Music and language

Subject: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 07:52 PM

Interesting piece in the Guardian, based on a research paper suggesting that "music imitates the composer's native language", so that the reason a French piece of music, such as Debussy, sound French, while, for example, a piece by Elgar sounds English isn't just subjective - it's because the composers automatically made use of their native speech paterns.

Here is the Guardian piece - Great composers scored on language . And since, being on the Internet, we aren't restruicted to press summaries, here is the paper on which that artucle was based - English and French Classical Music Reflect the Melody and Rhythm of Speech in the Two Cultures, a paper by Aniruddh D. Patel, of The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego.

Intriguing to try to work out how far this applies in the case of folk music.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: mack/misophist
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 10:03 PM

The idea is fun but I think it falls apart when carried very far. For example:

A. Chinese music ought to be utterly unique but often sounds very melodic when played solo.

B. French and Spanish music ought to be more alike.

C. Italian and Romanian music (not to mention French and Spanish) should have more in common with each other than German music.

D. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish music ought to be much like German music.

And so on.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:32 AM

There have been numerous studies on Gaelic music and the relationship between the playing and the language. There is little doubt that the relationship is strong there . In fact puirst a beul ( mouth music ) is a direct link between the two.
       Slainte,
       Sandy

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: beetle cat
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 01:21 AM

well, thinking on tonal languages, the language is almost music before it is used in "music". even english, although not tonal, has stresses.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 05:36 AM

Is it more true for 'folk' music than 'international art music?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Amos
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 07:44 AM

It makes sense that if you are immersed in a primary set of rhythms and tone patterns all your life, especially the formative early years, that your compositions would somehow resonate to them. I doubt you can nail it down to detailed laws of nature, though. It is also true that you can detect certain flavors in writing by Americans, ENglish, and Australian -- event thou' they are all using English. Now, if you could make a case for the differences appearing in oil paintings, that would be something.


A

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 09:11 AM

Ah, the joys of making one's living in one of the soft sciences.
You needn't be right, just repeatedly assert that you are,and QED.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 10:57 AM

Might it be possible to quantify the the difference between say English and Italian as they are spoken?

Or say English and Russian? I think it is true that although most different languages use most part of the throat and mouth etc. they don't use them in the same proportions. Some languages more throaty some more on the lips. This might give the possibility of dedscription if not quantity.

Misic seems a bit more straitforward. pitch, rhthym, length of notes. Irish songs don't geberally sound like Arabic songs.

Perhaps we can lead the soft sciences to something a bit more concrete?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 11:40 AM

Chinese music sounds pretty recognisably Chinese - I can't see why mack/mis should express surprsie at the fact it's pretty "melodic" - Chinese is a language where tone in speaking is a key element.

Listening to speech when it's very faint, or distorted, so that you can't pick out any words, it's normally very easy to identify what language is being spoken pretty accurately, and even what variety of te langauge. For exmaple it's easy enough to picks out English from French, but it is also easy to pick out North American English from either - it isn't a question of vocabulary as such. And I have a feeling that if you tried the same experiement with some fluent Irish speakers, in Irish and in English, it might be quite hard to spot whiuch language they were actually speaking.

I don't imagine this is by any means the only factor in shaping music, but it has to be one of them.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:47 PM

Perhaps if we tried to analyse speech by identifying the factors we do in music; pitch, rhthym, length of words etc. a pattern might emerge?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 02:33 PM

That paper I linked to does include examples of doing what Les suggested.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 08:09 AM

And what about Händel? German composer who wrote a lot of music to English texts. I must say, I don't hear any difference when "Hallelujah" is sung in English or in German.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 02:38 PM

Is that the affect of International art music ironing things flat?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 02:53 PM

I don't think the language used for singing is the point here - the suggestion is that the native lannguage of the composer colours the music. I'd say Handel's music does sound German. But that impression might be coloured by knowing that he was German.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 03:39 PM

I know that I quite often, listening to one of our public radio station's classical music programs, will hear an unfamiliar piece and tell my wife, "I'll bet that's English!" And it almost always is. There is what I think of as a pallidness, a sort of simplistic approach that I don't hear from composers of any other nationality. Not all English music is this way, but when I hear what I'm talking about I can attribute it pretty accurately.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 03:58 PM

And when you hear the English music that you don't think is pallid and simplistic, would you identify that as sounding English as well?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 06:48 PM

Some Chinese country music is quite melodic but a visit to one of the various Chinese opera bases (Beijing, Anhui, Shanghai) the songs are in dialect and the music can be cacophonic due to the use of cymbals, bone like percussion, and sometimes a screaching erhu (a two sting bowed instrument) and that fits well with the language which can be quite stataco.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: GUEST,greg stephens
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 01:09 AM

This discussion concentrates on whether languages influence local forms of music. Might it not be that local forms of music are influencing the language?

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: GUEST,Fay
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 05:44 AM

Chris Wood did a study/composition project a couple of years ago (don't know if he's published any of it yet) where he recorded people speaking, telling stories of their lives etc and then he took the recordings and tried to break down the sound patterns to make pieces of music. He was very much following this idea - he has also talked about the landscape shaping the spoken and musical sound i.e. the grassy flowing downs tunes are 'rolling' and the northumbrian craggy tunes are 'jumpy'.

Not sure if I was very impressed with either theory/result, but an interesting subject.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 06:57 AM

the joys of making one's living in one of the soft sciences. (21 Nov 04 - 09:11 AM)
Rather the joys of commenting on a subject without reading first.

This is the first time in my life that I have seen research in the Neurosciences described as 'soft'. The paper McGrath has linked to is described as the 'Popular version'. Popular versions tend to 'sound' softer for good reasons.

I don't know the long version so I don't know whether I'd consider it good research but the result fits well into other findings about music and language. For instance,
(1) Persons with native languages in which pitch plays a role (Chinese for instance) are more likely to have 'absolute pitch'.
(2) In music professionals the brain region for language is also (in addition to other brain regions) involved in music processing, whereas people with less contact to music do not use the speech center for music processing.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 23 Nov 04 - 09:49 AM

Dave, I can also recognize the "English sound," which I love. But I really think it's modes (often Dorian) that I'm attracted to - suits my melancholy nature. ;-)

When I first read this thread title, I thought it would be about Rex Harrison's singing in My Fair Lady. It was reported that he really couldn't sing, so his songs were written to be "talked." He was instructed to just use his natural speaking inflections when appearing to sing. Songs such as "I've Grown Accustomed to her Face" and "An Ordinary Man" have a very small range.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: GUEST,greg stephens
Date: 24 Nov 04 - 04:47 AM

Is that right, that the songs were written for Rex Harrison? Didn't he just star in the movie of an already written musical?
Rap is a good example of this sort of thing, half way between speech and melody.

Subject: RE: Music and language
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Nov 04 - 09:04 AM

To my ears rap seems to avoid changes in pitch, relying instead on rhythm and sometimes changes in volume - essentially it's percussion rather than melody.

It'd be quite interesting to have a similar study focussing on rap (and similar) in English and French. Though it's not the language as such that it's about, it's the way the language is spoken, the intonation and speech patterns, which is a very different, and much more varied, thing.