General issues in cognitive musicology A semiotic approach to music Nicolas Meeùs Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles, Belgium Contemporary Music Review, 1993, Vol. 9, Parts 1 & 2, pp. 305–310 Photocopying permitted by license only © 1993 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH Printed in Malaysia The purpose of this paper is to sketch a semiotic approach to music that avoids relying on linguistic models. Peirce’s triadic description of the sign is drawn into a landscape in which any sign is viewed as a node in a latent network of potential intersemic relationships. Whenever a sign is uttered, in speech or in musical performance, it activates an area of the emitter’s and the receiver’s semiotic network; the felicity of the exchange depends on the level of similitude between the networks. Basic musical techniques such as repetition, variation or development are the means of structuring the listener’s network. The musical discourse tentatively controls the listener’s meandering through the semiotic network, and the score is a notation of the discursive strategy. KEY WORDS: Semiotics, network (semiotic), intersemic relationships, discursive strategy. Musical semiotics as an approach to a general semiotics The purpose of this paper is to sketch a semiotic approach to music that would avoid relying on linguistic models; it proceeds from the conviction that these models, especially that of verbal communication, are not suitable for the development of a true semiotics of music. The need to distinguish what is particular to language from what belongs to a general semiotics had been stressed already by Ferdinand de Saussure when he proposed General issues in cognitive musicology 329