Even if it is now scientifically proven that the human brain, when listening to music, activates (among other things) the brain areas that process language, does this mean that music is a language in its own?
It is true that there are great similarities between music and language, because just like verbal language, music is codified. A composer, for example, has the technical and aesthetic means to produce precise impressions, such as sadness, joy and fear. There are conventions, rules of composition that make it possible to organize and articulate sounds between them. These rules are in a way comparable to a syntax organizing words, in order to build sentences loaded with meaning.
But is it possible to say that music has a meaning? Certainly it stimulates our hearing and causes impressions that are in turn treated by the brain as information. Scientific research conducted by researchers at the University of Liverpool rightly highlights the fact that music and language both follow the same brain path, suggesting that our brain interprets music as a language. However, this scientific argument is not enough to assimilate music into a language. Because it cannot claim, unlike verbal language, to transmit an objective meaning.
Music does not have a meaning but rather an emotional tone, it is more about expression than meaning, it corresponds to the subjective moment of communication while language would be the objective moment.
Music could thus be described as a “vector of emotions and impressions”. It is fascinating to see, in a state of mindfulness, how music is able to alter our moods (or “affects”) and make us go through a multitude of emotions that are sometimes opposed in just a few notes, rhythms or harmonies.
The awareness of the action of music and its direct link with emotions therefore also helps to prepare children for the opposite path: not only to listen to music to identify its emotions and feel its effect on our own, but also to bring out the deepest individual emotions through music and instrumental learning.
Musical expression is not only the result of a physical vibratory process and the acquisition of an instrumental technique aimed at producing clean and harmonious sounds. To express oneself through music is above all to connect emotions that can be clearly identified with one’s own experience, one’s own history, whether it is lived or imagined. The Sassmanshaus musical method uses this principle by drawing inspiration from a technique well known to theatre and cinema actors called the Stanislavski method.
Music is THE “Vector of emotions and impressions” par excellence and generates a real feeling of appeasement and fullness for those who exploit its full power. The Eden School, a pioneer in the field of music education from a very early age, has clearly understood its usefulness and importance.
To be able to express your emotions in the safe environment that Music offers is also to open the door to being really heard by others and thus create links where objective language reaches its limits. This is why the Eden School encourages the learning of specific innovative techniques based on scientific realities in order to promote the identification of emotions, musical expression, instrumental learning and artistic expression in all its forms.