Steve Schwartz:

>I learned it [grammar] as a description of *how* the language means,
>as opposed to *what* it means.  My suspicion is that the definition
>of musical meaning is so vague or so elusive that we can't talk
>about its grammar.

I think reasonable to say that music has a syntax (i.e:  a particular
arrangement of culturally codified elements), but not semantics.  Meaning
in music is often "positional":  depends on where (or when) do I put some
previously known elements that don't have a meaning by themselves.  For
example:  an unusual cadence or a change in a formal scheme may be
"meaningful" due to the fact that they break our previous expectations
about the way in which some chords are resolved or the way in which a piece
is build or finished.  In every unusual cadence (whatever one may invent),
we don't know what the final chord means, but we know that "it shouldn't be
there", that it stops the "natural" tendency of the previous chord.  This
is, I assume, an example of the smallest and simplest particle of "meaning"
in music.  In order to provoke that, it's necessary a previous well known
matrix of arrangement of the elements:  only in that context it's possible
to talk about an unexpected arrangement.  So, like every cultural
production, our Western musical "grammar" (i.e "how music means") needs to
be analyzed diachronically (or historically), and this is the way in which
musical styles are studied.  Of course, all this tells us very little about
"how music means", but it can keep us entertained for a long time.

Pablo Massa
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