Linguistics: A New Approach for Musical Analysis? Jean-Jacques Nattiez, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jun., 1973), pp. 51-68. ble URL: bitp://links jstor.org/sici?sici=0351-5796%28197306%294%3A 1% 3CS 15¢3ALANAFM®%3E2.0,CO%3B2-8 Intemational Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music is currently published by Croatian Musicological Society ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of htp:/wwww stor org/about/terms.html. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contaet the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hp: www jstor-org/journalseroat. html Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR isan independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupswwwjstororg/ Mon Nov 13 08:32:14 2006LINGUISTICS: A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS?* Jean-Jacques Nartiez Faculté de Musique, Université de Montréal Linguistics, semiology and musical analysis The idea is in the air: linguistics, that is the methods used to describe a language, might be relevant to musical analysis. In 1970, while visiting the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal, Pierre Boulez. announced alts vital to escape, as one might put it, from this kind of formalist! anal- ysis in order to reach true formalism, what is known as the formalist school of the analysis of language.the musicological study of scores aims above all to determine what connects them with earlier or contemporary musical aesthetics, and also where they part company with it, and to know besides whether they have left some trace or exerted an influence on following generations.<® In the Encyclo- bédie Larousse (I, 1957) we find: »Musical analysis: an objective account of the technical procedures used in the composition of a particular work. ‘The analysis may remain at the level of a simple morphological description, but may also reach comprehension of the esential logic of a technique ‘ retrace the genesis of a work or a historical advance raises ana- lysis to the level of creation.«* Is it not characteristic that Charles Seeger should, in 1939, have regretted the existence of a breach between system- atic and historic musicologists?® Before a structural hislory was contem- plated, was a synchronic description of the structures made? Saussure works with a further and final disctinction, a fundamental one, ‘without which linguistics would be purposeless. Among the heterogeneous facts of language he separates what he calls Jangue (which must not be con- fused with particular languages) and parole, By langue he means the ab- stract system which is common to all the speakers of a given language; pa- role, on the other hand, isthe totality of all the individual acts of language: no two people pronouce a in the same way, and, in the same individual, a is uttered in a different way according to the places it occupies in a lin- guistic context. To show what distinguishes a for every speaker of French ffom the other vowels of French i to place ft on the level of langue, and is a part of phonology. To study the actual utterances of a isto place it at the level of parole and is a part of phonetics. The distinction between langue and parole must be applied cautiously in music, but it enables us to reveal different leves among musical facts: to the parole of linguistics may correspond the performance of a work and, at the same time, the work (the parole of a composer) as it relates to a musical. system (tonal, serial, etc.). ‘This is because music, unlike ev- ceryday language, is an art, and is realised in works which can later be per- formed. This means that musical semiology has not two levels to choose from but three: the level of performance, that of the organization of the work itself, and its system of reference. Gan musical semiology deal with variations in execution from one performance to the next and judge what, # sAnalyse musicale: compte-rendu objecti{ det procédé: techniques qui ont serti a bern cae cure, in eu at nn eee de grin morpalogique, mai ben parent, & Pacligenc dee qu consi ie iceciqas dukeldémarche (1) Reroute le gensse dune ceuvre bu dune dé marche historique deve Vanaiye a niveau de la création « ur underining ® La musicologie, P. U. F., QS. J2, Pari, p. 19. © Did, pp. 117-8 Quoted by B, HARASZTI, op. cit, pp. 1675-6LINGUISTICS: A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? 