Signata
Annales des sémiotiques / Annals of Semiotics
6 | 2015
Sémiotique de la musique
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
José Roberto do Carmo Jr. and Thiago Corrêa de Freitas
Publisher
Presses universitaires de Liège (PULg)
Electronic version
URL: http://signata.revues.org/1054
ISSN: 2565-7097
Printed version
Date of publication: 31 December 2015
Number of pages: 23-41
ISBN: 978-2-87562-087-3
ISSN: 2032-9806
Electronic reference
José Roberto do Carmo Jr. and Thiago Corrêa de Freitas, « Melodic Primitives and Semiosis », Signata
[Online], 6 | 2015, Online since 31 December 2016, connection on 29 March 2017. URL : http://
signata.revues.org/1054
Signata - PULg
PrimitiveS
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
José Roberto do Carmo Jr.
hiago Corrêa de Freitas
Curso Superior de Luteria - UFPR
1. Primitives
Some of the biggest unanswered questions about the meaning of music concern
the nature of musical primitives: what they are, how many they are, what their role
in semiosis is. Obviously, this is very far from being a simple problem and would
require a signiicant efort even to begin to igure out the nature of its solution,
if there is one. For this reason, the discussion proposed in this essay addresses a
much more restricted subject. We will look at melody, particularly at tonal melody
— which is a quite concrete and traceable object — through the lenses of linguistics
and psychoacoustics. here are two assumptions behind this approach. First, we
assume that the kinship between music and language is deeper than is usually
thought. hus, the comparative method is not just the best one, it is the single
method through which we can advance in these questions. Second, we assume that
no matter how meaningful music may be, it has a concrete aspect whose relevance
in semiosis is underestimated. Paradoxically, the deeper we go in musical meaning,
the more we need to look at the physical aspects of sound production and sound
perception.
Ever since Helmholtz’s seminal work, On the sensations of tone as a physiological
basis for the theory of music, 1 it is known that pitch, intensity, duration and timbre
are the main attributes of tone, which in turn is the basic unit of melody. From
a semiotic point of view it may be better to say that these attributes are minimal
features of tone, emphasizing the fact that two diferent tones can be fully
characterized on the basis of diferences in pitch, intensity, duration and timbre.
1.
Helmholtz (1895).
24
Primitives
To say that these features are minimal is to say that they are at the very endpoint
of musical analysis, in the same way as phonetic features are at the endpoint of
linguistic analysis. To say that these features are melodic primitives is equivalent
to saying that any aspect of melody could be described as a composition, that is, a
particular arrangement of them.
Such “atomistic” approach is not viewed favorably in semiotics, at least within
the Greimasian framework, and hence the question of musical primitives has been
relegated to a minor role. Several reasons contribute to this neglect, the main one
being the holistic principle already formulated by Aristotle, according to which
“the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Accordingly, the properties of a
complex object cannot be understood only by the properties of its parts, rather
the object’s complexity afects the structure of its parts. Greimas’ criticism of the
sort of componential analysis carried out in the 60s is particularly clear about this
point:
On peut imaginer, théoriquement, qu’une vingtaine de catégories
sémiques binaires, considérées comme base taxinomique d’une combinatoire,
est susceptible de produire quelques millions de combinaisons sémémiques,
nombre largement suisant, à première vue, pour recouvrir l’univers sémantique
coextensif à une langue naturelle donnée. Sans parler de la diiculté pratique
d’établir une telle base d’universaux sémantiques, un autre problème - non
moins ardu - se pose lorsqu’il s’agit de préciser les règles de compatibilité et
d’incompatibilité sémantiques, qui président non seulement à la construction
des sémèmes, mais aussi à celles d’unités syntagmatiques plus larges (énoncé,
discours). Aussi voit-on que l’analyse sémique (ou componentielle) n’obtient de
résultats satisfaisants qu’en pratiquant des descriptions taxinomiques limitées…,
et que l’idée de pouvoir disposer, pour l’interprétation sémantique, de matrices
comparables à celles que la phonologie est susceptible de fournir pour sa propre
interprétation, doit être abandonnée… Ainsi, la grande illusion des années
1960 — qui croyait possible de doter la linguistique des moyens nécessaires
pour l’analyse exhaustive du plan du contenu des langues naturelles — a-t-elle
dû être abandonnée, car la linguistique s’était ainsi engagée, sans toujours s’en
rendre bien compte, dans le projet extraordinaire d’une description complète
de l’ensemble des cultures, aux dimensions mêmes de l’humanité. Greimas &
Courtés (1979, p. 327)
However, the fact that it is very hard to reduce the whole to its parts does
not imply that we will not improve our understanding of musical semiosis if we
consider those parts separately and study their speciic properties. Indeed, it is not
necessary to choose between “atomism” and “holism”; rather, semiotic analysis
comprises both a holistic approach, in which the object (a musical piece) is taken
as a whole, and an atomistic approach, in which the properties of primitives
become the focus of the investigation. his kind of research leads us to questions
like: What are the semiotic properties of tone per se? What are the meaningful
efects of dynamics and tempo? Why is there no speciic notation for timbre? his
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
25
point is illustrated by the two fragments of Mozart’s clarinet concerto shown in
igure 1. he irst fragment (1) contains the motif played on the violin (bars 1-2);
the second (2) contains the motif played on the clarinet (bars 57-58).
