What is the object of the musical sign? Andy McGuiness Abstract The issue of whether musical meaning is immanent, and whether musical signs have objects, has vexed musical aesthetics for some time. This essay proposes a system of congeneric iconic signs which take as their objects other gestures in the same musical utterance. Meaning is created through the abstraction of likeness between signifier and object of signification. The meaning thus created is immanent to the sound, in that it does not transcend immediate sensory perception. This kind of sign function, however, does not preclude other kinds of sign function, which may function in other ways and create extra-musical meanings. Keywords: icon, musical sign, congeneric signs, immanent meaning, Peirce Introduction A recurring problem in the aesthetics of music is the issue of the object of the musical sign. On the one hand, various authors have long (at least since Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful (1891)) argued for the immanence of musical meaning. On the other hand, the project of explaining what extra-musical meanings music can signify—whether emotions, narrative, or aspects of culture (such as identity)—and how, has occupied at least as many, and probably more, writers on music. That music does carry extra-musical meanings cannot be denied (although specifying those meanings exactly may be difficult). However, a theory of musical meaning which included only extra-musical reference (rather than to connections between the sonic elements in themselves) would be contrary to our experience of music. Extra-musical reference may be inescapable, but the idea that music also works in some way which is independent of or supplementary to external reference is implicitly assumed or explicitly argued in much of the literature. A description of music which ignores relationships built on the structural characteristics of sonic elements—relationships between the sounds themselves of the music—seems lacking in an essential aspect. The claim is not that there are no extra-musical associations to be found, but that a fundamental attribute of music consists in relationships between the sonic elements of any particular musical utterance. In the formal aesthetics of music (as opposed to musicology), relatively little attention seems to be paid to the nature of such intra-textual relationships. In this essay, I propose a notion of congeneric iconic signification which addresses directly the nature of immanent meaning in music. The term ‘congeneric’ means that signifiers and their objects are of the same kind—in this case, both are musical gestures of equal standing in the same musical utterance. A further characteristic of the kind of signification I propose is that relations between signifiers correspond to a relations between signifieds in the system. This contrasts with, for instance, linguistic signification, where the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified ensures that the relation of signifier A to signifier B does not correspond in any meaningful way to the relation between signified A and signified B . Congeneric signification allows (although it does not entail) that relations between signifiers will show meaningful correspondences to relations between signifieds. My notion of congeneric iconic signification depends on C. S. Peirce’s idea of the ‘qualisign’, an abstract property which requires a material sign (such as a musical gesture) for its embodiment. The signified of a congeneric iconic sign is the abstracted likeness between a signifier (musical gesture) and its object (another gesture in the musical utterance). Signification depends on promiscuous reference to any and all musical gestures of the musical utterance which are active in the perception or memory of the listener. It establishes a system of relations between signifiers and produces—in the sense that it generates or creates—meanings which are immanent. My formulation contrasts with Wilson Coker’s idea of congeneric iconic signification, which rather depends on likeness to establish reference. In Coker’s formulation, the conception of the object of reference (the musical gesture) carries meaning, which is further developed in the interplay of references through the musical work. Coker’s system leads to meaning which is symbolic and communicative of extra-musical meaning. 1