Klasik Batı Müziği Bağlamında Müzikal Göstergebilimde Temel Birim Sorunsalı

Abstract

Although the question of basic unit is a question of linguistics in principle, it has been a question of musical aesthetics and of musical semiotics in twentieth century likewise of many other disciplines. Developed under the pioneering roles of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce, semiotic studies have applied the language model to the disciplines of social sciences such as psychology, anthropology, philosophy, literary science, narratology, and artistic disciplines such as painting, cinema, theater and music. While it could be argued that the basic unit of a signifier is phoneme or of a sign is moneme, the question of basic unit is still an arguable question in musical semiotics, a relative new discipline. Pioneering studies in musical semiotics have dealt with this problematic in various aspects, but although the discussion has continued on the axis of Classical Western Music, a satisfactory consensus has not been achieved for the basic unit problematic. In this paper, the question of basic unit in musical semiotics will be examined in regard to the major semiotics theories and an inquiry on the existence of a possible basic unit in music will be performed. In this context, a brief summary of the semiotics theories of F. de Saussure, C. Peirce and Barthes; and the possible contribution of a possible application of these theories to the musical semiotics will be discussed by referring to J. Molino, M. Baroni, J.J. Nattiez and N. Ruwet. Following the discussion, an alternative phenomenological application to the question will be suggested by using the two ways as N. Ruwet names “from top to bottom” and “from bottom to top”. On the other hand, since the limited literature at hand has continued the discussion on the axis of Classical Western Music, the universal set of this study was intentionally limited to Classical Western Music.