E
arly in his Theory of Semiotics, Umberto Eco surveyed the communicative processes and cultural systems that might be included in the field of semiotics, moving through a list worthy of Jorge Luis Borges: zoosemiotics, olfactory signs, tactile communication, codes of taste, paralinguistics, medical semiotics, kinesics and proxemics, formalized languages, written languages, unknown alphabets, secret codes, natural languages, visual communication, systems of objects, plot structure, text theory, cultural codes, aesthetic texts, mass communication, and rhetor ic. Mid-way through this list he considered what he called “musical codes.” He began by proposing that the whole of musical science since the Pythagoreans has been an effort to descr ibe musical communication as a r igorously structured system.1 How-ever, Eco also obser ved that, in spite of this tradition of structuralism from which musical semiotics can draw, music poses ser ious difficulties for semiotic theor y:“Music presents, on the one hand, the problem of a semiotic system without a semantic level (or a content plane): on the other hand, however, there are musical
‘signs’ (or syntagms) with an explicit denotative value (trumpet signals in the ar my) and there are syntagms or entire ‘texts’ possessing pre-culturalized connotative value (‘pastoral’ or ‘thr illing’ music, etc.).”2
Eco developed a somewhat fuller account of what he meant when he charac-terized music as a semiotic system without a semantic level a bit fur ther on, just prior to setting out the combinator ial rules for semiotic codes. The problem was not that musical syntax cannot be inter preted — indeed, Eco argued that any syn-tactic system can be inter preted on some level — but that the inter pretation of music is resolutely indeter minate. There is thus no depth to the semantic levels pro-duced by musical syntax.3
1. Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Advances in Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 10. The idea that musical communication is a r igorously structured system is, of course, another way to theor ize about music. Interest in such an approach has waxed and waned along with musicians’ interest in numerology, mathematics, and science as possible models for musical organization.
2. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 11.
3. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 88 – 90. In advancing this point, Eco engages in a dialogue with Louis Hjelmslev’s distinction between semiotic and non-semiotic systems; see Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to
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I find Eco’s comments interesting, not for the view of musical semiotics they provide (since the passages to which I have referred are pretty much all he has to say about music in A Theory of Semiotics), but for their clear focus on the impor tance of musical syntax for musical under standing. Musical syntax is where any semiotics of music must begin. In what follows, I build on this idea, using the perspective on musical syntax introduced in chapter 1. There, I proposed thinking of syntax as a connected or orderly system. In the case of music, organized sequences of musical events properly recognized as syntactic are typically created through a set of musi-cal practices shared among a number of musicians. Within most traditions of music making, however, there is also some latitude in how musical mater ials can be arranged, and the syntax specific to a par ticular musical work may emerge only over time. This was the case with the Leidensmotiv from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, for the importance of three successive statements of the motive was something that became evident only once we were well into the opera. In situations such as this, certain aspects of the systematic quality associated with musical syntax are deter-mined by the expressive goals of the individual ultimately responsible for ar rang-ing the musical mater ials. My term for the way such expressive goals are realized is
“compositional strategy.”4
Compositional strategy, conceived in these ter ms, assumes an alliance between syntax and processes of meaning constr uction: composers arrange musical mater i-als with relatively specific expressive or communicative goi-als in mind. This approach takes inspiration from recent work in cognitive linguistics, which does away with a hard-and-fast distinction between syntax and semantics and instead constr ues lan-guage as made up of symbolic structures that consist of form-meaning pair s.5 A similar perspective can be seen in Mark Turner’s work on the iconicity of rhetor i-cal figures. Turner argues that, in some cases, the for m of a rhetor ii-cal figure is matched to the meaning the speaker wishes to convey, connecting the image-schematic str ucture of the for m with the image-image-schematic str ucture of the mean-ing. Thus a rhetor ical figure based on repetition, such as anaphora (which involves the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines), can be used to summon the image of repeated blows, as in an example attr ibuted to Longinus: “By his manner, his looks, his voice, when
a Theory of Language, rev. ed., trans. Francis J.Whitfield (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), 111– 13. Hjelmslev, for his part, leaves open the question of whether music is a semiotic system in the strict sense he develops.
4. It should be clear from the general way I have formulated the notion of “compositional strategy”
that these strateg ies are not the exclusive property of those traditionally recognized as “composers.” In certain situations, performers and even listeners may use such strategies to organize musical mater ials.
Throughout this chapter, I shall simplify things by assuming that composers are the architects of com-positional strateg ies, with the under standing that (mutatis mutandis) these strateg ies can also be imple-mented by those not conventionally recognized as “composers.”
