Language and Music

The relationship between language and music remains almost self-evident, as does their universal presence in human beings. It is probably better to say language rather than speech, because when it comes to music, a confusion between the concrete reality of speech and the abstract concepts used to describe language has been fostered by the everyday expression “musical language”. This formula is a convenient metaphor and has become so common that we have sometimes lost sight of its very approximate character. Not only does music not convey a precise meaning (everyone agrees on this), but it is not even certain that it can be reduced to a set of signs, whatever they may be, and here consensus is no longer assured.