• 10 Dec, 2025 *

Language and music, in both theoretical investigation and lived experience, reveal a fervent kinship: each serves as a medium for human experience, yet their meaning is structured in disciplines unique to themselves. Language organizes itself through grammar, syntax, and pragmatics; music draws on mode, timbre, and emotion to shape understanding. The familiar phrase that “music is a universal language” speaks to an intuition many hold, yet the idea remains philosophically and linguistically ambiguous. Analysis of the defining criteria of “language” alongside the capacities of music reveals both where they intertwine and diverge. Each system encodes information, evokes emotions, and sculpts a relationship between creator and listener, though they do so through sui generis principles. Music may not constitute a language in a traditional linguistic sense, but they share profound parallels in improvisation, hierarchical organization, phonology and timbre, and culturally mediated meaning.

Throughout the history of music theory, the search for meaning has often turned toward universal or cosmic principles. Pythagorean conceptions of cosmic harmony, for example, grounded musical meaning in mathematical proportions. Pythagoras observed that musical intervals correspond to numerical ratios: 2:1 for the octave, 3:2 for the perfect fifth, and 4:3 for the perfect fourth. This discovery laid the initial foundation for the earliest theoretical claim that musical meaning is not arbitrary but rooted in the structure of the very world surrounding us. In this worldview, these ratios extended beyond our aural perceptions: they underpinned the movements of celestial bodies, thereby creating a universal, inaudible harmony. Music thus became an almost metaphysical language, a form of knowledge revealing the arithmetic architecture of the world. Meaning in music, therefore, initially arose from its perceived alignment with cosmic order. Linguistic meaning, by contrast, comes from a combination of convention, arbitrariness, and innate cognitive structure. The meaning of words is arbitrary, its meaning coming from shared cultural understanding and usage as opposed to an objective link between words and their meanings. The juxtaposition reveals two contrasting models of constructing meaning. One is based on universal proportions, the other on culturally shared understanding. Yet musical meaning is not confined to fixed ratios or cosmic order; it also emerges through lived creation, where musicians shape sound as speakers shape language.

One of the clearest realms in which the kinship between music and language becomes impossible to ignore is in the comparison between musical improvisation and spontaneous speech. Musical improvisation offers a particularly revealing parallel to spontaneous speech, as both involve the real-time generation of meaningful material without any reliance on a pre-determined script or sheet of music. In linguistics, spontaneous speech encompasses an unplanned method of communication, such as small talk (e.g., “looks like we’ll be here a while, huh?”), answering questions, or responding to unexpected situations, and it is characterized by frequent disfluencies. These disfluencies, which affect “up to ten percent of words and over one third of utterances in natural conversation” (Shriberg), take on several distinctive forms: filled pauses (e.g., uh– we have a calico cat); repetitions (e.g., near the–the bookshelf by the bed); deletions (e.g., it’s–I could get it from the grocery); substitutions (e.g., I’ll take–I’ll order that couch); insertions (e.g., and I–and also I love you); and articulation errors (e.g., that’s a [hunch]–humpback whale).

Jazz improvisation, for example, mirrors this spontaneity: musicians make swift decisions that distinguish improvisation from rehearsed performance. Improvisation is often cited as being a conversation between instruments, a dynamic also central to Jugalbandi in Hindustani and Carnatic classical music. Jugalbandi–literally meaning “tied together”–is a duet in which two musicians engage in an improvised exchange, whether on different instruments or through alap, the improvised, melodic vocal exploration foundational to Indian classical performance. Call-and-response structure is a large part of it; the act of listening to what one instrument/voice has to “say” and responding to it accordingly, morphing the performance into not simply a musical display but a genuine dialogue. In this sense, improvisation develops its own set of “disfluencies.”

