Non-communicative contextual ‘meaning’

A task that now remains for this introductory discussion of mental states and musical syntax is to account for an idea that can be found in much recent musicology, namely that the meaning of music is largely determined by the non-musical context in which it is heard

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It is worth mentioning at this point that it is common practice for philosophers to talk of ‘meaning’ as if it were exhausted by semantics (truth conditions, reference, etc.). However, we have already adopted a much broader conception of meaning, as the amalgamation of mental states in the mind of a listener.

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A good example that immediately springs to mind is the use of leitmotivs in Wagner’s operas. An instance of a particular leitmotiv signalled to the listener that a particular character or concept should be brought to mind, by virtue of the fact that the leitmotiv was earlier directly associated with that character or concept.

(whether that context is social, political, gender-determined, economic, and so on). The pursuit of the contextual ‘meanings’ of music has been the focus of much mainstream musicology since the mid-1980s, and the term ‘meaning’ has been subjected to much misuse. Often, semantics is conflated with this sort of meaning. Alastair Williams, in a reflective book on the state of musicology, manages to discuss ‘semantics’ without ever defining it, tacitly equating it to some sort of conception of meaning that is largely determined by social “discourses” surrounding the music (Williams, 2001:42-47).43 Similar is Lawrence’s Kramer’s Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (2002), which suggests that meaning in music is a socially determined affair, but fails to distinguish between social significance of music for people and the matter of meaning in terms of the intelligibility of musical utterances. Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s widely read Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (1990), in its discussion of music as a system of ‘signs’, seems to equally blur any distinction between significance attributed to a musical piece by a listener and meaning as a property of the experience of musical utterances themselves.44 Nattiez, despite discussing and acknowledging a difference between meaning that is intrinsic to music and meaning that is extrinsic, further confuses issues by talking of “musical semantics” (e.g. 1990:9 fn).

Seeing as we have already accepted the phenomenon of musical meaning as the experience of an amalgamation of mental states present in the mind of the listener in virtue of the causal properties of musical utterances, it would appear that non-musical cases have been ruled out. Our principal interest here is precisely those cases where it is the properties of the musical utterances themselves that determine the experience of music as meaningful. However, this second idea of ‘meaning’, as related to the extra-musical significance that a musical piece has for the listener, merits brief discussion. For this purpose, it is worthwhile distinguishing intra- musical (intrinsic) meaning and contextual (extrinsic) meaning – but the reader should at all

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In fact, the section Williams labels ‘Semantics’ is actually a discussion of narratives in discourse and music, and does not even mention the word semantics in any place but its title. With the opening sentence of the first chapter, Williams claims that a major concern in his book “is that music is embedded in discourses and surrounded by ideas that contribute to its meaning” (2001:1). He never goes on to define ‘meaning’ and distinguish the idea of meaning as anything other than social (for example, as a property of communicative acts).

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See, for example, his definition on p. 9 (Nattiez’s emphasis): “An object of any kind takes on meaning for an individual apprehending that object, as soon as that individual places the object in relation to areas of his lived experience – that is, in relation to a collection of other objects that belong to his or her experience of the world.”

times be aware that the use of the word ‘meaning’ in both concepts does not equivocate them.45

We are going to accept the ‘context’ as all the factors that appear to affect the experience of music as meaningful for the listener, that are not derived from the properties of the music itself. The contextual dimension is far more unprincipled and variable than the sort of intra- musical properties we have thus far been discussing. Broadly construed, there are two sorts of contextual determinants of meaning: (a) those that, despite not being intrinsic to the music in question, are dependant on features of the other determinants of meaning (such as structure and syntactical arrangement); and (b) those that are only very loosely attached to the music, and are not really dependant on the nature of its physical composition at all. ‘Attach’ is the operative word for case (b): the contextual determinant of this latter variety is the sort of significance that is implied when people associate pieces of music with specific events in life, events that are themselves extra-musical. For example, a particular song on the radio (lets say, a particularly jovial one) might evoke feelings of nostalgia, because the song was current in bygone youth. Clearly, the structural and syntactic nature of the song would not impinge on the feeling of nostalgia that accompanies a hearing of it.46 However, the case where the contextual determinant is somehow dependant on (but not intrinsic to or derived from) other music-specific determinants of meaning, is of interest. A similar view of meaning has been referred to as homological fit (Cook, 2001a:172) or affordance (Clarke, 2005), and it deserves more attention. However, we should first clarify the general notion of contextual determinants of meaning or significance a little further.

