Editing Music theory (section)

===Musical semiotics===
{{Further|Music semiology|Jean-Jacques Nattiez}}
[[File:Roman Jakobson.jpg|thumb|upright|Semiotician [[Roman Jakobson]]]]
Music semiology ([[semiotics]]) is the study of signs as they pertain to music on a variety of levels. Following [[Roman Jakobson]], [[Kofi Agawu]] adopts the idea of musical semiosis being introversive or extroversive—that is, musical signs within a text and without.{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}} "Topics", or various musical conventions (such as horn calls, dance forms, and styles), have been treated suggestively by Agawu, among others.{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}} The notion of [[Musical Gestures|gesture]] is beginning to play a large role in musico-semiotic enquiry.{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}

:"There are strong arguments that music inhabits a semiological realm which, on both [[ontogenetic]] and [[phylogenetic]] levels, has developmental priority over verbal language."{{sfn|Middleton|1990|loc=172}}{{sfn|Nattiez|1976}}{{sfn|Nattiez|1990}}{{sfn|Nattiez1989}}{{sfn|Stefani|1973}}{{sfn|Stefani|1976}}{{sfn|Baroni|1983}}{{sfn|''Semiotica''|1987|loc=66:1–3}}{{incomplete short citation|date=December 2021}}{{clarify |date=November 2018|reason=The quotation cannot stem from all these references at once!}}

Writers on music semiology include Kofi Agawu (on topical theory,{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}} [[Heinrich Schenker]],{{sfn|Dunsby|Stopford|1981|loc=49–53}}{{sfn|Meeùs|2017|loc=81–96}} Robert Hatten (on topic, gesture){{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}, [[Raymond Monelle]] (on topic, musical meaning){{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}, [[Jean-Jacques Nattiez]] (on introversive taxonomic analysis and ethnomusicological applications){{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}, [[Anthony Newcomb]] (on narrativity){{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}, and [[Eero Tarasti]]{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}.

[[Roland Barthes]], himself a semiotician and skilled amateur pianist, wrote about music in ''Image-Music-Text,''{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} ''The Responsibilities of Form,''{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} and ''Eiffel Tower,''{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} though he did not consider music to be a semiotic system{{Citation needed|date=August 2015}}.

Signs, meanings in music, happen essentially through the connotations of sounds, and through the social construction, appropriation and amplification of certain meanings associated with these connotations. The work of [[Philip Tagg]] (''Ten Little Tunes'',{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} ''Fernando the Flute'',{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} ''Music's Meanings''{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}}) provides one of the most complete and systematic analysis of the relation between musical structures and connotations in western and especially popular, television and film music. The work of [[Leonard B. Meyer]] in ''Style and Music''{{Full citation needed|date=July 2015}} theorizes the relationship between ideologies and musical structures and the phenomena of style change, and focuses on romanticism as a case study.