Main strategies for conceptualization of musical meaning

Makovetskaya Mariya Vladimirovna PhD in Philosophy Senior Educator, the department of Philosophy, Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology  190013, Russia, St. Petersburg, Moskovsky prospect, 24-26/49 mnemi@yandex.ru

Seliverstova Nina Andreevna PhD in Philosophy Docent, the department of Philosophy, Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology  190013, Russia, St. Petersburg, Moskovsky prospect, 24-26/49 nina-seliverst@yandex.ru

The semantic interpretation of musical art goes back centuries. Attempts to comprehend the essence of music accompany human thought throughout its history, having its specific feature as a starting point: music does not resort to direct reproduction of visible images, like plastic arts, does not use linguistic means to describe images, like verbal arts. The generally accepted definition of music as an art form that creates "generalized images of various internal human experiences and states of the external world through sounds" ^{[1, p. 166]} proceeds de facto from the recognition of the existence of musical meaning, without problematizing its very possibility.

How is it possible to convey generalized images by means of sounds that do not form a system of conditional language meanings? And if this semantic function is still inherent in musical art, then can there be a reasonable translation from musical to another type of signification (for example, verbal or visual). Or do the languages of art constitute independent semiotic systems that do not have adequate mutual translation? If so, how does the mastery of these languages combine in the integrity of the human ability to comprehend meaning?

The very term "musical meaning" involuntarily refers us to the semiotic way of reading it, however, it is necessary to understand that the problem of musical meaning is much broader than its presentation only within the framework of semiotic theory.

The way of understanding the problem of musical meaning begins with the search for the cause of musical influence. While the effect of musical influence on a person is undeniable, its causes and mechanism cannot be unambiguously explained. To this is added the question: how is musical influence and musical imagery related?

Musical sounds are sounds ordered by pitch, strength and duration of sound. But in order for us to talk about the presence of musical influence, there must be another side of the musical event itself. This is the subjective side of the act of musical and aesthetic perception.  The distinction and the attempt to establish a correspondence between these two poles of being of musical significance is guessed in completely different historical and philosophical teachings that enclose the essence of music in the framework of a specific system of concepts.

Concepts explaining the fact of musical influence and the essence of musical meaning can be presented in the following basic strategies. The first strategy of conceptualizing musical meaning goes back to the Pythagorean-Platonic theory of harmony of spheres (music is mathematics). The second strategy of rationalization of music, which originates from the ancient theory of musical ethos, boils down to the statement that music is the language of feelings, or to use a more general judgment, music is a form of expression of feelings.

         The Pythagorean concept of world harmony fits musical art, the very act of its physical sound and the act of its aesthetic perception into the general ontological structure of the world, comprehended by the mind in its mathematical essence. The beginning of the doctrine of mathematical harmony was laid by the early Pythagoreans. And if little is known about Pythagoras himself and his contribution to this theory, then his students have already left real evidence about the study of numerical relations underlying musical intervals and their cosmological interpretation. It was in the Pythagorean school that "the very idea arose to explain the structure of harmony using numerical relations" ^[2], that is, to speculatively explain the consonance and dissonance of musical intervals by finding mathematical proportions. From the ancient Greek philosopher Archytas, a Pythagorean and contemporary of Plato, the theory of "three proportions — arithmetic, geometric and harmonic" has come down to us ^{[3, p. 27]}, in which the geometric proportion describes the mathematical law of pitch change when dividing the average tone. The further development of the mathematical approach in musical aesthetics, which found its embodiment both in the writings of Plato and in the writings of the late Pythagoreans, considers the doctrine of harmony as a speculative law permeating the cosmic structure. The essence of mathematical, that is, purely ideal harmony consists in the ideas of numbers and numerical relations.