37 fn the level of a particular interpretation, belongs strictly to music? Just as, for Saussure, scientific linguistics is the study of langue and not of parole, so it might be considered that it would be speediest and easiest for it to take as the subject of analysis a series of works sufficiently numerous to reveal constants. This is the way linguistics proceeds in seeking a systematic struc- ture beyond the individual character of the sentences. When one looks at it this way, is it even possible to discuss the semiology of a single work of mu- sic? We do not believe s0,® for all the attempts at literary semiology®” and such semiological approaches to works of music as have been made® tend to show that recurrent features are only apparent against a background of ‘works sufficiently numerous to give some guide-line as to what is relevant. So, between works considered intuitively as stylistically homogeneous and their system of reference a whole series of intermediate steps is established, rather like an inverted cone, which leads us from the style of a particular period of the work of one composer (Mozart's mature style) to the wider system through the style of the whole of the composer's work, the style of a genre (for example, concertant music), of an epoch (romantic), etc. This ordering in a series of the objects to be analysed” would make musical se- miology possible, and it would then seem to us sufficiently clearly defined: it tends at present to become confused with stylistcs because the structural systems of music, as of literature, are realised in individual works. But its special feature, in contrast to the traditional analysis of music, will be the rigour of its methods, and it is this that we will discuss now. »Extractives procedures, linguistics and musical analysis What has enabled linguistics since the Prague Linguistic Circle was found- ed in 1926 to win the reputation it enjoys today is that it has focussed its main attention on its discovery procedures which we might go as far as to call heuristic, or procedures of elicitation, This is what places linguistics truly in the realm of science, in contrast to many contemporary >semiolo- giese: »No physicist or biologiste, writes Gardin, »would be surprised to be asked to present, along with a new theory, the natural data and the mental processes which led him to formulate it-e# The procedures of elicitation 2 Uales the work itl is of considerable length: Tritan or La Tetralogie, for FW have in mind the work on the structural analysis of poetry by JAKOBSON, LEVESTRAUSS and RUWET. ' For example, F. B. MACHE, Méthodes linguistiques et musicologie, Musique en jew. Nov. 1971, No. 5, pp. 75-92: for our eriticism, see the article cited in note 5. We owe this view of semiosiylistc relevance to Jean Molino (Sur les titres de Bruce, unpublished) J. C, GARDIN has put forward the criterion of serial ordering in his work on the analysis of documents' which inspired the semiological theory of J. Molino. But fone might say more generally that afl scientific analysis, even when if does not state Ts based on a serial arrangement of the subjects approached J.C. GARDIN, of. cit, p. 658 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC are all those techniques which make it possible to mark off in the amor- phous area offered to the analyst those objects which will be included in the scientific description. One may question the worth of this or that method: one can only begin to speak of science if the analytic procedures are explicit enough to be copied by another investigator or, to put it another way, explicit enough to show what steps will lead one to a given theory. Linguistics, from this point of view, is divided into two large families. Firs, there are the functionalist and glosemati schools, which define items by the role they play in human communication, that is, by the meanings carried by language. Phonology thus considers that in French p and b are two distinct phonemes because they keep the listener from confusing >pi- cerre« (stone) with abiéree (beer): it is when p and b commute that one observes a change of meaning, and so observes that p and b may be considered as two distinctive units. It is immediately apparent that musical analysis cannot use procedures like this since it is impossible properly speak- ing to make units change place in relation to their meaning. On the other hand, another school, distributionalism (or American struc- turalism) attempts to describe languages without relation to meaning but solely by the examination of the contexts in which a particular item appears. Tt was the works of Harris that inspired Nicolas Ruwet, who is both lin- uist and musicologist, to propose a method of distinguishing units in mu- sic based on the idea of repetition: the articles that this author has written seem to us to point the most substantial direction for musical semiology to take in the future.#® In fact, if we tum to musical analysis in its present state, we see that there has been no attempt to define rigorously the items with which we work. Let us examine, as Ruwet suggests, the definitions of apparently sim- ple terms like phrase, cellule, figure, motif, période, and théme in the var- ious encyclopedias or analytical treatises. First, is an individual author consistent? Encyclopédie Larousse, 1957: cellule: petit desin mélodique et rythmigue qui peut dre isolé ou joire pantie d'un contexte thématique. Une cellule peut ete appelée a die développée indépen- ddamment de son contexte, tel un fragment mélodique. Elle peut dire @ la sour- ce de toute la structure d'une oewere; on Pappele alors cellule génératrice. # N. RU deamon ea 1566, XS, pp, 65-90; Quelgues remarques sur le xble de la repetition dang Ia synaxe musicale, in Fo honour Roman Jakobson, Mouton, The Hague 196), pp. 169521703. ‘Reprinted in Langage, musique, potsie, Le Seul, collection Poetique, Paris 1972. B We are extremely grateful to Louise Hirbour-Paquette for undertaking this survey Note sur les duplications dans Voeuvre de C, Debussy, Reve belge 162, XVI, pp. 51-70; Méthodes analyse en musicologie, R. B. 3LINGUISTICS. A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? 