including concepts associated with bodily states, perceptual categories, and linguistic constructs. He points out that language is not necessary for the existence of musical concepts.170

167

Zbikowski (2002), p. 110.

168

Ibid.

169

Zbikowski (2002), 60f.

170

Ibid. 71

Musical concepts and musical categories do belong together, and the development or emergence of conceptual models for the typical features of a category is the starting point of understanding how a particular piece of music is organized.

The notion of motive as the starting point of musical understanding has to be revised. Categories are much more flexible in showing what is striking about a given piece of music. Motives are too small a part and too specialized to show how processes of constructing meaning work, because the global conceptual models that are at work in the process specify the structure of the local models that are framed for each category.171

The debate over the definition of concept is longstanding, but at least some clarification on the topic is necessary to develop an idea or perhaps the core of a future theory on how content is processed in and by music. A look at linguistic theory, as a matter of fact, gives insight into how we are able to flip from one conceptual frame to another, and it gives insight into how and why we conceptualize.

Meaning never settles down into a single residence, because it is literary and parabolic. We use common or default recruitments which are a phenomenon of thought in general. These common or default recruitments do not give us fixed basic concepts, because concepts are flexible and they can change over time.172 Basic concepts, such as event, state, object, path, place, property and manner are ubiquitous in all languages. If a concept ceases to exist in one of the grammatical devices, it tends to show up in 171

Comp. Zbikowski's analysis of Wagner's Leidensmotiv in: Zbikowski, Lawrence (2002), p. 49-62.

172

Turner (1996) p. 24f. 72

another. Causatives reveal a lot about universals of thought: causation does not necessarily need to be implied in the verb, but it can also be implied in the structure, in prefixes and suffixes, and through verbs of its own. Causation is a phenomenon that occurs across the worlds languages in one grammatical slot or another. These slots are classes and micro-classes, prefixes, suffixes, prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions and the so called light verbs such as make, do, be, and the like.

The concepts that appear in these slots are organized among:

• a set of relationships that allows for an enmeshing with one another,

such as acting, going, being and having.

• a taxonomy of entities such as human versus non-human, animate

versus inanimate, object versus stuff, individual versus collection,

flexible versus rigid, one-dimensional versus two-dimensional versus

three-dimensional.

• a system of spatial concepts to define locations and paths

• a time line that orders events, and distinguishes instantaneous

points, bounded intervals, and indefinite regions

• causal relationships, such as causing, letting, enabling, preventing,

impeding, and encouraging

• the concept of a goal, and the distinction between means and ends.

According to Pinker, these are the basic building blocks of a language of thought.173 This language of thought is what allows us to conceptualize our environment and integrate events and actions, cause and effect, and these universal elements of thought are at work when we conceptualize musical events. 173

Pinker (2008), p. 81. 73

Zbikowski evades the closer look on concepts, and broadens the field by employing even wider theoretical constructs, for instance cognitive models, idealized cognitive models, and the like. A definition of the musical concept per se is not possible, but musical concepts must be as flexible as concepts in the domain of human cognition in general. Musical concepts can be characterized individually in the contexts in which they appear. In conceptual semantic theory, there are so called core concepts, some of which can be applied to music semantic theory. Core concepts according to linguistic theory are having and benefiting, having and knowing, having and moving, time, things and locations, and causality.174 The concepts of having and moving, time, things and locations, and causality can be applied to music. Language is not necessary for the application of these concepts, as they belong to human cognition in general.

In music, the concept of having and moving is used whenever a the key of a piece of music is changed. The concept of time is ubiquitous in music, as it is a temporal art. The concept of things and locations is necessary for modulations, for example. The analysis of "Angel Eyes", for instance shows, that the B-part contains a fake modulation to Ab-major. Without a concept of location, we would not be able to understand the change of tonality, as we would not be able to conceptualize the movement of a thing, a tonality, in space, the location.

The ability to reason about music this way is grounded in cultural experience, as Zbikowski puts it.175 He states that the basic feature of conceptual models is that they consist of concepts in specified relationships. 174

Comp. Pinker (2008), p. 85-87; Turner (1996), p. 1-25.

175

Zbikowski (2002), p. 108f. 74

He claims that the conceptual models are drawn from two sources. First of all, they are dependent on the culture the listener lives in, and second, they may be constructed through conceptual cross-domain mapping. Here, Zbikowski mixes two theories: whenever there are two input mental spaces, we are dealing with conceptual integration. The conceptual model is no longer similar to a concept then, but it becomes a blend, and it will show emergent structure of its own then.176 Nevertheless, the assumption that conceptual models depend on culture is true: once a model is created or learned, it is stored in memory and available for the organization or understanding of a given set of musical circumstances.177

3.5 Conceptual Cross-Domain Mapping

and image schemas



3.5.1 Introduction to metaphor and





cross-domain mapping

While classical theories of language regard metaphor as a matter of language not thought, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson developed a theory that shows "that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action".178 Metaphorical expressions were assumed to be mutually exclusive with the realm of ordinary everyday language. Everyday language was said to have no metaphor, thus to be literal, because metaphor uses mechanisms outside the realm of conventional language. 176

Comp. Chapters 3.5 and 3.7 for conceptual cross-domain mapping and conceptual blending.

177

Zbikowski (2002), p. 110.

178

Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 3. 75

Metaphor was defined as a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of their normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept.179

Lakoff and Johnson showed that metaphors are general mappings across conceptual domains. The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another domain. The general theory of metaphor is given by the characterization of such cross-domain mappings. General principles that take the form of conceptual mappings apply not just to novel poetic expressions, but to much of ordinary everyday language.

