Is music a language?

[Achinz]

New Scientist, 28 Feb 2004

MUSIC may be more like language than we realised, evoking memories of meaningful concepts, and not just emotional responses.

Stefan Koelsch's team at the Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, showed that excerpts of classical music can activate or "prime" memories of related words or concepts in just the same way
that sentences or word lists do. Brain responses to the music were indistinguishable from the responses to sentences, the team reports in Nature Neuroscience (DOI:10.1038/nn1197).

It is clear that music can encode some meaning by tapping into our emotions. We also learn some linguistic associations, to do with lyrics, titles or brands. But most linguists believe music itself has no semantic content. While Koelsch agrees that music cannot be used to organise a meeting, or explain a problem, he is convinced it has
more meaning that we realise.

"When we listen to music we don't really know how rich is the semantic information that music carries," says Koelsch. "The brain computations are just the same for musical and for linguistic information."

So are you with the linguists or Koelsch?

 

[Mrogreturns]

Do you have any information on how consitent were the meanings evoked across participants? In other words, did a given piece tend to elicit the same concepts in diferent people, or was there a lot of variation?

 

[KaNick]

Music is as much of an language as scents.

 

[Xen]

music can be used to communicate emotions, and feelings- perhaps even some simply actions, like fighting, or fleeing- personally, the most universal music to do it with is classicla music, as other genras get to complex, and sub-culture specific

 

[Bozo Erectus]

All art forms are languages.

 

[Scowler]

I believe "music" (however you choose to define it) may trigger certain basic physiological responses - for example, a "fast" piece might trigger a rise in heart rate, or an atonal piece may cause a sense of unease due to the inability of the brain to lock onto any obviously organisational elements - but as far as meaning goes everything is imposed by cultural context.

 

[Fanatica]

Music is Math and like Math it is a language.
(Potentially) Anything which can be "deliberately" conveyed with the intent of communication or transmission of data could at least loosely be considered as language. The effectiveness of the language would be dependent upon there being a receptor which is able to translate or interpret.

 

[Scowler]

Originally posted by Fanatica
Music is Math and like Math it is a language.
(Potentially) Anything which can be "deliberately" conveyed with the intent of communication or transmission of data could at least loosely be considered as language. The effectiveness of the language would be dependent upon there being a receptor which is able to translate or interpret.

But this is why Maths (as a language) is very different from either music or the everyday language we use to communicate.

Music is Maths, but only in the sense that mathematics defines the fundamental elements of music, e.g. the harmonic series, etc.

Maths is an entirely directly representational language, which is why you can't express sarcasm in mathematical terms (as far as I know!)

Our everyday written and (especially) spoken languages are almost entirely associative, which is why even deliberately imperfect language can convey particular ideas ("all your base are belong to us"...)

Music is a combination of association and the abstract - it can have no particular meaning while still retaining a logical syntax.

Rightly or (most likely) wrongly, this the impression I get.

 

[Fanatica]

Waves, patterns, encoding are elements of music and language. Association is relational to experience. We could have associations when we hear morse code, but that doesn't mean it's not fundamentally a language. A bird's song can be music to our ears, but they most likely know nothing of music.
It's all about communication.
I listen to the lovely beating of distant drums, unaware the enemy will soon devour me, for I fail to understand their language, distracted by the lovely associations of adolescent memories of girls dancing in hula skirts.

 

[Double Barrel]

I've always considered music a univeral language.

Simply meaning that a Japanese, American, German, Kenyan, etc., can all jam on a 12 bar blues even if they cannot communicate words with the same vocal language. Pretty cool idea, that music can transcend our nationalities, race, backgrounds, etc.

This concept is even truer with a tribal drum circle, in that a person doesn't really have to know music to shake a tamborine or tap two sticks together (only a sense of rythm is required!). This will be a major part of the Sonic Voodo live show, btw.

Rock on!

 

[Laughing Gull]

yep it sure is. maybe that's why they put music on the Voyager (or was it Pioneer?) probes that have left our Solar System.

