Music and Language Revisited

Abstract

The relationship between music and language is one of the mainstays of philosophical reflection on music. Even before Aristotle theorized the political distinction between phone and logos (cf. Agamben 2018) the relationship between sound and meaning has been identified as a problematic node from which to compare these two forms of expression. The ‘linguistic turn’ (Bergmann 1953; Rorty 1967) of the twentieth century and the emergence of disciplines such as semiology, semiotics, philosophies of language and hermeneutics has led to a rich proliferation of frameworks for comparing music and language. In musicology, too, a search for language-like structures in music (Jakobson 1932; Ruwet 1966; Nattiez 1975; Lerdahl, Jackendoff 1983; see also the essay by Marta Benenti on music and metaphor in this volume) has led to fruitful connections.1 More recently, the development of cognitive sciences (Leman 2007; Patel 2008) has provided new tools for the study of musical understanding, casting new light in particular on the possibility of a semantic dimension in music.