WMA Forum 2005

The Semantic Analysis of Musical Texts

Ljudmila Shaymukhametova, (Ufa State Institute of Arts, Russia)

I am very much obliged to the International Association for Word and Music Studies for the invitation to address you with this presentation. I am also very pleased to make the acquaintance of scholars working in the field of “Music and the Spoken Word”, to which a section of this conference is devoted. I am a musicologist who participates in this conference with great interest, especially for the reason that an interdisciplinary approach, in my eyes, is a most fruitful way of tackling many problems.

I would like to begin with a brief historical outline of my subject.

In Russia, the time of most vigorous research on the topic of the interconnection of word and music fell in the ’70s and ’80s of the twentieth century. During this period the following achievements were made. First, a theory of relating different layers of a musical composition to its lyrics was set up, based on instances of nineteenth-century romantic song as well as on the Russian romance. Second, word rhythm and its manifestation in the melody of operas were described. Third, some regularities of sequential occurrence of verse and prose in the composition of Russian romances were accounted for. Fourth, generalizations on the ground of specifically Russian musical and poetic rhythm were made. This also involved an account of how the word rhythm is being shifted in the famous chants of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as in concerts of sacred music. Finally, some special attention was devoted to research on music and text in the vocal works of Schubert, Schumann and Mahler.

During the last ten years scholars in Russia have revealed an increased concern with the issue of how musical and literary themes are interconnected—in other words, how they are linked in their migration through the works of different authors and styles. Typical for every form of art, the ‘eternal’ themes of Good and Evil as well as Love and Death are presently being investigated with great concentration. An example of this systematic investigation is a line of works on the issue of musicality in Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, on Goethe’s Faust as it was received by Hector Berlioz, on Faustian motives in the works of Stravinsky and Schnittke, on Liszt’s Mephisto waltzes, on the theme of the mythological Orpheus in the Russian ‘Silver Age’ poetry and its manifestation in the creations of Russian composers, et cetera.

In the twentieth century, a considerable branch of the academic establishment acknowledged music to be part of a communicative semiotic system. Owing to this shift, music is nowadays being studied in the context of the problems of language and speech. The original impulse for this perspective came from the ideas and works of Ferdinand de Saussure, from the inquiries of the Prague Linguistic Circle, from Charles Pierce’s theory of signs and the discoveries of Claude Levi-Strauss, A. J. Greimas, Roland Barthes and many others. As for Russia, the semiotic approach was promoted by the so-called Tartu School at Tartu University headed by Jurij Lotman. It is due to the achievements of scholars all over the world that music is now being accessed from two viewpoints: musical language (language) and musical speech (parole).

For the academic tradition I come from it is of foremost importance to see music as a process genuinely consisting of two triads: first, that of ‘composer, performer, listener’ and, second, that of ‘language, speech and thought’. The conception of these triads originated in the 1920s, and their later amplification is to a large extent due to the doyens of Russian science, Boris Asafjev and B. L. Yavorsky. According to their understanding, musical language has to be seen as not merely a language of moods, passions and emotions, but rather as possessing a vocabulary of stable intonational figures, which in their turn possess concrete an object- and situation-related etymology and an elaborate system of meanings. Interacting with other forms of art, music recurrently sustains and extends its vocabulary.

It was a further consequence of the abovementioned insights that by their means a whole comparative tradition was established—a tradition of analogizing verbal language with musical language so that it became possible to account for some universal regularities of their structures. Eventually some conceptions of the disciplines applicable to research on musical language were established.

We find analogies to verbal language in musical phonetics, grammar, syntax and semantics. Musical phonetics deals with the sound and acoustic foundations of music. Musical syntax relates to the structural organization of music in time. Musical grammar This statement displays a change of mood from surprise to perplexity (bars 10-14), discontent and anger (bars 15-20). To account for this a performer has to be able to break up the text into meaningful segments and to get clear on his tasks as a producer, tasks which are similar to those required for staging a theatrical scene. is basically a science of the chord, of its structure, rules of constitution and norms of musical language.