But this same mathematical harmony has a physical embodiment both in the real sound of structurally arranged sounds of musical instruments, and in the sound emanating from the movement of the planets. The world, music, human soul and body have the same essence, comprehended through mathematical harmony. A person can comprehend this harmony with the mind or perceive it through sensory influence. One way or another, the same process will be at the heart

 Pythagorean cosmology and the mathematical-cosmological interpretation of music was reflected in the teachings of Plato. Here the doctrine of harmony is the basis of the theory of musical ethos, and, taken in a broader sense, is embedded in the system of ancient education. If harmony is akin to order, and order is a natural, healthy state, then the health of the soul will consist in a harmonious combination of spiritual forces, which can be achieved with the help of music. "as soon as harmony is upset in us, living beings, so at the same time nature is disrupted and suffering appears… When harmony is restored and returns to its nature, it should be said that pleasure arises" [4 p. 32]. However, in an attempt to theoretically comprehend the musical type of influence, Plato is already far away from the original Pythagorean intuition of a purely mathematical understanding of music. According to Plato, musical harmony is an imitation of a certain ethos, character through external imitation of the voice.

Following him, Aristotle, who had already completely diverged on this path with the Pythagoreans, purely empirically describes the possibilities of using musical influence on the character education of young men, embedding music in the system of civic education. He also reserves for her an even more applied role of entertainment for free pastime. "In view of the fact that we accept the division of melody, which is established by some philosophers who distinguish ethical, practical and enthusiastic melodies and determine the nature of individual modes corresponding to each type of these melodies, we assert that music should be used not for one purpose, but for several: both for the sake of education and for the sake of purification ...; thirdly, for the sake of pastime, i.e. for the sake of calm and relaxation from strenuous activity." ^{[5, pp. 641-642]} Aristotle speaks about the causes and mechanism of musical influence (and its mathematical component) only in the most general sense, defining it as the ability of music to imitate moral qualities. The theory of musical ethos thus represents a departure from the Pythagorean mathematical approach to music, being the forerunner of the New European theory of affects.

The Platonic-Pythagorean tradition and the ultimate rationalization of music underlying it, its reduction to the mathematical foundations of harmonic sound, found its continuation in the medieval Christian type of worldview. The Roman philosopher Boethius, in his "Instruction to Music," recounts the musical and aesthetic teaching of the neo-Pythagorean philosopher Nicomachus of Gerasa ^[6], calls music a part of mathematics, which, unlike the other three parts, "is connected not only with speculation, but also with the moral structure of the soul" ^{[7, p. 155]}. "There is no doubt that the state of our soul and body, apparently, obeys in a certain sense the same proportions that (as will be seen from the following exposition) combine and combine harmonic modulations with each other." [Ibid., p. 158]. The universal laws of the world order or the agreement underlying the world at its various levels and in its various manifestations is comprehended precisely with the help of musical art. Therefore, participation in the existence of music primarily occurs through the action of the mind (music is intelligible harmony), and only secondarily through the ability to produce musical sound or perceive it (music as sensually perceived harmony). "But only the musician who comprehends the essence of music not through the exercise of his hands, but with his mind." [Ibid., p. 161]

Boethius names three types of music: world (harmony of the world order), human (harmony of the human body and soul) and instrumental (harmony of physical sound). Of these, only the last one coincides with the modern concept of music. 

By the end of the Renaissance, the medieval type of worldview based on the idea of world harmony is giving way to a new type of attitude to the world. The idea of world harmony as the law of a single arrangement of the macro and microcosm testified that the world of ancient and medieval man had not yet split into internal and external. In modern times, an insurmountable boundary is drawn between human consciousness and the world, an ontological gap arises, which is most clearly manifested in Descartes' dualistic ontology. The cognizing and acting subject becomes the ontological basis of the world as an object of application of its activity. In accordance with this, the idea of the essence of music is also changing. The theory of world harmony is replaced by the theory of musical affects, which reduces the essence of music to the technique of sensory influence on the listener.

