Filozofija i drustvo 2019 Volume 30, Issue 1, Pages: 83-98
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1901083P
Full text ( 307 KB)
In the defence of musical meaning
Popović Una (Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Novi Sad)
This paper is about the musical meaning and its relation to verbal meaning.
My aim is to show that musical meaning should be sharply differentiated from
the verbal one, that it should not be understood as a subspecies of verbal
meaning, or as a meaning of a verbal sort whatsoever. I will address this
issue starting with the sounds of music and language, and working my way up
from those: by comparing these sounds and the way they relate to their
meanings, I will show that musical sounds are strongly connected with
musical meanings, that they have token-like qualities. Resulting from this
is a suggestion to redefine the way we use the concepts of meaning and
articulation, so that they would allow for the concept of non-verbal,
musical meaning. Additionally, my suggestion is that musical meaning per se
should be differentiated from the non-musical meanings music can communicate
and convey - one does not exclude the other.
Keywords: musical meaning, verbal meaning, sound, type/token, articulation