Music and Language - Part 1

An investigation into ways in which music can function coherently as a language with specific reference to narrative elements, thematic discourse and semantic connotations in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

‘Music resembles a language. expressions such as musical idiom, musical intonation, are not simply metaphors. But music is not identical with language. The resemblance points to something essential, but vague. Anyone who takes it literally will be seriously misled.’[1]

It is my aim that by investigating the similarities and differences between music and language I will be able to understand the emotions music evokes in its listeners with a much greater degree of accuracy as language is the means we have at our disposal to most accurately express, identify or describe our emotions. There has been a wealth of musicological debate over the last twenty years that was considered in order to substantiate the above claim. Therefore, assuming music resembles a language one must logically be able to construct something that resembles a translation. If music is able to convey a message to the listener then surely it must be possible for that listener to understand the message they are hearing? However, as Adorno states, those who use this theory literally will be misled. Parallels can be drawn between music and language. Sounds rise and fall, interact with one another, there is a degree of punctuation and ideas develop. ‘Music resembles language in the sense that it is a temporal sequence of articulated sounds which are more than just sounds.’[2] Despite this resemblance interpreting music in this way is not without its problems. ‘Music creates no semiotic system.’[3] This makes it very difficult to work out exactly what the message behind the music is. Music can hint towards specific emotions or stories but everyone’s ideas of what these emotions are are bound to be different. Similarly music can hint at a message or convey fragments of a message but is unable to precisely inform the reader of the composer’s intentions. Parallels can also be drawn between music and the rhetoric of image. There is more to each photographic image than simply the objects the image contains. According to Barthes, image conveys three messages; the linguistic message (or the objects the photograph contains), the denoted image (how the objects relate to one another to create a scene) and a third symbolic message (the culturally informed connotations of the image). It is this third image that arguably arms the photograph with ‘ineffable richness’[4] which cannot be exhausted. I believe that this can be mapped onto music; albeit with varying degrees of success. Music conjures up all sorts of images in one’s mind and by analyzing these images one should be able to tap into a very rich well of information and understanding. This method, however, is also not without problems. Images are stationary entities and the mood and message of the image is therefore set. Music is fluid and is listened to in real time. It is not the notes on the page that spark emotion in the listener it is the sound the music creates. Harmonies shift and tonalities change throughout pieces of music and this difference between music and image must be observed. When writing about the Structural Analysis of Narratives Barthes states that ‘to understand narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of  the story, it is also to recognize its construction in ‘storeys’, to project the horizontal concatenations of the narrative ‘thread’ on to an implicitly vertical axis; to read (to listen to) a narrative is not merely to move from one word to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next.’[5] This is exactly the way one should treat music, especially that by Mahler, as, when listening to music by Mahler, a huge emotional charge is immediately apparent. Mahler’s works have been criticised over his treatment of themes as the symphonies are often constructed in large blocks that are less eloquently related than in the works of some other composers. If it is not the subtle development of thematic material that keeps the listener engaged it is possible that it is the emotional charge carried by the musical sound world. One cannot merely listen to the horizontal flow of sounds and hope to gain an understanding of the music’s emotional content. One must grasp the music on an number of vertical levels to appreciate this ‘ineffable richness’[6]. When one finds oneself at this stage of the analysis they encounter the largest problem this method presents. At the very moment one tries to explicitly define the emotions and messages they have detected is the precise moment their ideas become no more than mere speculation. ‘ The language of music is quite different from the language of intentionality. It contains a theological dimension. What it had to say is simultaneously revealed and concealed . Its idea is the divine Name which has been given shape. It is demythologized prayer, rid of efficacious magic. It is the human attempt, doomed as ever, to name the Name, not to communicate meanings.’[7]

‘Intentional language wants to mediate the absolute, and the absolute escapes language for every specific intention, leaves each one behind because each one is limited. Music finds the absolute immediately, but at the moment of discovery it becomes obscured, just as too powerful a light dazzles the eyes, preventing them from seeing things that are perfectly visible.’[8]

As a result music can be treated neither as a language or an image and is situated uniquely between the two. It is my aim, by looking at the writings of Roland Barthes and Carolyn Abbate to ascertain ways in which music can function as a language to convey a message, or series of messages that are open for interpretation. By using these findings and looking at “Mahler: A musical physiognomy” by Theodor Adorno I can study Mahler’s ninth symphony from a semantic perspective. The ninth symphony, often called the farewell symphony, was written at the end of Mahler’s incredibly eventful life. Some claim it to be a farewell to the symphony, others a farewell to life. Either way I hope to be able to better understand the moods and thematic development of the piece and the images it conveys. The enormity of the emotional content coupled with the sheer scale of the work makes it impossible to analyse, using traditional methods, no matter how detailed, and find meaning in every nuance of the piece. A degree of speculation when adopting this approach is inevitable. However one can go as deep into the music as they dare so long as the ideas have their foundation in solid theories. This is why, before looking at the ninth symphony in detail, several theories advocated by Barthes, Abbate and Adorno to name but a few must be carefully considered.

