The impetus for these thoughts was my reading about deaf people and sign=20
language. The statement was made (by Oliver Sacks) that it is infinitely=
=20
worse to be born deaf than born blind. The reason is that if you are bor=
n=20
deaf it is much more difficult to acquire a language (unless you have the=
=20
good fortune to have your deafness recognized early and to be exposed to=20
signing). Without a language, it is not possible to think. Sacks also m=
ade=20
a similar point with respect to aphasia (a loss of the ability to use=20
language due to a stroke or other damage to the brain). The real tragedy=
of=20
aphasia is not the inability to communicate with others (although that is=
=20
certainly bad enough), but the inability to think. So, language is a too=
l=20
not just for communication, but for thinking. In the case of people born=
=20
deaf who learn sign as their native language, they probably think in sign=
=20
(which is both impossible and fascinating to imagine). That caused me to=
=20
wonder about thinking in music as a language. Obviously music doesn't=20
contain the information that typical language does ("go to the store and =
buy=20
me some twinkies," or "watch out, there's a saber tooth cat behind you"),=
=20
but most use of language isn't survival related anyway, whether used in=20
communication or in thinking.
One interesting tangent is that shakuhachi music is used for meditation,=20
which largely attempts to loosen the restraints of language in our=20
experiencing life.
Anyway, I have enjoyed reading the thoughts of this intelligent and well=20
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 exotic
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 the
comparison of language and music. There are musical pieces like
Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and Shika no t=F4ne which can be heard to tell
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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