Everyday abstract concepts like time, state, change, causation and purpose are also metaphorical. Metaphor is thus defined as a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. Metaphor can be understood as a mapping from a source domain SD, to a target domain TD. The mapping is tightly structured. There are ontological correspondences, according to which entities in the SD correspond systematically to entities in the TD. Lakoff and Johnson use mnemonics to suggest the mapping, to provide an easy remembrance of what mappings there are in the conceptual system, so they developed a strategy for the naming of these mappings. The form of a mnemonic name is either

TARGET-DOMAIN IS SOURCE DOMAIN,

DOMAIN.

or

TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-

The names of mappings have a propositional form. This must not be

mistaken for mappings to be propositions. Mappings are not propositions and the metaphors are mappings, that is they are sets of conceptual correspondences. Evidence for the existence of a system of conventional conceptual metaphor is of five types. Apart from psycholinguistic 179

Lakoff, George (1993): The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In: Ortony, Andrew (editor): Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, p. 202-251. Further quoted as: Lakoff (1993). 76

experiments there are generalizations that govern polysemy, inference patterns, novel metaphorical language and patterns of semantic change that prove the existence of a system of metaphor.180

An example for a cross-domain mapping from language is the JOURNEY METAPHOR.181

LOVE IS A

This mapping is a set of ontological correspondences

that characterize epistemic correspondences by mapping knowledge about journeys onto knowledge about love, that means that we reason about love in terms of our knowledge about journeys. This becomes evident when we take a look at the language we use when we talk about love. A sentence like "Our relationship has hit a dead-end street!" is per se not poetic or used to achieve a special rhetorical effect. The ontology used here is as follows: The SD is the JOURNEY domain. We have travelers, a vehicle, a path along which they travel, a destination and an impediment. The TD is the domain of

LOVE,

where we encounter the two lovers, the love relationship, the lovers' common goals and the difficulties in the relationship. The ontological correspondences constituting the metaphor map the ontology of travel onto the ontology of love.

The principle of understanding one domain in terms of another domain is stated informally as a metaphorical scenario. the lovers correspond to the travelers, there are goals to be reached in both domains, the relationship corresponds to the vehicle that allows them to reach their common goals together, the relationship is seen as fulfilling its purpose as long as it allows the to make progress toward the common goals, the difficult journey is

180

Lakoff (1993), p. 205-210.

181

The names of the mappings, that is the mnemonics are always written in capitals. They are not metaphors themselves, but they show which domains are mapped onto each other, through their TD IS SD structure. 77

characterized by impediments, places like a dead-end street, where decisions have to be made about which direction to go in and whether to keep traveling together.182

Cross-domain mapping is a phenomenon that is pervasive in human cognition, so we can assume that this phenomenon occurs in music as well, with implications for music performance, the listening to music and music theory. When our ordinary everyday thinking is organized by conceptual metaphor, it must be possible to make the underlying processes visible.

Music is a temporal art, it is multidimensional, and we are dealing with at least three dimensions. Whenever we are exposed to music, we perceive sound waves that move through the air. The perception of melody is explicable through Gestalt theory and contour theory.183 These theories do not provide us with the knowledge of how and why we integrate or process musical events. Examples from linguistic theory are suitable for showing how the process works, and they are transferable to music. An example how we conceptualize the domain of music in terms of the domain in space is pitch relations. When talking about pitch in western music, we employ the terms high and low. High is used for tones that have a high frequency and low is used for those tones that have a low frequency, that is, they do not oscillate so fast as do those tones with a high frequency. The underlying up-down orientation, as it is called, is spread across various fields of thought and action.184 The knowledge about physical space is used to understand and

182

Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 25-51; Lakoff (1993), p. 210-212.

183

Comp. Deutsch (1989), p. 110-112.

184

We conceptualize quantities, emotions, states, and locations with an up-down orientation, whereas we use a front-back orientation for the conceptualization of time. Also see: Turner (1996), p. 62-70, Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 14-24. 78

describe a tonal event. The underlying metaphor that is at work here is called

STATE OF BEING IS ORIENTATION IN VERTICAL SPACE.

theory the metaphor is SPACE.

In music semantic

PITCH RELATIONSHIPS ARE RELATIONSHIPS IN VERTICAL

The metaphor is also structuring the way we notate music. High

notes are placed near the top of the page, whereas low notes are placed near the bottom of the page. An example for the ORIENTATION IN VERTICAL SPACE

STATE OF BEING IS

is how emotions or statuses are expressed in

everyday discourse. The metaphor is grounded in embodied experience. Most mammals lie down to sleep, when they are ill, or when they die. The physical basis allows us to reason about states of being according to the position of the agent in vertical space.185 When reasoning about music, we make use of our knowledge of the movement and position of objects and agents in space. The movement of a melody for example is only understood, because we have experience with objects and agents moving in space.

Metaphorical orientations of this kind are not arbitrary, nor are they purely theoretical constructs. They are rooted in our physical and cultural experience. The overall external systematicity among the many spatialization metaphors defines coherence among them.186 Another example for the spatial organization of music is the organization of instrumentation by metaphor. The

STATE OF BEING IS ORIENTATION IN VERTICAL SPACE

metaphor

organizes which instrument is used in which musical context. A requiem would never be played by piccolo flutes, as the mapping is PHYSICAL WELL-BEING IS UP,

HAPPY IS UP,

or simply HEALTH AND LIFE ARE UP. So according to

the context of death and grief, the instruments are chosen. Typical instruments used in the requiem domain are trombones, strings, English

185

Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 14-15.

186

Lakoff/Johnson (1980), p. 18. 79

horns, bassoons, oboes, and the like. The view of the trombone as the instrument representing death is a mapping that is consistent with the conceptual structure of the domain of requiem and the domain of death.

Cross-domain mapping also structures music theory. In fact, every theory of music employs cross-domain mappings.187 As shown above, musical organization is analogous to the organization of the physical world. Theorizing musical meaning requires the structuring of a nonverbal domain, so cross-domain mapping helps us by providing systems of relationships that can be mapped onto musical domains. Cross-domain mappings exploit the conceptual structure of domains of space and events. They provide us with an opportunity to map musical concepts onto concepts from other conceptual domains. As stated before, musical concepts are derived from concepts of embodied experience.188 We conceive of music in terms of concepts that we 'know' from everyday experience.189 The mapping of everyday concepts onto musical concepts is governed by certain rules. The mapping is selective, and guided by image schematic structure. The necessary recognition of objects, events, and stories is guided by image schemas. Human perception is not chaotic and unstructured because of what is generally called small spatial stories. Story, projection, and parable are the root of human thought.190 Story as a mental activity is as important as visual perception and it is motivated. Small spatial stories constitute our environment. Examples of these events in space are pouring liquid into a container (coffee into a cup), watching a car go by, tracking a stick as it is

187

Zbikowski (2002), p. 74.

