When Jim Martin suggests that music foregrounds certain general
semiotic functions at the expense of others, I think this is
probably about right, provided we assume that musical meaning
is NOT in some fundamental way different from other sorts of
meaning, including linguistic meaning, and that the general
functions are valid across semiotics (which I believe strongly
is so, though no one semiotic gives us a complete view of any
of the functions). Moreover, to give this analysis more content
we would need greater 'delicacy' in identifying the sub-functions
at risk in different musical 'registers' or styles.
I think most of all we need to be very careful not to accept
our cultural ideologies, or even our personal experiences which
are shaped by these ideologies, which tell us that one semiotic
modality is somehow essentially different from another. The
default assumption is that they are very much alike, and I think
it is difficult to be really specific about how they differ,
except within a common framework of how they are similar first.
The same is true of visual semiotics, sign languages, and our
other examples. Everytime the viewpoint surfaces in ourselves
that 'music is purely emotional' we should also remember the
counterpoint, that 'music is purely mathematical'. These are not
contradictory, but they should help us rethink our views about
emotion, mathematics, and music. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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