5. Ronald W. Langacker, “Conceptualization, Symbolization, and Grammar,” in The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, ed. Michael Tomasello (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates, 1998), 2. Langacker’s notion of a symbol is spelled out in g reater detail in his Theoretical Prerequisites (vol. 1 of Foundations of Cognitive Grammar)(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), 11– 12, 56 – 58.
cate g ori zat i on, st rate g y, and sy ntax 139 he strikes you with insult, when he str ikes you like an enemy, when he str ikes you with his knuckles, when he str ikes you like a slave.” The efficacy of such a connec-tion is straightforward enough — as Turner notes, “Involving members of the audi-ence in the image schema of the iconic for m automatically involves them in the basic structure of the meaning, thus moving them part way toward accepting the whole.”6 In what follows, I show how compositional strateg ies in music make use of similar connections between expressive goals and the for ms expressions take.
Music being music, the meaning that is conveyed is not as direct as that which con-cerned Longinus, nor as quotidian as that which concer ns cognitive linguists.
Nonetheless, I argue for a direct connection between compositional strategy and musical syntax: the organization of musical elements into systematic str uctures is part and parcel of meaning constr uction in music.7
The particular focus of what follows is on the par t processes of categorization play in compositional strateg ies. As discussed in chapter 1, categor ies of musical events have immediate salience for listener s and are thus important guides to any understanding of how musical mater ials are organized. Building on the perspective developed in chapter 3, we can say that they are basic to any theory of music. Inas-much as composers try to shape their music to confor m to the capacities of listen-ers (trying, in Schoenberg’s ter ms, to create musical coherence so that the work can be comprehensible), processes of categorization will also play an important part in compositional strateg ies. Musical categor ies are thus a place where the concer ns of listeners and the concer ns of composers meet.
In the first section of this chapter, I explore the role categor ies of musical events play in the compositional strateg ies basic to a musical game attr ibuted to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozar t. The game in question is one of a genre, which seems to represent the very antithesis of compositional strategy, since such games produce finished — or nearly finished — musical works simply through tosses of the dice. Embedded within their structure, however, is a set of rather traditional strateg ies for wr iting two-part
6. Mark Turner, “Figure,” in Figurative Language and Thought, ed. Albert N. Katz, Cristina Cacciar i, Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., and Mark Turner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 50 – 51. Turner’s discussion of the iconicity of rhetor ical for m appears on pp. 49 – 51. The quotation attr ibuted to Long-inus is from Aristotle, On the Sublime, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, Loeb Classical Librar y, 199 (Cambr idge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), §20, p. 190. Both a poetic and musical use of anaphora can be found in Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which first appeared in his 1973 album Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The chorus of the song — consisting of reiterations of the line “Knock, knock, knockin’
on heaven’s door”— makes use of a repeated note in the melody, as well as a repeated word. Both repe-titions cor relate with the meaning of the text. Note as well that the meaning is at least potentially figura-tive, rather than literal, since nowhere in the song is it assumed that heaven actually has a physical door on which one can knock.
7. As I have character ized it here, compositional strategy bear s a strong resemblance to the tactical logistics of rhetoric, and it might thus be seen as another instance of the use of ideas drawn from rhetor ic to conceptualize musical design (something discussed in g reater detail in the fir st part of chap. 7). As will become apparent, I construe the idea of compositional strategy as rather more general than its rhetor i-cal counter part, and more involved with issues of immediate impor tance to musii-cal expression (such as how the temporal succession of musical mater ials should be ar ranged). This construal of compositional strategy seems largely consonant with the approach Edward Cone took in his ar ticle “On Der ivation:
Syntax and Rhetor ic,” Music Analysis 6 (1987): 237 – 55, which was discussed in chap. 1.
musical for ms, realized through the manipulation of categor ies of musical events.
During the eighteenth centur y, these same strateg ies were applied, on a much larger scale, to sonata for m, guiding the way harmonic and thematic mater ials were laid out.
They could also be applied to melodic mater ial alone, however. In the second section of this chapter, I show how this was accomplished through an analysis of the syntax of the principal motive from the first movement of Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet (K. 465). Taking the different versions of the motive as members of a Type 1 category, the patter n of typicality descr ibed by these member s as they appear over the course of the movement shows strong similar ities to the basic strateg ies for sonata for m. The syntax for these motive forms nonetheless occupies a different layer than the syntax that guides the for mal organization of the movement as a whole.
As with the grouping of statements of Wagner’s Leidensmotiv, the syntax of the principal motive from the first movement of the “Dissonance” Quartet emerges over the cour se of the movement. Both the emergence of musical syntax and the independence of syntactic levels is further demonstrated by the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 6, which is taken up in the third section of the chapter. Although there is little variation of the principal motivic mater ial for the movement, Beethoven is nonetheless able to imbue two versions of the motive with distinctly different syntactic functions. The categor ies of motive forms that compr ise these versions then become elements at a higher level of syntax. The nesting of syntactic functions can also be seen, in a slightly more complicated way, in the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 18 No.
1, which is discussed in the four th section of the chapter. There, different versions of the main motive are distinguished by melodic str ucture and by compositional strategy, and the categor ies for each become syntactic elements within the move-ment as a whole. In a concluding section I review the perspective on musical syn-tax developed over the course of the chapter and g ive a bit further consideration to how syntax contr ibutes to the constr uction of meaning in music.