Year: 2000
Type: article
Abstract: 1] Most applications of Peircean theory to music have been sketchy, being usually confined to the trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol.The outstanding feature of Jose Luis Martinez's paper on Indian music to the Atlanta conference of SMT, reproduced in the January issue of MTO, was the introduction into music theory of the qualisign, sinsign and legisign, of the idea of emotional, energetic and logical interpretants, and of other aspects of Peirceanism that are normally the preserve of the philosophers.Here is a musician who is able to swim in the broader expanse of the Peircean sea.[2] It is, of course, a commonplace that the Indian raga system acknowledges a level of referential meaning.Martinez cites raga malkauns, which is said to have a signification of "seriousness or peacefulness."In this respect, the raga becomes a legisign, a type of which the tokens are individual improvisations on the raga.And since the raga has qualities that cause it to resemble its object (it is performed slowly, and the notes mostly lie in the low register) it is an iconic legisign.This is a thoroughly convincing application of Peircean theory to music.[3] This kind of semiosis is called "Musical Reference" by Martinez.He invokes two other kinds: one of these is Musical Interpretation, which is shown in musical treatises and critiques (it is "the study of the musical sign related to its interpretants").In the Indian tradition, this may take the form of something that resembles our own music theory, but may also take narrative and mythical forms, which Martinez calls "analogic."[4] The third kind of musical process is called "Intrinsic Semiosis."Kofi Agawu, in his response to this session of the conference (which included three other papers) relates Martinez's system of three semioses to Nattiez's "tripartition theory."Presumably, Intrinsic Semiosis made Agawu think of the "neutral level," and Musical Interpretation evoked the "esthesic level."[5] Ideas like "intrinsic semiosis"-semiotic, but not related to an "outside world"-have appeared often in music theory.There may be a tenuous connection to the Molino/Nattiez theory, but I think there's a lot more to it than this.Let us, first of all, examine what this author means by his novel concept.At first sight, it seems to resemble Wilson Coker's "congeneric musical meaning" (Coker, 1972, pp.60-88).There is, however, a fundamental difference.Coker describes congeneric meaning as intramusical, the signifying by one part of a composition of another part.For example, in the first five measures of Beethoven's Fifth, the first phrase (mm.1-2) "predictively" signifies the second (mm.3-5), and the second "retrodictively" signifies the first.The ground of signification is iconic, since they resemble each other.This writer is aware that the relation between phrase 1 and phrase 2 is most obviously syntactic, but he says that the syntactic coherence of a composition is established when "one part of a piece may iconically signify another" (Coker, 1972, p. 66).His subsequent descriptions of strophic form, sonata form, and so on, make it clear that he regards repetition and recurrence in music as a Volume 6, Number 2, May 2000
Source: Music Theory Online
DOI: 10.30535/mto.6.2.2
Author: Raymond Monelle
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4392836280