Musical languages

by Joseph Peter Swain

In Musical Languages, Swain revisits the age-old analogy between music and language in light of the latest advances in modern linguistics and cognitive psychology. He shows how our new knowledge about spoken language can explain our experience of music. The illustrations used in the book range from the most elemental speech sounds to the poetry of Emerson, from a single saxophone note to the grandest passages of Beethoven; they include discussions of medieval polyphony and the music of Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Schoenberg, and American jazz, all within their historical contexts. Such scope shows how deep the analogy between music and language really is. The ubiquitous expression "musical language" becomes fresh and precise once again.