Sound, Speech, and Music

Abstract

In this examination of the relation of thought to sound, David Burrows offers the thesis that sound has played a liberating role in human evolution. Burrows proposes that the limitless expansiveness of human thought stems primarily from the unique capacity of vocal sound to rapidly articulate meaning while simultaneously encouraging the listener to remain detached from the immediate physical world. But ironically, sound - particularly musical sound - also enables the hearer to feel connected to and grounded in the world, an orientation that helps compensate for the emphasis in speech and verbal thinking on the elsewhere and the otherwise, the former and the eventual. Burrows also examines the conflict that results between the naturally flowing diffuseness of sound and the tendency of the human mind to seek fixity and permanence. He explores this conflict in two chapters that examine musical instruments and the verbal, notational and gestural representation of music.