188

For explanation of the "grounding hypothesis" see Chapter 3.5.3.

189

Comp. Zbikowski (2002), p. 76f.

190

Turner (1996), p. 12. 80

carried away by a stream, and so forth. We do recognize and are interested in our own coherent personal experience, not in the small spatial stories themselves. The recognition of small spatial stories requires us to recognize not only the objects that are involved in events, but also sequences of these situations.

Small spatial stories are made up of sequences. They are routinely held together by one or more dynamic image schemas, which inherently carry with them sequences of spatial situations. The capacity for recognizing and executing small spatial stories is like the capacity to speak, see color, or to distinguish sounds.

Our small spatial stories are imaginative constructs of the human mind and not optional, but motivated. The human mind needs them to categorize. Evolution and experience make us inevitably produce a capacity for story. For any human infant it is impossible to fail to achieve the concept of a container, liquid, pouring, paths, and movement along a path. The product of the achievement of these concepts is a small spatial story of liquid being poured and flowing along a path into a container. Thus, mall spatial stories are crucial for the survival and reproduction of the human race. The key to the recognition of small spatial stories are image schemas.



3.5.2 Introduction to image schemas

By definition, image schemas are skeletal patterns that recur in our sensory and motor experience. Examples are balance, bounded interiors, motion

81

along a path, and symmetry.191 A simple image schema is a container. A container has an interior, an exterior and a boundary that separates interior from exterior. Two of the most important containers in the mental domain are the human body and the head.

The image schema for movement along a path involves locomotion by people, hands reaching out to us, our own hand reaching out, a ball rolling and liquids pouring into a container.192 In music, this image schema for movement along a path is important for ensemble playing. The locomotion by people is the melody's tempo being determined by meter and rhythm. The hands reaching out can be either cues given by fellow musicians or cues given by the conductor. Our hands reaching out map onto either cues we give while we play, or cues we give by hand. the ball rolling is mapped onto the theme that is played. the liquids pouring into a container are either not mapped at all, because the mapping is selective and must conform to the Invariance Principle, or if it is mapped, it corresponds to a solo in improvised music, or a cadence played by the solo instrument in classical music, and so on and so forth. The image schematic structure of movement along a path determines the mapping and thus the structure of the mapping.

The concepts of

INTO

and

OUT OF

are example for complex image schemas.

"The goal of a path is the interior of a container" structures our concept of INTO.

The image schematic structure for the concept of

OUT OF

is described

as "the source of the path is the interior of a container". When "a path intersects a container", we are dealing with the image schema of the concept

THROUGH.

As the above examples show, image schemas arise from

191

Turner (1996), p. 16.

192

Turner (1996), p. 16-33. 82

perception and interaction. Embodied experience plays a major part in cross-domain mapping. Image schemas are crucial for humans' ability to categorize. When several events have the same image schematic structure, we recognize a category. Category connection is not only visible because of the shared image schematic structure of shape or part-whole structure, but also because our image schemas for interaction are the same.193 When perception is to provide the basis for interaction, the image schemas for interacting with an object or an event must be consistent with our image schemas for perceiving it.

The notion of image schema was developed by Mark Johnson. He stated, that meaning is grounded in repeated patterns of bodily experience from which image schemas emerge.194

Image schemas are the ultimate grounding of the process of cross-domain mapping. The central question that led to this claim is if we understand a target domain in terms of a source domain, how do we understand the source domain in the first place? 195 Image schemas are experiential Gestalts that emergent through sensorimotor activity as we manipulate objects, orient ourselves in space and time, and direct our perceptual focus for various purposes. Image schemas are imaginative and non-propositional in nature. They are the organizing structures of experience at the level of body action and bodily perception. Image schemas are more abstract than ordinary visual mental images and they consist of dynamic spatial patterns that underlie spatial relations and movement found in actual concrete images. 193

Ibid.

194

Johnson, Mark (1987): The Body in The Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago, p. 2ff.

195

Comp.: Zbikowski (2002), p. 68. 83

They are permanent properties of embodied experience. As image schemas have internal structure of their own, they can serve as the embodied basis for many abstract metaphorical concepts.196

An image schema is a dynamic cognitive constructs that "functions somewhat like the abstract structure of an image and thereby connects together a vast range of different experiences that manifest this same recurring structure".197 The

VERTICALITY

schema is the structure we grasp

repeatedly in myriads of actions and events. Typical experiences are standing upright, perceiving buildings and trees, watching water rise as we pour it into a glass, climbing stairs, or riding an elevator. The concept of VERTICALITY

is based on this image schema. The most important point so far

is that image schemas are pre-conceptual. They provide the structure upon which concepts are based, but they are no concepts themselves. The relevance to music is as follows: The image schema for VERTICALITY provides us with an up-down orientation. Target domains such as CONSCIOUSNESS,

and

MUSICAL PITCH

HEALTH, EMOTIONS,

are understood in terms of the source

domain of verticality. Musical pitch is verbally described in terms of high and low tones. When we are singing, high sounds resonate near the head, whereas low tones resonate in our chests.198 The vertical orientation of our body thus correlates with the vertical orientation of musical pitch. We do characterize musical pitch in terms of high and low tones even when the instrument we are playing or listening to has a horizontal orientation, like for instance a piano, or a church organ.

196

Comp.: Gibbs, Raymond W. jr./Lima, Paula Lenz Costa/Francozo, Edson (2004): Metaphor In Thought And Language Is Grounded In Embodied Experience. In: Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 36, Issue 7, p. 1189-1210.

197

Zbikowski (2002), p. 68.

