Abstract
The concept of sign (M. K. Cohen, P. Ricoeur, C. G. Jung, S. Langer, L. Wittgenstein; Boethius, St Augustine). The signs of the notes as a spatial form of music. Syntax, morphology and phonetics in language, including musical language. Interpretation as knowing the meaning from the sign (J. Grondin). The sign has meaning only to the extent that it can be understood (V. Daujotytė). The written signs as the potentiality, and the language and the expression as the actualisation. A text is a system of signs: the sign is something which exists not as an end in itself but as a reference to something other than itself. The result of perception of the intonational links in the structure of the text is expressive intonational activity.
Signs indicate what they represent,
but don’t cause it.
—Boethius (The Consolation of Philosophy, 156).
The realities signified are to be valued more highly than their signs. For what exists for the sake of something else must be of less value than that for which it exists. [...] The knowledge [which results from] a sign should be regarded more highly than the sign.
—St Augustine (‘The Teacher’, tr. Robert P. Russel, in Saint Augustine, The Teacher. The Free Choice of the Will. The Grace and Free Will, vol. 59 of The Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 38–39).
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Signs are one of the most fundamental forms of objectifying an idea. Signs are assigned the role of bearer of meaning—connecting the signifying with the signified—that is, the sign with the thing signified by it, and requires understanding. The art of explanation (interpretation) is in a broad sense a set of certain rules which one needs to know, when one desires to discern the meaning in any system (not only in a linguistic system, but also in one of musical signs) and to convey it through appropriate means of expression.
The signs of the notes are a spatial form of music. Based on this (although music is a temporal art), certain intonational links, that is, spaces and structural relations of tones are already visible. Through interpretation the visible scheme acquires movement—the sign figures become tones. Both verbal and musical language have their own syntax and morphology, in particular, phonetics. As the primary meaning of the words is revealed, their suitability for explaining the analogous phenomena in the music becomes acceptable. Syntax (from the Greek súntaxis, meaning composition, structure) is the structure of the sentences or the elements of sentences in any language (and therefore, also musical language). Morphology (from the Greek morphḗ, meaning form) is the science of forms and the system of phenomena signified by those forms (revealing its meaning in the process of intoning the music; form is process—Boris Asaf’ev). Phonetics (from the Greek phṓnēma, meaning sound) are the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of the sounds in any language.
A sign is not a specific linguistic thing. “Each thing in the world is a sign [a signum] or a character insofar it is a means whereby the reality of something else can be known. Interpretation in a broad sense thus denotes knowing the meaning from the sign.”Footnote 1 In music the sign of the note points to its own acoustic form. “Anything acquires meaning if it is connected with, or indicates, or refers to, something beyond itself, so that its full nature points to and is revealed in that connection.”Footnote 2 As far as its meaning is concerned, in terms of information and idea, the written sign, in interpretation, when it acquires a sound form, deviates more or less from its written parameters. The sign scheme is an intermediate link between the sound image and the sign. Its matter requires deciphering.
The sign has meaning only to the extent that it can be understood.Footnote 3
The scheme reflects only the relevant relationships, by itself it means nothing. The written script and the signs are the potentiality. The language and the expression are the actualisation. Many of the schemes cannot be deciphered, if the conditionalities of the system, which serve as its key, are unknown.
Hermeneutic universality goes hand in hand with semiotics. It is thus worth briefly acquainting ourselves with some of its principles which can be applied equally to music. Semiotics is a science which studies signs and their systems. Human culture is conditioned by signs: it is fixed by signs and requires cultural sensitivity to understand and transform them. Cultural signs are traditionally manifested through three main aspects. Syntactic—by the mutual links of the signs,Footnote 4 semantic—by explanation and interpretation of the signs, and pragmatic—in the act of designating, or of understanding the signs, or in our case, the interpretive act. The traditional semiotic understanding of a sign presupposes the unity, or principle of substitution, of two sides—the signifying and the signified. Carl Gustav Jung stated that “the sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.”Footnote 5 Something in place of something. The graphic sign is experienced sensually—by seeing it and transforming it into sound, but this is not yet an act with meaningful intent. The conversion of the sign into sound should be determined by the whole as it has already been perceived or by the meaning of the interpreted work.
“Signs themselves may be very complicated and form intricate chains; many signs are nameless, and linked into continuous situations, to which we react not with a single deed, but with a steady, intelligent behaviour.”Footnote 6 The graphic sign (the sign of the notes) is a potential indicator of what must be actualised in the process of interpretation—in the process of conversion into sound.