In the theory of musical affects, the art of music is compared with the art of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and music can be considered as the art of suggestion. The musical influence in this case is conscious and directed. Music as the art of suggestion of affects on the part of the listener appears as a way to experience an exciting adventure, having experienced a certain sequence of affective experiences. It should be recalled that the direct predecessor of this strategy of rationalization of musical influence is the ancient theory of musical ethos. In this theory, music is also considered as a direct way of influencing the human soul in order to educate the proper character and way of human actions (ethos). In the theory of musical affects, music as a way of affective influence is no longer considered in the context of the pedagogical system, and is used only for a pleasant pastime. The purpose of music, according to Descartes, is to give us pleasure and excite various affects in us ^[8]. The ontological basis of this theory is, firstly, the idea of the complete comprehension by the mind of the structure of the human soul, and its affective nature, and secondly, the idea that the specificity and accuracy of musical influence is achieved through imitation. The melody, imitating the flow of passion, is able to cause a similar passion in the listener. "The theory of intonation appears here as a detailed hermeneutics that describes in detail, in the spirit of the dictionary principle, the specific content of the affect of the general musical elements of the form" ^{[9, p. 264]}

Imitation is possible because the action of passion can be rationally described, explained and calculated mathematically. Here we encounter the intersection of the two strategies mentioned above: "music as mathematics" and "music as the language of feelings". Thus, despite the change of the basic ontological paradigm, we see that the tradition of interpreting music as mathematics continues to exist. One example of the synthesis of the New European and medieval ideas about music is the famous statement of Leibniz: "... Music enchants us, although its beauty consists only in the ratios of numbers and the count of beats and vibrations of sounding bodies repeated at certain intervals, a count that we do not notice and which, however, our soul incessantly performs" ^{[10, p . 404]}

The theory of musical affects receives its logical development in the romantic theory of expression. Romanticism, as a trend that has largely opposed itself to New European rationalism, considers the inner world of a person as a mystery, the content of the soul incomprehensible in terms of reason, but manifested through its creations. The dominant role of imitation in music is now denied. Music becomes the art of direct expression of feelings.  Its mode of expression compares favorably with verbal expression, which indirectly expresses the subject, distorts or narrows its content. This interpretation is also supported by the uncertainty of the objectivity depicted by the music. "A musician extracts the essence of his art from himself — and even the remotest suspicion of imitation cannot touch him" ^{[11, p. 307]}, writes Novalis, a German romantic poet who seeks to build a universal synthesis of being reflected by art and science. Music, in fact, cannot be recognized as either imitative or fine art. It has similarities with speech intonation, but unlike verbal language does not create conventional signs. Music as a language of feelings is considered unconditional, universal, primary, and therefore understandable for everyone and does not require translation language. The classical idea of music as a universal language is contained in this quote by Johann Wilhelm Ritter:

"Music is also a language: universal, the first language of man. Existing languages are individual expressions of music, that is, not music in individual expression, but parts related to music as separate organs to the whole organism" [Ibid., p. 335]

Consistent reasoning leads to the following question: if the meaning in music is expressed without mediation, does this mean that the musical is in principle untranslatable? Is it possible to say that the world of meanings expressed by music is specific and adequate only to musical expression? Romantics answered this question directly: verbal language is not able to express, and the mind is not able to comprehend what is expressed in the language of art, and especially musical art. "Why do they seek to measure a richer language by a poorer one and translate into words what is higher than words?" [Ibid., p. 287]

The status of language gives music the ability to directly express the individual feelings of the author who creates it. Important accents in the ontological structure of the musical are shifting. The center of it is now not the listener and his state of mind as what the composer is working for, but the composer himself and the performer as a conductor of the composer's will. However, the author is also not the only source of the work of art he creates. The author's genius makes him a conductor of higher forces, whose voice can only be heard by subtle, gifted with the highest sensitivity of nature.

Thus, in the romantic theory of the essence of the musical, the question of the autonomy of musical meaning is raised for the first time. This is connected with the concept of absolute music, which originated in the musical and aesthetic paradigm of the XIX century. According to this concept, musical art does not depend on any social order, religion, or subordination to the text, and the only source of its origin draws from itself ^[21]. Music, like other arts, become autonomously significant areas of human existence.

