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Vol. 13 (2025): Percepta - Revista de Cognição Musical

Meaning in Music

DOI
https://doi.org/10.34018/2318-891X.13e025007
Submitted
March 22, 2025
Published
2025-05-10

Abstract

In this article, renowned Italian musicologist Mario Baroni reflects on the nature of musical meaning. Starting from comparisons with the concept of meaning in the field of linguistics, the author discusses possibilities and obstacles in transferring it to the area of ​​music due to the non-conceptual character of musical meaning. He then describes the relationships between meaning and musical grammar, and considers the extent to which verbal language can describe the meaning of a musical piece. In the second part, the author considers the interactions between structural rules and expressiveness, based on his project creating software to compose musical pieces in a specific style. The experiment demonstrated that expressive musical pieces can be obtained through specific structural rules, generating a particular type of musical meaning.

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