The Text and the Work

The author brings out the most important aspects of this vast topic from the perspective of a musician. The text is the primary given for musical interpretation which indicates a hidden meaning. The text is aggressive because it declares what is written in it, and powerless, because everyone can do with it as they please (T. Sodeika). The work is only a promise, since what unfolds within it “does not yet exist” (A. Maceina). The work issues a challenge which expects to be met (H. Gadamer). The said [le dit] does not count as much as saying [le dire] (E. Levinas): for the explanation of musical language, expression is required. The text is not an entity of signs closed in itself, but a space in which lines of semantic impulses are drawn (I. Melnikova). The deep semantics of the text are not what the author was intending to say but what the text itself speaks of (A. J. Greimas): a work says more than is embraced by the creator’s consciousness (A. Maceina). Hermeneutics envisages the restoration of the meaning of the text or the creation of that meaning by a new interpretation which is already that of the interpreter (J. Baranova). Texts exist by way of escaping from the captivity of their signs. Only the interpreted—intoned—musical text becomes a creative work.