Steve Schwartz:

>My suspicion is that the definition of musical meaning
>is so vague or so elusive that we can't talk about its grammar.  We can
>certainly talk about constituents of music and their interrelation, but,
>especially since 1912 and since the growth of ethnomusicology, one finds
>so many different kinds of music, many of them proceeding from different
>assumptions, that the systems become too different to compare fruitfully.
>I essentially agree with Jim Tobin, that the language metaphor is exactly
>that.  It allows us to talk in certain convenient ways about a piece of
>music without having to engage in technical esoterica.

This is an important point.  This discussion reminds me of the discussion
in physics concerning a Theory of Everything.  Such a theory does not
yet exist in physics, and not everybody agrees that its achievement is a
sensible goal.  Music has many meanings and many possible origins.  It is
possible to speculate (nothing more) that music has its roots in speech,
and hence in language, but as it evolved it did not keep the grammar.
Our brains presumably did not evolve to make music, tell stories, paint
paintings, or do mathematics, but these things get done, fulfilling some
deep human need.

Bernard Chasan