Songs as Bonds of Union

March 26, 2007

I looked up "song" on Wikipedia and found what I suspected: it is not a sexy topic. I would define a song as a short musical composition accompanied by words. Two clarifications might be in order. I say "short" because the final "Ode to Joy" section of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is too long and complex to rank as a song. And I say it is "accompanied by words" because if the voice simply outlines a melody or uses scat then we do not have a song.. we have a musical piece that uses the voice as an instrument.

In the past if I had been called on to rank musical forms, the song would have gone pretty low.. behind such obviously weighty compositions as symphonies and sonatas. But I think now that I would rank the song as a marvel of life! It represents a mash-up of two distinct ways of meaning. There is music, able on its own to communicate an emotional state. There are words, processed as language.

In The Singing Neanderthal Steven Mithen argues that music was a pre-verbal stage of communication. In his timeline of human development there comes a fork in the path where verbal communication splits from music.. and becomes more and more dominant in human experience. We still have music around.. thank God.. and it still serves as an important method of communication.. but music so often lives out there away from words. The humble song is the place where music and words come together to form a bond of union.

What implications does this have for interpreting songs? If language and music are two different sets of meanings then the interpretation of songs must proceed in something like a contrapuntal manner. Words must have their say; Music must have its say. These two elements will contradict or reinforce each other.. but that interplay of two meaning systems must be at the heart of song interpretation.

Songs are endlessly fascinating precisely because the combination of these two systems often results in something that the creator may not have total control over. My review of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" touched on this complexity. What does it mean for George Harrison to sing these spiritual lines to the tune of "He's So Fine"? And variations on that question could be asked with respect to many songs..