198

Ibid. 84

The application of image schema theory and cross-domain mapping provides us with a method of grounding our descriptions of musical phenomena in concepts derived from everyday experience. This creates the opportunity of establishing relationships between concepts that are fundamental to the theorizing about music.199

Zbikowski provides another example for the application of image schema theory to music. The analysis of Palestrina's Credo from the Pope Marcellus Mass shows how musical concepts are connected with concepts from other domains, including concepts associated with language. Cross-domain mapping provides a simple and effective way to account for the effectiveness of Palestrina's text painting.200 We use the

VERTICALITY

schema to give

physical space a direction of up, and a direction of down, analogous to the up-down orientation of the human body. This orientation is mapped onto a metaphorical space made up of pitches and the intervals between them. Each of the voices in the six-part texture takes up the word "descendit" and begins to descend through musical space. The notion of descent from the text is given a sounding equivalent by a specific sequence of musical events.201 The idea of descent that is created through the text painting depends on more than the general idea of descent, because the latter could have been evoked in other ways. The scalar descent observable in the example is analogous to the descent of the human body through physical space. The descent involves a lessening of potential energy, and a continuous movement into a particular direction. The listener also gains insight into the construction of meaning. Usually text-painting is understood 199

Zbikowski (2002), p. 76.

200

Zbikowski (2002), p. 83-84.

201

The term sequence is not used in its musicological sense, but in the sense of the connection of small spatial stories. Comp.: Turner (1996),p.18. 85

to operate through a kind of imitation, in this case physical descent as portrayed by musical descents. Instead of mimesis, the mappings that are at work in this case reflect the global models of a given cultural perspective and historical moment. The meaning constructed in this example is capable of being applied to a rich set of correspondences that are activated by mapping between the two domains of physical descent and musical and textual descent. Palestrina's text painting is a relatively singular instance of the construction of meaning involving music and language. Text painting is normally regarded as a compositional stylistic device that is in most cases restricted to a single word or image.



3.5.3 Cross-domain mapping, image schemas





and program music

A more complex example of how cross-domain mappings help us to conceptualize musical events and thus to construct musical meaning can be found in Hector Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique. The melody of the idée fixe is played by a soprano clarinet (E flat clarinet) in a distorted form in the fifth movement.202 The distortion as the target domain TD is understood in terms of the original melody from the first movement as a source domain SD. The category of the idée fixe contains the prototypical model of the idée fixe from the first movement. The version from the fifth movement is a less good example of idée fixe, because of graded structure of categories, but as it shares image schematic structure with the prototypical example, the exemplar from the fifth movement also belongs to the category.

202

Berlioz, Hector: Symphonie fantastique. Bärenreiter-Verlag and Breitkopf & Härtel. Wiesbaden, Kassel, 1972. V. Songe d'une nuit de Sabbat. mm.40. 86



3.6 The Invariance Principle

and the Event Structure Metaphor

A short introduction to the event structure metaphor and the invariance principle are indispensable for the understanding of the theory of conceptual integration.



3.6.1 The Invariance Principle

The conceptual projection from a source domain to a target domain os not arbitrary, but instead the mapping is governed by a global constraint called the Invariance Principle. Invariance is a global constraint that must be satisfied in building and projecting target, source, and, in case of conceptual integration, generic spaces. The mapping must not result in an imageschematic clash between source and target. Metaphors preserve the cognitive topology, that is the image schematic structure, of the source domain in a way that is consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain. Mappings are by no means algorithmic processes where the structure of the source domain is merely copied onto the target domain except if the target domain interferes. The Invariance Principle holds constraints on fixed correspondences, so the image-schematic structure of the target domain cannot be violated. The inherent structure of the target domain limits the possibilities for mappings.203

203

Comp. Lakoff (1993), p. 215. 87



3.6.2 The Event Structure Metaphor

The event structure metaphor has space as a source domain and events as a target domain and it contains all the relevant mappings that are necessary for the conceptualization of events. For the case of music we can make use of the so called inheritance hierarchies and thus apply the event structure metaphor to music as well as to human cognition in general. In cognitive science, events are understood to have their own internal structure. The internal structure is image-schematic, because it is governed by our understanding of small spatial stories. According to Turner, the internal structure of an event is called its aspect. The aspect of events will further be referred to as event shape.

The event structure metaphor is based on research conducted by George Lakoff, Sharon Fischler, Karin Myhre and Jane Espenson. Different aspects of event structure, such as states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes, and means are cognitively characterized in terms of space, motion, and force.204 If the hypothesis, that the meaning of music lies in the recognition and understanding of meaningful musical events, then these musical events must conform to the event structure metaphor. Furthermore, the analysis of music must conform to the principles of the event structure metaphor and the Invariance Principle. Musical analysis does nothing other than verbalize for instance states (tonality, meter, rhythm, timbre) changes (of tonality, instrumentation, rhythm, and so forth), processes (modulations, solos played), actions (cues given, improvisations played), and causes (the actual modulation which is movement along a path).

204

Lakoff (1993), p. 220. 88

Lakoff and Turner proposed that one type of extremely fundamental projection projects action-stories onto event-stories. This general pattern was named EVENTS ARE ACTIONS.205 The image-schematic structure of events shows that events can be punctual, drawn out, closed or open, single, repeating, preserving, creating or destroying entities, cyclic or not cyclic, and so forth.206

This very structure is grounded in our understanding and

executing of small spatial stories.

Events also show causal structure. Causation is understood through image schemas of force-dynamics.207 The implication of this theory for music is that causes, that are often understood by projection of the image schema of movement along a path, can be made explicable. A cause in music is, for instance, a modulation or a cadence, the developing of a theme through different groups of instruments, and so forth. Musical analysis should be more accessible for the broad public if it used a language and models of explanation that are governed by the metaphorical mappings that lie underneath them.208 Zbikowski leaves out the event structure metaphor in his theory, in not stating it explicitly, but nevertheless he applies it to his analyses.209

Instead, he develops the notion of musical syntax and

compositional strategy. His analysis of In der Fremde shall be recapitulated under the aspect of generating new knowledge in chapter 4.2.

205

Turner (1996), p. 26.

206

Ibid.