We have already considered the fact that both music and language have structural features that contribute to our perception and comprehension of utterances, and are partly responsible for that perception of mental states we call ‘meaning’. By altering these fundamental structural features, we alter those mental states, and hence the perception of meaning.47 A cursory consideration of this fact about intra-musical meaning should put the nature of contextual determinants of meaning into perspective. The contextual determinants are not intrinsic to the music itself. Rather, these determinants can be divided into two groups, those

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Koopman and Davies (2001:262) point out instances of a similar distinction being made between intra- musical (or “formal”) meaning and extra-musical meaning. Examples, in respective order, are embodied and designative meaning (Leonard Meyer), intrinsic and extrinsic referring (Jean-Jacques Nattiez), introversive and extroversive semiosis (Roman Jakobson), and endosemantics and exosemantics (Wilfried Nöth).

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Indeed, this is none other than the ‘Darling, it’s our tune’ syndrome (Mithen, 2005:18). 47

that depend on the structure of the music, and those that don’t – (a) and (b) above. Alluded to above were those determinants that are not dependent on the music, case (b). What of those that are? Consider the following example, which we shall use to illustrate both sorts of contextual determinants. Operas by Wagner are not particularly well-received by the Israeli authorities, because of the composer’s anti-Semitic sympathies. However, there is nothing intrinsic to the musical structure of Wagner’s works that is anti-Semitic. Indeed, we can imagine a fictitious case where Wagner had written in the style of Mozart, and a lot of his music had become equally famous. In such a hypothetical situation, there would still be an association with the anti-Semitic attitudes of the composer. Wagner’s music, even if it were written in the style of Mozart, would still attract the ire of the Israeli authorities. This is plainly not because of the music itself, but rather because of the attitudes of its author. This sort of contextual meaning, equivalent to case (b), is associative, and it is essentially extra- musical.

However, it is sometimes the case that a piece of music seems to lend itself well to particular interpretations, and not others. Successful interpretations would not work as well if the manner in which the music is constructed had been different. In other words, this sort of meaning is dependent for its validity on properties of the music in question. This is akin to case (a), discussed above. A particularly famous example is that of Susan McClary, who likened the arrival of the recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to the “murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release” (McClary, 1991; as quoted in Treitler, 1993:36). Setting the controversy that this statement generated aside, it would be difficult to imagine that McClary could have arrived at this colourful interpretation had the recapitulation begun with a quiet statement of the opening theme, instead of crescendo and loud bravado. McClary’s ‘reading’ of this part of the music is not intrinsic to the music itself, but it is compatible with it. Her view would not have been tenable had Beethoven instead chosen to reduce the excitement at this point. Note that the murderous rage of a rapist is not encoded in the music. It is something that McClary brings to the music herself, and the music is of such a nature that her contribution has in some quarters been taken seriously.

Clarke (2005) has suggested that in cases like this, the music itself affords particular interpretations, but at the same time does not afford others. This is similar to the way in which a chair affords sitting to a tired person. In a bar fight, the same chair would afford the

function of a weapon, even if it was not designed to perform this duty. But the chair could never afford making coffee, or printing a thesis. These sorts of things are beyond the logical possibilities that the chair affords. Similarly, the Beethoven example that provoked McClary’s much-discussed interpretation could afford several others: calamity, bravura, the menacing return of a diabolical main character in a plot, and so on. But it could not afford the image of an idyllic pastoral scene.

Note that a similar scenario exists for language as well. Both spoken and written language can be seen as having an extra-linguistic dimension of meaning over and above that governed by the grammar and the meaning of the words. For example, a sentence out of Mein Kampf has, for 21st century readers, the added dimension of being written by Hitler, which results in associative extra-linguistic meanings. However, this added meaning – or better yet, this added significance – is independent of the grammar and the meaning of the words concerned (provided, of course, that we have chosen a fairly politically neutral sentence from the book). Likewise, singular words or phrases can have connotations for a particular community, that they do not have for other communities. The fact that these connotations are peculiar to one community and not another shows that they are not intrinsic to the nature of the utterance itself.

Therefore, contextual determinants of musical and linguistic meaning are of two varieties: those that are afforded by the utterance (McClary’s Beethoven), and those that are totally independent of the utterance (nostalgia for old pop tunes). Both these determinants are not intrinsic to the utterance itself: two listeners in different environments and contexts will have different ideas of this sort of meaning. Contextual determinants of meaning are generally extra-communicative, although it is easy to imagine them being employed pragmatically in the service of communication. One could say that the utterance does not of itself elicit this sort of thing: rather, music either provides the means (by affordance), or the listener simply imposes a general meaning of his or her own, irrespective of the structure of the utterance (extra-musical).48

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The use of the word ‘meaning’ in this sentence illustrates the sort of equivocation that takes place in the vast majority of discussions about musical meaning.