Musicians utilize filled pauses (e.g., an intentional moment of silence or the prolongation of a single note), repetitions (e.g., restating a musical phrase, then building upon it), and insertions (e.g., repeating a musical phrase, but adding an embellishment or new note within it). There also exists a more tailored set of improvisatory “disfluencies”, such as shifts in tone (e.g., opting for an airy saxophone timbre to mimic the human voice, commonly done in jazz) or articulation (e.g., slurring notes for a purpose separating them may not serve). Improvisation, then, mirrors spontaneous speech not merely in its unpredictability, but in the way its apparent hesitations gel into a coherent language of its own, thus revealing the sacred bond between music and language. Even in moments of spontaneity–whether it be an improvised solo or an unrehearsed conversation–structure remains the silent enabler of creativity.

Within language, there exists a hierarchical structure that organizes linguistic units from smallest to largest: phonemes, the smallest unit of sound in language that can distinguish one word from another (e.g., moon → /m/, /uː/, /n/); morphemes, the smallest units of meaning,which can be free (e.g., water, silver) or bound (e.g., dis-, -able); words, combinations of one or more morphemes that carry meaning (e.g., quicksilver, lullaby, discoverable); phrases, groups of words that function as one unit in a sentence (e.g., NP: the shimmering stars; VP: dances across the starlit pond); clauses, groups of words containing both a subject and a verb, which can either be independent (e.g., the elephant tiptoed across the meadow) or dependent (e.g., while the swan waltzed gracefully); sentences, complete thoughts made up of one or more clauses (e.g., the fox walked along the dewy meadow, humming a tune of mischief); discourse, connected sentences that form a conversation, story, or text (e.g., short stories).

Just as language is organized by phonemes, morphemes, and beyond, music too exhibits a hierarchical structure of its own: the note, the smallest unit in music, a single sound with pitch and duration (e.g., F#; E♭ held for two beats); the chord, a group of two or more notes played in unison, creating a harmony (e.g., Fmin7 chord: notes F, A♭, C, E♭ played at the same time); the motif, a short musical idea that can be repeated or varied (e.g., first four notes of Dies Irae: F, E, F, D); the phrase, groups of notes that function as a “musical sentence”, expressing a complete idea (e.g., opening of Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23: three-bar phrase); the section/passage, a larger unit made up of multiple phrases, often forming part of a movement or piece (e.g., Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 55 No. 1: A/B/A form); the movement or complete piece, a full musical work or a distinct movement within a larger work, comprised of multiple sections (e.g., the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata); the performance, a connected sequence of musical works, or a full-length performance (e.g., the entirety of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis). In this way, music and language share a structural similarity. Phonemes are analogous to notes, morphemes to chords, motifs to words, and so on. Though music may be unable to convey concrete meaning through a hierarchical structure in the same way language can, its structure is used to convey complex emotions and subjective meaning.

Outside of hierarchical structures and their respective organization of the units within language and music, the very material of those units–sound itself–plays a crucial role in crafting meaning. In language, this is the study of phonemes; in music, of timbre. Phonology is defined as the study of systems of sounds within a language, including phonemes, intonation, stress, and pitch patterns. For instance, the phonemes /m/ and /n/ distinguish moon from noon, while a rising intonation can transform a statement into a question and vice versa, as depicted in “You love me?” (rising intonation) versus “You love me” (falling intonation/flat intonation). In music, the counterpart is timbre.

Timbre is defined as the unique color or quality of sound that allows us to distinguish a clarinet from an oboe, or a muted trumpet from a bright one, even when the pitch or duration of pitch is identical. For instance, a jazz saxophonist may growl on their instrument to create a raspy timbre, or a composer may utilize a piano instead of a harpsichord based on the style they wish to emulate (e.g., baroque vs. classical). Phonology conveys subtle meaning in language, while timbre allows music to communicate texture, emotion, and style. Yet the two diverge in function: phonology often carries semantic or grammatical weight, whereas timbre primarily conveys expressive or subjective content.

