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Association of Meaning in Program Music: On Denotation, Inherence, and Onomatopoeia

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We tested three theses on the construction of extramusical meaning in program music: (1) that some excerpts contain an “inherent” musical structure which facilitates the interpretation aligned with the composer's intentions; (2) that “onomatopoeia” , musical imitation of natural sounds, is a frequent subclass of this “inherence”; and (3) that providing the title of the piece further facilitates the “proper" interpretation of intended meaning. Two hundred and one students were given six musical stimuli (three based on “inherent” and three on “arbitrary” association) and asked to write a one-sentence description of extramusical meaning associated with the examples. In the first trial, all participants provided descriptions without a suggestion. In the second, they were randomly assigned to three groups, receiving suggestions that were neutral, aligned with the composer’s program, or deliberately worded to contradict this program. Three raters then coded the responses on the basis of conformity with the composer's intentions and presence of onomatopoeia. The result was (a) no difference in the numbers of conformant descriptions to “inherent” as opposed to “arbitrary” examples; (b) a negligible number of onomatopoeic descriptions; (c) a strong influence of “false”, but not “true” suggestions. We discuss some implications for further studies of extramusical meaning.
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DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 1
Research Report:
Association of Meaning in Program Music: On Denotation, Inherence, and Onomatopoeia
Mihailo Antović, Dušan Stamenković, Vladimir Figar
University of Niš, Serbia
in press: Music Perception, http://mp.ucpress.edu/
Correspondence:
Mihailo Antović,
Faculty of Philosophy,
Center for Cognitive Sciences,
University of Niš,
Ćirila i Metodija 2, 18000 Niš, Serbia
mantovic@gmail.com; mihailo.antovic@filfak.ni.ac.rs
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 2
Abstract
We tested three theses on the construction of extramusical meaning in program music: (1)
that some excerpts contain an inherent musical structure which facilitates the interpretation
aligned with the composers intentions; (2) that onomatopoeia , musical imitation of natural
sounds, is a frequent subclass of this inherence; and (3) that providing the title of the piece
further facilitates the proper interpretation of intended meaning. Two hundred and one
students were given six musical stimuli (three based on inherent and three on arbitrary
association) and asked to write a one-sentence description of extramusical meaning
associated with the examples. In the first trial, all participants provided descriptions without a
suggestion. In the second, they were randomly assigned to three groups, receiving
suggestions that were neutral, aligned with the composers program, or deliberately worded
to contradict this program. Three raters then coded the responses on the basis of conformity
with the composers intentions and presence of onomatopoeia. The result was (a) no
difference in the numbers of conformant descriptions to inherent as opposed to arbitrary
examples; (b) a negligible number of onomatopoeic descriptions; (c) a strong influence of
false, but not true suggestions. We discuss some implications for further studies of
extramusical meaning.
Keywords: extramusical meaning, inherent and arbitrary association, onomatopoeia,
connotation, denotation.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 3
Association of Meaning in Program Music: On Denotation, Inherence, and Onomatopoeia
Musical meaning is a much discussed concept, which scholars approach from
numerous angles. While some authors reject the idea that music can have semantic content
(Kivy, 2002), supporters too take a variety of positions, looking for the meaning of music in
the form alone (Bernstein, 1976), in musical affect (Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 2006), in
emotions triggered by the music (Juslin & Laukka, 2003), in image schemas (Brower, 2000)
or conceptual metaphors underlying music perception and analysis (Zbikowski, 2002), in
conceptual blends of music and the extramusical (Brandt, 2008), or in broader semiotic
connections between music and the world of experience (Hatten, 2004; Agawu, 2008).
Introducing some system behind such diversified approaches, Koelsch (2013, §10)
proposes a useful tri-partite classification into intramusical, musicogenic, and
extramusical meaning. The first class pertains to formal, intrinsic structural relations
among musical elements, the second to physical, emotional or personal effects elicited by the
music, and the third to conceptual meaning, where a musical sign relates to a referent from
the world of experience.
The present study deals with extramusical meaning. It empirically tests three interrelated
ideas on the interpretation of composer intentions in program music: (1) that some program
pieces contain an inherent musical structure which facilitates proper extramusical
interpretation; (2) that there is a subclass of such inherent structure in which this
interpretation is based on the recognition that the music physically imitates a natural sound;
and (3) that the provision of a short verbal clue explicitly introducing the composers
program helps the participants to reach, and ultimately verbally report, this proper
interpretation.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 4
Our three research ideas have been inspired by various authors attempts to provide a
finer-grain classification of extramusical semantic phenomena. For instance, Koelsch (2013)
follows Karbusicky (1986) and ultimately Peirce (1931/1958) in proposing that extramusical
meaning can be iconic, with the musical information resembling the sounds or qualities of
objects, indexical, emerging from the inner states of the individual, and symbolic,
coming from arbitrary extramusical associations. Davies (1994, pp. 29-36) defines five
classes of extramusical meaning, from natural and unintended to arbitrary and symbolic,
while Cross (2011) offers an essentially binary distinction, based on either (culturally-
shaped) association, or a fit between the acoustical characteristics of a musical fragment and
its inferable communicative function (p. 118).
