The Meaning of Music

Physics of Life Reviews, 2011

Stefan Koelsch has chosen a hard problem in exploring the responses of listeners to aspects of meaning in western common-practice period tonal-harmonic music. This is a highly culturally-particularized art-music that has accreted strata of discursive significance likely to condition its experience in ways that are intimately bound to the history of western culture. Music rooted in tonal dynamics is interwoven into the fabric of contemporary life in multifarious and disparate strands and in various stylistic manifestations, serving a range of functions from modulation of affective and associative responses in narrative contexts (as in film and advertisements), through framing the timing of joint action (as in dance, or marching in step), through managing and coordinating collective attentional focus and affect (as in singing or playing together), to serving as a focus for subcultural affiliation (as, e.g., in peer-to-peer file-sharing). As an auditory stimulus, it may carry traces of all these functions simultaneously for a listener, and the meanings that it may bear for any individual are likely to be as multifarious as its manifestations and functions.

In this essay I approach the mysterious art of music from several perspectives. As a classical pianist, I think about music as an immensely powerful way of communication. As a music teacher, I am interested in explaining tangibles of music in the clearest terms possible. And as a scholar in the cognitive sciences, I believe that the psychology of music can advance our understanding of the human mind.

2012

This study concerns the widespread phenomenon that music is perceived as meaningful to the listener in some sense. The study adopts a style of conceptual clarification and investigation that is current in the analytic philosophy of language, and is further informed by recent research into the fundamental biology of human musicality, which suggests that musicality and language are neurologically related.

Music Theory Spectrum, 2003

The similarities between music and language are often remarked upon. For this reason, many thinkers fall into a linguistic bias in music analysis. Both are unique products of the human mind serving the purpose of expression, although they do not coincide entirely. Meanings conveyed musically and linguistically differ due to physical, conceptual and formal limitations. A closer study of their creation points to the common root of linguistic and musical production, consisting in the human affinity for symbolic transformation of experience, stemming from evolutionary adaptation to the changing environment. Symbolisation not only allows the human being to internally conceive the reality which surrounds them, but also to represent objects and concepts in absentia. This faculty prompted the elaboration of systems of communication and artistic creation, a virtually ludic activity reflecting the inherent cerebral processes.

On distinguera les métaphores descriptives des métaphores «structurelles» qui organisent l'ensemble de la composition. Ainsi, on peut écouter un quatuor de Haydn comme s 'il était une conversation : cette métaphore explique la structure ou la forme du quatuor, mais elle révèle aussi les qualités expressives du quatuor : son «esprit», sa «bonhomie. » Ces métaphores «structurelles» font le pont entre le «musical» et l' « extra-musical » -c' est-à-dire, la vie.

Phenomenology of musical meaning, 2024

The article deals with the phenomenological analysis of music perception on the material of rock songs. The structure of a song is simpler than the structure of a classical piece of music, but all the results are valid for any music with appropriate complication. “Listening device” – a computer program that translates sounds into musical notation - perceives individual sounds. But the musical consciousness understands the specific musical thought. It groups sounds into motifs and phrases. The concept of musical thought has different interpretations and needs a thorough phenomenological analysis based on Husserl's doctrine of the constitution of sense. F. Tagg introduces the concept of “museme” – a unit of musical meaning. Musemes have meaning only for the understanding consciousness. Musemes of different levels include motifs and phrases, metric signature, rhythm, and the structure of the whole work. In a melody there may be "key sites" in which the concentration of musical thought is maximized. They are constituted by musical consciousness and are largely subjective. The phenomenon of key site is not specific to music; key sites are found in literature and philosophy. Their appearance sheds light on the peculiarities of acts of understanding. The understanding of a musical work takes place in time, and this allows the consciousness to mark out a segment of time, to arrange the intelligible structure in it. A melody is a meaningful whole that has its own logic of unfolding. It encompasses a segment of time and transforms it into something stationary. Melody can be represented in the form of a scheme. The subject of music is the compression of time into such structures. An interesting example of musical perception and understanding is psychedelic rock. When listening to psychedelic music, the constitutive activity of consciousness is reduced and an altered state of consciousness occurs. The horizon of meaning narrows, the protention disappears. Here we should recall the notion of “saturated phenomenon” introduced by J.-L. Marion. The saturated phenomenon does not allow for constitution and assimilation. Psychedelic music modifies the horizons of future meanings. The article concludes with a question about computer music: will it make sense to us? So far there is no unequivocal answer to this question.