By nominally fixing only the pitch and duration, the sign indicates the position of the sound in musical space and time. But already the loudness requires additional (graphic or verbal) instructions to be given in respect of the note—in a way they are striving—not to make up for, no!—but to apologize for the inevitable losses. A musical script, especially a modern one, tries to bring the musician’s eye closer to their ear, but this often has the opposite effect—the ear gradually turns into an eye and has to discern an abstract figurative depiction of the signs of the notes in the movements of the sonic mass. However, be that as it may, a shortening of the distance separating the sounds and the notes can only be registered in written form with great difficulty.Footnote 7
That is why satisfaction with only “visible” musical information is so pervasive.
In line with semiotic vocabulary, we use the terms denotation and concept to identify this dialectical link between the two planes. In semiotics, denotation means phenomena, qualities of process and relationships which are signified by the sign. The concept (from the Latin conceptus, meaning apprehended or perceived) is the information provided by the sign. “If we have a significant sign it must stand in a particular internal relation to a structure. Sign and relation determine unambiguously the logical form of the thing signified.”Footnote 8 We commonly identify an artistic-musical concept as what we usually call a musical idea, or artistic-musical image. The holistic core of a musical concept lies in the intonation, so that it should also be considered as a “unit” of musical thinking. It is more than a complex of sounds. It is the whole that bears the weight of the thought and is meaningful from the perspective of artistic content. Our ability to use signs, and to endow our expressions with the information gained through them, is conceptual, but our perception (conceptuality) can be very diverse: primitive and enhanced, everyday (what I perceive is enough), scientific, artistic. These are all creative shades of expression and perception.
[…] Who could search
In ignorance for anything, or who
Could look for that which was unknown to him,
And where could he discover it? When found
Could ignorance discern the hidden form?Footnote 9
Musical signs can direct us not only to formal acts, to knowing how to use the signs only by turning them into sound, but also to the interpretive (recreative) process, by finding the means of expression to realise the intonational potentiality of the signs in the text. “A phoneme or grapheme is necessarily always other, to a certain extent, each time that it is presented in a procedure or a perception, but it can function as a sign and as language in general only if a formal identity allows it to be reissued and to be recognized.”Footnote 10 It is the intonational act that causes those deviations from the “letter,” but not from the meaning, which is presented differently each time. The sign is an associatively constructive musical technique, which points to the direction (in the role of an indicator) for the search for meaning. Paul Ricoeur calls a symbol “any structure of signification in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and which can be apprehended only through the first. This circumscription of expressions with a double meaning properly constitutes the hermeneutical field. […] Symbol and interpretation thus become correlative concepts; there is interpretation wherever there is multiple meaning, and it is in interpretation that the plurality of meanings is made manifest.”Footnote 11
A text is not a piece of paper covered with printing ink but a system of signs, a unique sphere, where the ontological character of the element (sign) can be defined as follows: the sign is something which exists not as an end in itself but as a reference to something other than itself. The meaning of the text, and its subtext, is the perception of the intonational links in its structures. The result is expressive intonational activity.
Notes
- 1.
Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, tr. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 56.
- 2.
Morris K. Cohen, A Preface to Logic (New York: Henry Holt, 1944), 47.
- 3.
Viktorija Daujotytė, Laisvojo mąstymo properšos [Chinks of Free Thinking] (Vilnius: Alma littera, 2017), 87.
- 4.
“Syntax in contemporary music is not eliminated, but it often manifests itself in a formal, non-intonational way. Intonation in it is rather depicted, it acts as something secondary, and ceases directly to affect the hearing and emotion” (Nezaykinskiy, Звуковой мир музыки [The Sound World of Music], 165).
- 5.
Carl G. Jung, ‘Approaching the Unconscious’, in Carl G. Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols (New York: Anchor Press, 1988), 55.
- 6.
Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 227.
- 7.
Nezaykinskiy, Звуковой мир музыки [The Sound World of Music], 25.
- 8.
Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 42–43.
- 9.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 154.
- 10.
Jacques Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology, tr. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011), 43.
- 11.
Ricoeur, Existence and Hermeneutics, 98.
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Rimas, J., Rimas Jr, J. (2024). Sign and Expression (the Concept of the Musical Sign and Its Function). In: Etudes on the Philosophy of Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63965-4_13
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