The first question of the present study derives from this last distinction, revived recently
in Pérez-Sobrinos (2014) classification into two categories of semantic inference in program
music: inherent and ad hoc subsidiarity, which are subclasses of what she calls
dependency enrichment. It is important to stress that the present work is not investigating
the complex classifications of metonymic processes in music internal to Pérez-Sobrinos
theoretical model. Rather, we are using the broad distinction into inherent and ad hoc
exemplified by six musical excerpts from her article as inspiration for our own research
question: whether composer-intended extramusical meaning is more transparent to
participants in the inherent class. As our study deals with associative processes, we label
the first group inherent association (resembling HaCohen and Wagners [1997] inherent
and Koelschs iconic) and the second arbitrary association (close to Koelschs symbolic
meaning, Davies intentional, arbitrary stipulation of stand-alone meaning, or Crosss
culturally-shaped association).
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 5
With regard to the second question, we search the participants descriptions for lexical
items invoking the imitation of natural sounds. We take this to be indicative of the
extramusical meaning construction process which, following numerous authors
comprehensively listed in Castelões (2009), we label musical onomatopoeia. The concept
corresponds to the first subclass of Koelschs iconic meaning (musical information
resembling the sounds of objects) and is also closely related to Pérez-Sobrinos echoing
an operation whereby music directly imitates a sound from the physical world, as in the
violin trills in Vivaldis Spring which echo the warble of birds (2014, p. 137).
Our third question revisits HaCohen and Wagner (1997), who applied Osgoods semantic
differential and an original method labeled the semantic integral onto participants
interpretation of Wagners leitmotifs. Their participants first rated predefined connotations on
Likert scales, and then invented denotative titles for the leitmotifs. Overall, the results
confirmed both that the leitmotifs bore inherent meaning and that the relationship between
their connotative and denotative aspects was complementary (p. 145). Thus we define
musical descriptions with no prior contextual clue as based on musical connotations, and
descriptions following the explicit verbal prompt as derived from musical denotations.
We put forward the following hypotheses:
1. [Inherence]: The classification into inherent and arbitrary association fails with
or without explicit verbal prompts, participants do not report the intended extramusical
meaning in the former group significantly more often than in the latter.
2. [Onomatopoeia]: Descriptions of music with lexical items referring to the imitation of
natural sounds are rare, even in excerpts claimed to explicitly utilize imitation (Vivaldi).
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 6
3. [Denotation]: The subsequent provision of context, in the form of the title of the piece
and one additional sentence aligned with the composers program, changes the extramusical
interpretation, biasing the description toward the composers intention.
Method
Participants
There were 201 participants, nonmusicians, students of the English Department,
University of Niš (M = 21.37 years, SD = 1.27, 69.15% women).
Stimuli
We used six musical excerpts investigated in Pérez-Sobrino (2014). Three were based
on inherent association: violin trills in Vivaldis Spring imitating the chirp of birds;
Schuberts Gretchen by the Spinning Wheel in which circular patterns in the piano
resemble the image of a wheel that revolves; and Griegs In the Hall of the Mountain King in
which the staccato maps onto the walking of the main character, Peer Gynt. The remaining
three were based on arbitrary association: Papagenos piccolo motive in The Magic Flute,
Ravels use of the pentatonic scale to introduce an oriental mood in Laideronette, Empress of
the Pagodas, and Wagners sword motif from The Ring of the Nibelung. The arbitrary
examples were selected based on the global musical similarity with the inherent excerpts
(all classical pieces, one in each group is played by the piano, a medium-sized and a full-
blown orchestra, there is a person singing in German in one piece in each group). All six
stimuli contained the particular parts of scores indicated by Pérez-Sobrino and were 28
seconds in length.1
Procedure
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 7
While not identical, our methodology was inspired by HaCohen and Wagners (1997)
semantic integral method. These authors used participants freely invented titles to
assemble modular names of Wagners pieces, in an effort to predict the range of possible
extramusical meanings that listeners from the same cultural circumstances could ascribe to
the leitmotifs. Our study took a different turn: we looked for free-form associations to
programmatic musical motives, played either alone or after pre-devised titles, where the
appropriateness of these titles to the composers intention was controlled for. Rather than
compiling more generic extramusical meanings, we assessed the conformance of the
descriptions to the composers alleged intentions, ensuring the objectivity of assessment
through the calculation of inter-rater agreement. Our protocols find support in Osgoods
representational mediation theory, where a meaning of the (musical) sign is established
through association with its (nonmusical) significate, and the linguistic description
(behavioral response) is a consequence of mediated, internal self-stimulation (cf. Berlyne,
1971, esp. p. 111). In Osgoods own words Whenever some stimulus other than the
significate [e.g. the violin trill] is contiguous with the significate [e.g. the chirp of birds], it
will acquire an increment of association with some portion of the total behavior elicited by
the significate as a representational mediation process (Osgood, Succi, & Tannenbaum,
1957, p. 6).