Fig. 1. Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A (K622), Allegro, violin (1) and clarinet (2) parts.
In some respects, these two fragments may be viewed as exactly the same; in
some others, they may not. Actually they are almost indistinguishable from each
other, the diference being the key signature — 3 sharps in (1) and no sharps or
lats in (2) — which is just a notational convention. However, considering the way
these fragments are actually played, they are quite distinct. he actual sound we
hear when musicians play these fragments is somehow independent from their
form, and therefore should be investigated by themselves. Evidently, we do not ask
the reasons why Mozart decided to have the strings (1) introduce the theme and
some bars later restate it with the clarinet (2), which is sort of canonical is this kind
of composition. he question here is why Mozart chose the clarinet and not the
oboe? Or the horn, or the viol? In brief, what we are looking for is a “semiosis of the
timbre”, which is somehow independent from the piece in which it is actualized.
By doing so, we take timbre as a musical primitive. And what goes for timbre goes
for dynamics, tempo, and other melodic variables.
In order to examine this issue we have divided this article into three parts. he
subject of the irst part is melodic distinctiveness. Basically, we discuss how melodic
primitives are used to build up musical objects like melodies, chords, rhythmic
motives, and so on. In order to do so, we need to take a look at the kinship between
music and language from the viewpoint of the theory of distinctive features. Indeed,
timbre, intensity, pitch and duration are minimal features both in music and in
language.We will show that there are only two classes of features, one that comprises
pitch, duration and intensity, which is responsible for melodic distinctiveness, and
a class that comprises only timbre, which is responsible for musical enunciation.
he second part explores some properties of the vocal apparatus and of musical
instruments in order to explain why melodic primitives are organized in the way
they are. he subject of the third part, which is quite speculative, is the relationship
between timbre, connotation and enunciation.
26
Primitives
2. Melodic distinctiveness
Let us start our discussion by introducing the concept of distinctiveness in the
way it is understood in linguistics. he point here is to know whether or not
distinctiveness — a concept taken from phonology — can be applied to describe
how basic musical units are arranged in a system. According to phonologists, the
phoneme is the smallest unit of the speech chain which distinguishes meaning.
he English words “tea” and “key”, for instance, have both two phonemes each, /t/
and /i:/, and /k/ and /i:/ respectively. A pair of words like “tea” and “key” is called
a minimal pair because they difer in one single phoneme in the same position in
each word. he phonemes can be broken up into even smaller parts called phonetic
features, which are the smallest units of the system behind the speech chain.
Phonetic features are acoustic or articulatory attributes of the sounds of language
like Sonorant, Vocalic, Consonantal, etc. Figure 2 shows a matrix with all the
features necessary to build up the words “tea” and “key” and to distinguish them
from each other.
“tea”
/ti:/
Sonorant
Vocalic
Consonantal
Coronal
Anterior
High
Continuant
Voiced
/t/
+
+
+
-
“key”
/ki:/
/i:/
+
+
+
+
+
+
/k/
+
+
-
/i:/
+
+
+
+
+
+
Fig. 2. Matrix of phonetic features of the segments /t/, /k/ and /i:/.
We can see that /t/ and /k/ share the same features, but do not share their
values: /t/ is [+Coronal], [+Anterior] and [-High] while /k/ is [-Coronal],
[-Anterior] and [+High]. hus, although the phoneme is the smallest unit of the
speech chain used to diferentiate words, its distinctiveness is a property borrowed
from the phonetic features. Moreover, the inventory of phonemes is always a
restricted set of sounds that are actually employed in a particular language. he
inventory of phonetic features is universal, they are present in all known languages
and occupy the lowest degree in the phonological hierarchy, which means that
they are at the very endpoint of phonological analysis. In brief, phonetic features
are the primitives of the phonology of any and all everyday languages. 2
2.
Many aspects of the sound structure of languages cannot be described only through the theory
of distinctive features. Instances of this are the rhythmic patterns of speech, intonation, the
interaction between phonological units (words, feet, clitics, etc.) and syntactical structures, etc.
hus, since the late 80’s, new research pathways have been opening to explore these ields, like
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
27
We are now in a position to introduce our irst hypothesis: the mechanism
behind the distinction between two melodic strings (a sequence of notes) and
between two words (a sequence of phonemes) is exactly the same, that is, the
concept of distinctiveness can be applied to music in the same way as it is applied
to language. For example, consider the fragments (3) and (4) in Figure 3 below.
Fig. 3. First bars of Happy Birthday (3) and Star-Spangled Banner (4).
he igure shows the irst bars of two unique melodies, Happy Birthday (3)
and he Star-Spangled Banner (4). No one will confuse these melodies despite the
fact that they difer from each other in nothing but one single attribute, namely,
pitch. Both have the same number of notes (six), with the same duration each,
and the more prominent notes of each string are placed in the same position.