207

Comp. Pinker (2008), p. 219-214, The force-dynamic model of causation.

208

See Cook (2001) for this claim. The conference at which he presented his paper was concerned with music theory and musical analysis, which has become somewhat hermeneutic and estranged from the public. If musicology beyond 1999 is to survive, it must engage in making music approachable to a wider public, outside the realms of academe.

209

Zbikowski (2002), p. 172f. 89

The general mapping of the event structure metaphor according to Lakoff is:

STATES ARE LOCATIONS (bounded

regions in space)

CHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS

CAUSES ARE FORCES

ACTIONS ARE SELF-PROPELLED MOVEMENTS

PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS

MEANS ARE PATHS (to

DIFFICULTIES ARE IMPEDIMENTS TO MOTION

LONG TERM, PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITIES ARE JOURNEYS

EXTERNAL EVENTS ARE LARGE MOVING OBJECTS

(into or out of bounded regions)

destinations)

Mappings in the domain of music do not have to contain all the mappings enlisted here, because mapping structure always is highly selective, the mappings are given to preserve completeness of the metaphor.210

Assuming the event structure metaphor has implications for music theory, they would result in new mappings, such as:

MODULATIONS ARE CHANGES OF LOCATIONS

CHANGES OF INSTRUMENTATION ARE CHANGES OF LOCATIONS

CHANGES OF RHYTHMIC PATTERNS ARE CHANGES

KEYS ARE STATES

RHYTHMS AND METERS ARE STATES

Furthermore, modulations are understood via the PROPELLED MOVEMENTS

ACTIONS ARE SELF-

mapping, as there is no agent in the domain of

music, who changes a key, so modulation is a self-propelled movement. 210

The application of the event structure metaphor would exceed the realm of this thesis and therefore shall be tried out for another occasion. The event structure metaphor is a crucial element of conceptual integration networks, so it is indispensable to refer to it in this place. 90

For the analysis of music and music theory in general, the theory of crossdomain mapping does not suffice. Cross-domain mapping is characterized by unidirectionality, whereas in conceptual integration theory blended spaces can become input spaces for new blends.

3.7 Conceptual Blending

Blending, or conceptual integration as it is called, differs from conceptual cross-domain mapping insofar, as blending always has emergent structure of its own. Meaning is best described by means of parable, that is, the projection of story. A story is a holistic event that is containing ordered parts. A typical blend consists of two input mental spaces, a generic space and a blended space that exploits and develops counterpart connections between the input spaces. The projection from the input spaces is selective, as counterparts may or may not be brought into the blend, and they may or may not be fused in the blend. Conceptual integration recruits a great range of conceptual structure and knowledge without our recognizing it. Characteristic for blends is, that they develop structure that is not provided by the input mental spaces.

Blends develop by the three mechanisms of composition, completion and elaboration. Partial structure from input spaces is projected and that structure is composed in the blended space. We are guided in doing so by the counterpart connections between the input spaces. Completion provides additional structure which is not provided by composition. Elaboration develops the blend through imaginative mental simulation according to the internal logic of the blend. Composition and completion often draw together

91

conceptual structures previously kept apart. The blend can reveal latent contradictions and coherences between previously separated elements and it can yield insight into the conceptual structures from which it arises.211 It is impossible to integrate two input mental spaces with out some counterpart connections between them to guide the blending. Input spaces have counterparts because they share abstract structure. There are different kinds of structure that can be shared, such as category structure, frame structure, role structure and image-schematic structure.

The abstract structure shared by the two input mental spaces resides in a generic space, which indicates the counterpart connections between the input spaces. Conceptual integration involves thus a cross-space mapping of counterparts and integration of events. The blended space inherits partial structure from the inputs and has emergent structure of its own.

The emergent structure is created through composition by the new relations that become available through the blend and that did not exist in the separate inputs. Further, it is created by completion, because knowledge of background frames, cultural and cognitive models allows the composite structure projected into the blend from the inputs to be viewed as part of a larger, self-contained structure in the blend. The pattern in the blend, triggered by the inherited structures is "completed" into the larger, emergent structure. The mechanism of elaboration is the actual "running the blend". Blending is a dynamic activity, that can produce knowledge as a blended space is a manipulatable unit that provides full access to the input structures without requiring continual recurse to them. 211

Turner, Mark/Fauconnier, Gilles (1995): Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression, p. 185f. In: Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (3), p. 183-204. Further quoted as: Turner/ Fauconnier (1995). 92

Blending is a dynamic process that involves multiple mental spaces. For the process of conceptual integration to be successful, certain conditions must be fulfilled. The general principles apart from composition, completion, and elaboration are called optimality principles. The optimality principles are Integration, Web, Unpacking, Topology, and Good Reason.212

Integration provides that the blend constitutes a tightly integrated scene that is manipulatable as a unit. All of the spaces in a network should have Integration.

Web guides the manipulation of the blend, so the web of appropriate connections to the input spaces is maintained easily without further computation.

Unpacking guarantees that the understander can unpack the blend alone in order to reconstruct the input spaces, the generic space and the network of connections between these spaces.

The optimality principle of Topology says that for any input space and any element projected to the blend, it is optimal for the relations of the elements in the blend to match the relations of their counterpart.

Good Reason maintains significance. If an element appears in the blend, there is pressure to find significance for that element. Good Reason provides for relevant links to other spaces and relevant functions in running the blend.

212

Turner/Fauconnier (1998): Principles of Conceptual Integration. In: Koenig, Jean-Pierre (editor): Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language. II, Stanford: CLSI, p.269-296. 93

Blending theory can have implications for music as well. As our ordinary understanding and reasoning is guided by blending, we can assume that music is no exception to the process. An example for a blend in music can be found in a decision Hector Berlioz made when he composed his Requiem. Each Requiem Mass contains a dies irae. The dies irae is a Gregorian chant sung in the course of a Mass for the Dead. The melody is old and under a semiotic view, one could argue that it is a symbol, a form of Thirdness. Berlioz had used the original Gregorian melody in his Symphonie fantastique, where it is used in the fifth movement. First in its original phrasing, then in the end of the movement from mm. 414 on in a grotesque form as it is intertwined with the Ronde du Sabbat. When he composed his Requiem he deliberately chose not to use the Gregorian choral, but instead he composed a new melody because he did not want to confuse the two works with each other. By holding the works apart, he avoided a blend that would have emerged if he had used the original melody in the Requiem. The listener would have been reminded of the symphony and would have mixed up the burlesque use of the dies irae with the purpose it serves in the Requiem.

