Made for Each Other: Music and Text — Revealing the Language of Plainchant

Across all known human cultures, spoken language shares a set of acoustic properties with music: pitch variation, rhythm, tempo, timbre, and dynamic contour. These are not just decorative features of speech; they carry the weight of our words. Unlike the sort of speech like a computer voice or the ever popular robot voice uses. Without our inflections, our speech is rendered emotionless, leaving us unsure of its true meaning.

The way we talk carries meaning that the words themselves do not. This is what linguists call prosody, and it operates in every human language without exception. Where this is most evident is in the sung versions of texts, poems, and literature. Much like it is revealed in passionate speech, or that of children who have a way of getting their point across based on the pitch and duration of their words.

So, it’s not so much that music adds something to language, but rather it recovers or elevates something language has.

When we speak, our inflections carry great weight in the delivery of our words. When someone says, “Oh great”, in a sarcastic manner, almost everyone can pick up on the speaker’s true meaning. But how does this work when music tries something similar?

When a composer sets words to music, it acts as a form of inflection. Words and music share the same neurological pathway in us, but when words are sung, it’s the music that has the stronger sway over our emotions. The musical rhythm adds weight to words. Our brains have to process more than just words; with music added, it passes through multiple interconnected areas that make the experience deeply immersive. When we hear music and words together, this feels like it carries greater meaning than just words alone.

Hence people crying to sad songs where the lyrics alone would not move the same listener to the same degree.

A cynic would say that all music is doing is emotionally hijacking our feelings. Music releases a neurochemical cocktail to make us blubber and fall apart. So, if we break down and weep over sad songs, is that not just the music manipulating our emotions, or is it also the music revealing an inner meaning from the lyrics?

The answer appears to be both, depending on what you believe. We get triggered by music, and then we supply the reason why. Is this emotionally honest of us and music, especially when composer know how to tug on our heartstrings? Some would say that this is what makes us human. Our reaction to situations, whether manipulated by a composer or not, is still a human reaction, and how can we have anything else?

Not everyone will hold the same emotional reaction to a piece of music with lyrics, but maybe, there is a universal reaction; it’s just hidden. After attending a concert of Plainchant by the Choir Air France at Notre Dame des Champs Church in Paris two weeks ago, I can say that I didn’t care what the words were saying. I was immersed in the beauty of sound coming from the double choir; the meaning was in the music.

If our responses to lyric-based music is purely neurochemical manipulation, maybe they would be more uniform than what they appear to be. What seems to be the case is our subjective point of view counteracts what our emotions tell us. If this is so, which is the correct version, and does it matter? Does it matter to you?

The instinctive answer to this three-part series is language came first, then music was added. But in that addition, music has opened language to reveal its true meaning, as it does for many in plainchant, which proves music and text were made for each other.