59 motif: ett élément caractéristique d'une composition musicale, qui assure & différents titres Punité d'une oewsre ou d'une partie d'oeurre (un motif qui peut dre aimilé d une cellule, est capable de prendre trois aspects qui peuvent dre dissocds, rythmique, mélodique, harmonique) figure: motif rythmique et mélodique analogue @ la cellule, rithmig a a We see that, by virtue of the definition of figure, cellule, motif and figure are one and the same thing, with one exception: harmony is not involved in cellule and figure. Looking at it more closely, can one speak of differen- ces between cellule and motif? From a cellule the whole structure of a work may spring, while a motif gives unity to a work or part of a work. Are we not speaking of the same phenomenon? theme: idée musicale constitute par une mélodie (ou un fragment mélodique) sur laquelle Sappuie la structure d’une composition musicale. The only difference from the cellule here is that a théme cannot be rhythmic only, but the author does not state whether it can be melodic only. Apart from this, the difference seems to be one of size: the cellule, like the motif, is a small item. But at what point do they become themes? If we now turn to the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, we see how inconsistent this vocabulary is: a motif here is defined as a »cellule mélodique, rythmi- que ou harmonique, caracteristique dans une oeuvre musicale.«** ‘The confusion is worse confouded if we turn from French to English, One need only look at thi figure: ‘any short succession of notes, either as melody or a group of chords, whick produces a single, complete and distinct impression. The term is the exact ‘counterpart of the German »Motive and the French smote. It isthe shortest complete idea in music.® But is motif, in French, well enough defined for one to speak of an exact counterpart? We could multiply examples ad infinitum. ‘The second problem set by these definitions, and by far the most impor- tant, because it calls in question the very foundations of traditional mu- M Histoire de la musique, Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, Gallimard, Pari . 2082. © Grove Dictionary, St. Martin's Press, 1964, 1960,60 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC sical analysis, is that of finding the criteria which would enable one to sep- arate out musical units, for itis clearly units with a beginning and an end which are under discussion. Let us turn to the Encyclopédie Fasquelle 1958): cellule: terme de composition musicale qui appartient surtout au vocabulaire cyclique: est la plus petite unité indivisible; [a cellule est distincte du motif, lequel est divisible; la cellule peut, elle aussi, étre employée comme motif de dévelop- pement motif en syntaxe musicale classique, c'est le plus petit élément unitaire (phrase) ‘analysable dun sujet qui peut comporter une ou plusieurs cellules. Motif harmonique: c'est un enchalnement d'accords défini dans Vabstrat, Cestacdre sans tenir compte de la mélodie et du rythme, Motif mélodique, est une formule mélodique établie en ne tenant compte que des intervalles. ‘Motif rthmique: on appelle ainsi une formule rythmique caractéristique, ab- straction faite des valeurs mélodiques. theme. tout élément, motif ou petite pice ayant donné liew d quelques variations, de- vient par la un theme. Phrase ce terme, emprunté& le grammaire38 désigne un ensemble de sons lmité par deus pauses et posédant un ren complet (...) De tous les systémes music aus, Cert sanz doute la rhétorique tonale qui a azsuré avec le plus de précision a délimittion des phrases grdce a ta fixation hidrarchiste des cadences har- moniques, clguées sur les articulations du discours parlé. Dans le monodie modal, est la pause cotncidant avee celle tu texte qui e plus souvent, tent Tiew de fn de phrase (....) Sa longueu est des plus variables (...) période. une phrase complexe dont les diverses propositions sont enchatnées. Let us set immediately beside this list several examples from other works: phrase (Larousse): suite de notes qui offrent un sens musical acheué et qui forment une division naturelle de ta ligne mélodique, comparable a une phrase du discours consti- ™ Our underliningLINGUISTICS, A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? 