But not only music history is able to be understood, or misunderstood in blends. Music analysis also can make use of conceptual blending, or rather the underlying blend can be made visible. Zbikowski gives an example for a blend in music analysis that stems from the text painting Palestrina used in his Pope Marcellus Mass. The excerpt from the score below shows the descent of the melody on the words "descendit de caelis".213

213

Zbikowski (2002), p. 64. 94

The blending process would look as follows: Model of a four space Conceptual Integration Network (CIN)

Generic space: elements in directed relations; teleological framework

Text space:

Music space

-descent from heaven -lessening of kinetic energy

-descending scalar Passages -drive to cadence

Blended space: -pitch objects that descend -sound of descent

95

The text space and the music space serve as the two input mental spaces. Our knowledge about directed relations, in this case motion through physical and musical space are conceived of as directed relations with respect to the teleological framework.214 The blended space has emergent structure of its own, because once the blend is run, pitch objects are understood as downward movement of Christ from heaven to earth. Before the blend was run, we only were aware of the music, and the text as separate units. Now, that the spaces are integrated, we can manipulate them as one unit, according to the optimality principles. The blend would not have worked, if the listener did not know Latin, or if he had no translation of the text. The inference the listener makes is that the lower the pitch, the nearer the ground. The new emergent structure of the blend, the connection made between a downward melody and a text describing descent creates new knowledge insofar, as the listener will recognize this combination in the future and will therefore make inferences about the meaning of a musical event that is yet to come.

Conceptual blending is a dynamic process that activates at least four mental spaces. Selected structure from two input mental spaces is projected into a blended space. A fourth space, the generic space contains the counterpart connections between the input mental spaces. The structure that emerges from the blend is not available in neither of the input mental spaces.

Musical concepts can combine with other concepts and new meaning will emerge if they are integrated in a blend. This is shown especially in Zbikowski's analysis of Robert Schumann's song In der Fremde. He set up a Concepual Integration Network for the song that shows, how cross-domain 214

Zbikowski (2002), p. 82f. 96

mapping and conceptual integration structure our understanding of music, and how an understanding is made possible. The analysis of Schumann's song will be discussed in Chapter 4.2.

3.8 Summary

The analogies between music and language can be used to simplify the introduction into cognitive semantic theory. Music and language have in common that their primal medium is sound. Furthermore they have in common that they are both describable by the same theories we use to explain everyday reasoning and acting.

The analysis of music under a semantic view is not only useful in the search for music universals, but also can be used by performers, theorists, and listeners. Once the mappings that are at work are made visible, we know why and how we make sense of music, or create meaning. The debate over the musical sign is unnecessary, because we are dealing with musical concepts and categories within this approach. The field of musical semantics is relatively new, but as music is viewed as a conceptual domain of its own, there is a great scientific interest in the creation of meaning in music.

97

4. The Construction of Meaning

4.1 Does a music semiotic analysis

generate new knowledge?

In music semiotic analysis, one of the main problems is the question of the musical sign, which still is undefined. Due to the fact that musical phenomena are studied as if they were signs, an analysis is never precise in a scientific sense. The terminology and the concepts of Peircean and Greimasian semiotics are applied to music in a schematic way. The analysis of Beethoven's Ghost Trio is intended as a demonstration of how a deeper understanding of the expressive meaning of the opening of the trio can be achieved through applying structuralist and hermeneutic perspectives. Hatten intends to show the breadth of the semiotic approach.215 He takes the first 21 measures of the trio as they contain the opening theme of the work. First, he cites other analyses of the work, claiming that conventional analysis resembled the parsing of a poem. According to Hatten, Schenker's argument, that pitch structure and metric interpretation revealed the true content of music, does not suffice and that instead the structures discovered could be based upon typical meanings in the style. He postulates that the manner of creation of unique kinds of meaning within the constraints of that particular style should be searched for. The first kind of meanings is called a stylistic correlation based on generalizations of types. Hatten uses the term

215

Hatten, Robert (1997): The Opening Theme of Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio: A Discourse in Semiotic Method. In: Applied Semiotics/Sémiotique appliquée 2:4, p. 27-40. Further quoted as: Hatten (1997). 98

of correlation as a substitute for reference or denotation.216

Hatten's

approach is thus grounded on referentialism, and he states that adjectives used for feelings are to be used as well.217 The second kind of meanings is called stylistic interpretation and is based on the creation of tokens. Correlated musical structures can exist in relatively stable types in the style. A wider range of tokens of each type that are possible in various works in the style.218 The icon, index, symbol part of the Peircean tripartition is replaced this way through a new terminology.

Hatten also employs the Greimasian notion of marked versus unmarked. His claim that the examination of structural oppositions, that is, marked versus unmarked structures, shall result in a mapping of opposition in structure to an opposition in musical meaning.219 He takes the partial-augmented sixth chord from mm. 6-7, which conventionally is analyzed to be a cadential 6/4 when resolving, and states that he would rather term it as a "very strong arrival".220 So he arrived at a point of opposition in musical meaning. Another instance of marked versus unmarked structure in music is the use of a minor scale in a major key. Here, he also clearly draws on Greimasian concepts.

All in all, his analysis has plenty of examples and postulations for a hermeneutic and structuralist perspective, but the actual analysis is missing. All in all, Hatten's analytic approach does not differ greatly from conventional

Hatten Robert (1995): Metaphor in Music, p. 376. In: Tarasti, Eero (editor): Musical Signification. Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin, p. 373-391. Further quoted as: Hatten (1995).

216

217

Hatten (1995), p. 376.

218

Ibid.

219

Hatten (1997), p. 30f.

