Stirling Newberry, about Satoshi's and Pablo's commentaries on music as a
language:
>These two learned gentlemen have been arguing in circles - saying that
>whatever else, we can't think of music except as language, because we must
>think in language, and therefore if we think about music it must be as a
>language.
I>
>This is roughly like saying that because a scholar writes about a Russian
>novel in English, it is impossible to think about Russian in anything but
>English, and therefore Russian is English.
Well, in fact, I was saying precisely the opposite. Perhaps I wasn't
clear. Taking the terms of your own example, I was saying that "Russian
*is not* English". You can trace a structural parallel between speech
language and music in order to teach music to other people, or to develop
a system of historical analysis, but that parallel doesn't means in itself
an identity. All of this came from your rejecting of modern musical
linguistics, under the charge of being a mere "metaphore". I just said
that, historically, the relationship between music and language has been
often consciously --and even "instrumentally"-- metaphorical, and then,
your refutation was unnecessary. Satoshi goes beyond this: If I haven't
understood him bad, he demands of this relationship much more than a useful
metaphor:
>(...)what I in fact said was that language is "the forum of shared
>meaning". That forum is also that of Being itself. Language is the
>sine qua non of Human Being. To me Nietzsche was also right when he said,
>"without music life would be a mistake". Music to me is essential to that
>"forum of shared meaning".
>
>Music as a language then becomes something more of a virtual "a priori"
>necessary ground without which it is scarcely possible to even begin to
>think about music - and not just a "useful lie" that helps stop musical
>theory from sailing off the edge of the world!
I like this idea very much. However, it is less related to "music as a
language", than to "music and language", a more general issue. I don't
want to make tautologies or trace silly distinctions, but I think that this
case deserves an additional speculation. Culture looks at itself through
language. This implies that intellectuals from all ages needed (and still
needs) to trace a relationship between music and speech language OK?.
Well, musical linguistics (i.e. music taken *as* a strict language)
represents just a "positive" moment of this relationship. This paradigm is
denied at times, because we find that it's useful just for *some* limited
purposes, and not for a deeper insight on what music is or can be. We feel
a strong anguish in the fact that this paradigm can't provide us a new
aesthetic, a new mode of making music, or a new broad understanding of it.
Well, I would dare to say that the "forum of shared meaning" of which
Satoshi speaks us consists of both "positive" and "negative" moments as
these. "Music and language" becomes a topic of which, "music as a
language" is just a dialectical issue.
By the way, I'm not sure if this message has a single right assertion or if
it can provide anything useful to any reader of this list, but... damn,
how funny was to write it!!!
Pablo Massa
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