Despite the convenience and widespread use of the theory of expression, it receives critical evaluation because it contains obvious contradictions. The formalistic aesthetics of E. Ganslik ^[13] is one of the illustrative examples of such criticism. Ganslick opposes the main thesis of the theory of expression: music, according to his position, can neither express nor depict feelings, and therefore cannot be considered the language of their direct expression. Musical sound is a dynamically developing process over time, and therefore can only structurally correspond to the dynamic side of phenomena. This way of forming musical meaning cannot be equated with either pictorial or expressive. "the beauty of a piece of music is something purely musical, that is, it consists in combinations of sounds, without relation to any alien, non-musical sphere of thoughts" ^{[13, p. 38]}, writes Ganslik. In music, a special kind of beauty is created — musically beautiful. Despite Ganslick's logically impeccable and very convincing criticism, the theory of expression does not give up its positions to the end. It is obvious that the introduced concept of "musically beautiful" does not explain, but replaces the question of the method of formation of musical meaning. The untranslatability of the "musically beautiful" actually brings us back to the same romanticization of the mystery, only in its other manifestation. 

However, in a certain sense, the tendency to autonomize musical meaning in its extreme expression (the doctrine of art for art's sake and pure music, the formalistic aesthetics of E. Ganslick) is justified from the standpoint of criticism of those theories in which music acts as art subordinate to an external goal. "This formalistic approach fits very well into society and culture, in which the core is not the ethical function of music (which is understood as its supposed usefulness), but rather its beauty, its aesthetic function" ^{[22, p. 82]}

The aesthetic function postulated as the main one not only does not cancel, but also necessarily presupposes a semiotic function. Does semiotics underlie aesthetics, or does the aesthetic function (the beautiful, taken as a value in itself) not need a signification function? When it comes to aesthetic value, the paths of philosophical reflection lead us rather to the evidence of the mutual intersection of these functions than to their isolation. In order to be able to make a judgment about the beautiful, this judgment must receive a certain content. And let, from some aesthetic positions, the judgment of the beautiful is made as if on a pre-reflexive, pre-prejudicial level (Cassirer) ^[15], this level should be symbolized in one way or another.

The critique of the musical theory of expression finds its new reading in the aesthetic theory of S. Langer ^[16],[17]. Although it is possible to express feelings with the help of music, it cannot be considered its main purpose. "The fact is that we can use music to free ourselves from our subjective experiences and restore our inner balance, but this is not the main function of music" ^{[16, p. 195]}. Feelings can be expressed in any other way. But what, then, is the specificity of music as an aesthetic form? In the philosophy of S. Langer, continuing the line of neo—Kantianism of E. Cassirer, music is one of the types of symbolic human activity that cannot be reduced to linguistic. Symbolization can occur both at the discursive and at the pre-discursive level. "Feelings have certain forms that gradually become articulated" ^{[16, p. 91]}. There are many non—discursive, that is, non-conceptual, and therefore non-verbal forms of symbolization of reality, and music is only one of them. Music and other forms of art are forms of symbolization of our sensory experience ^[18]. However, if we consider sensory experience to be a denotation, the content of musical meaning, then we need to understand that in the neo-Kantian system, any external symbolization of sensory experience should be preceded by its internal design at the pre-discursive level. Music does not deal with feelings, but with sensory representations that are not expressed by musical sound, but are represented by them like characters on stage.

An additional aspect of the specificity of the musical type of symbolization is presented in the theory of Nelson Goodman, an American art theorist who represents the analytical tradition in the philosophy of art. In the work "Languages of Art" ^[19], he attributes a specific type of expression to music – metaphorical, distinguishing it from literal.  "Expressive qualities are qualities possessed and referenced by a work of art, but they differ from exemplified qualities in that they are possessed metaphorically, and not literally" ^{[20, p. 152]}. Music can express similar emotional states, but it will not be a literal or direct expression. Works of art are symbols in symbolic systems ^{[20, p. 151]}. A piece of music is the result of a symbolization process. Therefore, if music expresses emotional meaning, it does not express it in the literal sense, it is a symbolic representation of emotions.

