ABSTRACT
The need for a well-defined epistemological basis for research in music signification is not always obvious. Although Theodor W. Adorno is a classic example of philosophers who apply their theories to music—securely grounding them in Hegelian principles—most music semioticians are not philosophers sensu stricto, but empirically minded scholars whose starting point is music theory. Music may influence how people compose their bodies, how they conduct themselves, how they experience the passage of time, how they feel about others and about situations. Signs are social, and musical signs are no exception. The Zemic model is an effort to articulate this fundamental fact. The suprazemic level reflects the unchanging Hegelian Essence. Being absent from the present, the Essence represents the subject’s negation of the Zemic process. The Zemic analysis takes place not so much on the level of the notes in the score, but as an explanatory principle that addresses how music functions as a self-regulating cybernetic system in the human brain.