Consequently, these fragments constitute a melodic minimal pair through which
we isolate pitch from other tone attributes, showing that it is a melodic feature —
from now on [Pitch] — whose distinctive function in music is similar to the one
played by phonetic features in language. he obvious diference between phonetic
features like Consonantal or Voiced, on one hand, and Pitch, on the other,
is that the former are binary, since they admit of just two values, + or -,while a
melodic feature like Pitch is n-ary, that is, it admits of multiple values.We will
come back to this point later on.
To say that pitch is a distinctive feature in music is to over-explain something
that everyone knows, and the extent to which such an approach could carry us
may be open to question.However, things are not that simple. Indeed, there are
melodies which can be easily distinguished from each other, but are made on the
same sequence of pitches. Consider the irst bars of the Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
(5) and Bach’s Cantata “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (6). No one will confuse these
two melodies. However, they are built up on the very same chain of pitches, as
Figure 4 demonstrates.
metric phonology (Liberman & Prince 1977), intonational phonology (Pierrehumbert 1979),
auto-segmental phonology (Goldsmith 1976; Clements 1985), prosodic phonology (Nespor &
Vogel 1986), to mention a few. Although essential to our understanding of the way language
works as a whole, those analytical models have not changed a single detail in the theory of
distinctive features. Since the crucial point in our argument is distinctiveness, we have no need
to consider other phonological models in our analysis.
28
Primitives
Fig. 4. The first bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to joy” (5) and Bach’s “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring” (6).
hese two fragments constitute another melodic minimal pair. But now what
distinguishes them from each other is not the pitch of their tones but their duration.
In other words, we have managed to isolate duration from other features — from
now on [Duration] — showing that it plays a similar role to pitch in creating
melodic distinctiveness. Like pitch, duration is not binary, rather it is n-ary, which
seems to be an important characteristic of all melodic features and distinguishes
them from phonetic features, which are mainly binary.
Another tone attribute that plays a distinctive role in music is intensity —
for now on [Intensity]. Figure 5 below presents the theme of the Allegro from
the Brandenburg concerto BWV 1048 (7) and the same melodic material in a
compound rhythm (8). he single diference between the two fragments lies in the
notes which are stressed and the notes which are not. Since this detail is enough to
distinguish the two fragments, it is to be considered a melodic feature.
Fig. 5. Allegro from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto BWV 1048 in the original version (7),
and in a compound rhythm (8).
It seems that intensity and duration are usually redundant features, that is, the
longer the tone is the stronger it tends to be and vice-versa. Finally, it is possible
to show that timbre, the remaining attribute of tone, is NOT a distinctive melodic
feature. We have already seen this indirectly in the fragments of Mozart’s clarinet
concerto (igure 1). he fact that timbre is not a distinctive feature explains why
there is not an accurate notational system for timbre. he same goes for dynamics,
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
29
tempo, key, among others. As we will see later, the main characteristic of a nondistinctive feature is that it is able to be “translated” (in the sense Hjelmslev
understands this notion). 3 One can always play a melody at a slow or fast tempo,
and this will not change its identity. One can always play a melody on the violin or
on the clarinet, as we have seen from Mozart’s clarinet concerto. In these cases, we
are just “translating” one tempo into another, one timbre into another, and so on.
But when we change pitch, duration or intensity of the melodic tones, we change its
identity. It is for this reason that they are distinctive melodic features. Interestingly,
as with phonological features, one can build up a matrix with distinctive melodic
features. Indeed, one inds such a matrix in sotware for music composition and
edition. Figure 6 shows an example from the irst three bars of “Happy Birthday”.
We will come back to this point later.
Bar
0001.01.001
0001.01.007
0002.01.001
0002.02.001
0002.03.001
0003.01.001
Pitch
g3
g3
a3
g3
c4
b3
Duration
288
96
384
384
384
768
Fig. 6. A matrix from the first three bars of “Happy Birthday” taken from the software
MUSE.
3. Grading, context-sensitivity and tensiveness
Melodic distinctiveness is not a minor question. Indeed, distinctiveness per se is an
intriguing cognitive question whether from a theoretical or a practical perspective. 4
But our interest in distinctive melodic features lies on three particularities, namely
grading, context-sensitivity and tensiveness, which are absent from phonetic
features and which could help to explain some of the meaning efects of music. Let
3.
Hjelmslev (1961, p. 117).
4.
Every time we are faced with an object, no matter its nature, we are asked to identify and
recognize it, and the single way to do that is by inding out the distinctive feature(s) that makes
it diferent from other more or less similar objects. Whether we perceive an ordinary object, a
word, or a melody, we are always asked to ind out what gives them their speciicity. Although
distinctiveness is not among the main topics in semiotics, it is in the core of the so called artiicial
recognition systems, which are devices for the recognition of voices, characters (OCR), faces,
gestures, and melodies, among others. he economic interest in these devices and the technical
interest in how they may work are quite obvious. With 39% of the music market being made in
digital format, it is no wonder that companies like Sony, Google and Microsot have a strong
investment in research, mainly in Music Data Mining and Music Recommendation Systems,
ields in which a theory of the melodic distinctiveness is crucial.