We thus asked the participants to listen to six musical examples and write a single-
sentence report on what the pieces reminded them of. The experiment took place in identical
small classrooms, with 18 to 25 participants per session. The stimuli were played on a laptop
computer with a pair of Genius 2.1 CH surround speakers. Their order was counterbalanced
across participants.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 8
The participants heard every stimulus three times: after the introductory trial, they
were asked to write down the name of the composer/piece. Those who did this correctly were
excluded from calculations for the particular stimulus (54 situations, or 4.48%). Naturally,
answers to the remaining stimuli by the same person were retained, in practice resulting in a
slight variation to total numbers of answers per stimulus. Upon the second listening, the
participants were required to write down, in one sentence of their native language what, from
the world of experience, the segment reminded them of and why. In the final trial, they were
asked to repeat the task, however after reading a short text, which contained two sentences.
Here the participants were randomly assigned to three groups: control was given neutral
instructions, describing only the formal musical parameters, such as the number of bars and
size of the orchestra; experimental group 1 was given proper instructions, containing the
title of the piece and one more sentence in line with the composers program; experimental
group 2 was given wrong instructions, where we invented an antonymic title of the piece
followed by one sentence deliberately opposite of the composers program (see Footnote
1).
Data analysis
Respondents free-form descriptions were coded into quantifiable variables. Relating
to Hypothesis 1, the variable conformance had two values: salient and nonsalient,
where salient responses were in line with the composers apparent intentions, in two levels
of polysemy: (1) Vivaldi anything related to birdsong or birds (cf. Pérez-Sobrino, 2014, p.
133); (2) Schubert: a wheel or an object rotating around an axis (p. 138); (3) Grieg: human or
any animate footsteps (p. 143); Mozart: hunter of birds or any animal that can be hunted (p.
142); Ravel: any invocation of Asia or the Orient (p. 144); Wagner: any association to a
sword or fight (p. 147).
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 9
The second variable (onomatopoeia) related to Hypothesis 2, and was coded as
onomatopoeic (pure sound, e.g., buzz, whir, screech, twitter), and nononomatopoeic. In
relation to the common thesis of music cognition theorists affiliated with cognitive linguistics
that musical meaning is based on image schemas (e.g., Saslaw, 1996; Zbikowski, 1998;
Cox, 1999), we additionally divided the nononomatopoeic category of descriptions into
image-schematic (images, spatial movement, interaction of forces, e.g., a battle, a person
walking, a waterfall), and non image-schematic (technical terms, e.g., low tones,
emotional qualities, e.g. sad, descriptions of contexts where similar music was heard rather
than of the music itself, e.g. Its like The Lord of the Rings).
With regard to Hypothesis 3, we compared the number of salient responses before
and after the suggestion, in all three groups. We also tested if the participants anyhow
changed their opinion after the suggestion, based on the presence of new concepts in the latter
description. Finally, we checked if any change in experimental group 2 was in line with the
false suggestion, containing at least one new concept from the false suggestion.
The coding was conducted independently by two raters. Cohens Kappa (κ) for all
relevant variables taken together was .77 (indicating substantial agreement, Landis & Koch,
1977). The value for conformance alone (salient/nonsalient) was .86 (almost perfect
agreement). Agreement on the number of onomatopoeias was total (1.0). Yet, when we broke
down the nononomatopoeic category in two segments (image-schematic and non image-
schematic), κ reduced to .66 (still in the range of substantial agreement). In other words,
there was a bit of controversy on whether some responses were image-schematic, but no
dissent on onomatopoeias.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 10
Finally, the two coders and the third author met to decide on instances of
disagreement. The final decision was almost always unanimous, with only six cases requiring
a majority vote, after which the final database was compiled.
Results
The distributions of salient and nonsalient responses to pieces based on
inherent and arbitrary association did not significantly differ after the first listening, i.e.
in the entire sample without a suggestion: ϰ2(1) = 0.88, p = .35, V = .03 (Table 1):
-----------
Table 1
-----------
Moreover, there were no differences in these distributions after neutral and false
suggestions in control and experimental group 2 control: ϰ2(1) = 0.47, p = .49, V = .04;
exp 2: ϰ2(1) = 0, p = 1, V = .01. After proper prompts in experimental group 1 there were
significantly more salient responses to arbitrary and not inherent stimuli: ϰ2(1) = 7.38, p <
.01, V = .15 (Figure 1):
-----------
Figure 1
-----------
To test if there was still a gradation in the number of salient descriptions from the
arbitrary toward the inherent category, we allocated the descriptions into three groups by
the number of salient answers (based on the analysis of confidence intervals, p < .05, Figure
2):
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 11
-----------
Figure 2
-----------
We did not get a scale in which inherent pieces slowly give way to arbitrary ones
in terms of the degree of inherence. Rather, the distribution into three categories was
relatively even, making Wagner as highly inherent as Grieg, Mozart and Ravel as medium
inherent as Vivaldi, and Schubert alone least inherent.
In terms of the relative transparency of intended extramusical meaning in the three
examples from the inherent association group, Grieg was interpreted correctly without
prompts most often, followed by Vivaldi, and then by Schubert (p < .05, Figure 2).
As for Hypothesis 2, we had 54 onomatopoeic and 1,096 nononomatopoeic responses,
of which 764 could be classified as image-schematic and 364 as non image-schematic. In
other words, there were about twenty times fewer onomatopoeic than nononomatopoeic
descriptions.