         A different solution to the problem of musical meaning is noted in the development of semiotics and the extension of its methods to the analysis of musical works. However, the inclusion of music in a number of semiotic systems in itself requires justification. Indeed, in this discursive field, the expression "music as a language" can no longer be used in its usual metaphorical fuzziness. Now it requires a strict terminological definition. In the semiotic interpretation of music, the musical work itself is taken as a starting point, as a text, without reference to a specific author. The focus of consideration is neither the personality of the composer with his rich inner world, which has found a special expression in music, nor the personality of the performer or listener, but the work itself as an action of the sign system embodied in the text.

In order to define music as a semiotic system, you can use the proposed Yu. Stepanov ^[21] graded classification of types of semiotic systems. Semiotic systems can be recognized as any phenomena that in one way or another perform a sign function for the observer. Semiotic systems are arranged in a sequence, the direction of which is set by the increase of sign properties. In this sequence, music will occupy one of the lower stages, as a sign system with a weakly differentiated system of values transmitted by acoustic influence.

The next stage on the path of semiotic interpretation of music is the problem of identifying primary sign units, the combination of which could be considered as a semiotic element of the next level, that is, as a kind of musical utterance. What is a sign in music? Can musical signs as primary elements of meaning, combining with each other, form new levels in the hierarchical order of meaning generation? The difficulty of this problem can sometimes take the form of theoretical surrender. So, for example, if we follow the logic of E. Benveniste, we can completely attribute an "extraterrestrial" nature to the musical type of expression, thereby refusing further reflections on the principles of the musical type of signification. The specificity of the musical way of expression according to Benveniste is that "if we consider music as a kind of "language", then it is a language that has syntax, but no semiotics" ^{[22, p. 80]}, that is, it is a language in which the presence of structural units is obvious, but their meaning is indefinable. For the same reason, it is impossible to identify full-fledged sign units in music, since syntactic (or apparent) the structure of musical speech does not coincide with the semantic division.

But the same "strangeness" of the musical language can be interpreted in exactly the opposite way. Raymond Monel, a recognized English musicologist and music aestheticist writes:  "Besides the fact that music seems "abstract", it behaves strangely in relation to its structure; it is similar not to the syntactic level of language, but to its semantic level, since it generates consistency and coherence through repetition systems, such as semes, sememes and isotopes of language" ^{[23, p. 149]}. One way or another, the question of the relationship between the syntactic and semantic levels of the musical language (if they are distinguished according to the semiotic approach) remains unresolved. One can only assert, Monel writes, that "the syntactic and semantic levels of music live in an inextricable mixture" ^{[23, p. 149]}.

The raised problem of the allocation of the primary semiotic unit in music finds among the supporters of the semiotic approach in musicology two main ways to solve the problem. The first option is to declare the musical composition as a whole as a sign. This is the path proposed by the Russian music semiotic M. Bonfeld. "Summing up the consideration of the problem of a musical sign as a unity of the signified/signifier, it can be argued that this unity is realized only at the level of an integral musical work (to a certain extent this also applies to the finished, completed part of it); fragments of a musical work isolated from the context cannot be considered as signs (words), because the meaning of these fragments it is determined only and exclusively by the whole from the context of which they are extracted"^{[24, p. 18]}. The description of the signification mechanism is shifted to the level of describing sub-sign elements that do not have an autonomous meaning within a musical work as an integral sign. Sub—signs are such units of musical meaning, the meaning of which always depends on the context.