Chapter 1 – Image, Music, Text

The photographic paradox

In Image, music, text Barthes investigates photographic image and the meaning it conveys. ‘What is the content of the photographic message? What does the photograph transmit? By definition, the scene itself, the literal reality.’[9] Photographic message is a message without a code. This is in contrast to literature where one has to have prior knowledge (or literacy) in order to interpret the text beyond its visual effect. Messages conveyed by images transcend language barriers and can be interpreted by different nationalities and cultures. The disadvantage of this communication is that it is less specific than text and can be interpreted in a number of different ways often influenced by the culture or society in which it is received. When a scene is captured on film there is a certain reduction of image but there is at no point a transformation. ‘In order to move from the reality to its photograph it is in no way necessary to divide up this reality into units and to constitute these units as signs.’[10] This is what language must do in order to be understood. It relies on a set of codes or rules. If one were to describe the scene in the photograph then one would be forced to use language as a vehicle for the meaning. The text itself does not carry the meaning but in order for the photographic meaning to be communicated language is essential. There is a vital difference between the meaning that image conveys and the message that is used to articulate it. In essence a message is something that must be explored in order to understand the meaning. Barthes argues that each of these images conveys a supplementary message, in addition to the ‘analogical content itself’.[11] The signifier of this message is the ‘treatment of the image . . . and whose siginified, whether aesthetic or ideological, refers to a certain ‘culture’ of the society receiving the message’.[12]This supplementary message behaves differently to the literal reality of the scene. The literal reality is unlikely to change from culture to culture. A chair, for example, is a form which is understood as an identity. Although the message may change in a linguistic sense the meaning is always going to be that of a chair. What might change from culture to culture however, is any supplementary meaning the chair might convey. The quality of the chair might convey a supplementary meaning regarding class or functionality. One might be able to identify a style or period. These ideas may very well be significant to one culture not in another. In short each image conveys two messages; the denoted message (which is the scene itself and the objects in it) and a connoted message (the way in which the society communicates what it thinks of it.) One example of denoted and connoted messages is a rose. The denoted message is simply that of a flower. The connoted message on the other hand is more culturally informed. The connoted message conveyed by the image of a rose may be a number of things; love, romance, optimism, blood, or even tudorism .[13]  Of course this image may be interpreted in different ways by different cultures. The idea of a rose signifying the Tudor age is something that contains a large number of historical connotations in Britain but may escape other cultures.

Is music able to have denoted and connoted  messages?  Say for example the denoted message is the notes themselves and the sounds one hears. The connoted message might take into account tonality, texture, style or period. ‘The code of the connoted system is very likely constituted either by a universal symbolic order or by a period rhetoric, in short by a stock of stereotypes (schemes, colours, graphisms, gestures, expressions, arrangements of elements).’[14] What if one were to examine this connoted message further? ‘How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?’[15]

