Abstract:Music is commonly seen as a means of communication among people, a kind of literature without the limitations of language, a language without phonemes. People refer to music as a language of the hear...Music is commonly seen as a means of communication among people, a kind of literature without the limitations of language, a language without phonemes. People refer to music as a language of the heart or as a universal These expressions indicate that people assume that music contains certain universal values, certain feelings perhaps, which are perceived equally by all listeners. On the basis of this assumption (which, we shall see, is erroneous), music has been construed as a universal means of communication beyond language, an Esperanto of the soul. Equally questionable is the frequently repeated notion that music is derived from language. We will never know whether humanity first learned to speak or to sing, and we can only draw conclusions from ontogenetic study of this problem. The babbling of infants is neither -speech nor music but the point of departure for both. But as soon as a child begins to change from this babbling to articulated speech, it also begins learning to sing and to reproduce rhythmic sounds. Surely speech and music are related in their structure, but in function they are completely different modes of expression. They seem to appear simultaneously in the individual's development as soon as the vocal organs are able to produce them. This is true in spite of the fact that the ability to make speech-sounds is irrelevant to the ability to sing, just as the ability to sustain a tone at a given single pitch level is irrelevant to speaking ability. The purpose of speech is the trans mission of concrete thoughts; that of singing, the realization of an artistic impulse. Speech is a function of the desire to communicate; singing, of the expression of emotion. Singing is conceivable even without the intention of communication; one can sing with meaningless syllables, and one can appreciate song without understanding the words.Read More
Publication Year: 1961
Publication Date: 1961-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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