Looking over Dr. Santa's post on dictation below, one of the perennial questions about music jumped out at me: is music a language?
Certainly it has language-like properties: structure, a sort of grammar and syntax, sonic and written manifestations, and others. We could even argue that different musics have different grammars and syntaces: V-IV is not a common chord progression in common practice music, but it appears all the time in popular musics. Same thing with parallel fifths: forbidden in Bach's time, but rampant in Debussy and his peers.
But can music communicate anything? If so, what does it communicate? How does it transmit its message? Isnt' the primary purpose of language to communicate?
Feel free to post your thoughts in the "Comments" section...
Certainly it has language-like properties: structure, a sort of grammar and syntax, sonic and written manifestations, and others. We could even argue that different musics have different grammars and syntaces: V-IV is not a common chord progression in common practice music, but it appears all the time in popular musics. Same thing with parallel fifths: forbidden in Bach's time, but rampant in Debussy and his peers.
But can music communicate anything? If so, what does it communicate? How does it transmit its message? Isnt' the primary purpose of language to communicate?
Feel free to post your thoughts in the "Comments" section...