Charles Dalmas wrote:

>I have had frequent debates on whether or not music is a language, and I
>have decided after very careful study that it is NOT a language.

Music may not be a language now, at least among most of us.  But that
doesn't mean it couldn't be.  Many spoken languages (Chinese and Vietnamese
come to mind) are tonal, i.e., the tone of a sound (high, low, rising,
falling, scooping, etc.) is as important to its meaning as its
vowel/consonant composition.

Admittedly, tone alone is not alone sufficient to convey meaning in those
languages, but I'm not sure a language based entirely upon tone sequences
which would represent all words could not be evolved.

The closest we have for that at present are Wagner's Leitmotiven which
convey ideas although no words need be sung to them, and often convey the
same idea or recollection, when they are sung to totally different texts.
Wagner himself, apparently never made a list of his Leitmotiven, let alone
assign names to them.  In some fundamental way, they constitute a simple
"language" on their own.

Walter Meyer