Music and Language: A New Look at an Old Analogy

Abstract

lationship in terms of little and big. Another familiar comparison involves music and language itself. It is an interesting analogy, and has implications for music instruction and general intellectual growth. A language of the emotions, a universal language, a language used by conductors and performers-we often talk about music in linguistic terms, and rightly so. Music and language are both uniquely human activities; they set us apart from the other creatures of this planet, and they still challenge our capacities for description and understanding. If there is a relationship between the two, what sort of relationship is it? Is music a language, or is it somehow like a language? Or is it perhaps a very special sort of language that resists description in conventional linguistic terms? The surface similarities are apparent: both music and language take place in time, and they both employ distinctions of pitch, duration, and intensity as a basis for recognizable patterned behavior. To some degree, we use the same kinds of words in talking about both. Sign, phrase, reading-these terms and others suggest that music is, like language, a system of symbols that we learn to use and enjoy. Yet this common vocabulary of description seems to be heavily weighted in favor of the printed page, whether covered with words