Inaugural Lecturer: Professor Peter Dayan, Chair in Word and Music Studies
Lecture Title: “Does music need words?”
Date of Inaugural Lecture 13 January 2009 at 5.30 pm
Lecture Venue: Lecture Theatre B, David Hume Tower, George Square
Abstract:
“Does music need words?”
Does music need words? Most musicians will answer this question with an impatient
‘no’. However, there are several obstacles to accepting that answer. One is a centuries-old
conviction, first expressed by the Church but supported by figures as diverse as
Mallarmé, Wagner, and, in our day, John Carey, that without the kind of meaning that
only words can supply, music remains somehow vain. Another is that since the 1960s,
cultural theory has taught us there is no such thing as a purely musical meaning, because
music is never received in purely musical terms. ‘Music’ as a general category is created
only by words; and the import of any piece of music can only be appreciated by weighing
up its reception within a fundamentally verbal culture. If one doubts this in academia
today, one risks being branded an essentialist reactionary. Yet the musicians’ conviction,
shared by music lovers, remains: somehow, somewhere, it is possible to ‘think in music’,
leaving words and their brand of meaning behind; as if music really did exist on its own
terms, purely, timelessly. How? why do we still believe this, in spite of the academic
consensus to the contrary? Perhaps, in the end, we want music to keep word-mongers at
a certain distance - and perhaps it needs words to do so.