 

[funxus]

Obviously it doesn't belong in this list:
Mandarin, English, Swedish...

But it probably belongs in a list similar to this:
Spoken language, body language, symbols, smells (for some animals)...

 

[Goober]

No, its annoying.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

"Language" is too limited of a term to describe it

 

[sourboy]

Anyone who soloes on a guitar can tell you to lay back, close your eyes, and listen....what comes next is a story, with the same emotion (if not more) than you could get from a movie or book or anything else.

I know when I play, if I am happy or positive then my soloes stay upbeat, cheery and melodic - like "hey let's dance and laugh." When I am down they seem to go from slow and sappy to fast and harsh as my thoughts go from "im so sad" to "why does this keep happening to me, arrgghh!" - and back.

This shows communication. Now how I relay that communication in a "language" sense would be to speak it, with another listening to it. Anyone who plays an instrument can tell you that it almost becomes part of you. It can take the place of your mouth, or vocal chords. Those who listen, do so in the same way. Instead of words, there are melodies, but they still carry meaning - like words do, so...

Is music a language? In a sense, yes. Can most people understand it? Yes. Do they? No.

 

[Achinz]

Originally posted by Aphex_Twin
"Language" is too limited of a term to describe it

Sure but in the context of the thread, the question is does music have a linguistic effect on the listener? That is, when you hear music do you hear "words" which convey some meaning you?

 

[Free Enterprise]

From the article:
MUSIC may be more like language than we realised, evoking memories of meaningful concepts, and not just emotional responses.

I think that music can cause or encourage one to think of certain concepts especially classical music. Often one associates certain types of music with a particular idea. Although even perhaps the intrepretaton of the same exact musical sound may vary from person to person.

Stefan Koelsch's team at the Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, showed that excerpts of classical music can activate or "prime" memories of related words or concepts in just the same way
that sentences or word lists do. Brain responses to the music were indistinguishable from the responses to sentences, the team reports in Nature Neuroscience (DOI:10.1038/nn1197).

Interesting and quite possibly true.

 

[Achinz]

Originally posted by Free Enterprise
I think that music can cause or encourage one to think of certain concepts especially classical music. Often one associates certain types of music with a particular idea.

Worth elaborating. Any examples come to mind?

Sometimes one speaks of "abstract" music and at others, "descriptive" music. Much of chamber music like string quartets fits into the former category although certain motifs have been interpreted as having descriptive content eg the "Lark" String quartet of Haydn. There's also the famous "fate" motif of four chords in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

The descriptive genre is well known eg the tone poems or pictures. Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is a noted example of painting in music.

"Concepts" seems to me quite acceptable in the current context although I'm still finding "words" somewhat less easy to pinpoint.

Although even perhaps the intrepretaton of the same exact musical sound may vary from person to person.[/B]

Again any examples come to mind?

 

[Mrogreturns]

Originally posted by Mrogreturns
Do you have any information on how consitent were the meanings evoked across participants? In other words, did a given piece tend to elicit the same concepts in diferent people, or was there a lot of variation?

Also- were the pieces written specifically for this study, or were they prexisting pieces that the participants may have heard before? I would also like to know what they did for there control comparisons. Without this sort of detail, we can't really make much sense of the story.

 

[Achinz]

@Mrogreturns
On "any information on how consitent were the meanings evoked across participants? In other words, did a given piece tend to elicit the same concepts in diferent people, or was there a lot of variation?" and "I would also like to know what they did for there control comparisons. Without this sort of detail, we can't really make much sense of the story."

we'll need to look up the original paper cited (which would not be easy to access I suspect).

Although on the first question, I was interested in what Free Enterprise has to say regarding his own experience.

[Also- were the pieces written specifically for this study, or were they prexisting pieces that the participants may have heard before? [/B]

Inferring from the report, I'd say it would be extant CM pieces. There is such a wide repertoire in CM that I guess it would not have been difficult to use unfamiliar music ascertained before the experiment.