30
Primitives
us briely examine each of these particularities, starting with grading. Phonological
systems are described as structures of numerous features (around twenty, according
Chomsky & Halle), and each one is deined as positive or negative. Any natural
language can be described as a special arrangement of those twenty binary features.
he structure behind music seems to be much more parsimonious, since no more
than three features are needed to characterize any melodic string. On the other
hand, these features are not binary, rather they are gradual, assuming several values
depending of each musical “idiom”. In other words, the phonological system and
the melodic system seem to be conversely oriented, the irst being a structure of
binary oppositions, 5 the second being a structure of gradual contrasts. his detail
afects the way semiosis is produced in language and in music.
Coming back to the examples we began with, the diference between /t/ in “tea”
and /k/ in “key” is due to the linguistic oppositions between phonological features
like [+/- Coronal], [+/- Anterior] and [+/-High]. he way language expresses
grammatical and semantic relations is also based on oppositions between binary
features, like [+/- Masculine], [+/- Singular]and so on. In a sense, the system
of phonological oppositions and the system of semantic and lexical oppositions
seem to suit each other. Both are organized on the same basis. hat is why binary
opposition is the fundamental relationship in linguistic structures. A quite
diferent picture emerges from the melodic system because, in this case, we have a
system exclusively based on degrees of contrast, rather than on binary oppositions.
Pitch is a relationship between two adjacent units in a string, and not simply an
opposition between two units. his is true not only for pitch, but for all melodic
features, be they primitive or derived. Duration, pitch, tempo, dynamics, etc. are
not bipolar categories, but contrastive and gradual in nature. his perhaps explains
why music lacks in representing referents and propositions. On the other hand
music is suitable to expressing correlations with meanings based on contrasts,
like afects and emotions. To sum up, the grading of distinctive melodic features
(pitch, duration, and intensity) and of their derived features (register, tempo and
dynamics), allows them to express any kind of meaning whose intrinsic character
is also gradual. As we have known since Sémiotique des passions (Greimas &
Fontanille 1991), grading is one of the basic characteristics of emotion, afects and
passions. 6
5.
“In view of the fact that phonological features are classiicatory devices, they are binary, as are
all other classiicatory features in the lexicon, for the natural way of indicating whether or not
an item belongs to a particular category by means of binary features. his does not mean that
the phonetic features into which the phonological features are mapped must also be binary. In
fact, the phonetic features are physical scales and may thus assume numerous coeicients, as
determined by the rules of the phonological component.” (Chomsky & Halle 1970, p. 297).
6.
We cannot develop this point further here as it would require an extended discussion about
tonality and harmony, and perhaps another essay. he reader interested in the semantic aspects
of this issue can refer to Claude Zilberberg’s recent work, in particular Zilberberg (2012).
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
31
A second particularity which is present in melodic features — and absent from
phonological features — is context-sensitivity. 7 One cannot assign an absolute value
for the pitch, duration and intensity of a tone independently of the context where
it occurs. In order to make this point clear, let us consider the phonetic feature
[Voiced], for example. A segment can be [+ Voiced], like /b/ or [- Voiced], like
/p/. his characteristic is not dependent on the context where /b/ or /p/ occurs. 8 In
other words, /b/ is always /b/, in any circumstance, as well as /p/ is always /p/ in any
circumstance, and the same goes for any other phonetic feature, without exception.
his context-free characteristic makes the phonological system stable enough for
its purpose, namely, the communicative functions of the natural languages.
All melodic features, on the contrary, are context-sensitive. One cannot assert
that a musical sound is short or long, high or low, strong or weak by itself. As
the values are all relative, the sound that is long in one context can be short in
another context, and the same is true for intensity and pitch features. To say that a
sound is context-free is to say that it is not subject to any syntagmatic constraint.
Conversely, to say that a sound is context-sensitive is to say that it is subject to a
syntagmatic constraint.
his point is crucial for understanding why musical semiosis is fundamentally
iconic whereas verbal semiosis is fundamentally symbolic (see Santaella, in this
volume, page 92). Saussure showed that language is based on oppositions. 9 Two
phonemes, say /p/ and /b/, are opposed to each other from the point of view of the
paradigm, that is, the vertical axis that is behind the text. his means that /p/ and
/b/ presuppose each other. 10 However, there is no presupposition at all between
them from a syntagmatic point of view, i.e., there is no syntagmatic constraint
between /p/ and /b/.To sum up, thanks to the paradigmatic presupposition, /p/
and /b/ are placed in opposite sides in the system and can be used as a basis for
oppositions, like in “pack” versus “back”; however, thanks to the lack of syntagmatic
presupposition, the presence of /p/ does not imply the presence of /b/ and viceversa. So we ind words with both /p/ and /b/ (“bump”, “pub”), just /p/ (“papa”)
or just /b/ (“baby”). he basic mechanism of natural languages rests on this dual
property of the phonemes.
7.
We borrow this notion from semantics: “All linguistic morphemes are context-sensitive in the
way that their semantic value depends partly on their semantic environment (tender does not
have the same meaning in a tender steak and in a tender man)”. (Robert 2005, p. 123).
8.
Many languages present neutralization between phonological oppositions. For instance, under
certain circumstances, German plosive voiced consonants [b, d, g] become plosive unvoiced
consonants [p, t, k], respectively. hus, “ab” (from) is pronounced [ap], “Farhad” (bicycle) is
pronounced [faːɐ̯ˌʀaːt], and “Tag” (day) is pronounced [taːk]. Obviously, such a devoicing rule
does not imply that the speaker does not recognize the diference between voiced and unvoiced
consonants.