220

Hatten (1997), p .29. 99

musicological analysis. The difference lies in the application of literary metaphor in his depiction of musical phenomena. The body of works cited is huge, but Hatten is unable to yield emergent meaning by his method of analysis. His analysis remains vague and shows that in the semiotic approach, as it is undertaken by Hatten, no new knowledge is generated, as the Peircean and Greimasian concepts are schematically pressed onto an existing analysis of a musical work.

Where there are no terms to describe, or no scientifically adequate methodology for a semiotic analysis, Hatten inserts adjectives or phrases that are loaded with literary metaphorical expressions.221

Van Baest's and van Driel's analysis of Lloyd Webber's Requiem also is a rather speculative enterprise, although they take into account all sides of the tripartition, including the stages of abduction, deduction, and induction. They state that they argued that induction is an argument that leads to truth and knowledge, but the hypothesis, or the consequences of the hypothesis that the ending of the Requiem (mm. 79-81) contains a struggle between life and death, only have the possibility to be true and thus generate new knowledge.222 The essence of Peirce's semiotic theory is the description of the process along which knowledge is generated.

According to Peircean theory, semiosis, the act of making sense, is always started when a situation is encountered that does not match the individual's habits and beliefs. Concerning the Requiem, there are habits and beliefs. that are requiem-specific and requiem-non-specific. The habits and beliefs 221

Cook (2001) also criticizes Hatten's approach, as he evades the search for a universal terminology and unequivocal method of analysis.

222

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 106. 100

van Baest and van Driel examine belong to the domain of the final Interpretant. Crucial for a Peircean analysis is the inclusion of the three stages of abduction, deduction and induction mentioned before. The surprising phenomenon, in the ending of the Requiem is the boy soprano' s solo sung in piano with the organ playing in fff while the soprano changes loudness to a pianissimo. Further, the Requiem does not end with the phrase "et lux perpetua luceat eis"223, but the soprano repeats "perpetua" and eventually fades away. The contrast between the soprano solo and the organ solo constitutes the surprising phenomenon, as the soprano continues to sing, even when the organ has already begun to play, so he is not to be heard. The three stages now come into function, as at the stage of abduction, the fact of the unconventional ending, containing two soloists and intervallic clashes, is recognized. The hypothesis they formulate is that life (the boy soprano) struggles with death (the organ).224 The deductive stage asks for the consequences of the hypothesis, and requires the finding of other instances of a struggle in the Requiem. The inductive stage observes the consequences, and two places are given, where the organ does not support the vocal part, but acts as a solo instrument. One is to be found in the Offertorium, the other instance is found in the end of the Hosanna.

From these instances of the organ not supporting the vocal part, they conclude that the ending of the Requiem is the struggle between life and death. So the situation of doubt changed into a situation of belief. The analysis of the Requiem is far more complex than a conventional musicological analysis, due to the application of all the sides of the Peircean tripartition. The complexion does not help in generating knowledge, as the 223

"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis."-Eternal rest grant them, O Lord: and let the perpetual light shine upon them.

224

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 83. 101

act of semiosis must be completed in order to be able to analyze. The whole enterprise seems inaccurate, as the substantiation of the conclusion shows. Van Baest and van Driel claim that whenever the musical instruments step into the foreground, a special proposition is made.225

This rather

commonplace statement given as a reason for the instrumentation of the Requiem's ending is counterproductive to the construction of meaning, because in this case it would be an unpacking of meaning instead, as the act of semiosis had been completed before.

Van Baest and van Driel hold the completed act of semiosis responsible for the change of a situation of doubt, with regard to the struggle of life and death, into a situation that could generate an explanation for the musical phenomena in the ending of the Requiem.226 They argue that on the one hand side it is possible to gain knowledge, or construct meaning with the help of music semiotic analysis.227 On the other hand they negate the generation of new knowledge from music semiotic analysis. If the process of fixing beliefs is not completed, with regard to a consensus being found of the final Interpretants or the reaching of knowledge through more advanced methods of analysis and a consensus achieved by scholars regarding a certain belief, then the gaining of new knowledge is impossible. The construction of meaning will fail under these circumstances.

225

van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 82.

226

Ibid.

227

Measures 79-81 were examined under the view that they are an observable struggle of life and death. See van Baest/van Driel (1995), p. 78-107. 102



4.2 Does a music semantic analysis generate new knowledge?

Robert Schumann's song circle Op. 39 Liederkreis was published with In der Fremde as the opening song in 1849. The text is from Josef Freiherr von Eichendorff's novella Viel Lärm um Nichts. Zbikowski's analysis is concerned with harmony, melody, text and arrangement, but it is more to it than a parsing of the song's features.Of course, he also uses adjectives to describe musical phenomena occurring in the song, but these are always used with a good reason, as he directly identifies the mappings that are at work and shows not only the ontological correspondences between the two input mental spaces of text and music, but also explains why we integrate the two input spaces in the way we do.

The opening measures mm. 1-5 contain the melody and the basic harmonic frame of F#- minor. In the first five measures, the harmony changes only between tonic and dominant. Measures 6-9 repeat the melody and the harmonies become a bit more complex, changing from F#-minor to a fully diminished D#7th-chord, A-major6th C#-major7 and then returning to the tonic.

When Zbikowski claims, that the music seems to fit the portray of the young woman from the novella, he does not merely leave it at that, but he gives the mapping that allows for such an understanding of the opening measures of the song.228 The piano arpeggios in the low register are typical of guitar music at the time the song was composed. The melody is simple, as well as the harmony of the first five measures. There are only two chords present, 228

Zbikowski (2002), p. 276. 103

and the range of the voice does not exceed a perfect fourth. The text "Aus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rot da kommen die Wolken her", in connection with the music from the first five measures allows for a CIN that shows the integration of threatening natural phenomena, loneliness,and the secure F#minor key. As Schumann must have known the novella, we can state, the Zbikowski's analysis has so far generated new knowledge, as it made visible the structures of two different ontological states.229 The harmonic frame stays intact, even though measures 6-9 augment the harmonic frame. In measure 10 the new key, A-major is introduced and Zbikowski states that the sound brightens. Apart from the knowledge that a new key is used, there is no new knowledge gained at first sight, as a bright sound is always a very individual perception. He nevertheless is able to generate knowledge, because he gives the reason for the perception of brightness. The perspective of the text changes from past over present to future, and the harmony changes to A-major and the high register of the piano is used as the singing voice also rises to the high register. We perceive brightness because of the overtones we hear, and because of the upward movements of the melody and the accompaniment.