Per response, the number of onomatopoeias was negligible. The most cases were
noted in Ravel (12 instances, or 6.06%) and Vivaldi (22 descriptions, or 11.89%). With
Ravel, seven onomatopoeic responses invoked the sound of raindrops or flowing water
(perhaps interesting as the princess in Ravels program is taking a bath). In Vivaldi, of 22
onomatopoeic answers, only 11 (5.95%) invoked birdsong (chirp, twitter), while the rest had
nothing to do with birds, their song or even spring.
With regard to Hypothesis 3, there were no significant differences in the number of
salient responses before and after the suggestion in control and experimental group 1
control: ϰ2(1) = 0.56, p = .45, V = .03; exp 1: ϰ2(1) = 0.01, p = .92, V = .01, but there was a
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 12
statistically significant decrease in this number after the false suggestion in experimental
group 2: ϰ2(1) = 15.85, p < .01, V = .15 (Figure 3):
-----------
Figure 3
-----------
The number of changed descriptions increased after suggestions in experimental
group 1 as compared with control, ϰ2(1) = 31.02, p < .01, V = .20, and rose further in
experimental group 2, as compared with both control and experimental group 1 in this last
case, ϰ2(1) = 26.14, p < .01, V = .19. Of the total 265 changes in experimental group two,
203 were related to the content of the suggestion (76.60%).
Discussion
HaCohen and Wagners study demonstrated that the leitmotifs bear inherent
meaning and substantiated the existence of complementary relations between the
connotative and denotative aspects of the leitmotifs, [...] disclosing essential characteristics of
the semantic structure of music in general (p. 154). It appears that our experiment has
provided a result opposite to theirs, as the relations between connotations and denotations in
our examples were hardly complementary. First, providing proper titles did not increase the
number of responses aligned with the composers program (denotation did not enhance
connotation). Second, titles deliberately contradicting the composers intention sparked a
significant decrease in the number of salient responses (thus the wrong denotation
managed to override the apparent connotation). One caveat is necessary here, however.
HaCohen and Wagner explicitly focused on Wagners leitmotifs. Since in our study, too, the
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 13
sole example by Wagner fared quite high on the inherence scale, we believe a composer-
specific follow-up is warranted.
The present work was also inspired by Pérez-Sobrinos (2014) broad classification
into inherent and ad hoc subsidiarity. While we reiterate that our methodology has not
tested the specific predictions on musical metonymy from this model, our results seem to put
to question some of its underlying assumptions about the bases of musical meaning. For
instance, Pérez-Sobrino claims that the identification of the chirp of birds in the Vivaldi
segment should be easy and manifest, exemplifying the most direct form of perceived
similarity between the music and the extramusical program (p. 137). Likewise, she expects
that familiarity with the title, at least in Vivaldi and Grieg, will facilitate the listeners
understanding of the composers intended meanings (p. 133 and 143). Neither of these
assumptions has been corroborated in the present work.
We therefore propose that prior to engaging in the very important theoretical debates
about the nature of the cognitive process through which participants understand composers
programmatic intentions (e.g., associations, conceptual blending, metonymy...), we should
first empirically establish the phenomenon (Merton, 1987): under what conditions are these
intentions actually grasped. In the present study inherent structure and explicit two-
sentence prompts have not motivated an increased number of correct interpretations. This
of course does not deny the concept of meaning generation in program music, but only
vouches for further work on what conditions need to be met for proper, composer-intended
extramusical interpretations to be induced. Further studies should look into the minimum
degree of suggestion needed to entrench the association between the music and the
extramusical (a longer text, repeated exposure to the text, visual animations rather than verbal
suggestions…). Likewise, once the proper extramusical interpretation has been entrenched,
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 14
one could wonder how it may motivate and/or constrain subsequent extramusical meanings
associated with the musical theme. This is especially relevant as we often witness in the
media that well-known music gets (ab)used in originally unintended contexts.
Methodologically, the present work has used a technique based on free-form associations,
supported by Osgoods notion of representational mediation. Further studies could resort to
more established experimental methods, perhaps the full semantic differential protocols. We
still hope that our results, especially the apparent openness of listeners to interpretations that
counter the intentions of the composer, provide some contribution to the fledgling discipline
of musical semantics.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 15
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DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 17
Author Note
Mihailo Antović, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of English, Faculty of
Philosophy, and also researcher and head of the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the
University of Niš, Serbia. He teaches cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and conducts
research on music and language cognition. He has presented papers at numerous conferences
in Europe and the USA, and published his work in journals such as Metaphor and Symbol
and Musicae Scientiae. He was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Case Western Reserve
University and a research scholar at the University of Freiburg.
Dušan Stamenković, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Faculty of
Philosophy, University of Niš, where he teaches contemporary English and gives tutorials in
cognitive semantics and semiotics. He has presented his papers in the United Kingdom,
Ireland, Argentina, Romania, Sweden, Spain, Bosnia and Hezegovina, and Serbia, whereas he
has published his work in a number of journals, including Games and Culture, Studia
Neophilologica and Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. His interests include cognitive
linguistics, semiotics, game studies, visual language, and multimodality. He is the secretary
of the Center for Cognitive Sciences (University of Niš), and a member of RaAM, SCLA,
SASE, and ESSE.