9.
“Tout le mécanisme du langage (…) repose sur des oppositions de ce genre et sur les diférences
phoniques et conceptuelles qu’elles impliquent.” (Saussure 1967, p. 165).
10.
he presupposition rests on the voiceless/voiced glosseme that underlies the opposition p/b.
32
Primitives
In music, on the contrary, things do not work in this way because musical
notes contract mutual presuppositions from both the paradigmatic and the
syntagmatic viewpoints. hus, a phoneme, say /p/, can be unequivocally established
through the paradigmatic functions contracted with other members of the system,
say /b/, /t/, /d/, etc. However, a musical tone cannot be unequivocally established
through only the paradigmatic functions it contracts with other members of
the system. In other words, the paradigmatic oppositions are necessary but not
suicient conditions to establish the value of a tone. To do so, it is necessary
to consider its syntagmatic environment, that is, its context. We are faced with
a relationship between two units in a string (one syntagma), and not simply an
opposition between two units (one paradigm). All and any musical segments are
subject to this kind of syntagmatic constraint. his is true not only for pitch, but
for all musical features, without exception. his property of musical features have
two remarkable consequences. On one hand, music is unable to express oppositive
contents like the ones we ind in natural languages. It is not possible to express the
diference between a “computer” and a “table” through musical sounds because
they are context-sensitive, that is, they are not autonomous from each other. 11
On the other hand, musical features can express iconically any content that itself
presents the same syntagmatic constraint. his is the basic reason why music can
express afects and emotions almost directly. hus, serenity and ecstasy, sadness
and joy, tension and relaxation are not only opposed afects (paradigmatic). We
can trace a continuous line between joy and sadness, as well as between fast and
low tempos, because joy and sadness, on one hand, and fast and low tempos, on
the other, establish cohesive relationships. Melody achieves its universality from
this structural parallelism between musical features on one hand and afects and
emotions on the other (see Zbikowski, in this volume, page 154).
Finally, the third particularity of distinctive melodic features, tensiveness, is
closely related to grading and context-sensitivity. All and any distinctive melodic
features are tensive categories. Let us see how Greimas & Courtés deine tensiveness
in the Dictionnaire I.
Tensivité : La tensivité est la relation que contracte le sème duratif d’un procès avec le sème terminatif : ce qui produit l’efet de “tension”, “progression”
(exemple : l’adverbe “presque”, ou l’expression aspectuelle “sur le point de”).
Cette relation aspectuelle surdétermine la coniguration aspectuelle et la dynamise en quelque sorte. Paradigmatiquement, la tensivité s’oppose à la détensivité.
(Greimas & Courtés 1979, p. 388)
Obviously, this deinition takes tensiveness as a category in the content plane.
Indeed, at the time the Dictionnaire I was being prepared (1979), the main task
of Greimas and Courtés was to establish a solid basis for a theory of discourse
11.
In fact, we are not faced with a real impossibility; we just do not know any everyday language
whose structure is based on this kind of syntagmatic relationship. By the way, such a
(hypothetical) language should be completely based on prosody.
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
33
independently from its manifestation, that is, independently from the expression
plane. However, the Dictionnaire II (1986) restates the entry, now written by Claude
Zilberberg, who emphasizes that shortcoming in the theory. In any case, thanks
to the principle of structural analogy established by Hjelmslev, 12 it is possible to
regard tensiveness as a category of the expression plane as well.
he crucial point with tensiveness is that it establishes a strong relationship
between both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axes, which is far from being
usual among categories on both planes. On the contrary, adjacent units in the
syntagmatic axis usually do not inherit paradigmatic dependence. One example
will make this point clear. he category [+/- Voiced] constitutes a paradigmatic
dependence between the features [+ Voiced], or voiced and [- Voiced] or
voiceless. However, when projected onto the syntagmatic axis, these features
are NOT dependent on each other. he fact that a sound is [+ Voiced] does not
produce the expectation of a sound [- Voiced].
his kind of expectation is exactly the meaning efect produced by any
tensive category. It is obvious that tensiveness is one of the foundations of any
and all rhythmic phenomena. Indeed, we could deine rhythm as nothing but the
projection of a paradigmatic dependence onto the syntagma. his is the reason why
poetic rhythm is based on prosodic features, that is, the alternating between weak
and strong, high and low, short and long 13 syllables. All these prosodic categories
are tensive, since the presence of one of these terms creates the expectation of
its complement. Not surprisingly, the prosodic features cover exactly the same
substance as the distinctive melodic features do.
4. Musical instruments, vocal apparatus and melodic primitives
Before we go on, here is a summary of what we have seen so far. he expression
plan of both music and language is built up with sounds organized in a system
of opposite values, which can be analyzed in minimal elements, the so-called
primitives. hese elements are commutable, that is, the interchange between any
two of them changes the identity of an utterance. he properties of the primitives
are inherited by the sounds that compose the system of both language and music.
