# Universal Language



## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Do you think that music is the Universal Langauge? 

Personnaly, I think not. While it is true that music is a human constant, just like spoken language. And like spoken language, I feel it is necesasry to learn the musical grammar of a culture to be able to understand, fully, it's music. I may find the new sound interesting, but will tire of it shortly if I do not know what it means. Because 
I do not know the musical language I can go no deeper than the sounds and rhythms. Beyond that the music has not communicated it's full message.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

*Music is the least universal language. *You can teach a Gorilla English, but how many people can I teach to love Parsifal?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

My answer is definitely yes. Because contrarily to spoken language, where someone have to theach you the meaning of words, you can enjoy music from every part of the world, even if you don't know for what that music was composed for, just for its sound.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

brianwalker said:


> *Music is the least universal language. *You can teach a Gorilla English, but how many people can I teach to love Parsifal?


you're talking about opera, not just music.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Music is similar to all cultures on earth, English is not.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Generically, yes. However, the meaning through symbolic association and metaphor remains culturally specific and subject to the usual vageries of hermeutics.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

There is an element of universality in music... Things that are clearly expressed no matter what culture or background you are from. But there's also often a layer of meaning that requires a certain amount of context to fully appreciate. The more you study and think about music, the more it says to you. Most peaople who get bored with music are just using their ears to listen and not their mind. They never get beyond that surface level.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Music is similar to all cultures on earth, English is not.


Everyone can understand the message of Beethoven's ode to joy!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Music is similar to all cultures on earth, English is not.


Pardon me? Translation please.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

moody said:


> Pardon me? Translation please.


That means Native Australian music, Korean music and Italian Baroque music are the same!


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

jani said:


> Everyone can understand the message of Beethoven's ode to joy!


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Some more universal, some less so. But the fact that they can be means that music is a pretty universal language.



> "Oh," replied Haydn, "my language is understood all over the world!"


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I was with you until the last one there...


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

yes it is a universal language.

classical music is like shakespeare you have to understand it a bit more.

but even with that most classical music has a basic human sentiment to it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

bigshot said:


> There is an element of universality in music... Things that are clearly expressed no matter what culture or background you are from. But there's also often a layer of meaning that requires a certain amount of context to fully appreciate. The more you study and think about music, the more it says to you. Most peaople who get bored with music are just using their ears to listen and not their mind. They never get beyond that surface level.


or maybe it's the opposite, the mind adds something that is not necessarily in the music. I've always had a terrible opinion of sommeliers. I mean, sometimes it's good to know things from a different perspective, withouth any weight of context (even because sometime context is something like "Bach-Mozart-Beethoven were the greatest composers who ever lived)


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

Leonard Bernstein did an entire series of lectures on this subject:


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Ramako said:


>


Holy smokes! I can't believe they kept all those people together. If I were in that choir, I'd have a hard time keeping my feet from floating off the floor.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

norman bates said:


> My answer is definitely yes. Because contrarily to spoken language, where someone have to theach you the meaning of words, you can enjoy music from every part of the world, even if you don't know for what that music was composed for, just for its sound.


But that's not communication, that's just pleasure. We may as well call food the universal language.


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## Machiavel (Apr 12, 2010)

Sex is the universal language!


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Machiavel said:


> Sex is the universal language!


So true. It's harder to be clearer than with sex.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Lukecash12 said:


> So true. It's harder to be clearer than with sex.


Postmodernists beg to differ


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

drpraetorus said:


> Do you think that music is the Universal Langauge? ...


Yes and no.

Yes, if for example you are able to play an instrument, you can travel all over the world and play your music. Communicate across cultures. Applies in the same way to musicians as diverse as Mali's Habib Koite, to India's Ravi Shankar to the USA's Hilary Hahn and so on.

No, in terms of me being a Westerner, I have not much of a clue of the subtleties regarding Chinese (Peking) opera or Balinese gamelan. I can (and have) enjoyed things like this though.

But what I don't like is when universalist ideology is used as a sledgehammer. I described that in an opening post on an ancient thread of mine here. I was free to say those things then, now I would have to duck for cover, it explains how I see it as hard to say what I think here now. But anyway...


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

bigshot said:


> I was with you until the last one there...


The awesomeness just blew your mind, huh? :3


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Is painting a language? Is sculpture a language? Theater and storytelling usually utilize language to facilitate their content, but you wouldn't really call them languages themselves, right? I think it is silly to call music a language at all, much less a universal one. The fact that a person could have any number of reactions and interpretations of a piece as straightforward as say... a Haydn piano sonata, is a pretty clear case for the lack of universality in music.


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

Yes. In both ways, as a performer and as a listener. For the performer, no matter where you are you can still read musical notes. For a listener, no matter which culture you are from you can still listen to and enjoy another's music, although in some instances you may not understand how it is done or why.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Lukecash12 said:


> But that's not communication, that's just pleasure. We may as well call food the universal language.


but music communicate emotion. Sure, one who doesn't know what the trumpet or the flutes represent in Ives's Unanswered question can't fully appreciate the piece, but in case like that it's because the work is not simply music.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

norman bates said:


> but music communicate emotion. Sure, one who doesn't know what the trumpet or the flutes represent in Ives's Unanswered question can't fully appreciate the piece, but in case like that it's because the work is not simply music.


It communicates emotion between people conditioned to have the same responses. However, someone from, say, Papua New Guinea, probably wouldn't be emotionally roused like you or myself when hearing memorable passages from Schubert or Beethoven. In fact, that kind of stuff bewilders them.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Lukecash12 said:


> It communicates emotion between people conditioned to have the same responses. However, someone from, say, Papua New Guinea, probably wouldn't be emotionally roused like you or myself when hearing memorable passages from Schubert or Beethoven. In fact, that kind of stuff bewilders them.


i'm a fan from the very first hearing of the music of teiji ito, and i had never heard gagaku music before, but i don't particularly like mozart.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Manxfeeder said:


> Holy smokes! I can't believe they kept all those people together. If I were in that choir, I'd have a hard time keeping my feet from floating off the floor.


Yes, i almost start to feel sick when they start to comment about that they weren't 100% in tune always...

Its kinda hard to have 10,000 people in tune at the same time.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Music to me is paralanguage. Instruments generally mimic vocals, and I think people hear paralanguage universally.

When I listen to Boccherini, I probably experience the same paralinguistic effects as those who were listening in its time and place of origin.

Just as we all hear the same train whistle, we can all hear the same music.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

mud said:


> When I listen to Boccherini, I probably experience the same paralinguistic effects as those who were listening in its time and place of origin.


The distance in time and culture will ensure a significant difference in the aural semantics though.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

No, the aural semantics fall back on paralanguage.


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## Guest (Oct 20, 2012)

Lukecash12 said:


> So true. It's harder to be clearer than with sex.





Cnote11 said:


> Postmodernists beg to differ


And those who've been married thirty years!

What seems to have been overlooked is that communicating usually involves intent. The fact that billions around the world might be able to derive some pleasure out of Ode to Joy does not make music a language, if what is meant is the use of a language to convey intentional meaning from one to another.


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