Preface

There is on-going debate about whether music can convey meaning without the aid of lyrics or other verbal or visual cues. And if it can, how does it? Of course, these arguments devolve into semantics. What do we mean by meaning? But leaving arcane conundrums aside, the question of meaning in music, as we commonly understand that word, fascinates me.

This piece wonders about how meaning is made, especially as explored by Noam Chomsky’s now famous sentence, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” When we read it, we can’t resist trying to figure out what it means. Is it emotional meaning as in a poem? Are “Colorless green ideas” and “sleep furiously” metaphors, perhaps for unresolved theories struggling for completion? Presented to his students, all responded with explanations of the sentence’s meaning, but he purposely constructed it to be nonsensical to research how we make meaning of things—even things intended to be meaningless.

Absolute music is an example. The composer intends a piece to be contemplated as pure music, as artistic abstraction without rational meaning, but I’m not sure that’s possible—neither are many musicologists. As Chomsky’s test showed, we seem compelled to find meaning, intended or not. Even from nonsense, we try to make meaning. It seems that besides meaning in the rational sense (e.g. the futility of war, or love conquers all), we also search for and understand emotional or suprarational meaning. “I don’t know what that artwork is supposed to be about, but it really means something to me.”

That non-lyrical and non-programmatic music can convey meaning seems indisputable. But how does that work? Syntax, memory and thereby comparison, associations with timbres, rhythms, loudness, the rise and fall of pitch all seem to be among the tools available, but how meaning occurs remains unexplained. Even when a composer intends meaning, explicitly or implicitly, it seems to be no more valid or meaningful than what a listener may find. Even when we clearly understand what the composer intends to communicate from a program note or the music itself, we aren’t simply receiving that information. Our minds compare, relate, and otherwise contemplate the music in many ways. Whatever the composer may have to say about it is only one of many aspects to which we respond and that determine whatever meaning we may or may not find. Like composing, listening is a creative act. As listeners, we make meaning.