Since grading, context-sensitivity and tensiveness are properties of pitch, duration
and intensity, music is especially suitable to function as an analog (an icon) of any
object or process that presents the same properties. he expression plan of natural
language, on the other hand, is mainly structured on oppositions and discrete
12.
“…expression plane and content plane can be described exhaustively and consistently as being
structured in quite analogous fashions, so that quite identically deined categories are foreseen
in the two planes. his means a further essential conirmation of the correctness of conceiving
expression and content as coordinate and equal entities in every respect” (Hjelmslev 1961,
p. 60).
13.
See Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1952, p. 13).
34
Primitives
categories and, for this reason, it cannot refer directly to dynamic and tensive
objects and/or processes.
here are reasons to think that the roots of this diference between language
and music lie on their origin and development. Although language is as “natural” as
music and their origins are lost in the mists of time, it is possible to hypothesize that
speech and singing have a common background in the prehistory of mankind, but
at some point they diverted into opposing paths. his is the so called musilanguage
hypothesis sustained by Brown (2001). Although it is not possible to prove this
hypothesis, we can indirectly explore it, and its consequences, by considering some
properties of the vocal apparatus and of musical instruments. he idea behind
this approach is that the evolution and the development of language and music
could well be mapped against the mechanisms that produce linguistic and musical
sounds. Instead of considering language and music by themselves, we might now
consider the devices that produce language and music, with the hope that they can
shed light on the problems of melodic primitives.
According to Fant (1960), speech sounds result from two consecutive
processes: a source produces an initial sound and a ilter modiies it. At the larynx,
where the vocal folds are, sounds are produced whose spectrum contains diferent
frequencies. his spectrum is iltered by articulators like tongue, teeth, lips, velum,
etc. Basically, when a human speaks, the vibration of the vocal cords function as
a glottal source of energy and the displacement of the organs of the mouth and
throat function as the ilter. he combined action of source and ilter produces
the two phonological macro-categories, phonemes (consonants and vowels) and
prosodemes. With this mechanism, a human can produce thousands of syllables,
which are the basic building blocks of speech. he inventory of English syllables,
for example, runs to something around 16,000 syllables. he crucial point in Fant’s
model is that phonemes depend on the mobility of both source and ilter, whereas
prosodemes depend exclusively on the source’s mobility. Consequently, source
and ilter are functionally speciic.
Musical instruments are mechanisms fully comparable to the human vocal
tract. All and any melodic musical instruments have a source of energy and a
ilter. he source-function can be performed by the strings of a guitar, the wooden
bars of a xylophone, the reed of a clarinet, and so on, while the ilter-function
is performed by sound boxes and tubes in many diferent shapes and sizes, built
from a whole array of diferent materials. However, musical instruments present
a crucial diference in relation to the vocal tract. In musical instruments, the ilter
does not have movable parts that play a role similar to that played by the jaw,
tongue or velum. hat means that the ilter of musical instruments is always static.
One can pluck or bow the strings of a violin but one cannot change the shape of its
body in order to produce diferent timbres. he same is true for wind instruments.
On a saxophone, for example, the source is a single reed mouthpiece, and the ilter
is the metal pipe and the bell. he only movable part of the whole device is the reed.
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
35
he keys only change the resonance frequency of the sound generated. We press
the keys in order to change nothing but the pitch.
As tones are the outcome of the source vibration, we have nothing but tones as
the output of a musical instrument. In this order of ideas, the mobility of the ilter
seems to be the key factor distinguishing musical and linguistic sounds, which are
therefore organized in systems conversely oriented. he melodic system can be
described as a singular case of organization of basic sound unit categories where (i)
the segments category is completely syncretized in one single value, the timbre, and
(ii) the supra-segments category presents maximal resolution, with a wide range
of pitch, duration, and intensity values. his organization is opposed to the one
observed in natural languages, where segments present maximal resolution and
supra-segments are reduced to a category with few terms. 14
From this point of view, what makes the relationship between music and
language so special is that they share the same basic units, but at the same time
these units are organized in systems conversely oriented. In language, the prosodic
categories are atrophied and play a marginal role; in music, they are hypertrophied
and constitute the core of the system. In language, the inventory of phonemes is
much richer than the inventory of prosodemes, while in music we have the opposite
scenario. hus, we could metaphorically say that the melodic system seems to be
an inverted mirror of the phonological system.
his reasoning shows that the systems of musical and linguistic sounds are not
diferent from each other in the substance of their basic units. Consequently, the
fact that they are specialized systems has to be attributed to the divergent ways their
evolution and development took. It is well known that several anatomical changes
in the vocal tract were decisive for the emergence of human language (de Boer
2010). Crucially, the lowered larynx and the angle between mouth and pharynx
created the room necessary for the improvement of tongue mobility, that is, the
ilter mobility. On the other hand, from the source-ilter model perspective, what
distinguishes a modern lute from its probably oldest ancestor (the disputed Divje
Babe lute), or a modern string instrument from the ancient lyra, is the range of
tones they produce (Figure 7). As instruments evolve, their range increases. If we
consider the three basic features of musical tones (pitch, duration and intensity),
the current violin has a range of about 2,400 sounds and a piano has 4,488 sounds,
within the same violin-like and piano-like timbres.
