Semiotics and the Art Music of India

Abstract

We know details of ancient classical music of India thanks to a
 very old tradition of musicological scholarship. Dating as early as the
 beginning of the Christian era, there is a crescent number of extant treatises
 in Sanskrit dealing with all aspects of music theory, musical practice, dance,
 and aesthetics. Indian scholars, in combining studies on the technical and
 aesthetical features of music, have made clear a semiotic preoccupation, that of
 understanding the meaning of music. Conversely, we find in the treatises
 attribution of meaning to ragas, talas, and musical forms, implying also a
 normative function to the theory of music. However, what was established in the
 treatises has not corresponded perfectly to the music as practiced in courts and
 temples. New treatises were in constant demand of being composed to adjust the
 theory with the current practice.
 
 The Western scholarship on the music of India has often employed the methods
 of ethnology. Yet, this approach has been poor in creating better understandings
 on issues with which Indian scholars have been concerned for millennia—in
 particular, the meaning of music. It is my view that the general theory of
 signs, as proposed by Charles Peirce, can be used as a theoretical instrument
 that gives to the analyst precise concepts for the study of musical
 signification. The advantage of this approach consists in operating with a
 system that enables the study of the traditional Indian music in accordance with
 its own logic. However, I believe that, between the general theory of signs (a
 normative science) and the subject matter—music (consisting of acoustic
 relations and facts of culture)—there must be an intermediate theory, or an
 applied theory—namely, a theory of musical semiotics. My purpose in this
 conference is to demonstrate how Indian music was studied with the semiotics of
 Peirce, the semiotic theory of music built for that, and the results thereof.