ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a research review on analogy with the aim of assessing its role in musical understanding and its potential to provides a means of addressing a number of issues of long standing, including that of the relationship between language and music. It explores work on a cognitive process related to but in some measure distinct from analogy: metaphor and how cross-modal correspondences relate to analogy and metaphor. Analogy has been recognized as a key factor in human creativity and has been linked to the conceptual flights of fancy and processes of meaning construction created through metaphor and metonymy. Applications of conceptual metaphor theory to music have resulted in two different strands of research. The notion of analogical reference offers one way to account for music's often-observed capacity to imitate natural sounds. The alignment of features and structure that typifies analogy is thus constrained by contextual goals that are distinct from the analogical process proper.