Vladimir Figar (MA) is a teaching assistant in the Department of English, Faculty of
Philosophy, University of Niš, where he gives tutorials in contemporary English and
cognitive linguistics. He has presented papers at conferences in Poland, Sweden, and Serbia.
His area of interest includes conceptual metaphor, conceptual blending, and political
discourse.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 18
The present research was supported by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and
Technological Development (grant no. 179013).
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 19
Footnotes
1. The complete stimuli and verbal suggestions are available online at:
http://www.cogsci.ni.ac.rs/experiment_meaning_music.html
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 20
Table 1.
Distribution of salient and nonsalient responses inherent vs. arbitrary association (in the
entire sample, without a suggestion)
Conformance
Nonsalient
TOTAL
Inherent
442 (78.23%)
565 (100%)
Arbitrary
443 (75.73%)
585 (100%)
TOTAL
885 (76.96%)
1150 (100%)
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 21
Figure Captions
Figure 1. Distribution of salient and nonsalient responses per participant group after
the suggestion (second trial).
Figure 2. Ordering of the percentages of salient responses by stimulus with confidence
intervals for each stimulus. Overlaps in 95% confidence intervals are shown in shaded areas.
Figure 3. Numbers of salient responses before and after the suggestion, per participant
group.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 22
Figure 1.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 23
Figure 2.
DENOTATION, INHERENCE, ONOMATOPOEIA 24
Figure 3.
... The present study complements such existing approaches as it aligns with the field that is occasionally referred to as 'musicolinguistics' (Bernstein, 1976 ): we build upon the well-established practice of examining verbal descriptions of music (see e.g. Antović et al., 2016;McAuley et al., 2021;Tagg & Clarida, 2003), extending our exploration to uncover their interconnectedness with bodily action and creativity. ...
... Here it is important to note that the claim that musical semantics often manifests as relating to human beings and their actions is anything but new (Watt & Ash, 1998). Likewise, invocations of human beings and their movement regularly occur in experimental studies reporting verbal output to musical stimuli (Antović et al., 2013;Antović et al., 2016;Tagg & Clarida, 2003). Yet, they do not always target the relationship between embodiment, conceptual schematicity and linguistic reference. ...
... SD = 1.27, 69% women), nonmusicians (defined as having up to three years of musical training), unfamiliar with the original musical programs behind the examples they were exposed to, which was explicitly corroborated in a post-study questionnaire. They provided short written reports of musical associations (Antović, Stamenković & Figar, 2016). The second protocol gathered 353 participants (age range 18-66, M = 26.41, ...
Article
The present study proposes a new approach to musical referentiality and its alleged tendency to relate to bodily experience and movement. To address this, we collected a corpus of 38,587 words (2,265 verbal descriptions of ‘associations’ or ‘imagery’ sparked by short musical excerpts by 554 participants from 32 countries). We tested the hypotheses that verbalizations containing clear references to bodies and/or their movement will (1) be prevalent in the data; (2) tend to be more creative than descriptions not containing such references; and (3) display similar underlying image-schematic structures, themselves hypothesized in cognitive linguistics to be a consequence of bodily interactions. Our analysis suggests that (1) descriptions containing references to human or animal bodies or body parts, and to movement, significantly outnumber those not containing such references, with a strong correlation between the invocation of bodies and movement ; (2) descriptions containing references to bodies and movement are deemed more creative by an automated creativity assessment routine than those not containing them; and (3) a qualitative linguistic analysis of the most creative descriptions reveals some embodied, image-schematic similarities beneath outwardly very different verbalizations. These findings suggest that musical meaning, while open-ended, may be partly constrained by tractable principles.
... A well-known example might be the famous fast-paced finale of Rossini's William Tell overture, apparently denoting the sound of soldiers marching (or, in later popular use, horses running). Needless to say, I side with Langer and others in having serious, also empirical, issues with the notion of onomatopoeia in music, especially with attempts to institute mimesis as the fundamental building block of musical meaning (Antović et al., 2016, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 3). Further employing the "latter" concepts from my list of semantic dichotomies, however, Langer also often wrote of a "connotative relationship" between music and subjective experience (Langer, 1957, p. 185), concluding that music abounds in forms that language cannot articulate; it is full of connotations, yet unlike in language, they are never assigned or fixed. ...
... (1959). As he was right to note, a (purely) associationist theory of meaning collapses immediately; the tendency has been corroborated across cognitive domains time and again, recently also in a music perception study by my group (Antović et al., 2016). ...
... The central idea is that grounding is multilayered, where "lower" and "higher" boxes are allocated along a continuum, providing hierarchical and partially recursive constraints on the generation of musical meaning. To illustrate, consider the description one naive experimental participant used to refer to a 20-second excerpt from the beginning of Grieg's famous theme "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (the full experimental procedure is given in Antović et al., 2016). To this person the music sounded like "a fat lion from a cartoon walking furtively on its fingertips." ...
