Musical and Social Meaning… Part 6

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 6

 Because of the complexity of how music functions, I am drawn to the conclusion that music which stands alone is beyond written communication and is therefore a metalanguage or perhaps even more accurately a paralanguage. Those who espouse the view that music is a metalanguage and or a paralanguage must of necessity concede that the music part of music is only analogous to and not synonymous with how  written or spoken communication functions.  I contend that music functions in some ways like language, but close comparison reveals that music alone and language do function differently is some ways.  However, the fact that instrumental music (music alone) does not function exactly like written or spoken language does not indicate that it does not communicate real life meaning to the listener.  This view that music as a whole is only analogous to language becomes even more complex when a musical composition includes words.

 All music that includes words communicates understandable meaning to all who experience it through the text and also from how its formal properties (the music part of the music) have been arranged into a coherent whole.  Whatever meaning that the music transmits to the listener is understandable meaning that relates to real life. This is evident because no performer musics in an artistic “bubble” that is detached from the world around him.  Since all musicing is done in community, all meaning that the music communicates to those who experience it has moral implications. Therefore, all religious musicing has the potential to have a positive or negative spiritual effect on the listener. Metacognition, i.e. a person’s thinking about his or her thinking when previously experiencing the music, further empowers what the music earlier triggered in the mind of the observer through brain stem responses.