Abstract
The aim of this paper is to reflect on the metaphor of ‘musical language’ in order to find a satisfying paradigm for musical expressiveness. First, I will review the idea of music as ‘language of emotions’. Then, I will present some authors from continental tradition, with particular attention to Giorgio Agamben’s reflection on the link between music and Stimmungen , seen as prelinguistic moods which determine the orientation of the human being. I will refuse Agamben’s approache and I will present Wittgenstein’s comparison between musical and linguistic understanding, in which the concept of gesture is central. In conclusion, using Luciano Berio’s and Guerino Mazzola’s reflections on musical gesture, I will propose a gestural paradigm for understanding musical expressiveness. I will indicate in the complexity of musical gesture a synthesis between bodily immediacy and cultural tradition that will help to refuse both the linguistic paradigm, based on the concept of ‘musical meaning’, and the pre-linguistic model of musical expressiveness, which take back to the platonic theory of ethos.
Published Version
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