Book
Multilevel Grounding develops a new approach to musical meaning—Multilevel-Grounded Semantics, addressing the well- known paradox that music seems full of meaning yet there is little consensus among listeners on what exactly it is that this meaning communicates. Offering a balance between formalist and referentialist approaches, Antovi ć ’s theory proposes that musical signifi cation emerges from constant cross- space mappings between the musical structure and the listener’s experience. The process is crucially constrained by several hierarchical and partly recursive levels of grounding: perceptual, schematically embodied, affective, conceptual, culturally elaborated, and individual. These levels are responsible for a range of phenomena that increase in complexity, from involuntary bodily responses to the manipulation of musical expectancies over cross- modal inferences relating the musical parameters to spatial domains to full- fl edged experiential narratives accompanying the music, as in opera or fi lm scoring. The book combines cutting edge insights from the fi elds of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, semiotics, linguistics, and music cognition, using a broad range of examples from traditional, classical, and popular world musics, into a theoretical system that shows how the focus on the grounding problem may help researchers convincingly resolve the apparent ungraspability of musical semantics.
... This framework arose as a way to analyse musical meaning in a systematic way, capturing the possible unconscious mechanisms that lead from the simple perception of musical structures (the first stage of multilevel grounding) toward the most complex, metaphorical interpretation of a piece enriched with the listener's personal experience (the final grounding stage). To illustrate, Antović et al. (2016), spotted a curious verbal description of a musical piece given by one of the participants. This person stated that a 20-second excerpt from Grieg's piece In the Hall of the Mountain King reminded them of "a fat lion from a cartoon, walking furtively, on its tiptoes" (Antović, 2021a, p.149). ...
Article
Full-text available
This paper aims at discussing the process of multimodal meaning construction called multilevel grounding, according to which meaning emerges hierarchically, through six recursive levels of constraint: formal, cross-modal, affective, conceptual, culturally rich, and individual. Given that this theory has found application in the cognitive science of meaning generation in music, language, and visual art, this study aims to investigate more thoroughly the nature of meaning construction when linguistic and musical data are cointegrated. To that end, we analyse 5 TV show scenes in which the dialogue and the tones heard in the background seem to be sending out contradictory signals on one/some of the six grounding levels this theory presupposes. By doing so, this study attempts to come one step closer to learning in what way language and music, even when they appear to communicate a conflicting message, still work together to create novel meaning. The results of the present study indicate that such linguo-musical mismatches occur on each of the five levels of interpretation, with the sixth level being excluded from the analysis on purpose due to its inherently subjective nature. The same phenomenon has been observed in each of the five analysed scenes, and we believe that its use was both intentional and necessary on the part of the shows’ creators to communicate the intended message in its entirety to the keenest of viewers. Namely, we argue that it is exactly these contrasts on each level of constraint that are responsible for the complex understanding of the scenes in question by introducing entirely new elements into the narrative, such as plot twists, which further leads to often humorous, but always non-composite, interpretations.
... To exemplify (with 7 I am referring to the recurring descending tetrachord associated with laments in Renaissance and late Renaissance weeping songs (see Section 4.3). On mismatches concerning associations between musical features and the composer's intended "programmatic" meaning, see, in particular, Antović et al. 2016. ...
Article
Full-text available
The article explores cross-modal iconic relations in nine diverse Western-music songs ranging from 1600 to 2015, all of them thematizing dysphoric weeping. Initial input comes from five recurrent features observed in ancient Greek texts associated with performative events, including the prominence of sound, interjections and strong self-referentiality, repetitions and refrains, the motif of endlessness, and tears associated with streams of water, dew, and libation liquids. The analysis adopts Peirce’s conceptual distinction between image, diagram, and metaphor iconicity, although the continuum reading proposed by several scholars is ultimately favored. The sample turns out to offer plenty of evidence of iconic relations. Interjections, falsetto, verbal repetitions, musical repetitions, musical rendering of sighs and endlessness, ostinato patterns, downward notes, and water images (rain and rivers), all of this is shown to substantiate cross-modal iconicity encompassing weeping, lyrics, music (including musical notation), and images, in different combinations. Quantitative investigations confirming/disconfirming and adding iconicity patterns, and comparative analyses linking Western and non-Western lament traditions constitute desiderata for future work.
... Dentro de la muestra escogida para dicho estudio se discute La primavera, en concreto el pasaje de su primer movimiento en relación con el canto de los pájaros (Figura 2), desde la noción del eco metonímico (Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez 2011, 113). Los ejemplos musicales de este estudio se han llevado al terreno empírico de la psicología arrojando resultados desalentadores (Antovic, Stamenkovic y Figar 2016): en particular, la relación entre el canto aviar y la música de Vivaldi fue apenas detectada por los participantes en el experimento, incluso por quienes habían recibido información del trasfondo programático del pasaje musical. Por este motivo, y aunque en ocasiones me veré obligado a hacer inferencias desde mi propia experiencia como oyente, intentaré evitar en este artículo generalizaciones inductivas. ...
Article
Full-text available
Este artículo pretende mostrar cómo algunos elementos del autoanálisis musical pueden ser reveladores de importantes aspectos cognitivos sobre la composición. Propongo primero un marco metodológico derivado fundamentalmente de algunas consideraciones sobre la semiología desde las neurociencias y la lingüística cognitiva aplicadas a la música en las investigaciones de Stefan Koelsch y Lawrence M. Zbikowski. Este marco es aplicado a continuación al estudio de Viento de otoño (1998) de José Manuel López López, junto a diversas fuentes del propio compositor directamente relacionadas con su composición. El análisis de este estudio de caso permite tanto un mejor entendimiento de las prácticas creativas del compositor como una evaluación de los potenciales y límites del marco metodológico presentado.
