Satoshi Akima comments on my last message:

>>However, I think that the problem here lies in the definition
>>of language.
>
>Again Pablo is absolutely right.  However it should be borne in mind that
>the question as to how to define language is every bit as vexed as that
>of how to define music.  What I say may conflict with certain linguistic
>paradigms such as structuralism.  However structuralism is not per se
>synonymous with linguistics any more than Schenkerian analysis is
>synonymous with music theory.

Far from me is the smallest suspect that Schenkerian analysis can be the
only possible musical theory (vade retro!) or that the structural paradigm
may be the panacea of linguistics.  The problem here is "what for?".  The
combination of structural linguistics and Schenkerian analysis have proved
to be (sometimes) a valuable tool for technical musical teaching.  Both
of them focuses manly in syntactical processes, and then, they can teach
you some aspects of basic musical architecture.  But if you ask to that
combination for a highest revelation about what language or music is, or
about what the musical or linguistic meaning consists of, you will get
systematically disappointed, simply because those theories were not
designed for that purpose.  That's what I meant originally in my response
to Stirling's message ("Why Classical..." 01/06/01).  A definition of
music or a definition of language are both linguistic facts.  That implies
a "tragic" determination, since language is a place of alienation:  the
place of the "subject".  We are determined by our own impossibility:
we are "subjects of language" as much as "subjects to language".  Then,
a definition only can show you some partial aspects of that what is to
be defined.  But our desire will always tend to "the lacking part".  A
definition is in itself a show of our alienation in language.  Here's why
the question about "what music is?" is boring, senseless or even annoying
to everybody in certain moments of the day or in certain moments of our
lives.

>Pablo also summarizes my approach to question of what language is.
>
>>...language is simply a "way of communication between human beings".

Well, I didn't want to summarize your approach to the question with
that general and simplistic assertion.  It's just a broad definition of
language.  In fact, a better one may be "any way of social interchange
between live beings".  I simply added this view to that of language
containing necessarily a set of codified elements, a syntax and a set of
semantic attributions, ergo, a grammar, and ergo, a rhetoric.  Both views
are not necessarily antithetical.  Music, according to this second view,
has a "lacking element".  That lacking element is (according to some
theorists) what stops us to say that music is properly a "language".
According to some other theorists, it's precisely in the lack of that
element where the communicative efficacy of music lies.

>Although not strictly incorrect, 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".

Absolutely agree.  Music seems to go beyond the "alienation in language":
she seems to say us something "deeper" than speech language can express,
but we don't know exactly what is it...  so does it really goes beyond
language or it stops "from this side of the line"?.  This was viewed as a
defect by XVIII th century aesthetics, in which poetry was the highest art
and the supreme way of communication between human souls.  The same fact
was viewed later as a main virtue by romantic aesthetics.  An interesting
question is why this "going beyond language" is essential to our "forum
of shared meaning"?.  I think that it's essential precisely because music
shows us patently (and even physically!!!..) our alienation in language:
we try to "explain" it and we can't stop of doing that, always in different
ways.  We try even to transform music into language by analogies,
comparisons.  Music and speech language, so, defines one to each other,
almost in a dialectical way.  There's always a rest derived from those
operations:  something that we can't express wholly and to which all our
anxiety is directed.  This can be felt as a failure...  or as a renewal of
our desire of theorizing.  This is what is, properly, human:  to "fail" and
try again.  That's what we all do in a forum....

>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!

Agree.  I've never pointed my gun against that notion, as you can see in
the last paragraph.  Concerning the "useful lie", I would say that it's
rather a "useful omission".  It doesn't necessarily stops musical theory
from "sailing off the edge of the world" (I doubt that there is anything
that can stops it).  It's simply a matter of awareness:  when I want some
deep insight in what music is and means, I don't read books whose humble
purpose was to teach how to resolve a little sonata-form scheme or a poor
inverted canon.  When I want to sail I pick a nice clipper, not a boat in
a bottle...

Pablo Massa
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