ABSTRACT
One of the chief issues in evaluating the relation between words and music is the status of music as a language. This chapter attempts to classify and evaluate some of the possible relations of music to language. It is important to note that for many composers and poets music and language belong together so intimately that they are almost inseparable. Large musical structures can recall other sorts of large speech structures. Sometimes music addresses itself not to the imagination but to the discerning intellect, and attempts to ape the language of oratory. Furthermore, from the beginning of theoretical discourse about music, there are strong hints that something is desperately wrong with the attempt to understand music as a language. If music slips through our grasp when we try to understand it as a language, the next step is to attempt to put together a non-linguistic theory of music.
