IS MUSIC A LANGUAGE?

                                                 (“Lunar - Kaleidoscope Sonata” Montez Magno - 1992)

 

Is music an autonomous, untranslatable language, or something other than a language?

Or can music be translated into words, statements, propositions? Do musical vocabulary and syntax compose verbalizable sentences?

In other words, am I trying to express, through my music, what words cannot say? Or what words can't say in the same way?

These questions, which I ask myself as a creator of music, obviously also arise from the point of view of the listener of my music.

Does this listener (if I have listeners, that's another story!) decipher a message, understand what I want to express, or is his or her reception on a completely different level, beyond words and language?

I imagine these questions have been debated a thousand times in the history of music...

But what can be communicated, shared and transmitted between two human beings through music? Ideas? Concepts? Feelings? Or something that escapes all determination, that can lend itself to multiple levels of reception and interpretation...?

I don't think a piece of music is devoid of meaning, intentionality or content.

I don't think that listening to music is just listening to a superficial, inconsequential flow of sound...

Music, authentic music, is always full of meaning...