Music semiology (

semiotics Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

) is the study of signs as they pertain to

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

on a variety of levels.

Overview

Following

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Kofi Agawu adopts the idea of musical semiosis being introversive or extroversive—that is, musical signs within a text and without. "Topics", or various musical conventions (such as horn calls, dance forms, and styles), have been treated suggestively by Agawu, among others. The notion of gesture is beginning to play a large role in musico-semiotic enquiry.

There are strong arguments that music inhabits a semiological realm which, on both
ontogenetic Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the st ...
and
phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
levels, has developmental priority over verbal language.

Writers on music semiology include Kofi Agawu (on topical theory, Schenkerian analysis), Robert S. Hatten (on topic, gesture), Raymond Monelle (on topic, musical meaning),

Jean-Jacques Nattiez Jean-Jacques Nattiez (; born December 30, 1945 in Amiens, France) is a musical semiologist or semiotician and professor of musicology at the Université de Montréal. He studied semiology with Georges Mounin and Jean Molino and music semiolog ...

(on introversive taxonomic analysis and ethnomusicological applications),

Anthony Newcomb Anthony Newcomb (August 6, 1941 - November 18, 2018) was an American musicologist. He was born in New York City and studied at the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962. He then studied with Gustav Le ...

(on narrativity),

Thomas Turino Thomas Turino (born December 12, 1951) is an American ethnomusicologist and author of several textbooks in the field, most notably the popular introductory book ''Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation''. His interests include the gro ...

(applying the semiotics of

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...

), and

Eero Tarasti Eero Aarne Pekka Tarasti (born 27 September 1948 in Helsinki), is a Finnish musicologist and semiologist, currently serving as Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Hel ...

(generally considered the founder of musical semiotics).

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...

, himself a semiotician and skilled amateur pianist, wrote about music in some of the essays collected in ''Image, Music, Text'' and ''The Responsibility of Forms'', as well as in the essay "Eiffel Tower", though he did not consider music to be a semiotic system. Signs, meanings in music, happen essentially through the connotations of sounds, and through the social construction, appropriation and amplification of certain meanings associated with these connotations. The work of Philip Tagg (''Ten Little Tunes'', ''Fernando the Flute'', ''Music’s Meanings'') provides one of the most complete and systematic analysis of the relation between musical structures and connotations in western and especially

popular Popularity or social status is the quality of being well liked, admired or well known to a particular group. Popular may also refer to: In sociology * Popular culture * Popular fiction * Popular music * Popular science * Populace, the total ...

, television and

film music A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...

. The work of Leonard B. Meyer in ''Style and Music'' theorizes the relationship between ideologies and musical structures and the phenomena of style change, and focuses on

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

as a case study.

Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and co ...

and

Ray Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always st ...

analyze how music is structured like a language with its own semiotics and syntax.

References

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Overview

References

Further reading