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University Press Scholarship Online

You are looking at 1-3 of 3 items for: keywords : semiological

Music as Discourse : Semiotic Adventures in Romantic MusicKofi Agawu

Published in print: 2008 Published Online:October 2011ISBN: 9780195370249 eISBN: 9780199852161Item type: book

Publisher: Oxford University PressDOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195370249.001.0001

The question of whether music has meaning has been the subjectof sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academicinquiry. Is music a language? Does it communicate specific ideasand emotions? What does music mean, and how does this meaningmanifest itself? Working at the nexus of musicology, ethnomusicology,and music philosophy and aesthetics, the book presents a syntheticand innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly forthe thinking of music as a discourse in itselfcomposed not only ofsequences of gestures, phrases, or progressions, but rather also ofthe very philosophical and linguistic props that enable the analyticalformulations made about music as an object of study. The bookprovides demonstrations of the pertinence of a semiological approach tounderstanding the fully-freighted language of Romantic music, stressesthe importance of a generative approach to tonal understanding, andprovides further insight into the analogy between music and language.

Musical Meaning in a Broader PerspectiveStephen Davies

in Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music

Published in print: 2011 Published Online:January 2012ISBN: 9780199608775 eISBN: 9780191729669Item type: chapter

Publisher: Oxford University PressDOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608775.003.0007

We discuss several notions of musical meaning that do not accordwith linguistic or semiological frameworks. Whereas accounts tryingto reduce formal meaning to linguistic or semiological meaning areflawed, musical structures can be said to have meaning in that theyare amenable to explanations in terms of reasons similar to those thatjustify human actions. An even more fundamental kind of meaning in

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music is experiential formal meaning. This relates to the experientialpotential the listener is able to realize when she responds to the musicwith understanding. Music also has subjective significance in humanlife. Meaning-for-the-subject deals with the idiosyncrasies of musicalexperience, while meaning-for-us concerns the meaning music has for allhuman beings, rather than solely for individuals.

Hjelmslev's SaussureRoy Harris

in Saussure and his Interpreters

Published in print: 2001 Published Online:March 2012ISBN: 9780748613083 eISBN: 9780748652334Item type: chapter

Publisher: Edinburgh University PressDOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748613083.003.0005

This chapter analyses Louis Hjelmslev's interpretation of Ferdinand deSaussure's distinction between lange and parole. Hjelmslev believed thatthis distinction represented Saussure's teaching ramene son essenceabsolue and that Saussure's great achievement was the discoveryor rediscovery of la lange, which had been neglected by linguisticspreoccupied with la parole. The chapter describes Hjelmslev's approachin studying and documenting les langues, and his abstract analysis ofsemiological relations.