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Music, aesthetics of

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-M030-1
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DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-M030-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/music-aesthetics-of/v-1

6. Musical meaning: general

It is common to divide views on the meaning or significance of music into two sorts, autonomist and heteronomist. The autonomist position is that music has no meaning, or else that it means only itself (thus yielding what is sometimes called ‘intra-musical’ meaning). The heteronomist position is that music has some sort of meaning that is other than the music itself (sometimes denominated ‘extra-musical’ meaning).

It is difficult to find thinkers whose views wholly exemplify either position. Perhaps Hanslick, who regarded music as essentially just a glorious succession of tones, and who held music incapable of conveying anything more than the dynamic qualities exhibited indifferently by phenomena of various sorts, is closest to a complete autonomist; Schopenhauer, who regarded music as an image of the inner nature of the world and held it to signify the infinite varieties of willing or striving, is perhaps closest to a complete heteronomist (see Hanslick, E.; Schopenhauer, A. §5). Gurney’s view, contrary to common belief, is as much heteronomist as autonomist, though he regards music’s expression of mental states as detachable from, and less important than, its purely musical beauty or impressiveness (see Gurney, E. §2). Langer’s view is substantially heteronomist, postulating that music is symbolic of emotional life, though Langer denies that such symbolism carries as far as individual emotions. The view of Leonard Meyer is substantially autonomist, in that it accords pride of place to embodied meaning, consisting roughly in the implications that musical events have for other musical events in a musical fabric; yet room is also made for designative meaning of an emotional sort, explained as a by-product of the play of expectations involved in sensing the implications for continuation that a musical composition at every point presents (Meyer 1956; 1967).

It seems reasonable to take musical meaning and understanding to be correlative concepts, so that the meaning of a stretch of music would comprise whatever is understood in understanding it. Viewed from that perspective, the question of whether music has any meaning beyond itself becomes that of whether in understanding music we need register or respond to anything more than purely musical events and relationships. The answer to this would seem clearly to be yes; though order and connectedness in purely musical dimensions is the basis of musical discourse, it does not exhaust it, and a comprehending experience of that discourse accordingly goes beyond a grasp of musical relationships per se.

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Citing this article:
Levinson, Jerrold. Musical meaning: general. Music, aesthetics of, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-M030-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/music-aesthetics-of/v-1/sections/musical-meaning-general.
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