I like music. I play it. I write it. I listen to it. I dance (horrifically) to it. And what’s more is, it’s not just a physical-ethereal backdrop to my day. I think music actually means something. Certainly “to me” – but I think to others as well. Meaning I can (try to) explain. Meaning that can stay the same through time. That’s right. I think propositions exist in combinations and sums and products of sounds. And not just the verbal kind. The musical kind. (I picked up some great ideas about this from Mars Hill Audio Journal Vol. 88.)
I’m not sure whether musical meaning can be as obvious or detailed or precise as verbal or written meaning. But musical sound seems to be on par with visual signs/signifiers, and I think offers capacity for more complexity of meaning than smell or touch. (Not too restrict this little aside to just 5 senses…)
It’s conveying this meaning that really interests me. I don’t think it’s a problem to state that I can understand the meanings that I ascribe to music that I write, or that I can associate or force or… ah, what’s the word. impose? (that’ll do for now) …particular meanings onto a song or chord or tempo. That’s the subjective issue. The problem here is whether a specific meaningful content of some piece of music can maintain its meaning regardless of who is listening/understanding.
For example, subjectively, whenever I hear Face to Face’s Ignorance is Bliss, i think of the beautiful winter in San Diego – low sun, stiff wind, victory at sea, me surfing in it. I don’t expect anyone to think of that or find that meaning in those songs.
But arguably more objectively, when anyone hears a minor chord, you’ve got sentiments of melancholy or sadness, or dark overtones. Maybe that’s the Western tradition, but I’ve never asked anyone from a different musical tradition what they thought of C#m. They might cry when they hear it too.
Going past a simple emotion attached to a chord, I’m suggesting that full-blown narratives and deep content can be indicated in instrumental, musical song. Lyrics or not.
(At this point, I could go two ways: A. Start talking about lyrics. B. Start talking about lyrics’ connection to music. C. Continue with the thought that music, all by its lonesome, contains objectively meaningful narrative. It’s only fair to give some time to C. It’s the hardest to accept. And so I’ll take a less conventional approach, and my final three sections will go C – B – A.
C. Objective musical meaning
First, when writers write a song, they have a purpose in mind, just like any author. The notes and chords are the phonemes/letters and morphemes/words. And the song takes shape like any sentence, spoken or written. A composer might purposefully not have a narrative in mind, just a feeling – that’s still meaning. And even if the composer purposefully doesn’t have even a feeling – they want you to fill it in, well, she still means something. Namely, “that we fill in the meaning.”
But this isn’t totally satisfying to me. I want to know how a song without words can depict an objectively meaningful narrative to more than one listener besides himself. One of my favorite bands, Thrice, claims to have done such a thing. Their most recent record, the Alchemy Index, has a song called “Night Diving.” Entirely instrumental. Supposedly narrative (about a dude who goes diving at night). And I hear it. I hear the structure. I hear the drama. But I have to be honest. I don’t know the story. I wish I could, cuz i love this band. And I’ve tried to interpret and reason it out, based on which sounds they use where and how things build and ebb and flow. There’s something there, but it’s not clear. So much for objective right? Well, I don’t know.
They clearly enough indicate that there’s a story. And I even have the sentiment of diving, being submerged in water. But what happens to this dude that merits a 5 minute instrumental song about him? Surely something good. And I long to know.
This leads me to this: objectively meaningful music might not be communicable, but incommunicability is no defeater for objectivity.
This is strange though. And brings me back to comparison of music to words. Maybe it is simply less articulate, and hence objective meanings are not easily (there might even be an issue with possibility period) communicated. But I’m confident that given an accompanying linguistic description of the musical narrative, I’d be able to follow, and possibly would have had the actual meaning as a line item in my very long list of possible meanings…
There’s a lot more to think about with this, but I’ve got a nice segue into section B here.
B. Connecting music to lyric.
Music and lyrics. Not just a Hugh Grant movie. Quite possibly one of the most dynamic duos in life. To me it’s just intuitive that lyrics and music would compliment each other. What better way to communicate the incommunicable? There is the definition and clarity of words that lyrics provide music. And there is the synchronic attribute of a moment of music provided to necessarily diachronic lyrics (an issue of it’s own, which I’ll try to remember linking here when I finish that piece).
Either way, I’m arguing that this is the most powerful way to know, understand and communicate meaning in music. I’ll say that spoken words are not the same as sung words. (Possibly another can of worms, but I think obvious for now.)
And I’ll actually leave it at that for the time being, as this will be the subject of many future posts. I think this combo is most important, the most practical for testing and evaluating, and consequently, the most controversial. I can’t wait.
A. Wurds
Wow. This is kind of a lackluster way of getting to your final point. Lyrics are words, so without the music – I mean any music at all, you’re really just back with language, and unless you’re a college sophomore in a Derrida class, you shouldn’t argue that language doesn’t have meaning. Not after what I’ve just taken pains to explain. Capice? (Sorry, not sure if this is how to spell ‘kapeesh’.)
D. Transparency about my intentions
Okay, I’m switching back to conventional alpha-outline notation in an effort to be truly transparent. The reason I’m most interested in this stuff is because in modern evangelical Christianity, music is important (this is not prescriptive, just descriptive of the current state of affairs). This worries me. Not that I don’t love music as a form of worshipping the God Who is there and has done great things. I like music, remember? I do a lot of it.
But it’s just what makes me love music so much that makes me worry about my community using it as the primary (regretfully, only?) form of worshipping God…
It’s powerful.