14.
he system of standard English sounds, for example, runs to forty-four phonemes but only
a few prosodemes, while the currently known languages number up to at least ninety-three
phonemes. On the other hand, the system of prosodemes can run to only ive levels of pitch
(Mandarin Chinese) and three levels of duration (Swedish).
36
Primitives
Fig. 7. The dashed line with arrows shows the divergence in the evolution of music and language.
his approach helps us understand why music and language share some
properties but not others, and strengthens the musilanguage hypothesis proposed
by Brown (2001). However, in contrast to Brown’s psycho-biological standpoint,
ours is semiotic — that is, we try to show that some properties of the vocal tract
and of musical instruments are at the root of the diferent ways language and music
produce meaning.
5. he psychoacoustics basis of timbre
It is time now to briely discuss the remaining melodic primitive: timbre. We have
just seen that, from a semiotic viewpoint, timbre seems to play a diferent role
than pitch, duration and intensity. Timbre is not a distinctive feature. In terms
of hjelmslevian semiotics, one can say that whereas pitch, duration and intensity
are melodic invariants, timbre is a melodic variant, thus emphasizing the fact that
timbre can be freely varied without changing the identity of a melody — something
which cannot be done with pitch, duration and intensity. he psychoacoustics
behind sound production help us igure out why things work that way and what
the consequences of this fact are for musical semiosis.
One of the most important tools for acoustic analysis (Henrique) was developed
in the early 19th century by the French mathematician and physicist Jean-Baptiste
Joseph Fourier, and is now called Fourier analysis. If applied to sound, it states that
any complex sound can be described as a composition of simpler sounds. hese
simpler sounds can be split into two groups: (i) the Fundamental, also called f1,
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
37
and (ii) the harmonics, whose frequencies are integer multiples of f1. heoretically,
the number of harmonics is unlimited. For instance, given a sound whose f = 1000
Hz, its fundamental and harmonics are: f1 = 1000 Hz; f2 = 2000 Hz; f3 = 3000 Hz;
and so on.
One may ask what exactly difers between the timbre of two musical
instruments, say, the violin and the clarinet? he answer is that the harmonics
produced by these instruments present diferent intensities, even when f is exactly
the same. hus, suppose a violin and a clarinet producing the same note C, with the
same intensity and the same duration. We will perceive diferent sounds (timbres)
due to the harmonic content of these sounds. Moreover, a trained musician can
perceive and identify two violins because no two musical instruments produce
exactly the same timbre, no matter how similar they are to each other. he same
goes for any musical instrument. Furthermore, this principle of timbre complexity
also explains why we never ind two diferent people with the same voice. Indeed,
the structure of the vocal apparatus is quite similar to that of musical instruments,
and the physics behind them is exactly the same, both being composed of a
vibration system which produces a complex vibration pattern (f1 and harmonics)
and a ilter system which enhances certain harmonics and dampens others.
he violin is a good example of such a vibrating/ilter system, as we can trace
the sound path from the string to the plates. he vibrating string usually has a
lot of harmonics, each with a diferent intensity. From the string, the vibration
is transmitted along and down the bridge to the top plate. he bridge has its own
preferred frequencies and hence plays the role of a ilter that reinforces some
harmonics while sotening others. From the bridge, sound is transmitted to the
top plate of the violin. Like the bridge, the top and back plates also have their own
(diferent) preferred frequencies and again the ilter efect occurs. Let us illustrate
this point with a concrete example (see Figure 8) following Gough. A G note with a
fundamental frequency (f1) of 196 Hz is played by bowing the violin’s string (input
wave form). he intensity of each harmonic of this frequency decreases as its order
increases, which is represented by the decreasing height of the bars, as shown in
the graph on the right side of the input wave form. However, the bridge is selective
in frequency and emphasizes the frequencies between 2.5 kHz and 3.5 kHz (bridge
response). he body has a much more complex pattern of emphasized/dampened
frequencies that afects virtually all of the harmonics and the fundamental (body
response). To sum up, the inal sound produced by a violin (lower graph) has a
completely diferent set of relative intensities as compared with the ones of a single
vibrating string. he waveform of this inal sound is shown in Figure 8 (output
waveform).
38
Primitives
Fig. 8. The filter effects caused by the violin parts and the modifications they produce on the input
waveform.
What we have seen so far is related to the way sound is produced. But the
way sound is perceived also afects the meaning efect of the timbre. Indeed,
our perception of sound is not “lat” because the ear response varies according
to frequency. A clear indication of this is the impossibility to transpose timbres.
Suppose one records a female voice and then, with the aid of sotware, we transpose
this sound to a lower tone to make it sound like a male voice; the resulting voice
will not be a male voice, rather a caricature of a male voice with a comedic meaning
efect. As explains Leipp (2010, p. 156),
L’anatomie et la physiologie individuelles du système auditif jouent donc un rôle
déterminant dans la sensation de timbre et il n’est pas surprenant de constater
des divergences dans le jugement entre auditeurs d’âges diférents. Il est donc
clair que le mot « timbre » ne peut avoir de signiication intrinsèque, absolue,
physique.
