Syntax: Music that Makes Sense and Music that Doesn’t

This paper puts forward a proposal for a major update of the well-established semiotic theory of Lerdahl and Jackendoff. Two modes of comprehension of music: from top-to-bottom and from bottom-to-top - are cross-examined in a number of music works. The paper argues that the primary way of making sense of a music work is hierarchically driven from bottom to top, and is based on parsing the musical flow into conventional idiomatic units. Nine aspects of expression in music are involved into categorization of musical idioms, and five of these expressive aspects follow their autonomous syntactic rules. Existing theories of musical semiotics grossly simplify the syntactic organization of musical text. The idiomatic basis of musical syntax is discussed in relation to the conventions of expressive exaggerations of notated score in the Western classical music tradition. The semi-conscious spontaneous manner of using such exaggerations on part of performers and their unconscious perception by listeners make musical syntax appear poorly formed and highly susceptible to the impact of the affective states of performers and their audiences. This issue poses a fundamental obstacle to the generative grammar approach as postulated by Lerdahl and Jackendoff. Musical syntax should not be studied in isolation from the semantic contribution of musical emotions that affect parsing strategies of performers and listeners. The affective influence of musical emotions on all nine aspects of musical expression must be taken in consideration in any attempt to analyze the musical syntax.