Referential Meaning in Music

What does music mean? The concept of referential meaning has created much controversy in the mere definition of the words: “a symbol has meaning when acquaintance with it causes one…to think of something else” (page 7). When we think of words acting as symbols, the meaning becomes clear. One hears the word “cup” and thinks of a vessel in which liquids are held. But how can we define music in such terms, when the concept of a C-major chord, viewed from separate contexts, can have multiple definitions?

(Music Makes Me Sing)

This is the exact reason that musicologists avoid studying music on a referential level. There exists a lack of control and systematization that could ultimately result in analytical chaos, as Dr. Ferrara so quaintly puts. If we step back and consider the idea of analysis from a scientific stand point, there are two qualities we seek to achieve: objectivity and verifiability. Objectivity occurs when one remains neutral—detached and value free—to a subject. Verifiability describes the ability to reenact the process and achieve similar results. But from the viewpoint of a musical analyst, the “conventional systems of music analysis…do not satisfy the classic criteria of objectivity and verifiability” because there are so many factors, abstract and/or real which impact the final product (page 9). In a world reliant on systems, like that of the scientific, this might create chaos. However, in the musical world, instead of confusion, the lack of objectivity and verifiability often gives “richness and demonstrable insight” (page 9).

Langer’s description of man in the “realms of nature” states that the image of man is “active, rational and free” (page 10). Man’s ability to render experiences into language is unique because it demonstrates our place in the natural world. Armed with basic survival instincts, man is capable of extending the limits of scientific reason to cultural understanding (i.e. language, history, art, religion) because the power of the mind includes an ability to see, rationalize and conform.

The supernaturalistic-transcendent perspective describes man’s gift as one that is given from God, not from nature. This is taken from the Cartesian dualistic perspective that says man is only unique from nature if man’s origin is supernatural. This being said, man is also not part of the animal world. With development of technology and science, Cartesianism is further disproved with the naturalistic-reductive perspective: “man’s gift of superiority comes from nature, not God. Man is ‘naturally’ selective and therefore continuous with nature” (page 11). The specification that the theory is “reductive” is because it describes that the “meaning of man is reduced to the laws of a machine” (page 11).

While Langer agrees with the Darwinian model—that man is evolved from nature—she also understands that man is above other beings in nature. She then set out to construct a “naturalistic-transcendent perspective, which accepts that man is indeed evolved “form nature but understands his transcendence above other beings in nature” (page 12). What man knows is directly related to what he can ask, and the ability to ask and communicate sets us above other beings in nature.

(Darwin "Theory of Evolution")

Music defies all rational systems because unlike the facts of science, it does not have fixed meaning. “[M]usic cannot properly be called a language” because it is not comprised of fixed meaning and is based on the concept of feeling. It is understood on two different levels: logically and intuitively. A composer captures real life feelings/experiences into virtual form, a “metaphorical image of actual life” (page 15).

Human existence is permanent, but permanence is ever changing. We’ve been blessed and haunted by the sense of a beginning and an end. A web of beginnings and endings connects the past, the future and the present, but the transitions are hardly smooth. Why did the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” cause such unrest that the audience to rioted in anger? In our time, his music is seen and heard as a seminal 20^th century composition. Our appreciation for what is right and wrong in musical gestures and understanding has shifted so drastically that it is terrifying to consider what would have happened had the audience of Stravinsky’s time heard a George Crumb work. What visually and aurally connects our historical presence?

(George Crumb 1929-)

Perhaps it is because there are more performers nowadays than there ever were. In the introduction of “Philosophy and the Analysis of Music”, Dr. Ferrara distinguishes between the average music listener and the music performer. The standard has not been set for what is acceptable in new music, so it has increased the disorder in an already existing confusion about virtual feeling. Because music does not have fixed meaning, and because the level of expertise has become more varied in performance, has this affected our tolerance for change?