MUSICAL THOUGHT AND COMPOSITIONALITY

Many philosophers and music theorists have claimed that music is a language, though whether this is meant metaphorically or literally is often unclear. If the claim is meant literally, then it faces serious difficulty—many find it compelling to think that music cannot be a language because it lacks any semantic value. On the other hand, if it is meant metaphorically, then it is not clear what is gained by the metaphor—it is not clear what the metaphor is meant to illuminate. Considering the claim as a metaphor, I take it that what a theorist who speaks in this way is trying to draw our attention to is that there are interesting and illuminating parallels between music and language that might be philosophically significant. If this is their point, then the question is: what interesting parallel is it that could be so philosophically significant? In this essay, I will attempt to make explicit just what philosophical significance there might be to the claim that music is a language (or is language- like). Jumping straight in, I want to suggest that the connection between music and language that these theorists are trying to elucidate is that musical thought has a language- like structure. By “musical thought ” I mean that species of thought that underwrites a musician’s creative activity. When a musician composes a piece of music, or improvises a performance, they go through a particular decision-making process—that is, they think musically. In saying this, I am making one assumption, which is controversial but I believe warranted. I am assuming that the decision-making process that a musician goes through when they compose or improvise a piece of music is not linguistic. Whatever a musician does when they create a piece of music, they do not do something involving language. This seem