It seems a common thread in discussions about music to talk about it having it's own language. In keeping with the themes of John Cage, I think it is appropriate to say that music is not actually a language, simply because language is too restrictive a term. While languages can change and evolve, there is not much experimentation that a person can do with language. There are set grammatical rules that we follow, and words are understood in generally one or two definitions.
Music is greater than that, and so I think it is safe to say that it actually transcends language.There are patterns in music that people can copy in order to get something nice, but there is so much more wiggle room with music in not only the way it is created and for what purpose, but also for the listener to interpret. Give two different people the same instrumental music without any kind of context and it is extremely likely that they will walk away from it with differing understandings of what that composer or musician was trying to convey. Therefore, calling music a "language" is too tight a definition, and does not describe the sheer amount of possibility there is in the art.
While it is true that most of us adhere to a strict grammatical structure, there are some cases where we stray away from these set rules; we have things like TXT SPK (text speak) and L33T 5P34K (leet speak). It is very true that much like we have our set rules in grammar, music has it's rules in structure, but there are also cases where language or music don't follow these rules; Cage is like the aforementioned TXT or L33T (in that he doesn't adhere to the rules, I'm not trying to belittle his work), or if you want another example, his 4:33 is like when silence speaks louder than words.
ReplyDeleteText speech, to me, is more recognizing symbols as a sentence or expression than an extension of English. It could be called a new language, but one that only works if you can translate it into English. And L33T is just English with numbers, so I don't know if that qualifies as an argument
DeleteWhat about the words that Dr. Seuss made up in his books? Or the various names of creatures from sci-fi and fantasy? These are all made up words that, depending on their popularity, can integrate into the canon of language. Language expresses ideas through either sound or writing, and music does the same thing.
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