Abstract
Meaning in music constitutes an issue that have risen (and still rises) a strong debate. Although it has been approached from different perspectives there seems to be no consensus for its theorization. From a Social Semiotic perspective, music can be analysed as a part of a bigger construction, sharing the task of making meaning with other modes (verbal, visual, etc.). This paper aims to make a contribution to multimodal studies proposing a way to include music analysis in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. We adopt as framework Halliday’s theory (1978; 1994), although we start from Kress and van Leeuwen (2020) adaptations and include McKerrell (2015) and van Leeuwen (1999). Our working hypothesis is that, in multimodal contexts, music contributes with the construction of meaning, particularly ideational meaning, establishing a relation with other modes.
Music, narratives and discourse
It is often said that music has the power to transport us to places we dream, transform our moods, and add colour to great moments. We use music for pleasure at different times during the day and we establish connections between our emotional state and the music we listen to. When we watch a movie we can perceive the emotional moods in the characters, the emotional atmosphere in the music we hear in the background. For the human species, music posses a meaning that combines with other sounds, visual clues, scent clues, etc., to construct our representation of the world that surrounds us.
From a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective, music must be considered in terms of its possibilities of representation, its functioning with other modes and the relations of power it allows to establish. The aim of this paper is to present a systemic-functional semiotic approach that allows to analyse music in multimodal contexts revising the relations music establishes with verbal and visual modes. We adopt Kress and van Leeuwen’s adaptation of Halliday’s proposal (1996–2020) for the visual mode, and include categories described by McKerrell (2015) and van Leeuwen (1999) for music. According to our perspective, music not only works cohesively with the narrative to establish tension and resolution of conflicts but also interact with verbal and visual modes building ideational meaning and emotional framing.
The question of meaning in music has been approached from several disciplines and described in numerous ways. Modern perspectives have taken different paths: currently music and meaning constitutes a field approached not only by musicians and musicologists but also philosophers, linguists, anthropologists and social scientists of several disciplines. And yet – or perhaps therefore – there seem to be no consensus for its theorization.
Margulis et al. (2019), consider that people experience music not just as an abstract sequence of sounds, but as episodes in an unfolding narrative (2019: 2). Similarly, Walsh (2011: 63) says is not that music has a meaning but narrative has an influence on it. Therefore, this author prefers to speak about “narrativization” rather than narrative meaning in music. Following this logic, we can talk about cycles of action and repose in unfolding melodies that develop a certain idea of narrative, influenced by other elements. Similar conceptions have been also adopted by Maus (1991: 4), following Schenker (1979), suggesting the possibility of a generalized plot structure for tonal music.
The basic premise behind Critical Discourse Analysis is to examine linguistic choices to evidence unequal power relations constructed in texts that promote inequalities and exploitation (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; van Dijk, 1993). As O’Halloran has noted, the need for a multimodal perspective lays on the fact that language use is not thought as an isolated phenomenon (2014: 1). Therefore, analysis of communication must centre in images, visual design, television, newspapers, monuments, toys and also in and through music (McKerrell, 2015: 1). Discourse is conveyed in different modes, not just the verbal, hence the multimodal definition of text as the material manifestation of ideas through different modes. Discourses can be thought of as models of the world and project certain social values and ideas which contribute to the (re)production of social life (2015: 5). Music and sound play an important role in themselves but also in dialogue with other modes of communication such as image and verbal text. Music within multimodal communication often brings with it particular affordances that are either difficult to express via more propositional linguistic texts or images, or in some cases, impossible to express in other modes (2015: 8–9) and that often elicit irony, unspoken and implicit arguments.
Systemic-functional semiotics
Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, 2020) adapted Halliday’s perspective for image analysis, expanding the possibilities for a multimodal approach to meaning. Following their model, we introduce some categories of music theory to expand the multimodal context. We detail our proposal for each metafunction in the following sections.
Ideational metafunction
Ideational meaning refers to participants, processes and circumstances. As a part of a multimodal text, music tends to be seen as some kind of process animated participants represented in the visual or verbal mode carry out or experience. In considering music, we must consider first the place granted to it in the multimodal construction. The dichotomy diegetic/non-diegetic music in audiovisual material assigns different roles to music and, therefore, to the relationship music establishes with other modes. Diegetic sound in films and television explicitly signals something visible on screen, such as a door slamming, a dog barking, etc., or music the participants are listening to. It is the sound of the world in which the participants of the visual mode live in. In the film Green Book (2018), the character Tony Lip -played by Viggo Mortensen-, is driving the car and telling Doc Shirley -Mahershala Ali - how he got the nickname “lip” while they listen to Lucille, by Little Richard. The music is played in the car, it is not background music. In its non-diegetic function, music can construct emotional atmospheres in multimodal texts through an orchestral soundtrack, songs or music that does not belong in the participants world but in ours as audience. This is music and sound that we, as auditory can hear, but not the represented participants. Most audiovisual material often include both, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, as different modes in the same communicative moment. So, auditory channel can be inherently multimodal: when someone is talking/screaming/singing over non-diegetic background music. In that case, the sounds, even when they are heard simultaneously, are part of two distinct socially accepted channels of communication; and the audible elements of the multimodal text can be multimodal in addition to whatever might be going on visually or linguistically (McKerrell and Way, 2017: 12).
