An embodied approach to music semantics

Abstract

This paper looks at a framework for music semantics, based on the concept of embodied music cognition (Leman, 2007). The first part presents the representational viewpoint on semantics and why one should aim at transcending this. The second part deals with different types of semantics, ranging from more mental to more corporeal ones. The third part discusses issues of semantics related to embodiment. It is argued that the embodiment approach, by focusing on the role of the human body as mediator in a musical meaning formation process, may be a useful extension, and may perhaps be an alternative to the representational approach. An embodied approach to music semantics is fully embedded within an empirical and evidence-based research approach. Within this approach, methodologies from both the natural sciences and the human sciences are combined. It focuses on the human body as a mediator between mind and physical environment, thus allowing a fully multimodal approach to music semantics.