A jazz musician may employ a warm, dark timbre on the clarinet to evoke intimacy or nostalgia; a Chinese folk composer might exploit the plucked timbre of the guzheng or guqing to evoke snow falling atop a mountain, while the reedy, resonant tone of the sheng might embody the various other sounds in nature. Contrarily, moon and noon mean distinctly different things, each word holding objective meaning. There’s less subjectivity, as moon and noon do not simply feel different, they are different; however, in both language and music, the perception of these sounds is largely dependent on the audience. Phonemes and words are understood through cultural and social conventions, while timbre is experienced emotionally or contextually, shaped by genre, personal associations (e.g., nostalgia), or tradition. Thus, although phonology and timbre function differently, they both illustrate how subtle variations in sound can convey complex information, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of how meaning is shaped.

Beyond all structural and material qualities of language and music, meaning is profoundly shaped by cultural context and semiotic conventions. In language, register is defined as the social or stylistic variations of speech. Words acquire nuance through register such as formal, informal, poetic, etc., and convey different shades of meaning depending on who is speaking, to whom they are speaking, and what the context is. For example, you may greet someone using “greetings” in a formal setting and “hey” in a casual or informal setting. Similarly, you may use slang, idioms, or jargon, which also function semiotically. For instance, “crib” can be used interchangeably with “home”, but may only be understood within a certain social group or context, generational timeframe, or cultural frame. Within music, genre functions like linguistic register, affecting how a listener interprets sound.

In Debussy’s The Snow is Dancing, an impressionist piano piece from the Romantic era, the fluttering staccato notes and delicate pedal work evoke the sensation of snow swirling around in the air. The impressionist genre itself emphasizes atmosphere, color, and texture when compared to the rigid, formal Classical era it succeeded, signaling to audiences how to interpret this sound. Here, the genre functions semiotically: the dark timbre, dynamic contrast, and harmonic shifts convey the imagery of snow, much like how words acquire meaning within a specific linguistic register. Audiences who are familiar with the heart of Impressionist music “read” the snow through sound alone, demonstrating the integral role cultural and stylistic context play in interpretation within both music and language. Just as words rely on shared understanding to transmit meaning, musical signs rely on audience expectations and understanding of genre conventions, allowing sound to evoke imagery without any literal representation.

Some critics reject the idea that language and music share any meaningful similarities, arguing that music lacks fixed semantic content and therefore cannot possibly be compared to linguistic systems. They claim that because musical notes do not refer to specific objects and concepts in the world, music fundamentally should not be treated as a communicative system in any linguistic sense. Though there is truth to the claim that music does not have an objective, structured method of conveying or constructing meaning (syntax), this view overlooks the fact that meaning does not solely arise from literal denotation. If a child sobs, they do not need to verbally state their sadness in order for it to be socially understood as a negative emotion. Similarly, language and music alike rely on culturally shared conventions, expectations, contexts, and interpretive frameworks in order to be understood. Even if music does not “name” objects and tangible physical concepts the way words do, it still participates in a communicative system through genre, style, timbre, historical context, and so on. Audiences respond to musical cues such as dissonance, tension and resolution, tone quality, phrasing, articulation, dynamics, or tempo because they have learned how these signs function. When viewed through this broader lens, it becomes clear that music and language operate on shared principles: both depend on shared cultural knowledge and audience understanding, both shape emotional and conceptual interpretation, and both rely on structured internal patterns that guide how listeners and readers respectively make sense of what they hear. Thus, the claim that music and language have no overlap overlooks the intricate underlying processes that allow music to create and convey meaning.

Music and language, while distinct in their forms and methods of conveying meaning, reveal a shared capacity to structure experience, evoke emotion, and communicate within cultural contexts. From improvisation to hierarchical organization to semiotics, both systems exemplify the intricate ways humans make sense of the world around them. Recognizing their parallels deepens our understanding of what it means to communicate, what language means, and the fundamental human impulse to express and connect.