... The quality of Nasheed performance is not only determined by the individuals' musicality, but also determined by the group ability in combining the sense of musicality. It is related with Antović, Stamenković, and Figar (2016) state that Blending as a phenomenon involving 'intra-musical'elements. ...
Article
Full-text available
An effective learning process must be organized in a focus. Focus is the focal point of competency targets. The study examines the effect of Imitation, Creation, and Origination as a focus learning by using Encore software to musicality and creativity of Nasheed groups, which currently spreads all over Indonesia. It is important to know about the effect because popularity of Nasheed groups has not been matched by the quality of playing music adequately. By providing Encore software, it is expected that Nasheed groups could satisfy their fans. This research is an experiment research with Pre-test -Post-test Control Group randomized design. The factorial design is applied 4 x 3 factorial design. Three kinds of treatments were given to the experiment Nasheed groups. Imitation treatment was provided for beginner, creation treatment for semi-professional, and originality treatment for professional Nasheed group. Control group was given conventional learning. The sampling technique employed stratified random sampling with 26 groups which involved 262 munsyid (Nasheed player) which were divided into 131 experimental and 131 control groups. The effect of Encore software was analysed through MANCOVA analysis. The result of the research shows that the use of Encore technology could improve musicality and creativity for Nasheed group. This is indicated by the Pilae's trace value of 0.004 at 0.05% significance. However, based on multivariate analysis, the learning focus did not significantly affect creativity. © 2022 Gate Association for Teaching and Education. All right reserved.
Article
The present research focuses on meaning generation in music and language cognition based on complexes of image schemas. Viewed as relatively fixed building blocks of concept formation, image schemas are observed in this research as involved in potentially dynamic interactions which may be conducive to online complex conceptual construction found both in non-figurative and metaphorical language and elsewhere in various cognitive code expressions. In an effort to expand on recent computational work in the domain, we propose that a formal account of image-schema interaction should include the notion of scalarity, a higher-order parameter which captures the intensity with which schemas occur and/or interact with one another. In that sense, schemas are proposed to have a binary valence (positive or negative) and a three-tier range of intensity levels. We focus on some examples of the interaction of FORCE, PATH, LINK, BALANCE, and CONTAINMENT schemas in language and music to illustrate how a formal routine emerging from our proposal may help in addressing not only aspects of propositional semantics, but also affective and connotative nuances in musical and linguistic expression. Key words: image schema, dynamic interaction, concept generation, scalarity.
Chapter
It is an interesting question whether the problem of “words and worlds” really applies to musical phenomena. After all, according to many, music is best experienced if not talked about; likewise, it often seems to operate just fine in its own ontological environment, without the need to “refer” to anything extrinsic. This at least has been the position of countless “formalist” approaches in music aesthetics, semiotics, and more recently cognitive science. In response to such occasional objections, the present contribution aims to discuss precisely the problem of intentionality: can music be “about” anything in the extramusical realm and can the notion of metaphor help shed light on such a music-to-the-world connection?The present paper uses the cognitive-linguistic theories of conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending and the author’s proposal for a “multilevel-grounded semantics” to suggest that the form/content dichotomy in music is in fact a matter of degree. To support this, the paper provides an overview of musical descriptions resulting from historical texts, instances of criticism, or experimental studies, showing how they are metaphorical on a variety of levels, from apparently very simplistic “low tones moving upward” located in didactic Czerny etudes to highly descriptive “birds singing” as in Vivaldi’s Spring.To illustrate the complexities of the phenomenon, the text provides a detailed analysis of the possible reception of a well-known programmatic musical piece – Introduction and Royal March of the Lion from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. With an aim to suggest that the use of metaphor at the same time constrains the broad array of musical interpretations and allows for vast creativity in the music reception process, the model proposes six hierarchically interrelated levels of meaning generation that motivate musical metaphor, spanning perceptual constraints, cross-modal interactions, affective responses, construction of elementary conceptual imagery, culturally rich narrative elaborations, and finally optional personal associations.
Book
In this highly-interdisciplinary volume, we systematically study the role of metaphors and analogies in (mis)shaping our understanding of the world. Metaphors and Analogies occupy a prominent place in scientific discourses, as they do in literature, humanities and at the very level of our thinking itself. But when misused they can lead us astray, blinding our understanding inexorably. How can metaphors aid us in our understanding of the world? What role do they play in our scientific discourses and in humanities? How do they help us understand and skillfully deal with our complex socio-political scenarios? Where is the dividing line between their use and abuse? Join us as we explore some of these questions in this volume.
Article
The subject of musical onomatopoeia, or imitation of environmental sounds by musical instruments, has long been dismissed as marginal and unimportant in the context of Western art music. The purpose of this article is both to counter this dismissal and to propose the development of a field of study focused on musical onomatopoeia. After explaining the choice of the term musical onomatopoeia to refer to this compositional practice, based on the criteria of historical pertinence, frequency of use in the literature, and terminological coherence, I examine a number of factors that have determined the views of nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators on the subject. The article closes with a brief catalogue of examples from the Western art music repertoire.
