Meaning of Music

About the Conference

The international conference “Meaning of Music” took place on October 10th and 11th, 2024, at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. The conference was organised by the Department of Music Theory and co-financed by the Ministry of Education and Science in the “Excellent Science” programme – DNK/SP/548966/2022. The European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) was the honorary patron of the conference. The official language of the conference was English.

The title of the conference “Meaning of Music” outlined a very wide range of problems, but in the Call for Papers the organizers indicated that they were primarily interested in the approach developed under the influence of new cognitive linguistic theories such as conceptual metaphor (G. Lakoff, M. Johnson 1980) and conceptual blending (G. Fauconnier, M. Turner 2002). It was therefore above all about musical meaning, which involves one-directional mapping between mental spaces or emerges from the interaction of concepts with at least two such mental spaces. As the creators of this groundbreaking discovery reported, meanings that are constructed in this way are mostly unconscious, but they are at the heart of both everyday meanings and unique human creativity.

Musicologists quickly adopted the achievements of cognitively oriented linguists. Already at the beginning of our century, several serious publications reached readers’ hands that were devoted to theoretical issues, such as multimodality in the context of performing and listening to music (eds. R. Godøy, H. Jørgensen 2001), musical concepts (L. Zbikowski 2002), and musical metaphors (M. Spitzer 2004). After a longer hiatus, four broad and remarkably mutually resonant theories have emerged: cognitive musical grammar (L. Zbikowski 2017), sonic ontology (N. Cook 2018), multilevel-grounded semantics of music (M. Antović 2022) and film music cognition (J. Chattah 2023). In addition, interesting works in the field of conceptual blending have been written concerning creative processes (A. Brandt, D. Eagelman 2017; “Musicae Scientiae” 2018 no. 1), the topic of music and multimodal imagery has been explored in more depth (eds. M. Küssner, L. Taruffi, G. Floridou 2023), and the issue of preconceptual image schemas has been addressed.

The aim of the Gdańsk „Meaning of Music” conference was to gather, in one place and time, researchers from all over the world who are dealing with the topic of meaning construction in music from cognitive approach, in order to present current theoretical knowledge, to date scattered across various sources, and to present semantic interpretation of individual works from this new perspective. Therefore, the first priority was to ensure that the conference was attended by the leading scholars in the outlined area. The invitations sent out met with a positive response. Ultimately, the Gdańsk conference was attended by as many as eight invited keynote speakers, while a typical conference usually has two or three. Furthermore, these were outstanding experts of the topic, authors of numerous books and articles published by the best academic publishers in the world.

Invited keynote speakers presented the audience various aspects of musical meaning-making from a cognitive approach: prof. L. Zbikowski argued that an important resource for the construction of musical meaning is analogical reference; prof. Mihailo Antović summarized his multilevel-grounded semantics of music; prof. Violetta Kostka proposed the meanings of Paweł Szymański’s intertextual works in the light of conceptual blending theory; prof. Anthony Brandt explored how different composers strive to be understood without words; prof. Rolf Godøy discussed sound-motion objects and the issues correlated with them; prof. Michael Spitzer convinced us of the appraisal theory of music emotion; dr Danae Stefanou delved into a more critical understanding of the processes of concept formation; and dr Juan Chattah discussed the meaning of film music from point of view of certain cognitive mechanisms.

The remaining conference participants also rose to the challenge, although in addition to strictly cognitive themes, they also took up other topics. They addressed such problems as: neuropragmatism, image schemas, embodied meanings, metaphors, translations, topics, narratives, hermeneutical methods, ekphrasis, semantics of musical multimedia, the beginnings of language and music, the functions of music in culture, not to mention individual viewpoints on musical meaning by contemporary composers. Many of these various presentations, in addition to theoretical aspects, also contained semantic interpretations of musical pieces from the last few centuries.

The scope of the addressed issues was announced in the Abstracts Book, available from this website. It is worth noting that the abstracts are relatively long, with the longest ones – by keynote speakers – being around 1,000 words.

Generally, 51 participants took part in the Gdańsk musicological event, representing the USA, Canada, India and 17 European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Serbia, Switzerland, UK. During the conference, the participants, including three 2-person teams and one 3-person team, presented 8 lectures, 35 papers and 2 communications, of which 36 presentations took place physically in Gdańsk and 9 were presented via the Zoom platform. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the participants themselves, the conference was attended online via Zoom by about 60 people from 14 countries, in addition to the guests in the conference rooms, mainly teachers and students of the Faculty of Conducting, Composition and Music Theory of the local Academy of Music.

The two days of the Gdańsk event took place in a great atmosphere, which all participants contributed to creating, without exception. The goal – to expand our current knowledge about the meaning construction in music from a cognitive approach – was achieved. However, this does not mean that the topic is closed; on the contrary, researchers repeatedly confirmed that there are still many unanswered questions.

The members of Programme and Organizing Committee of the „Meaning of Music” international conference sincerely thank all participants for their efforts in preparing interesting statements, for their active participation in Gdańsk or online, and for creating the extraordinary atmosphere of this scholarly meeting. We hope that the presented topics were interesting and perhaps even inspiring for some. We are convinced that the results of our international conference will contribute not only to the popularization of the cognitive approach to musical meaning-making, but also to raise the general level of knowledge about human forms of mental and creative activity.

Recognizing that this “Meaning of Music” international conference and the other activities associated with it, were quite a challenge, the organizers would like to wholeheartedly thank all the people involved for their work. First of all, we are grateful to our authorities, mainly to the Rector, prof. Ryszard Minkiewicz and the Dean of the Faculty of Conducting, Composition, and Music Theory, dr. hab. Sylwia Janiak-Kobylińska, who made it possible for us to host this conference within the walls of the Academy of Music in Gdańsk. We extend our thanks to all the gentlemen from the Recording Studio and the IT Department, and especially to Piotr Jędrzejczyk, who took responsibility for all issues related to online connections. We are also grateful to all of the team from the Academic Office, Bursar’s and Promotion Office, who dealt with formal, financial and advertising matters. Last but not least, we would like to thank all our friends, colleagues and students from the Faculty of Conducting, Composition and Music Theory, who supported us in various ways.