In my opinion, music is not a language. Despite this, I have always marveled at the diversity of emotional responses that music can evoke. By simply pressing the “Next” button on my iPod, I can switch from a song that makes me feel happy and confident to a song that makes me feel mellow and melancholy. But the breadth and scope of music is not just limited to causing simple emotions. Many songs I listen to trigger memories of a specific person, place, or even time period in my life. Obviously, when I hear a song I listened to everyday during junior year of high school, the range and mix of emotions I experience are much more complex.
Despite all of this, I still do not consider music a language. Since the dawn of civilization, language has been used to communicate ideas and meaning from one person to another. Of course, the meaning of the words used by a speaker can be interpreted differently by the listener. But this disparity in conveyance is slight compared to the degree of discrepancy between a musician and an audience. Whether a pianist or a drummer, a musician will compose or play a piece to express a particular emotion. However, the sentiment the musician is trying to convey can be irreversibly modified once it is interpreted by his or her audience. Music is less a conversation than it is a a free-for-all. That being said, I will still admit that art is still indeed a collaborative effort. Even if a work of art’s meaning becomes altered in the void separating artist and audience, one must perform the art, and the other must experience it.
I am not so sure I agree with Gombrich’s statement “To evoke emotions in others the artist must give us a reference point…a good artist must have to communicate with his audience…”. I feel as though much of a person’s interpretation of art, specifically music, is innate. I feel this way because listening to a “death metal” rock band play “music” just doesn’t evoke emotions that we label as “happy”. Similarly, I would never work out to an orchestra playing Mozart, because classical music does not particularly energize me. Supporting my assertions are years of research on the particular areas of the brain and how they correspond to emotions. One particular structure in the brain, the amygdala, is known to play an active role in experiencing emotion. This is evidence that emotions do indeed have a biological basis. Much like an artist needs to perform for his audience to elicit a response, the amygdala needs a stimulus in order to respond emotionally. However, it does not require any communication with an outside entity to do so. The way we react to different types of music (or more generally, different types of sounds), may simply be a product of evolution.
Case in point is schizophrenia, where the patient hears voices that do no originate outside themselves. The theory is that excess dopamine might trigger the auditory cortex, where the emotional responses take place. Once we hear a familiar sound, the brain searched for a matching pattern for it. Since sound is not stored in a vacuum but rather is related to our other experiences and thoughts, tapping that electric circuit with its many components such as the memory of touch, sight or sound can trigger that stored experience. Therefore, even though we all can listen to G minor, what we hear depends on the sound’s electric circuit in our individual brains. That is why we have differing response to the same sound.
Bare in mind that I am no brain expert.