Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:17:47.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Processes of Musical Semiosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Charles L. Boilès
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Musical symbols exist. They are one of several types of a semiotic class called musical signs. Musical symbols exist for those who perceive them. Inversely, for people who do not perceive musical symbols, they do not exist. Musical phenomena are not in themselves symbols, for they only become symbols when they are interpreted as such by a mentality that has physiological contact with them. (A mentality may be biological, mechanical, or electro-mechanical.) Some human beings have acquired the habit of interpreting musical phenomena as symbols, and they are capable of recognizing this fact or of describing their habit in general ways. This essay will discuss the behaviour of those people who interpret certain musical phenomena as symbol or sign, and it will disregard all others: in conversation with people who cannot perceive the existence of musical symbols, there is neither communication nor basis for discussion.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 14 , 1982 , pp. 24 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Bidney, David 1967 Theoretical Anthropology. 2nd ed. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Boilès, Charles L. 1969 Cognitive Process in Otomi Cult Music. Ph.D. diss., Tulane University.Google Scholar
Boilès, Charles L. 1973 Semiotique de l'ethnomusicologie. Musique en jeu, no. 10 (mars):34–41.Google Scholar
Cowan, George M. 1948 Mazateco whistle speech. Language 24:80–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedlander, Ira 1975 The Whirling Derwishes. With a music section by Nezih Uzel. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Morris, Charles 1970 Foundations of the theory of signs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 1975 Fondements d'une semiologie de la musique. Paris: Union General d'Editions.Google Scholar
Sessions, Roger 1971 Questions about music. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Yoshihiko, Tokumaru 1977 Some Remarks on the Shamisen and its Music. In: Asian Musics in an Asian Perspective, ed. by Fumio, Koizumi et al. Tokyo. Pp. 90–99.Google Scholar
Umiker-Seboek, D. Jean 1974 Speech surrogates: drum and whistle systems, in: Current trends in linguistics 12: Linguistics and adjacent arts and sciences (Seboek, Thomas A., ed.) pp. 497–536.Google Scholar