Re: RE : Music as Language

From: Phil James (phil@sparklingbeatnik.com)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 18:35:29 PDT


There are different types of aphasias, affecting different areas of the
brain and different modes of expression, language interpretation, and
thinking. Lumping it all together you can come up with all sorts of
philosophical generalizations and interesting parallels, but they will
simply reflect the biases of the generalizer.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Reid ." <reid1898@hotmail.com>
To: <Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: RE : Music as Language

> The impetus for these thoughts was my reading about deaf people and sig=
n
> language. The statement was made (by Oliver Sacks) that it is infinite=
ly
> worse to be born deaf than born blind. The reason is that if you are b=
orn
> deaf it is much more difficult to acquire a language (unless you have t=
he
> good fortune to have your deafness recognized early and to be exposed t=
o
> signing). Without a language, it is not possible to think. Sacks also
made
> a similar point with respect to aphasia (a loss of the ability to use
> language due to a stroke or other damage to the brain). The real trage=
dy
of
> aphasia is not the inability to communicate with others (although that =
is
> certainly bad enough), but the inability to think. So, language is a t=
ool
> not just for communication, but for thinking. In the case of people bo=
rn
> deaf who learn sign as their native language, they probably think in si=
gn
> (which is both impossible and fascinating to imagine). That caused me =
to
> wonder about thinking in music as a language. Obviously music doesn't
> contain the information that typical language does ("go to the store an=
d
buy
> me some twinkies," or "watch out, there's a saber tooth cat behind you"=
),
> but most use of language isn't survival related anyway, whether used in
> communication or in thinking.
>
> One interesting tangent is that shakuhachi music is used for meditation=
,
> which largely attempts to loosen the restraints of language in our
> experiencing life.
>
> Anyway, I have enjoyed reading the thoughts of this intelligent and wel=
l
> educated group of people.
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: Thomas W Hare <thare@Princeton.EDU>
> Reply-To: Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu
> To: Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: RE : Music as Language
> Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 10:19:35 -0400
>
> I've been following the thread on music as language with interest.
>
> I had a prof in grad school, Bill Malm of the University of Michigan,
> who would get visibly irritated when people brought up that old saw
> about music being the international language. He would go on to use it
> as a foil for a lecture he gave on noh music that was intended to show,
> at first at least, that music was anything but immediately
> understandable, and that you needed grounding in a culture at least,
> and in some cases a quite explicit training, to "understand" music. (I
> put "understand" in scare-quotes because the issue of what constitutes
> understanding itself is worth thinking about, although I won't go into
> that here.)
>
> I think Malm's point is a good one. Classical traditions are highly
> self-conscious and require explicit training as well as listening
> experience for one to pass beyond an understanding that is based merely
> on the lure of exoticism: "Wow, what a wierd sound! Cool!" That exoti=
c
> thing cloys quickly.
>
> Popular tradition MAY be somewhat less demanding in terms of explicit
> training, but they probably require a solid experiential sense of
> context before they mean much. (Here the problem of "World Music"
> comes up, and the controversy about whether it really is a kind of
> transnational or transcultural music or whether it's merely the
> exploitation of "native" instruments within what is intellectually and
> aesthetically simply Western pop. I won't get more into that either
> here.)
>
> But back to the question of music and language. I think there are some
> really fascinating problems here. For one: language is inherently
> involved in communicating meaning. (And of course one could get into
> the deconstructive maze with the mention of "meaning," but let's not go
> there.) Let's say for the present purpose that meaning involves, among
> other things, the telling of stories. Now, how would that relate to th=
e
> comparison of language and music. There are musical pieces like
> Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and Shika no t=F4ne which can be heard to te=
ll
> a story (however simple), but if that's all we can get out of the
> comparison between music and language, then it doesn't get us too far.
> The stories are far too simple to be of much significance by themselves=
,
> and the quality, the complexity, the wonder of the music seems to
> overwhelm them very quickly. So where else can the comparison take us?
> (I must admit to a professional interest here, since I'm going to teach
> a course in the second term this year on literature and the arts, and
> the comparison between music and literature is something I want to put =
a
> good deal of time into.)
>
> Yoroshiku,
> Tom Hare
>
>
>
>
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