Observations about Words and Music
Communication vs Non-Communication
Word-based language is a system of communication where words carry meanings and form sentences which pragmatically communicate meaning.
Music has a certain “feel” of being a form of communication, but it is not actually used pragmatically to communicate.
If words and music are different kinds of thing, then presumably it doesn’t make sense to combine them.
And yet, the most common and popular form of music is songs, where the music contains words, ie lyrics.
We might wonder, given that music is not a pragmatic system of communication, and word-based language is a pragmatic system of communication: what does this tell us about music that has words embedded in it? And the answer to that question is, oddly enough: music with words in it is not a pragmatic system of communication. The music contains words, but the words do not pragmatically communicate.
That is, no one ever sings when they have something to say to someone.
In principle, when you want someone to pass the salt, you could sing a song “pass me the salt”. But in practice no one ever does that.
If we consider the communicative status of non-communicative music vs communicative words as a battle of some sort, it’s the non-communicative music that wins the battle.
Consonants and Vowels
For many languages, most of the information that describes a word and distinguishes other words is contained within the choices of consonants and vowels that make up the word.
There can be additional components of information used to describe words, which, d epending on the language, can include:
- Lexical stress, ie for multi-syllable words one of the syllables has the strongest accent, and other syllables may carry secondary accents. For example, in English, we have insert the noun and insert the verb which are different words.
- In tonal languages, words may contain lexical tone.
But some languages have neither of these: they are non-tonal and the words have no lexical stress.
So there is a subset of languages where we can state that all the information describing each word is entirely contained in the sequence of consonants and vowels that make up the word.
The thing about consonants and vowels, in relation to music, when words are embedded in the music, is that consonant choice and vowel choice have no signicant affect on the subjectively perceived quality of the music.
For a language where words have no lexical stress or tone, this means that in principle words can be embedded anywhere in music.
In those cases where there is lexical stress or tone, then this does put constraints on how words can be embedded into music.
The reason for considering this issue is the implication that the factors that determine musical quality and identity can be completely orthogonal to the factors that determine the identity of words.
That is, words can be added in to music, without changing the music.
Hypothesis: Communicative Prehistoric Music
If music is not pragmatically communicative, and words are pragmatically communicative, one might wonder why anyone ever decided to mix those two things together.
And so I suggest a hypothesis:
- The original prehistoric form of music was a pragmatic system of communication which communicated meaning.
But how did music communicate meaning, and what meanings did it communicate?
We do know that music, as we know it now, does express in some manner certain emotional feelings.
So it is certainly plausible that a prehistoric ancestor of music pragmatically communicated emotional feelings.
But there is more to music than just emotion. Typically music consists of well-known musical items.
When we listen to a well-known musical item, we have a definite and certain knowledge of which musical item we are listening to.
This suggests that the identity of musical items was something that itself could carry meaning.
That is, the set of well-known musical items in a culture constituted a set of symbols that could express a set of culturally assigned meanings.
In as much as any musical item expressed a particular emotional feel, the culturally assigned meaning would have had to be compatible with that emotional feel.
Now the number of different well-known musical items that could exist in a prehistorical human society was not going to be that large – maybe a few dozen or a few hundred at the most.
So the number of distinct meanings that such a musical system of symbols could express would be limited.
This then leads to a second hypothesis, which is that:
- Words evolved inside the music as an enhancement to provide additional meaning to the meanings of the musical items that they were embedded in.
This is where the orthogonality principle comes in: words could easily be embedded in musical items, without significantly altering the musical quality of those musical items, because the words were represented by choices of consonants and vowels, and these choices were orthogonal to those aspects of music that determined musical quality.
So it’s not that music evolved, and then words evolved, and then someone decided to put the two things together to make songs.
What actually happened is that music evolved, and then words evolved inside the music.
And to explain how we arrived at the modern situation where words are used to pragmatically communicate without being embedded in music, we have to explain how it was that the words “escaped” from the music that they were embedded in.
The Final Stage: Separation
Exactly how words separated from the music is something that I can only speculate on at this point.
We can suppose that embedded words started as just individual words that added to the meanings carried by the identity of musical items.
And then multiple words started to be added.
And relationships between words started to be represented, which led eventually to the development of complex grammar.
And at some point the complexity and sophistication of the meanings that the words could express outgrew and outstripped the limited meanings of the musical items that contained them.
And the process of determining the fixed and shared meanings of musical items faded away so that those meanings ceased to be determined, and did not constrain the meanings of the words.
And speakers chose to utter sequences of words less musically, especially in cases where the meanings of words did not require any emotional feel.
And at some point the system of pragmatic communication using words was fully “demusicalized”, and the words weren’t lyrics any more, they were just speech.
And yet music continued to exist. As something, but not as pragmatic communication. And words continued to exist inside the music.