Is Music a Language? A Contemporary Exploration of a Romantic Notion

Abstract

The question—Is music a language?—is an enduring one, not only philosophically, but in the everyday discourse of practicing musicians. This essay revisits the question through a German Romanticist lens. It focuses primarily on the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, plus the work of contemporary scholars such as Langer, Li, Han and Bowie. On one hand, the Romantic Era describes a period in which philosophers and composers were grappling with this very question in regard to its capacity to produce meaning without language. On the other, the Era offered a critique of the primacy of reason and an elevation of our nonlinguistic relationships to organic nature. Rather than remaining strictly within the Romantic framework, however, the essay expands into more modern, structuralist analyses of music to ascertain its constructive elements—that is, whether it has syntax and grammar, and whether “meaning” comes from these components. Recognizing that music has its structure and signifiers, much like language, the thesis offered is that music is not a language. It is rather a form of expression that defies and transcends the identification and meaning that language requires. Language is a way of thinking, one that has a different process than the thinking elicited by an engagement with music. To this end, Asian traditions are brought into the fold as is a discussion of the ineffable qualities of the sublime. The essay closes by considering the relationships between harmony and poetry and the improvisational nature of jazz performance.