Musical and Social Meaning… Part 5

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 5

          If these musical “codes” etc. exist in musical compositions, it is plausible that music is a form of metalanguage[i] which facilitates metacommunication[ii] that is made even more powerful by metacognition[iii] on what the listener has previously experienced with the sounds musical, verbal, and nonverbal.  This should cause skeptics of the axiom[iv] “Music is the message” to reconsider that, in light of recent scientific studies, clinical expertise in music therapy, and philosophical writings, music alone unavoidably communicates (transmits) understandable meaning (message) whether or not the worship leader is aware of its existence.  The existence of understandable meaning (some of it social) in the music fabric and landscape causes it to have strong moral implications.  This puts away the unfounded notion that the music part of music is a benign, amoral artform that communicates absolutely nothing to all who experience it.

          Music’s relationship to language has been considered in many ways by music philosophers.  Theories about how music functions include: music is a language, music is only analogous to language, music is a language of emotions, music is a metalanguage, and music is a paralanguage.[v]  Music philosophers have more or less convincingly shown that music does not function exactly like written language.  Music philosophers have also quite convincingly shown that music is emotive, but they have argued about whether the emotions that music arouses or triggers in the human  brain are or are not understandable in terms of having real life meaning.

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[i] Metalanguage as used here means that music is capable of communicating beyond the restraints of written communication.

[ii] Metacommunication as used here refers to communication that surrounds what a person says or musics that also has meaning. This meaning (in the music part of the music) may or may not be congruent with what that person intended to music. Since this communication is implicit and not expressed in words, it may support or contradict the verbal communication of the words spoken or sung. 

[iii] Metacognition is thinking about thinking used here in the sense that the one who has experienced music later muses on his thoughts and emotions that were triggered during the previous musical experience.  These thoughts are self-reflective, so much so, that the person who experienced the music actually relives the musical experience.

[iv] An axiom is a statement or proposition which is regarded by someone as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.

[v] Paralanguage was coined In the 1970s, by Gregory Bateson.  This term has come to mean nonverbal communication such as your tone of voice, pitch, intonation, speed of speaking, hesitation, noises, gestures, and facial expressions. The reason that a Christian must consider paralanguage is that it is a sort-of subset of meta-communication that often affects sacred musicing.  Paralanguage has the propensity to partially or even completely change the original meaning of sacred music. It is sometimes considered to only nuance nonphonemic properties of sacred music—i.e. words whose pronunciation and spelling do not match.  However, such a definition is too restrictive since paralanguage may consciously or unconsciously affect worship music much more than phonetically.