61 tuant un tout complet (une phrase mélodique se subdivise en divers membres qui correspondent aux indices du discours) phrase’: une phrase musicale est une idée développée ayant un sens complet. sentence®. the smallest period in a musical composition that can give in any sense the impression of a complete statement is that called the Sentence, which may be defined as a period containing two or more phrases, and most frequently end- ing with some form of perfect cadence. phrase: in its most frequent manifestation, it is a passage of 4 bars culminating in a more or less definite cadence, and possessing as consequence some degree of completeness within itself phrase: +++ phrases vary in length from 3 to 6 bars (...) The 4-bar phrase is by far the commonest (..) phrase'*: the term phrase is one of the most ambiguous in music. Besides the fact that it ‘may validly be used for units of from 2 to 8 measures (sometimes even more) in length, it is often incorrectly used for subdivisions of multiples of single phrases (...) We need quote no further. What do we remark? A multiplicity of eri teria each as vague as the next. First, on the pretext that the words »phrasee (sentence), »période« (period), etc. are linguistic terms, and because mu sic is apprehended linearly, itis believed that these terms may be transferred to musicology. But what does »a musical unit that makes complete sense ‘mean? It replaces small x by capital X and we are back at a totally subjec- tive definition of the significance of a musical fragment. The authors are well aware of the inconsistency of such definitions since they add other criteria: Fasquelle adds cadences and pauses, while the English authors add # J. FALK, Précis technique de composition musicale théorique et pratique, Le duc, Paris 1958, p. 11. # S. MACPHERSON, Form in Music, J. Williams (a. d.), London, p. 25. In linguistics, the English seen correspond to the French »piasce and the English »phrasee to the French »propositione (relative, adverbial, et.) or aayntagmex (nom ital, verbal), * Cedric Thorpe DAVIE, Musical Structure and Design, Dover, 1965, p. 19 “ L. STEIN, Structure and Style, Summy-Birchard Co., Evanston 1926, p. 37.62 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC the number of bars without agreeing as to what this number is (cf. Stein’s reservations). Ruwet asked for instance on the subject of segmentation: »Do I get the same results if I base the division on the pauses, and then on the cadences ~ which coincide above all in choral music - or on the other hand does an appeal to different criteria establish different divisions which introduce ambiguities into the structure?«# ‘As we have said above, the only possible solution is to establish consistent criteria for segmentation’ Ruwet had the idea of basing them on the repe- tition of musical forms, as considered from the various viewpoints of thythm, melody and harmony separately. The germ fo this technique is ap- parent in Fasquelle’s definition of motifs. Moreover, when this work says that the cellule can be developed it is inviting us to consider what is invol ved in the transformation of any musical segment. We would say that for two musical elements to be related by transformation the second must keep something of the first. Without going in detail into the techniques by which cone would find these transformations we would say that if the melody re- mains constant (we have here disregarded harmony) the transformation is rhythmic, and vice versa So, between SEBS and FEE eine wansformation is rhythmic Between SEES ana FESR, i i melodic. It will be necessary to go on to list all the types of musical trans- formation, but we can say here and now, as does linguistics," that there are three types of elementary and universal transformations in all linear systems: adjunction: abe -> abed deletion: abe -r ab substitution: abce— acb ‘These transformation will be applied, of course, to the different levels of the segmentation, according to techniques which we will not analyse here. The problem of a descriptive metalanguage Tc has just been demonstrated that what linguistics can offer musical analysis is a process of dividing up and delimiting the units with which traditional analysis does in fact work, but works inexactly. Why inexactly? Because it takes as its starting point an ill-defined terminology: one looks {for a motif or a theme with an intuitive idea of what they are, and it is this preconceived idea which takes the place of a criterion for selection. Is the problem then one of secking stricter definitions in order to lessen these ies? We reject this idea categorically. We must in fact ask ourselves 4 N, RUWET, Méthodes danalyse 9 p62. ff BRAHMS, Tereza do maja op 19, No.8 # KA. JACOnS, PS. ROSENBAUM, Englih Pransformational Grammar, Walthan (Mass), Toronto, Xerok College Publishing, 1968, p26 (adjunction, sub- stitution, deletion}LINGUISTICS, A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? 