The career of metaphor hypothesis and vocality in contemporary music

Abstract

The career of metaphor hypothesis advanced by Gentner et al, which describes differences in cognitive processing between metaphors encountered for the first time (novel metaphors) and metaphors encountered frequently (conventional metaphors), is applied to diverse relationships between instrumental music and the voice. A general account of musical metaphors hypothesizes that historical controversies over music’s capacity to communicate extramusical meaning are rooted in the problematic conceptual metaphor Meaning is Content and may be allayed by adopting an alternative, Meaning is Mapping. Historical practices of modelling instrumental performance and composition on the voice (e.g. cantabile, The Singing Style) are conceived as conventional metaphors and various contemporary approaches to voice-based instrumental and electroacoustic composition are conceived as novel metaphors. A brief survey of contemporary practices illustrates some of the ways recent music has exploited vocality with examples from recent repertoire, and points of comparison between conventional and novel approaches to vocality are summarized.

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