Is Music a Language?—part 4

 

                         Is Music a Language?—part 4

          Everyone brings something to the listening or performing experience.  Part of what each person brings is taken from his or her previous experiences with music, but part of what a performer or listener brings is from the real world outside of music. Therefore, I am a referentialist.  Although I do not adhere to every tenant of the mainstream of philosophical music referentialists, I contend that everyone musics in reference to the real world experiences that he or she has encountered outside the realm of music.  I do not believe that music’s meaning is its own meaning with no relationship to what one has experienced in life.
          Greensburg refers to music as a “non-verbal language”.  When one views the music part of music in this manner it opens new understandings about the power of music without words. This power is at least partially made possible by various unspoken understandings that are molded by the performer’s knowledge of music and cultural and environmental surroundings that will affect that person’s encounter with music.

Thought for the Day

Every Christian musician musics in community regardless of whether or not the musician intends to communicate the message of this world.  When one musics in the same manner as those who antagonistic to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that musician’s Christian witness is weakened (or even nullified) when those who understand its meaning as it is understood in community hear it with a sacred text.