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Processes of Musical Semiosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Charles L. Boilès
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Extract

Musical symbols exist. They are one of several types of a semiotic class called musical signs. Musical symbols exist for those who perceive them. Inversely, for people who do not perceive musical symbols, they do not exist. Musical phenomena are not in themselves symbols, for they only become symbols when they are interpreted as such by a mentality that has physiological contact with them. (A mentality may be biological, mechanical, or electro-mechanical.) Some human beings have acquired the habit of interpreting musical phenomena as symbols, and they are capable of recognizing this fact or of describing their habit in general ways. This essay will discuss the behaviour of those people who interpret certain musical phenomena as symbol or sign, and it will disregard all others: in conversation with people who cannot perceive the existence of musical symbols, there is neither communication nor basis for discussion.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 14 , 1982 , pp. 24 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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References

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