I agree with most of your post, but...
**** Music like language was never about sound but about meaning.... ****
I think sound is much more important to music than it is to language. (Unless, of course, one views sound as part of meaning.) Humans have created some wonderful musical instruments that produce beautiful, intoxicating sounds.
When I listen to someone speak, I rarely focus on the sound of their voice. I focus on meaning. Unless their voice is:
strange enough to be distracting, or;
wonderful enough (as with a friend who is a professional voice man for audio books) to be mesmerizing.
Thanks for your observation that make me able to precise my thinking...
In music sound is " part of the meaning" like you wisely remark....Like in poetry where sound become integral part of the meaning....
Like in speech experience the sound of a voice is not a passive vehicule of the meaning but integral part of the meaning itself for our subconscious deeper perception...There is 2 operatorial regimes in language evolutively and historically and day to day interwinned completely: prosaic and poetical mode....We can and we must separe them for specialized purpose and specialized function, like science discourse or poetical discourse, but erasing one will kill the other, and separating them completely in everyday language is impossible anyway and not desirable at all...
Sound is no more only sound in a purely physically acoustical sense in music nor in language...
The tonal playing timbre of an instrument means and will never be just a physical sound....
It is like if all sound for a musician are the ghost or the possible reincarnation of a meaning which is also a creative gesture....
A violin is more a "personality" than a tool.....If not, it is a complete extension of the self of the musician and anyway cannot be considered to be a mere replaceable tool....It is revealing that a musical instrument for a musician cannot be reduced to be like a brush for a painter or a chisel for a sculptor...This illustrate the intimate link between sound and soul....And the deep meaning of hearing...
It is the reason why Ravi Shankar was shoked to the core when Jimie Hendrix broke his guitar in front of the crowd on the scene of the same festival ....His sitar was for him his second mother not less, killing her was unthinkable....
«History of music is history of consciousness»-Ernest ansermet
«For the tabla player his gesture reflect the entire rythmical cosmos »- An Indian master
« It is not a harp Groucho 🤓 it is Violeta»- Harpo Marx