The third meaning

‘Can analogical representation produce true systems of signs and not merely simple agglutinations of symbols?’[16] In other words is image a rudimentary system compared to language when it comes to the expression of messages? On the other hand does image have an ineffable richness that cannot be exhausted? Barthes names three messages that images convey. These are the linguistic message, the denoted image and the third ‘symbolic’ message. The linguistic message is the most basic level. This refers to the content of the scene. The linguistic message can still be denotational and connotational and can function to imply the chain of signifieds. Thus although it is the most basic of the three messages it is still intrinsically linked to the further two messages. Musically this message is what is left once one mentally removes the cultural and stylistic significance of the sound. It functions as the sign which implicates the connotated signifieds. The denoted image conveys the message put forward by the linguistic message. This is what one finds once the cultural and stylistic significance has been returned. It is what has been implied by the linguistic message. The denoted image acts as a mediator of sorts; it completes the image implied by the linguistic message but  is added to by a third, symbolic message.  By satisfying the linguistic message’s implications it allows one to interpret the third ‘symbolic’ message. Why has the composer chosen a certain tonality? What is the significance of the chosen style? How might this relate to a contextual perspective of the work? This message is culturally defined and is almost completely connotational which presents a problem. ‘Another difficulty in analysing connotation is that there is no particular analytical language corresponding to the particularities of its signified – how are the signifieds of connotation to be named?.’[17] How is one supposed to precisely describe a message that has no precise definition? This is a problem that Adorno addresses when considering the relationship between language and music. ‘Music points to true language in the sense that content is apparent in it, but it does so at the cost of unambiguous meaning, which has migrated to the languages of intentionality. And as though music, that most eloquent of all languages, needed consoling for the curse of ambiguity –its mythic aspect, intentions are poured into it. ‘Look how it constantly indicates what it means and determines it.’ But its intentions also remain hidden.’[18] This is not only a problem for music, but also a problem for those writing about music. When discussing content without unambiguous meaning it is inevitable that one’s writing will become precisely that; ambiguous. Interpretation of such subjects or messages is always going to contain a degree of subjectivity. What one must safeguard against is inventing meaning for the sake of conclusion. According to Barthes there are two types of meaning found within the third meaning. These are the obvious meaning and the obtuse meaning. ‘The symbolic meaning (....) forces itself upon me by a double determination: it is intentional (it is what the author wanted to say) and it is taken from a kind of common, general lexicon of symbols; it is a meaning which seeks me out . . . I propose to call this complete sign the obvious meaning. Obvius means which comes ahead and this is exactly the case with this meaning, which comes to seek me out.’[19]  This is similar to the denoted image. Musically it is the interpretation of basic meaning; happy/ sad, fast/slow, serious/ jovial according to western rules of diatonic harmony. This might not be so easily identifiable in a culture where such a system isn’t used.

 ‘As for the other meaning, the third, the one ‘too many’, the supplement that my intellection cannot succeed in absorbing, at once persistent and fleeting, smooth and elusive, I propose to call it the obtuse meaning. ‘An obtuse angle is greater than a right angle: an obtuse angle of 100˚, says the dictionary; the third meaning also seems to me greater than the pure, upright, secant, legal perpendicular of the narrative, it seems to open the field of meaning totally, that is infinitely.’[20]

In music there is a horizontal flow of sounds but simultaneously there is a deep and meaningful vertical axis. The meaning behind the music. There, fairly conclusively one finds the answer to the debate over language and image. Image opens up infinite levels of meaning. The same can be applied to music as it too relies on a certain imagery to convey its message. What one has to make sure of, however, is that infinity itself is always related to the original source.

Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives

“Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances. Narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula), stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation . . . .”[21]

Although it is probably safe to assume that the list Barthes includes in that statement is not exhaustive it is nonetheless interesting to note that music has been omitted. One of the arguments against music being narrative is fuelled by the fundamental difference between music and literature or written text.[22] Written text can be explicit with its meaning as it uses a standardised set of codes. As discussed above, image, or more specifically music is a ‘message without a code.’[23] This argument appears to contradict what Barthes is claiming. If music cannot be narrative because of its differences from literature or written text then surely stained glass windows (assuming they are not accompanied by text) should also be excluded from this group? Although the story of Saint Ursula is a well known one Carpaccio’s painting contains no text. Notwithstanding Barthes is claiming that it has a narrative function. Can one see the inclusion of stained glass windows as a reason to place music in this list of narrative carrying entities? Before one can reach a decision on music’s ability to narrate one must first ascertain what narrative is, how it can be identified, and ways in which it can be analysed. 

With so many narratives existing it is difficult for one to define a universal structure. The most obvious place to look for such a structure is within the narratives themselves. Once again, however the sheer volume presents problems. Therefore, Barthes argues, narratives should be categorized. Such categories might include genre, period or society. ‘Thus in order to describe and classify the infinite number of narratives, a ‘theory’ (in this pragmatic sense) is needed and the immediate task is that of finding it, of starting to define it.’[24]

“Linguistics stop at the sentence . . . And yet it is evident that discourse itself (as a set of sentences) is organised and that, through this organisation, it can be seen as the message of another language, one operating at a higher level than the language of linguistics. Discourse has its units, its rules, its ‘grammar’; beyond the sentence, and though consisting solely of sentences, it must naturally form the object of a second linguistics.”[25]

This presents certain difficulties when considering narrative. It is not enough to follow the discourse on a linguistic level, to understand the narrative message one must see above and beyond this. This begins to open up horizontal and vertical meaning within discourse. The same can be applied to music. In order to grasp musical meaning it is not sufficient to follow the horizontal flow of the music. One must look much deeper.   ‘If the sentence, being an order and not a series, cannot be reduced to the sum of the words which compose it and constitutes thereby a specific unit, a piece of discourse, on the contrary, is no more than the succession of the sentences composing it.’[26] It seems, therefore, if one is to understand and analyse narrative one must be aware of not only the individual segments that compose it but also the narrative’s holistic span.