Another solution is proposed in the works of M.G. Aranovsky. If the primary semiotic unit is not a work as a whole, but a separate musical sound or a combination of sounds, then a different type of meaning must correspond to the musical sign, different from what we are used to using in verbal language. The intramusical meaning of a musical sign is formed due to the system function of the sign, that is, it is equated to the position of an element within the system and its connections in this system. However, such an elegant solution to the search for an elementary semiotic unit is difficult to unambiguously evaluate. After all, equating the meaning of an element with its function within the system, which directly refers us to the relationship between the concepts of a sign and its meaning in Saussure linguistics, also leads to the actual identification of the meaning of a sign and its denotation. In Aranovsky's teaching, an attempt is made to distinguish these two concepts: for a musical sign (sound), the system of intramusical connections itself takes the place of a denotation, and its immediate meaning is its function within the system. "Musical sound (that is, the sound involved in the musical process) by itself, it does not mean anything that would be outside of it, in the world of denotations. Nevertheless, it is still "burdened" with meaning. Only specific, the essence of which is not in the substitution of another object or action, but in the representation of some inherent function." ^{[25, p. 322]} It is obvious that in this interpretation music appears as an autonomous virtual system of meanings that have no connection with extra-musical experience. This brings us back to the problem of the untranslatability of musical meaning, or to the postulation of the cultural-historical relativity of codes that allow reading or constructing musical meanings. "The degree of "understanding" of a musical work and the meanings attributed to it will depend on the level of personal awareness of the perceiving subject about the cultural and historical conditions in which the composer created his composition, as well as on the conventions existing in society and the circumstances of listening" ^{[26, p. 94]}. However, the identification of the relative subjective, cultural and historical conditionality of the musical language does not yet solve the problem of isolation of musical meaning, the problem of its translatability and the embeddedness of the musical type of signification in the integrity of human existence.

The problem of the denotation of a musical sign is also raised in the analytical philosophy of language, which considers a musical text as an utterance. Here the problem of denotation is solved through the rejection of attribution.  the musical value of the external display function or designation. Instead of justifying the theoretical possibility of musical semantics (the meaning of music as an image, expression or designation), one should turn to pragmatics and rhetoric. In the context of John Austin's theory of linguistic acts ^[27], a musical utterance can be analyzed not as a locative, but as an illocutionary and perlocutionary act. "Illocutionary acts should be distinguished from what is called their perlocutionary effects... The acts produced by the utterance are different from the very results they cause" ^[28]. So, an example of the performance of an illocutionary act in a sounding melody will be the potential relationship of gravity between sounds, embedded in the fret system, and causing certain expectations of the resolution of sounds.  Whereas the actual resolution of sounds, corresponding or not corresponding to expectations, will produce a perlocative effect on the listener. This conclusion is generally at odds with the tradition of musical and aesthetic interpretation of the role of the forces of "musical gravity". The latter concept has long ceased to be a metaphor in the discourse formed by numerous studies on the psychology of perception. In the continental tradition, musical and aesthetic thought more often uses psychological patterns of musical perception to substantiate the semantic component of the musical language.  Psychological research fills in the theoretical gap by providing, at least on an empirical level, those elements that serve as a link in explaining the mechanism of musical influence and understanding of music.

Approaching the end of the study of the problem of musical meaning, we can formulate the following conclusions. Historically, there have been two strategies of musical significance: music as mathematics and music as a special kind of language. The first of them does not allow the autonomy of musical meaning. In fact, a double reduction is made here: the first is through the identification of music with musical harmony, the second is through the reduction of musical harmony to the so—called mathematical harmony, that is, to the formalization of musical harmony in the language of numerical proportions. The second way, considering the musical meaning as formed by analogy with the linguistic meaning, has a long history, and can be traced at the present stage in the semiotic approach to music. This is the way of gradual autonomization of musical meaning, the way of clarifying the specifics of the musical type of signification. However, within the framework of semiotic theory, the problem of musical meaning encounters obvious theoretical obstacles (the self-closure of the musical-semiotic system, the untranslatability of musical meaning). Thus, the question of the correlation of musical perception as a semantic process and the connection of this process with other processes of our inner experience appears as the immediate prospects for further research. This leads us to another area of musical aesthetics, namely the phenomenology of musical and aesthetic experience.