The semiotics of music involves an interdisciplinary dialogue between linguistics and musicology. The discipline raises questions about whether sounds can be studied as signs and whether music can function as a symbol...The semiotics of music involves an interdisciplinary dialogue between linguistics and musicology. The discipline raises questions about whether sounds can be studied as signs and whether music can function as a symbol. If language provides a useful model for musical analysis, music theorists and analysts must demonstrate the way music represents a system of communication and how this communication system functions. Because communication is so closely tied to the status of language as an interpreting system, music analysis based on language has become more and more complex. Semiotics has had a wide influence on music in the twentieth century. Music semioticians have been concerned with defining the "sign" in music, the most basic semiotic term with the least stable meaning. Kofi Agawu has argued that it "falsifies the semiotic enterprise" if one pursues a single and stable definition. Among all of the definitions of signs, the notion of "topic" has proved to be the most useful, allowing analysts to produce a fruitful set of tools in understanding eighteenth and nineteenth-century music. With the aid of the notion of "topic," a reading of the surface of classical music as a historically and socioculturally specific area of expression is made possible.In some cases, the combination of topical sequences allows analysts to construct a simple, preliminary plot for a work. "Plot" in a work refers to a coherent narrative that is offered as an analogy or metaphor. According to Agawu, topical identification enables a comparison of the "content" of different works, and the discovery of works that may have similar plots or narratives. Agawu's account offers a model to illuminate some aspects of Franz Liszt's symphonic poems. My research in this area demonstrates that Liszt generated a unique musical narrative in each work by establishing both a correlation and tension among musical topics, literary programs, and innovative formal structures. It is the correlation and tension among these three layers—topical allusions, supporting texts, and musical form, which constitutes music's ability to narrate a story analogous to the experience of literary narrative.展开更多
文摘The semiotics of music involves an interdisciplinary dialogue between linguistics and musicology. The discipline raises questions about whether sounds can be studied as signs and whether music can function as a symbol. If language provides a useful model for musical analysis, music theorists and analysts must demonstrate the way music represents a system of communication and how this communication system functions. Because communication is so closely tied to the status of language as an interpreting system, music analysis based on language has become more and more complex. Semiotics has had a wide influence on music in the twentieth century. Music semioticians have been concerned with defining the "sign" in music, the most basic semiotic term with the least stable meaning. Kofi Agawu has argued that it "falsifies the semiotic enterprise" if one pursues a single and stable definition. Among all of the definitions of signs, the notion of "topic" has proved to be the most useful, allowing analysts to produce a fruitful set of tools in understanding eighteenth and nineteenth-century music. With the aid of the notion of "topic," a reading of the surface of classical music as a historically and socioculturally specific area of expression is made possible.In some cases, the combination of topical sequences allows analysts to construct a simple, preliminary plot for a work. "Plot" in a work refers to a coherent narrative that is offered as an analogy or metaphor. According to Agawu, topical identification enables a comparison of the "content" of different works, and the discovery of works that may have similar plots or narratives. Agawu's account offers a model to illuminate some aspects of Franz Liszt's symphonic poems. My research in this area demonstrates that Liszt generated a unique musical narrative in each work by establishing both a correlation and tension among musical topics, literary programs, and innovative formal structures. It is the correlation and tension among these three layers—topical allusions, supporting texts, and musical form, which constitutes music's ability to narrate a story analogous to the experience of literary narrative.
