Music is considered a form of speech because it conveys information to an attentive listener. It can improve emotional states and is subjective based on culture, quality, and personal emotional makeup. Music is linked to language through tonality and traditional music theory. Some researchers propose that tonal music is a tightly codified system of language and communication. Music can be thought of as an entity created in its own right, capable of conveying a unique implicit meaning for the listener and the performer.
The concept of music’s role as speech originally came from the knowledge that music stimulates the organs in the ear and, in this respect, fits the definition of speech or language because it conveys information to an attentive listener. The ability of music to improve emotional states such as serenity, regret or exuberance has led some researchers to title the musical discourse as the “music of emotions”. Music as speech is believed by most experts to be highly subjective and its interpretation can be altered by culture, quality and personal emotional makeup. For example, if a class of students listen to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, one may find it melancholy, one may be moved to tears of joy, and yet another may be benevolent. In fact, studies show that some people have a significant lack of musical listening skills, which, by all accounts, makes them as deaf to music as speech, as a blind person would be to the written word.
Another avenue to explore in the role of music as speech is to compare it with physical written language, particularly syntax. Music’s most obvious relationship to language comes from the systemic linking of meaningful sounds, much like phonemes in cultures around the world. Specific pitches are inherent in nearly all established culture, suggesting that tonality is the primitive link to music as a universal phenomenon using many of the same artistic interpretations and primordial human sounds. Traditional music theory is also taught with a rhetoric that undoubtedly resonates with the structure of language. Use terms like segment, phrase, and sentence when describing writing and learning to play music. Music notation is written and, in turn, read in much the same way an essay would be conveyed on paper as well.
Some musicologists, such as Deryck Cooke in England, propose that in addition to being a medium through which to experience and express emotional variance, tonal music is a tightly codified system of language and communication. He points out that the experience of music is not as subjective as most researchers believe. Cooke and other researchers, who advocate music as a discourse that can stand on its own as a complete system of communication, argue that each degree on a given scale signifies a certain nuance of an emotion and elicits a definite reaction from people of contrasting cultures. For example, in this proposed role of music, the researchers say that a minor-scale pitch increase can induce excited and aggressive personal statements. Another concept that is at the forefront of musicology is the definition of musical discourse as a language for which there are no known words; a type of collective poetry born from man’s ability to deeply excite.
The supervision and mentoring of student musicians has close ties to the role of music as discourse. Some professors argue that the function of musical language as an art form is to recount or recall an experience from the past or perhaps inspire creative endeavors in the future. In this sense, musical discourse can be thought of not only as music or language, but as an entity created in its own right, capable of conveying a unique implicit meaning for the listener and the performer.
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