{"id":771,"date":"2007-05-15T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2007-05-15T12:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=771"},"modified":"2007-05-15T22:37:03","modified_gmt":"2007-05-15T12:37:03","slug":"music-a-systemicfunctional-semiotic-approach-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"Music – a Systemic\/Functional semiotic approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music – a Systemic Functional Approach
\n<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n Music – a semiotic schema
\n <\/caption>\n
\n

FUNCTION > <\/p>\n

RANK
\n \\\/<\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

IDEATIONAL
\n (Propositional\/representational)<\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

INTERPERSONAL
\n (Modality)<\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

TEXTUAL
\n (Compositional)<\/p>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

SCHOOL\/PERIOD
\n (Ideological base) <\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

Religious\/Secular
\n Canonical\/Popular<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

Orientation<\/strong>
\n i)Form (eg Classical)
\n ii)Ornament (eg baroque)
\n iii) Sense (eg romantic) <\/td>\n		Genre<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
WORK<\/th>\nType of orchestration<\/strong>\/Intertextuality <\/td>\nModality<\/strong>
\n – fantasy
\n -description
\n -irony
\n -etc
\n as expressed by<\/strong>:
\n -voicing
\n -key
\n -dynamics
\n -‘weight’ etc <\/td>\n		Frame<\/strong>
\n eg song\/folk dance\/tonepoem\/sonata\/etc <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MOVEMENT<\/th>\n\n

Interplay<\/strong> of
\n i)thematic structure
\n ii)sub-themes
\n eg: statement, recapitulation,cadence (ending), conjunction <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Mood<\/strong>
\n eg slow movement<\/p>\n

Mode<\/strong>
\n eg -major
\n -minor
\n -dorian
\n -lydian
\n -chromatic
\n -pentatonic etc<\/p>\n

Range<\/strong>
\n -pitch
\n -volume<\/p>\n

Instrumentation <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

Textual coherence<\/strong> :
\n -interplay of theme
\n -conjunctions\/transitions
\n -sub-themes
\n modulations:
\n -to different key
\n -to different mode
\n -tonal ambiguities <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

PHRASE
\n (Verbal group) <\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

Theme+rhythm<\/strong>:
\n anticipation
\n recapitulation
\n cadence
\n conjunction\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

Modifiers<\/strong>
\n -rhythmic
\n -tempo<\/p>\n<\/td>\n		Contrast options<\/strong>:
\n -rhythm
\n -tempo
\n -pitch
\n -dynamic range(loud\/soft)
\n
\n -pauses <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

THEME
\n (nominal group) <\/p>\n<\/th>\n

Play of figures<\/strong>
\n (nominal ‘characters’) <\/td>\n		\n

Characterisation<\/strong>:
\n relation to hearer – ‘gaze’
\n -pointers to key tonality
\n -colour
\n -dynamics
\n -line (melodic sequence)\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Deixis<\/strong>:
\n Tonal qualifiers – flat 5ths\/7ths etc<\/p>\n

Key statement<\/p>\n

Cadences (endings) <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

MOTIF
\n (Morphemes)<\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

Lexical content<\/strong>
\n recognisable figures<\/p>\n

recurrent patterns <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

Lexical Register<\/strong>:
\n Modified motifs:
\n -changed mode
\n -changed key
\n -inversions
\n -changed rhythm <\/td>\n		Collocations<\/strong>:
\n -position in theme
\n -posn in movement
\n -posn in Work
\n parallelism\/contrasts <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

NOTE
\n (Phoneme)<\/p>\n<\/th>\n

\n

Basic unit of information:<\/strong><\/p>\n

pitch+length<\/p>\n

degree of scale:
\n 8-octave
\n 7-leading-note
\n 6-sub-mediant
\n 5-dominant
\n 4-sub-dominant
\n 3-mediant
\n 2-supertonic
\n 1-tonic\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Oppositions<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

sound\/silence
\n long\/short
\n loud\/quiet
\n high\/low (pich)
\n chord\/single note\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Position<\/strong> in harmonic series<\/p>\n

distribution<\/p>\n

collocation<\/p>\n

intervals<\/p>\n

voicing <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And I welcome comments.<\/p>\n

Cheers
\n Jerry<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-music","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}