63 ‘why this terminology is ambiguous. It is simply because the few words each language possesses to designate the different types of musical segment are ridiculously small in number beside the variety of the segments, which com- bine aspects of different orders (rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, inten sity, register), and of the variety of the various criteria for division (caden- es, pauses, repetition, transformation), so that each term plays host to a ‘motley of any meanings one wishes to bring: a single concept may refer to ‘an infinite number of phenomena vhich vary for each individual according to his education and his idiosyncracies. Here we meet a more general and fundamental problem: natural lan- ‘guage is not fitted to serve as the language of science! — this is the essential reason for our difficulties - because it is too vague. It must be clearly re- alized that the validity of a scientific analysis does not depend only on the validity of the methods by which it is elicited from its material, but also on the metalanguage in which it expresses its theory of the data analysed. So the research procedures, in functional or distributional linguistics, lead us from the unanalysed utterance, here the musical text, to the code, that is the structural characterisation of the units which the heuristic procedures have enabled us to distinguish. The question therefore is one of knowing how to make this code explicit. ‘The problem raised here by musical analysis has been solved in a field apparently quite different, that of archaeology. Jean-Claude Gardin has ved, as we have here, that the traditional ierms were too vague to define the objects. »The designations which were apparently the most ele- mentary and widely used ~ samphorae, »Apolloe, »manore etc. ~ turned out to be in fact unreliable, and it was rarely possible to define the distine- tive features of each in a way that was generally accepted. Was the true am- ora the kind which was flattened at the two handles, etc. or, and more likely, was it defined by a combination* of such criteria? If by the combi- nation, in what order and arranged by what rules?« The solution proposed by Gardin is that the use of natural language should be completely abol- xed and it should be replaced by a collection of abstract symbols from a precisely defined repertoire. »An amphora would then be a type of recep- tacle, anonymous in a way, but very precisely characterised by a list of attributes as numerous and as minute as would seem useful for the needs of further comparative research.<*# It is apparent how these principles might be used in musical semiology: it is no longer a question of knowing whether one of the fragments of Brahms quoted above isa ‘motif or a cellule unit a, or A, or x, no matter which, possessing certain characteristics which are defined by a group of features (melodic, rhythmic) which make it possible to compare it and clasify it, that isto place it in a hierarchy, in relation to all the other “Cl. G. G. GRANGER, Pensée formelle et sciences de Uhomme, Aubier, Batis 1968. “Our underlining. 4 J.C. GARDIN, Analyse documentaire et analyse structurale en archéotogie, LAré, No. 26 p. 65.G4 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC segments of the piece. On the level of the metalanguage of the analysis one in-guess then what the immediate tasks of musical semiology will be: to develop fully a formal, artificial, explicit language which can take into account all the units one can find in music and their combinations. In other words, musical semiology should invent a vocabulary and a syntax that would enable it to show how a work or a set of works results from the com- bination of units varying in nature and size. Musical analyses. then acquires scientific standards: founded on a explicit and repeatable division into units it becomes first of all exhaustive in a way that sets it apart irrevocably from the stylistic disertations of traditional analysis and thus respects the good old Cartesian principle of comprehensive enumeration. It then reveals an order, that is, a hierarchy amoung the elements listed which it proceeds to classify: this taxonomic ‘quality classes it with linguistics, of course, but also with zoology, botany or chemistry whose beginnings were no different.«7 What is more, this clas- sification is combinative, that is, it will show, in tables or rule-systems, the relations between each feature or unit and its neighbours. It is by virtue of this that we can speak in music of structuralism in Saussure’s sense, and also of set theory: each unit of the work is defined by the intersection of n characteristics. Henceforth it is no longer described from the point of view of its substance or content (which is always judged subjectively) but as the node of a network: structure is there from the moment the elements of a set are defined extrinsically in contrast with other elements Here it is advisable to avoid an error which even the greatest linguists have fallen into, and which we will call the realist illusion.