Music – a Systemic/Functional semiotic approach
Music – a Systemic Functional Approach
Some years ago, when studying under Michael O’Toole at Murdoch University, I began experimenting with some thoughts on applying MAK Halliday’s systemic functional semiotics to music. To my knowledge, even 20 years later no-one else has sketched out such a schema. So, with some trepidation I thought I’d dig out that early naive schema and seek views on whether such a schema might still be useful as a point of entry into musical semiotics, and as a means of finding a language with which to deal with extra-linguistic artistic works. All that remains of that original lecture is the diagram that I developed and which I will lay out below. Then I’ll try to reconstruct a pathway by way of explanation for each element of the schema.
|
FUNCTION > RANK |
IDEATIONAL |
INTERPERSONAL |
TEXTUAL |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SCHOOL/PERIOD |
Religious/Secular |
Orientation i)Form (eg Classical) ii)Ornament (eg baroque) iii) Sense (eg romantic) |
Genre |
| WORK | Type of orchestration/Intertextuality | Modality – fantasy -description -irony -etc as expressed by: -voicing -key -dynamics -‘weight’ etc |
Frame eg song/folk dance/tonepoem/sonata/etc |
| MOVEMENT |
Interplay of |
Mood Mode Range Instrumentation |
Textual coherence : -interplay of theme -conjunctions/transitions -sub-themes modulations: -to different key -to different mode -tonal ambiguities |
|
PHRASE |
Theme+rhythm: |
Modifiers -rhythmic -tempo |
Contrast options: -rhythm -tempo -pitch -dynamic range(loud/soft) -pauses |
|
THEME |
Play of figures (nominal ‘characters’) |
Characterisation: |
Deixis: Key statement Cadences (endings) |
|
MOTIF |
Lexical content recurrent patterns |
Lexical Register: Modified motifs: -changed mode -changed key -inversions -changed rhythm |
Collocations: -position in theme -posn in movement -posn in Work parallelism/contrasts |
|
NOTE |
Basic unit of information: pitch+length degree of scale: |
Oppositions: sound/silence |
Position in harmonic series distribution collocation intervals voicing |
Much of this is self-explanatory, and has to do with the orientation of the music to the listener and to the culture into which it is inserted. Like all modes of signification, music has context, and a relationship to that context, whether to music history, or to style, or to genre. Each individual work is made up of elements each with their defining characteristics such as relationship to the key, voicing, sound/silence oppositions and so on.
The object here is to develop a way of talking about non-linguistic artistic texts in a schema that is relatively independent of a formal knowledge of music. That is, to try to come up with a descriptive semiotics of music by observing how it is structured, and how it functions within the culture.
I welcome suggestions on how I might develop this crude model further. In the meantime, I thought that after 20 years it is high time it got some wider exposure. If you use it, please acknowledge the source, but otherwise feel free to use and modify as you see fit.
And I welcome comments.
Cheers
Jerry
Comment by Bradley Smith
Hi Jerry, sounds very interesting indeed. I will need more time to look over your proposal carefully, but it is certainly an idea I find absorbing, and hope to pursue. I am studying at Macquarie University researching into intonation systems using the SFL framework. There are some references you might find useful/ interesting: Van Leeuwen ‘Speech, Music, Sound’, and 1991 ‘semiotics of easy listening music’; Steiner, in ‘Linguistics in a systemic perspective’1988; and a few non-SFL things I have been gathering together which I can reference if you like.
Posted on June 28, 2007 at 11:29 am