Levels of meaning

‘From the outset linguistics furnishes the structural analysis of narrative with its organisation.’[27] This allows us to show how narrative is not a simply sum of propositions and to classify the enormous mass of elements that make up a narrative (the level of description). ‘A sentence can be described on several levels (phonetic, phonological, grammatical, contextual) and these levels are in a hierarchical relationship with one another, for, while all have their own units and correlations . .  no level on its own can produce meaning.’[28] There are two levels of meaning describes by Benveniste which have different types of relationships with one another. The first are called distributional where the relationships exist on the same level. The second, known as integrational meaning, must be grasped from one level to the next. One alone cannot account for meaning so therefore the several levels of description must be distinguished and placed in an integrational relationship. ‘To understand narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of a story, it is also to recognise its construction in ‘storeys’, to project the horizontal concatenations of the narrative ‘thread’ on to an implicitly vertical axis.’[29] From a literal perspective, therefore, it would seem that understanding narrative is not just to move from one word to the next to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next. The same stands for music. Moving from one note to the next is unlikely to furnish the listener with an understanding of the music’s meaning; a grasp of the ‘implicitly vertical axis’ is necessary.

The determination of units

‘Since the Russian Formalists, a unit has been taken as any segment of the story which can be seen as the term of a correlation. The essence of a function is, so to speak, the seed that it sows in the narrative, planting an element that will come to fruition later – either on the same level or elsewhere, on another level.’[30]

Barthes claims that narratives are made up of functions as everything within a narrative signifies. Even if a detail seems to be tiny and insignificant it nonetheless is attributed a meaning; that of absurdity or uselessness. ‘Everything has meaning. Or nothing has.’[31] There are two major classes of functions. These are functions and indicies. Functions are distribution and thus find meaning at the level of the action, at the surface of the discourse. Indicies are integrational so find meaning on higher or deeper levels. It is the indicies that find semantic meaning as they refer to a signified and not an action. In keeping with Barthes’ theory both of these classes of function  must be present for one cannot have meaning without the other. Barthes claims that there are less important versions of these classes cardinal functions (smaller functions) and Catalysers (smaller indicies). These fill in the gaps between the narrative hinge points or mileposts.

It would seem then that what Barthes is saying is that narrative is a string of signifiers which point not only to one another in a horizontal sense, but also to their signifieds which reside elsewhere, on different levels. Only by grasping the narrative on both of these axis will one find meaning, as the signifiers cannot function without their respective signifieds. Considering all of this information it seems to be that music sits in a unique position between the meaning found in image and narrative. When looking specifically at narrative the theory can be mapped onto music in terms of distributional and integrational functions. Musical ideas could be described as distributional and operate as functions, as very often musical material points to similar or developed thematic material later on, at the same level. Similarly music can most definitely be integrational and operate as an indicie, as music has a connotational  value that can be grasped on a higher, culturally informed level.  It is also possible to identify a musical discourse. It is not too difficult to see the similarities between the flow of musical sounds and the horizontal construction of a linguistic discourse using sentences. What music fails to do however, is guide the listener through a story. One stumbles across the same problem time and time again. ‘Look how it constantly indicates what it means and determines it.’ But its intentions also remain hidden.’[32] Music is not able to guide every listener through the exact same ‘story’ as it does not have a set of predetermined codes with which to do so. It can only hint at what it might be saying. I believe that music can therefore have narrative elements but cannot sustain its own narrative as it does not have a linguistic function. ‘To understand narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of a story, it is also to recognise its construction in ‘storeys’, to project the horizontal concatenations of the narrative ‘thread’ on to an implicitly vertical axis.’[33] An exact reversal of this statement epitomises why music fails to be narrative. It has an implicitly vertical axis and can be analysed using several levels of meaning. The horizontal discourse alone though cannot carry meaning or sustain a narrative.  To understand narrative is not merely to recognise its construction in ‘storeys’ it is also to follow the unfolding of a story. This is something that music simply cannot do.