*® The structural description of a musical text does not reveal a structure which vwas hidden in the text: it results from an abstract construction which is set up by the scholar but which, by virtue of its explicit and formalized char- acter, other scholars can criticise and supersede. It is not therefore a matter cof knowing whether the srevealed« structure corresponds to some conscious intention of the author: it is a model of the object which may be proved to be a misrepresentation, The validation of models With the notion of invalidation we reach a final aspect. of musical semiology on which the most recent linguistics has laid particular stress. Tis not enough in fact to divide the utterance up correctly and to discover its code: one must go on to check the validity of the description. © A zoological classification is simply the listing of abstract features which enable ‘2 species a place in a table. ‘The same procedure is found in chemistry 's periodic classification of the elements) or in the systematic phonological jgustcs: in French, p, t, and k are unvoiced plosives, and b,d and g are Yee posites, but p and b are labial, t and d are alveolar, and k and gare done On this subject cf. R. BOUDON, A quoi sert la notion de structure, Paris 1968; G. G. GRANGER, Objet, structure et signification, Revue internationale de philocophie, 1965, No. 73°4, fase: 3, p. 254LINGUISTICS, A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? 65 ‘There is a very important current in linguistics called generative gram- mar which, in contrast to distributionalism, moves from the code to the utterance: this kind of grammar set up as @ hypothesis a certain number of rules describing the facts, formulated in such a way that itis possible from them to deduce, to bring into being (to generate) actual sentences of the language. If the person performing the operation produces sentences which aretnot recognised s French foreceampie, bya apenier of the language the rules are wrong and must be altered. In this lies the hypothetical and deductive nature of the theory of a language put forward by generative ‘grammar. One simple example: Grevisse’s grammar says that to form the superlative 1) the comparative must be formed, and 2) the article must be added. The illustrative application of the rule’ begins with »le garcon ai- mable«. 1: comparative: »le garcon plus aimablee; 2: add the article le garcon le plus aimablec, The rule thus seems correct, but itis nothing of the kind: if I begin with vla jolie fillee and carry out the two stages lit- erally I obtain: 1: ala plus jolie fille«; 2: vla la plus joie fille«: Generative grammar might thus be considered as a technique for validating the dis- tributional analysis from which it originated historically if, in the course of the last fifteen years, it had not become an autonomous linguistic shool, working forward de facto from an intuitive distributional analysis. ‘The question of validating a descriptive musicological model has never been raised: it is however the solution of this question which would finally ‘enable musical analysis to become an experimental science. What tradition- al analyses lack (not to mention musical criticisim) is sufficient precision for one to be able to recognise, from the description given of the initial ma- terial, the work or works being discussed or, beyond this, to recreate the initial material from the structural description and, in the case of works (plural), to create a work that is new but has the same stylistic character- istics as the initial material, In effect, and it is to Jean Molino that we owe this semio-stylistic theory, just as generative grammar simulates our ability to invent an infinite number of sentences that we recognise as French or to understand French sentences at first hearing (what Chomsky calls linguistic competence), 30 it should be possible to state the rules which would account for our ability to recognise at first hearing that a work of Beethoven's is indeed by Beethoven, or to invent a new work which would be recognised by an sexperte in (i, e. someone familiar with) Beethoven's style as re- sembling it. It is on this competence, stylistic this time, that the Faculty of ‘Music of the University of Montreal bases its teaching method of pastiche, and by it the teacher establishes whether the student has absorbed the ma~ jor stylistic characteristics of a given composer. Bat this knowledge is merely intuitive and lacks organization: it cannot be considered as a form of scientific knowledge. It is in fact impossible to discern, by ear or through the type of analysis practised up to now, what the combination of units and basic features is that characterises a given work or style. Furthermore, in contrast with linguistic practice, we do not believe thatitwould be possible to attempt this description if one began by establish- ing hypotheses which would be tested on the material by the generation of66 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC an existing or potential work (pastiche). For each moment of the work can only be described as the outcome of characteristics of varying natures and levels, and it does not seem possible to discover straightway the synthesis (combination) of these characteristics without first going through the tax:- nomic analysis discussed above. This fact is due to what we, like Ingarden,"* ‘would call the »polyphonice structure of a work of music. The metaphor that the author here borrows from music and applies to the novel must not be taken literally: in our field, it means that the work results from a type of structure made up of varied and non-hierarchic levels (rhythmic, me- lodic, harmonic, and many others doubtless within each) whose combi- nation can only be described after each has