Music and reality
Ben Curry · 2020
This chapter outlines the role of Peircean categories in understanding music signification, arguing that Peircean thought should lead us to place special emphasis upon a mind-independent reality. It argues that a full understanding of music signification recognizes a causal underpinning for musical events and behaviors but, nevertheless, grants a vital disconnect between the space of musical meanings and the causal nexus that is the ultimate reality of the world. Music signification, then, from a Peircean perspective, must ultimately derive from reality even when the signs we use in our thinking may seem fanciful or wholly mental. A useful example of how Peircean sign types can be deployed in elucidating musical meaning is found in the second chapter of Raymond Monelle’s The Sense of Music . In listening to the musical item, the arrow is reversed, such that the music can be said to signify “seriousness” with reference to dancing.