Here I leave the discussion of the general outline and proceed to the main part of my talk. For there is one discipline that is rather neglected: musical semantics. As far as I know, semantic analysis is hardly practiced as an applied discipline in music, in spite of the fact that it is one of the most important components of any system of linguistic universals.

Aspiring musicians are not being taught to decipher the etymology of musical meanings, they are not made acquainted with the musical vocabulary of different authors and styles, and are not made aware of figurative characteristics and metaphors. In short, everything concerning the domain of musical content is neglected (at least as regards musical education) and is no part of any regular curriculum.

Mature specialists (i.e., professional musicians) in their turn generally comprehend the artistic cosmos of a work of art subjectively, i.e., without having any accepted canon ready at hand. Shortcomings of this approach become evident when an interpretation based solely on intuition contradicts the intentions of the composer, the reason for this being that the content of the work itself is substituted by the content as conceived by the interpreter, which is not the same. Free artistic associations of the musician turn out to be an attempt to impose upon the audience some artificial content, i.e., content unintended by the composer.

There are numerous instances of bizarre interpretation of baroque and neo-classical works conditioned by this very situation. It is general practice that renditions of pieces of Haydn, Mozart and even Bach, as far as their figurative and emotional content and also the applied means of expression are concerned, bear strong similarity to romantic compositions. As it becomes apparent in such cases, exaggerated dynamics and boasting articulation ruin the semantics of the composition and transgress the limits of its style.

Russian pianists, to take another example, have a weakness for ‘singing’ the piano. That is to say, they so much favor the fluent, cantilene sound that they indiscriminately force it on all compositions. This is what their Russian mentality encourages them to do.

As regards Mozart, one can find content that he could not possibly have had in mind but which is nevertheless heard on numerous occasions. This is especially true of the opening and final movements of his concertos and sonatas, which are actually full of underlying theatrical content. They contain personages from the opera, comic scenes, theatrical dialogues and enchanting female characters that migrate from one composition to the other and are easy to recognize.[1] Despite all this, even at international contests priority is given to traditional ways of performing Mozart, which implies that they are seen as very fast, virtuoso and glittering pieces with runs, figurations and a lot of ornamentation and external contrasts. Thus the musical content intended by the author remains unrevealed and consequently unavailable to the audience.

A similar situation is true for Haydn’s sonatas. They often make use of the rich figurative system of the pastoral. The pastoral, with its abundant ornamentation, is conveyed by means of a specific vocabulary of the author, that is to say, by means of a system of meanings which were common in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. Yet, when read subjectively, these sonatas sound dull and monotonous. This is mainly due to a formal, technical decoding of melismas. Such a performance does not stimulate the audience and, as a consequence, Haydn is less and less performed.

Finally, the piano works of Bach are often deciphered in completely mysterious ways. It has become fashionable lately to recommend a Bible-based performance. One expert, for instance, believes to have identified the evil serpent as the protagonist of Bach’s Invention in D minor (BWV XV). The reason for this interpretation is an observation made by Albert Schweitzer, according to which the figurations imitate a winding motion at the words “the serpent winds”. Yet in that Invention the composer, as a matter of fact, applies meanings contrary to the one proposed above. Here the content is defined by means of a funeral march and of lyrical figurations, which constitute the ornament.

As these examples demonstrate (and many more could be given), it is impossible to interpret the figurative system of a composer without deciphering his vocabulary of musical meanings. Alongside with semantic figures, a major role in deciphering the structures of meaning is being played by the phenomena of intertext. The latter can display a circumstantial etymology of a sign, but it can also consist in textual extraction (a quote, a monogram, an emblem, for instance).

Semantic analysis is an indispensable tool in deciphering these phenomena. They provide the possibility of an analysis that is more adequate to the composer’s intention and therefore allow formulating intonational objectives with greater precision. As a result, the performer interprets a composition not on merely subjective grounds because he can resort to something outside his own intuition.

In 2001, at the Ufa Academy of Arts, which I represent here, a Laboratory of Musical Semantics was founded. By applying the method of semantic analysis, the main focus of the lab is on the problem of ‘musical text and the performer’. Its work not only aims at analyzing the content of a work of art but also at adapting the acquired results to educational practice.