been tackled independently of the others. Musical analysis as a science Let us look back to assess the ground covered: 1) in the first instance, linguistics invites us to define precisely the aim of ‘musical analysis in general, and of a particular musical analysis; 2) it goes on to demonstrate that repeatable analytic procedures must be in- vented which lead us from the utterance to the code; 8) further, it raises the question of the nature of the scientific metalanguage to be used to express the structural description; 4) Finally, it demonstrates that the results of the analysis may be validated by going back to the utterance. We can symbolize the course of this sussion by the following code rmetalanguage 27 4 A subject of analysis —____—> utterance utterance TPhis plan of work, (for this is what it is) is not, let us frankly admit, pe- caliar to linguistics: it is the plan followed by all investigators who want their work to have a scientic character. It is matter of being able to explain hhow one reaches the results (3) of the analysis by stages (1) and (2) and 4 R. INGARDEN, Das liteariche Kuntnerh, Max Nismeyer, Tibinge, 1963, p. 395: »Wir haben jim Laufe unserer Untersuchungen afters aul die Wertqualitaten Boagenicrne Sih n den since Schichen dep rarschen Woks fwtuen lund in ihrer Gesamtheit 2a einer polyphonen Harmonie fubren-< Quoted by 7 TING, in oAnalyse structurale et Hitératuree. (unpublished), note at, (We have scveral times in the course of our research emphasised the qualities which are found in particular levels of a work of literature and which form, together, a. polyphonic harmony.)LINGUISTICS, A NEW APPROACH FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS? or how one checks them (4). But if linguistics, which at present takes its mod~ cls from more formalized fields such as logic, mathematics, and the theory of formal languages, affords an example to musical analysis, it is because it has developed its procedures of analysis and validation on material which is analogous to music in those respects which it is the task of comparative semiology to illuminate. One might ask whether the project of a semiology of music does not merge into that of a science of musical analysis: we do not hesitate to answer that this is so. As Gardin wrote, following Morris, »semiology ... then appears for what itis, the process of scientific analysis itself applied to any subject.<® But, it may be objected, what has become of signs in all this? They were never in question, because the problem of all scientific procedure is just that of how to translate the sign system which is constituted by the subject itself, decode and analyse it into that other sign system, the investigator's metalanguage, with the eventual aid, as Saus- sure foresaw, of lingustics, the science of that particular sign system which is language. Satetak LINGVISTIKA: NOVI PUT 2 MUZICKU ANALIZU? ‘Ako se pribvati shvaganje da je, u najfirem saussurovskom smisla, semialogija snanost koja nasoji korn ingvintitke wrorew analisinelingvistitkih podrutja, mote se inti zafudno da je mutha semiologija jedna od zadnjth manos Sto su s€ oso vale, jer je glazba ~ satinjena od pojedinatah jedinica ~ oobito pogodna za prouta- vanje lingvstitkim metodama, Clanak vsporeduje muzitku i lingvstitku analiau s Zetirstaalita koja odgovaraju Getima fazama ispravno shvafenog zanstvenog. po- stupka: 1. kakva je priroda podrugja fo se analiia, 2. kako izabrati elemente koje analiza dri podesnima, 3. u kojem se nadjezku iaralava teorija samoga podrutja, 4 Kaki su upotrebljeni postupei da se potvedi ii obesnabi ceoretska konstrukcija? Da bi se odgovorilo na pro pitanje, uveduje se da muzitka tcorija nije odijelila Jmanentne i vanjske pristupe podrufjy, sinkronitka i dijakronitka staal, i da nije smratrala nulaim ralitovanje koje bi se moglo usporediti s de Saussureovom podjelom na jezkigovor Sto se tie drugoga, lingvisti su razradili komutatimne i ditibutivne postupke da bi rangranitlt i odredilijedinice. Muzikoloxi suse zadovoljili da na glazbene Binjnice koje trcba uzetiobzir prenesu jedau lofe definiranu terminologij. Muritka ée 32 semiologija moti esloniti na jas eksplicirane postupke segmentaije w radavima Nic colasa Ruwea, # J.C. GARDIN, Analyse sémiologique et littérature, of. cit p. 7 1 We would like to thank Marcelle Dechenes-Harvey, Marcelle Guertin and Louise Hirbour-Paquette for their friendly crticiem and advice.68 INTERNATION. REVIEW OF THE AESTHETICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC Kao rezultat rada na dokumentarno} automatici, s metalingvistithog se stajalita prediaie da se zakljuéci istrafivanja izraze u Sto je vibe moguée formalizranom je- aku da bi se izhjegle dvomislenotti i moguée krivotworenje teorije Na kraju, generativna je gramatika prikazana kao pottupak provjere odnoss na {aksonomsku analiza koja, 2a razliku od prve, ide od poruke k sustavus; pokazuje se da bi sustay generativnih pravila, prethodno osnovanih na empiriskom isijecanju mu- ii tekstova, dopustio Konstruiranje neke semiostilistke, co jest simulacije stilisti¢ke ompetencije muzitara (u smislu Chomskog)