The Semantic Structures of the Musical Text and Practical Semantics

Abstract

The content of the musical text, as opposed to the text of the musical score with its parameters
of composition and musical grammar, has not been described by theoreticians or practitioners
in structural categories. There exists a stable tradition of a narrow grammatical directedness of
teaching to read and interpret the text of the musical score. In analysis of musical composition there
is a prevalence of either the grammatical-syntactic aspects (in the music theory disciplines), or
the intuitive-artistic ones (in the historical disciplines). The structural approach makes it possible
to change the results of penetration into the depths of musical content. This article acquaints the
reader with this direction of elaboration of the technology of analysis and reading the semantic
organization of the musical text. Examination is made of the structure of intonational formulas
with established meanings and their features of accumulation of secondary semantic formation
upon their migration from one musical text of a particular composer to another, or compositions
of various genres and styles. The article contains information and references towards results of
research works and publications in the sphere of practical semantics – a new direction in the works
of Russian scholars under the tutelage of the author of this article in the community of scholars and
researchers from the Laboratory for Musical Semantics.

Keywords: musical semantics, analysis of musical compositions, Laboratory of Musical
Semantics, intonational lexis, migrating intonational formula.