The objects of analysis are the following: first, semantic figures, i. e., stable phrases with affixed meaning; second, intertextual phenomena. The latter convey meaning to a particular theme and provide a link between narrative images and a cultural metatext.

All this accounts for the connectedness of music and linguistics as well as for terms which are commonly used in analogy between music and literature. It is only natural that the categories of text, work, language, parole, context, vocabulary, semantics, grammar, intra- and extra-musical semantics have to be redefined with reference to music. Intertextuality as a universal mechanism becomes an interdisciplinary issue.

In our inquiries we assume the piano texts of different epochs and styles to be organized as a record of meaning. The meaning score generates a distinctive polyphony of meaning layers. It has horizontal as well as vertical projections. Every musical text can be sectioned into segments of meaning which are not subject to limitations of any particular formal structure. Thus, a remark in a dialogue can either be equivalent to a bar or to a whole part of a given composition.

As regards their role in the text, semantic figures are comparable to words and expressions. Their meanings derive from the interaction of music, the environment and various forms of art. Speech, movement, lyric figures, theatre and painting—they all partake in this process of meaning generation. In each case a semantic figure is employed, a certain meaning is conveyed, a character, a movement or a landscape image is evoked. It is of foremost importance to understand how the machinery of musical metaphors, consisting of a collection of sign structures, operates. They produce a polyphony of meanings, an ambivalence of sense.

The analysis of the vocabulary underlying the themes of basso ostinato genres makes it obvious that the characterization of this kind of music as ‘rigid’ and ‘unvarying’ is plainly wrong. The baroque theme in instrumental music turns out to possess a rich lexis of object- and emotion-related meanings. Several Mozart sonatas demonstrate migrating imagery of characters from his operas. There is, for example, Susanna (or her earlier prototype from Mozart’s La finta semplice). Her images are transmitted by gallant intonations of choreographic origin; by characteristic ‘ways of speech’, as for example clichés of Italian patter (third movement of Sonata Nr. 1, KV 279; first and third movements of Sonata Nr. 10, KV 330); by coloraturas, which communicate excitement, fits of passion and suggest rash temper (first movements of Sonata Nr. 5, KV 283, and of Sonata Nr. 15, KV 545); finally by exclamations, screams and interjections (first movement of Sonata Nr. 7, KV 309). Susanna’s recurrent cliché is furthermore a figuration in form of Alberti basses (first movement of Sonata Nr. 15, KV 545), or a rhythmic figuration (as, for example, in the case of the intense scene of conflict in the exposition of Sonata Nr. 7). These typical figurations generate the correct tempo and rhythm and establish the ‘nerve’ of theatrical scenes. It is only natural that such vocabulary (‘gallant’ intonations on the background of swift Alberti basses) comprises the essence and the emotional core of the Susanna part in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro itself.

The more lyrical and tempered Contessa is portrayed, in the sonatas, featuring in dialogues with the Conte, by means of her responses and some elaborate statements. Thus, for example, at the very beginning of Sonata Nr. 14 in C minor (KV 457) we hear an argument structured in the following way: ‘the Conte is accusing’—‘the Contessa is vindicating’. The intonational vocabulary reveals the nature of a given character, that is to say, his social status, age, sex, temper and way of behaving as related to the established code. However, the peculiarities of the situation are also put across in a very manifest way. Ornamentally decorated figures of curtsey droppings are combined with lamento figures; this corresponds with the way of expressing one’s feelings at this ‘gallant age’. The conflict is unable to disturb the balance of such a distinguished lady; her strain is being confined by the etiquette. Rather short utterances on her part gradually make way to an elaborate statement in the first movement of Sonata Nr. 7.

The analogy between the work of a musician when staging a composition and of a producer in the theatre, shows a high and, as it seems, as yet unexploited potential. A methodology based on such an approach could smoothly fit in with the modern educational techniques of role playing and problem modeling. It would activate the performers’ imagination and stimulate their creative momentum. Granted spontaneous creativity, communication of meanings on an intuitive level and all that—the situation demands to place articulation under the command of the system of connotations that was set up by the composer himself. Even more so when the music is actually a dialogue that takes place between definite characters. While the storyline carries on, the performer is forced to look for always solutions and choose ever new adaptations of the dialogue, paying tribute to the responses which are being given during the conversation.

