Form and order – Dimensions in musical meaning making

Abstract

ABSTRACT - This paper concerns musical meaning making in relation to semiotic theory and other forms of meaning making. This much-studied topic belongs to those fundamental issues that need constant rethinking. The paper discusses what the author considers oversimplified notions salient in many studies comparing aspects of music to language and their respective capacity to store and convey meaning, intentionally or otherwise. A critical discussion of meaning making in language provides a ground for understanding some of the dimensions and levels active in musical meaning making. Meaning, is never static, but in constant flux and subject to negotiation, between people and within people. This condition is shared across all media. At a basic level meaning is made by establishing relations between objects to create patterns that constitute form. Repercussions of this basic condition are discussed on semantic, syntactic and textual levels, but as it happens, never resolved at any of them. For it is not the aim in this text to provide answers but rather to explore different facets of the problem and perhaps challenge some of the essentialist notions about music, language and meaning still frequent in scholarly discourse. Keywords: musical meaning making, semiotics, concept development process, syntax, narrative