What is the relevance of this mechanism behind sound production and sound
perception for musical semiosis? Above all, we note that what we call timbre, pitch,
intensity and duration are just meaning efects, that is, abstract representations that
result from our perception of certain physical magnitudes. hus, the frequency of
f1 produces the meaning efect of pitch, the amplitude of f1 produces the meaning
efect of intensity, the length in time of f1 produces the efect of duration. he
complex harmonic composition of multiples of f1 produces the efect of timbre.
It is important to note that, besides their frequencies and relative intensities, each
harmonic has its own duration.
We now have enough elements to justify our proposition that timbre, on one
hand, and the other melodic features, on the other, should be treated as two diferent
classes of primitives. We have mentioned the possibility of representing tone as a
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
39
matrix of melodic features. However, due to the diferences we have pointed out
between pitch, duration and intensity, on one hand, and timbre, on the other, we
cannot represent timbre in a single matrix. Because distinctive melodic features are
inite values, a matrix for tone has a limited number of columns; and because the
number of harmonics that characterize timbre is theoretically unlimited, a matrix
for timbre would have an unlimited number of columns, which is far from being a
simple and practical system of representation. 15 To sum up, while pitch, duration
and intensity constitute a closed class, timbre constitutes an open class.
6. Conclusion
Now we will proceed to discuss how these particularities of the musical primitives
could guide future research in semiotics. Among the developments that could
be explored and about which we intend to write at length later, we now mention
just two, namely the kinship between music & language, including parallels and
divergences in their evolution and development, and the question of musical
enunciation and connotation.
One of the main tasks of contemporary semiotics is still the comparative
study of music and language. he chief reason for this is that there are no other
semiotics so similar to each other than those for music and language. At the same
time, the singularities presented by music can shed light on language and viceversa. Moreover, from a structural point of view, language and music are by far
the most complex semiotics we know. We have already seen that melodic features
present three particularities — namely grading, context-sensitivity and tensiveness
— which are absent from phonological features, and which are responsible for
some diferences between music and language. Moreover, the fact that music is a
prosodic-based semiotic (since pitch, intensity and timbre are the so-called prosodic
categories) opens the possibility for polyphony, which is strictly impossible in
language. Two or more people cannot speak at the same time, which is not a
problem at all when they sing or play. One important consequence of polyphony
is that it opens the doors for harmony. When we play two or more instruments at
the same time, the meaning efects of harmony are created. Any monody has an
implicit harmony, but the whole development of harmonic possibilities depends
on polyphony. hus, the roots of harmony and polyphony — to mention just
two relevant ields of music — are grounded on musical primitives. Another
question involving primitives relates to a striking asymmetry in the inventory of
the signiicants of both music and language. We know that musical instruments
and the vocal apparatus present structural similarities. Despite this fact, linguistic
15.
his is the reason behind the fact that one can represent a sequence of tones with a limited
number of symbols but one cannot do the same with timbre. Consequently, there is no notation
system for timbre, and we are limited to use labels like “violin” “cello” “lute” and so on.
40
Primitives
distinctiveness is organized around phonemes, with tones as a marginal class, even
in tone languages. On the other hand, we have nothing but tones as the output of
a musical instrument. his seems to be a key factor distinguishing musical and
linguistic sounds, which are therefore organized in systems conversely oriented.
In language — including tone languages — the prosodic features (pitch, duration
and intensity) play a secondary, marginal role; in music, they play a primary role
and, in fact, constitute the core of the system. From this viewpoint, the plan of
expression of music and language seem to be “inverted mirrors”. his phenomenon,
whose roots can be found in the evolution of music and language, can help us
understand why music is fundamentally iconic whereas language is primarily
symbolic (cf. Santaella, in this volume). Despite being a crucial question to our
understanding of music semiosis, no continued attempt has been made to explore
this research pathway, as far as we know.
Any and all enunciates — including melodic enunciates — are the result of an
enunciation act performed by an enunciator. Since pitch, duration and intensity
are the sole distinctive melodic features, they are the necessary and suicient
conditions to establish any and all melodic utterances, that is, a melodic utterance
is nothing but a string of pitch, duration and intensity values. Timbre has no place
in such a melodic utterance. On the other hand, there is a solidarity (Hjelmslev)
between enunciate and enunciator. hus, any melodic utterance can be performed
in an unlimited number of timbres, each one lending its particular character to it.
In other words, in each enunciation act, the enunciator manifests itself through
the timbre. It must be stressed that this is restricted to the melodic primitives and
their role in semiosis. Evidently there are derivates from these primitives, which
can play diferent roles. For instance, dynamics, which is a derivate from intensity,
is not a distinctive feature and consequently belongs in one of the enunciation
categories. he same goes for register and tempo, which are derived from pitch
and duration respectively. All these categories are controlled by the enunciator.
For instance, a singer or player can change the meaning efect of a whole piece by
changing the values of timbre (at least partially), tempo, register and dynamics.
By doing so, he/she will not change the piece in itself, but some of its meaning
efect, which is usually expressed verbally with connotative terms like “strong”,
“sweet”, “precise”, and so on. It is clear that those meaning efects are related to the
enunciator since those terms characterize a strong, sweet or precise enunciation.
In other words, all of those indexes connote something from the enunciator rather
than from the enunciate.
Melodic Primitives and Semiosis
41
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