The semantic analysis makes it also possible to deal with such an interesting musical phenomenon as figures of pastoral. On the pattern of Haydn’s piano sonatas a number of recurrent migrating intonations can be drawn out. There is, for example, the gallant figure assimilating eurhythmics to sound; or there are clichés of thirds and sixths symbolizing a duo of reed-pipes (the shepherd and his mate); or there are horn signals in various modifications of their meaning and structure; or there is the figure of languor expressed by means of decreasing chromatic embellishment of a cadence; there is finally the bourdon bass. Deciphering figurative meaning of some peculiar blends of these intonations is a difficult analytical task. Yet every faithful reproduction of a particular style is especially dependent on the details. In this case, the musical text is rich on subtle details whose realization in the context of ‘regimented feelings’ of seventeenth- century practices produces an impression of refined and delicate manners of articulation.

To proceed with yet another example, when analyzed by means of our method, the old baroque urtexts of German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveal their very own specific character.

With proper assignment of parts—continuo (invariant) and solo (variant)—to the performing partners (pianos 1 and 2) sceneries of everyday Hausmusik making of those days come to light. This provides the possibility of variably remodeling a text, based on unvarying universal compositional devices. Those are: the technique of register variation, the doubling technique, the techniques of diminution and augmentation, and finally the technique of double counterpoint, which is also referred to as the baroque mirror. The array of skills acquired in the course of such exercises allows a musician to cope with rather uncommon types of ‘free music making’, including improvisation. The ultimate instance of these practices is the conventional sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Hausmusik, especially some instructive piano compositions by J. S. Bach, as, for example, KlavierbÜchlein fÜr Anna Magdalena Bach, KlavierbÜchlein fÜr Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Inventionen. We understand them to be manuals of free music making, and we are working on different versions for editors and performers. Our laboratory teaches to develop piano texts to an orchestration score by means of timbre imitations in an eight-handed playing on two pianos. Interesting results are achieved by performing Bach inventions in the acoustic space-texture of two instruments. They are then being played without music and in different versions. This method provides a way of obtaining some text remodeling techniques and of implementing baroque vocabulary and stylistics.

Semantic analysis (in this case, the analysis of non-piano text in baroque compositions for the piano) confronts the performer with special challenges as regards articulation. These challenges are due to deciding on the proper dynamic imitations by means of the modern fortepiano. ‘Migrating’ figures were widely spread throughout seventeenth- and eighteenth-century piano music. Vocabularies of the flute, violin, trumpet, French horn and organ went down to the piano lexis of old masters. Migrating from text to text, they formed a semantic vocabulary and an artistic context of the baroque piano.

The introduction of the semantic method and of the developments in the field of practical semantics proves to be especially vital in elementary musical education. Our lab has issued several editions of manuals for children which are based on the semantic method. These are for example, The Semantic ABC for a Piano Player, Musical Dialogues and Games, Musical Rhetoric, Playing Together with the Teacher. They form the groundwork of future semantic concepts.

With their help aspiring musicians can study musical language and musical speech, the vocabulary of musical meanings and the content of musical compositions.

Our lab publishes scientific and methodological material concerning the named subject matter, organizes conferences, seminars and master-classes. We seek to establish contacts with other organizations, institutions and associations and are in the process of founding our own societies with the abovementioned objectives. In 2002, the All-Russian Asafiev Scientific and Educational Association was established[2], the main purpose of which it is to collect material on the analysis of musical content and to investigate musical language and speech.

The importance of a combined scientific effort in the field of practical semantics is twofold. Innovative educational technologies, which are designed on its basis, allow, first, to reinforce the understanding of music as a language and as a communicative semiotic system, and, second, to direct creative aspirations of musicians to an appropriate handling of musical texts.

1. In my work with musicians, I have taught a master class, “Intonational Theatre of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas”, for many years, and I enjoy it every time. It allows me to feel as an actress, a conductor and a manager of a play at the same time. Return to article

2. The President of the Association is Prof. Dr. V. Kholopova (Moscow Conservatory).

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