Article
The question of whether music has meaning has been the subject of sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academic inquiry. Is music a language? Does it communicate specific ideas and emotions? What does music mean, and how does this meaning manifest itself? Working at the nexus of musicology, ethnomusicology, and music philosophy and aesthetics, the book presents a synthetic and innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly for the thinking of music as a discourse in itself-composed not only of sequences of gestures, phrases, or progressions, but rather also of the very philosophical and linguistic props that enable the analytical formulations made about music as an object of study. The book provides demonstrations of the pertinence of a semiological approach to understanding the fully-freighted language of Romantic music, stresses the importance of a generative approach to tonal understanding, and provides further insight into the analogy between music and language.
Article
We explore the capacity for music in terms of five questions: (1) What cognitive structures are invoked by music? (2) What are the principles that create these structures? (3) How do listeners acquire these principles? (4) What pre-existing resources make such acquisition possible? (5) Which aspects of these resources are specific to music, and which are more general? We examine these issues by looking at the major components of musical organization: rhythm (an interaction of grouping and meter), tonal organization (the structure of melody and harmony), and affect (the interaction of music with emotion). Each domain reveals a combination of cognitively general phenomena, such as gestalt grouping principles, harmonic roughness, and stream segregation, with phenomena that appear special to music and language, such as metrical organization. These are subtly interwoven with a residue of components that are devoted specifically to music, such as the structure of tonal systems and the contours of melodic tension and relaxation that depend on tonality. In the domain of affect, these components are especially tangled, involving the interaction of such varied factors as general-purpose aesthetic framing, communication of affect by tone of voice, and the musically specific way that tonal pitch contours evoke patterns of posture and gesture.
Article
Wagner's leitmotifs were intentionally constructed as compact, discrete musical units charged with extramusical meaning. Should they be considered merely as arbitrary signifiers, whose signifieds are discovered only through the dramatic context of their appearance? The research reported here rejects this possibility, demonstrating experimentally that the leitmotifs bear inherent meaning. It is this meaning that grants them their communicative potential and provides a basis for the specific message given them in the setting of the specific musical work. A selection of nine representative leitmotifs from Wagner's Ring cycle was played to subjects during the course of a two-part experiment. The first part, which was designed on the basis of the semantic differential technique, yielded several significant factors that defined an inclusive connotative space. The second part of the experiment was designed and evaluated according to the "semantic integral" method, which was developed for the purpose of adding a denotative dimension, using titles given to the leitmotifs by the subjects. The results substantiated the existence of complementary relations between the connotative and denotative aspects of the leitmotifs. Findings of this sort should assist in explaining how the leitmotifs function within the dramatic context. The methods applied, as well as the findings arrived at, disclose, we believe, essential characteristics of the semantic structure of music in general.
Book
== Publisher's description (long) == This book continues to develop the semiotic theory of musical meaning presented in Robert S. Hatten's first book, Musical Meaning in Beethoven (IUP, 1994). In addition to expanding theories of markedness, topics, and tropes, Hatten offers a fresh contribution to the understanding of musical gestures, as grounded in biological, psychological, cultural, and music-stylistic competencies. By focusing on gestures, topics, tropes, and their interaction in the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, Hatten demonstrates the power and elegance of synthetic structures and emergent meanings within a changing Viennese Classical style. == Table of contents == Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Markedness, Topics, and Tropes 1. Semiotic Grounding in Markedness and Style: Interpreting a Style Type in the Opening of Beethoven's Ghost Trio, Op. 70, no. 1 2. Expressive Doubling, Topics, Tropes, and Shifts in Level of Discourse: Interpreting the Third Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B Major, Op. 130 3. From Topic to Premise and Mode: The Pastoral in Schubert's Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894 4. The Troping of Topics, Genres, and Forms: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler Part II. Musical Gesture Introduction to Part II 5. Foundational Principles of Human Gesture 6. Toward a Theory of Musical Gesture 7. Stylistic Types and Strategic Functions of Gestures 8. Thematic Gesture in Schubert: The Piano Sonatas in A Major, D. 959, and A Minor, D. 784 9. Thematic Gesture in Beethoven: Sonata for Piano and Cello in C Major, Op. 102, no. 1 10. Gestural Troping and Agency Conclusion to Part II Part III. Continuity and Discontinuity Introduction to Part III 11. From Gestural Continuity to Continuity as Premise 12. Discontinuity and Beyond Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index of Names and Works Index of Concepts
Book
This book shows how recent work in cognitive science, especially that developed by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, can be used to explain how we understand music. The book focuses on three cognitive processes: categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models, and explores the part these play in theories of musical organization. The first part of the book provides a detailed overview of the relevant work in cognitive science, framed around specific musical examples. The second part brings this perspective to bear on a number of issues with which music scholarship has often been occupied, including the emergence of musical syntax and its relationship to musical semiosis, the problem of musical ontology, the relationship between words and music in songs, and conceptions of musical form and musical hierarchy.