From measure 16 to 19, the harmony returns to the F#-minor key over a Bminor chord that is serving as a leading note to the dominant C#-major. The ending of the song has a F#-pedal in the bass, which reestablishes the harmony of F#-minor. As the music theoretic background of the song is not as demanding as a symphony, Zbikowski takes the opportunity to investigate how we conceptualize a song like In der Fremde. The Conceptual Integration Network for the song shows spatial mappings for abandonment, loss, and threatening weather for past and present and affective mappings of 229

Comp. Zbikowski (2002), p. 278. 104

forrest-solitude and quiet rest in the future for the text-input-mental space. The music-input-mental space shows the secure F#-minor with its tinges of chromaticism as the counterpart of the past and present mappings in the text space, as well as brighter not-F#-minor music, a higher register, and the lack of cadence as counterpart for the future mapping in the text space. The generic space contains the contrasting ontological states. The blend integrates matter-of-fact melancholy present, an individual temporarily displaced by animated, hopeful future, and the return to the melancholy present.230 The blend is guided by the principles of composition, completion and elaboration as follows: Composition governs that F#-minor and major music is mapped spatially with past and present. The future is mapped with A-major at first and then with B-minor. At the repetition of "die schöne Waldeinsamkeit", F#-minor is mapped onto the present. The principle of completion is satisfied by our projecting knowledge of a first-person narrator from the song to a singer who interprets the beginning with matter-of-fact observations of a given situation and gradually becomes more engaged, only to return to a matter-of-fact observation as the present-time situation is reestablished. The actual running the blend, the principle of elaboration lets us compare the poem as it actually appeared in Eichendorff's novella and how we perceive it from Schumann's song. We gain new knowledge insofar, as we are able to make comparisons between the two works, we are able to work out a reasonable interpretation if we are to perform the song, and a real understanding of the song in terms of a making sense of musical events is almost inevitable once we have integrated the two input spaces of poem and music.

230

Zbikowski (2002), p. 278. 105

5. Conclusion The basis of any analyzing or theorizing music is our ability to perceive musical events as coherent wholes. Music psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science show how music is processed by the brain. As auditory perception is similar to visual perception, the laws of Gestalt psychology can be applied to explain how we perceive music. The Four Stage Theory of Musical Awareness describes the process of conceptual integration. As psychology is always involved, independent from the theoretical perspective one takes or if there is a theoretical perspective at all, allows the assumption that both approaches are mutually dependent.

The sign problem that the semiotic approach clearly has, leads to a schematic application of Peircean terminology and concepts to music. As long as the musical sign is not clearly defined, instead of neglected, a satisfying analysis under the view of Peirce's general theory of signs will not be possible.

Furthermore, the debate on referential and formal meaning is longstanding, and it depends on the point of view that is taken, if the investigation of musical phenomena is restricted to music or some extramusical reality. The generation of new knowledge is, as van Baest and van Driel suggest with the title of their book, "a matter of belief". As the recapitulation of their Requiem analysis shows, there are no findings that would have been hidden from an observer's eye, if he or she analyzed the Requiem in a conventional way. Common sense would have led to the same results.

106

A semantic approach to music has the advantage that it helps looking for music universals. The semantic approach views music as a cognitive domain of its own, but it uses theories that show how our everyday thinking, speaking, reasoning, planning and acting are governed. The described processes of cross-domain mapping and conceptual blending provide us with the opportunity to see why and how we construct meaning. For the example of music, I tried to show, that we construct musical meaning along the ontological correspondences and image schematic structures that guide our ordinary everyday thinking, acting, and speaking. We would not come to the conclusion that In der Fremde is a love song, even if it did not have a text. The movement of the melody and the accompaniment in musical space suggest instability and loss in the middle part of the song, instead of stability and a feeling of arrival. Cultural learning and our embodied experience with movement in space prevent us from mapping the domain of love onto In der Fremde.

The two theories depend on each other insofar as they are concerned with the question of how music means. Eco's claim that music is a system lacking semantic depth is false. The applicability of semantic theories and the gaining of new knowledge through the domain of music suggest the contrary. Furthermore, if music had no semantic depth, it would not exist in the human conceptual system. Nattiez' use of the levels of poietic, esthetic and the neutral level show that the two approaches could possibly be unified in some aspects. The poietic level involves creation and Nattiez states that meaning must be constructed, according to the listener's cultural background. If the poietic level and the esthetic level could be integrated into the theory of conceptual blending, the two approaches could be applied together. The Peircean notion of the Emotional Interpretant is another point for a 107

unified theory. The Emotional Interpretant resembles a blended space, because it is the emergent structure from a perceived musical event.

Musical semiotics studies musical facts as if they were signs and thus, the notion of purely musical meaning cannot be satisfyingly explained. Musical semiotics has to cope with different competing theories, while musical semantics is a relatively homogenous field of science. The application of the two theories yet is not questions in terms of how, but it is more a question of either or. Perhaps the solution for a unified theory is much simpler, for as Emilio Garroni stated: "Semantics is more than a part of semiotics; rather it constitutes its theoretical basis."231

231

Garroni, Emilio (1977): Ricognizione della semiotica. Rome, p. 19. 108

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Versicherung selbständiger Arbeit

Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die Arbeit selbstständig angefertigt, außer den im Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis sowie in den Anmerkungen genannten Hilfsmitteln keine weiteren benutzt und alle Stellen der Arbeit, die anderen Werken oder dem Sinn nach entnommen sind unter Angabe der Quellen als Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht habe.

Bochum, den













--------------------------------------------ALEXANDRA SABELUS