Music cannot account by itself a pure and clear ideational meaning (in terms of describing unequivocally participants and processes) but it can signal it in other modes. Cross (1999: 15) describes agency in music by its ‘floating intentionality’. Music gives us the impression of a process but we cannot find a clear agent neither describe in detail what process is being developed. This seems to be the key that allows music to construct cohesion and social ties, and also to do the opposite and to function as an element of conflict between social groups. The ‘floating intentionality’ is rendered more specific in multimodal texts because of the combination of verbal text and images with sound. Therefore, music associates with images and verbal material in the construction of ideational meaning. Images can present participants: humans, non-humans, anthropomorphized objects, etc., constructing them in a discrete and defined way. Lyrics can also function as the visual mode, by just mention, depicting or describing participants. Also, lyrics can suggest participants through the use of pronouns and deictic forms. Therefore, before looking at processes and participants in music, we must analyse what kind of relationship is music establishing with the other modes present.
If we consider Tchaikovsky’ Solemn Overture, Op. 49 - usually known as the 1812 Overture-, written in 1880 to commemorate the successful Russian defence against Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, we can find passages of battle, marching troops, and national motifs as the Marseillaise. Events are established clearly by association with war sounds, explosions of canon balls and motifs constructed by previous music as representing violent and quiet events. The sense of ‘floating intentionality’ seems to become an actual verbal process and its agency lies in the participants involved, for instance, in the war: Napoleon, his troops, the Russian army, etc. In a similar way, we can find agency in the fate motif of Beethoven’ Symphony No. 5. This motif has usually been credited with symbolic significance as a representation of fate knocking at the door (Jolly, 1966).
When music is combined with images or lyrics, participants and processes are defined in a more detailed way. Given that sight is our dominant sensory system, visual mode plays a central role in the multimodal construction. In the film Inglourious Basterds (2009), the character Shosanna Dreyfus – played by Mélanie Laurent – prepares herself to kill the Nazis at her cinema. She gets dressed, does her make up and drinks wine while the diegetic music we hear – Cat People (1982) by David Bowie – prays: “putting out the fire whit gasoline”. In this case, the participant is constructed by the visual mode, and the music says something about her state of mind, emotional situation, etc. Something similar happens with lyrics. In the song Before Tomorrow Comes (2007), by Alter Bridge, the first verse reads: I couldn't sleep I had to listen To a conscience knowing so well That nothing comes form indifference I look inside of myself
We, as listeners, can establish a connection between the “I” and the melody, granting some kind of emotional value to the instrumental music in liaison with the words. To sum up, in multimodal contexts music conform a conceptual unity with other modes, such as visual or verbal, in which participants are usually construed by visual or verbal modes and music adds a feature to it contributing to character descriptions, text dynamics and a sense of plot development.
Interpersonal metafunction
Interpersonal metafunction refers to relations established through the text: social distance, status and power. The categories we propose has been adapted from those presented by van Leeuwen (1999: 5) and McKerrell (2015: 8): 1. Act of demand; 2. Perspective and social distance; 3. Tonal gravity; 4. Voice quality and timbre; 5. Modality.
Act of demand
A basic definition of music describes it as tension creation-tension releasing. Tension consists of the anticipation music creates in a listener for relaxation or release. Reiteration, increase in dynamic level, gradual motion to a higher or lower pitch, or (partial) syncopations between consonance and dissonance, etc. Tense sections create expectation to keep the listener involved. Cadences create an expectation that, depending on the type of cadence, can be released in the resolution; making the listener wait for the end, detour and take the listener’s attention for a different path, or not release at all. We consider four main types of cadences: 1. Authentic cadence: its sound, going from V to I (from dominant to tonic) presents full resolution: creates tension by V and resolves it going back to the tonic. In terms of multimodal meaning it creates a strong demand that is provided with a liberation or resolution. 2. Plagal cadence: This cadence also offers full resolution: goes from IV to I, although its sound is more solemn since IV creates smoother tension than V. In terms of multimodal meaning it creates a softer demand, like a prayer or a kind request that is finally answered by the return to the tonic. Half cadence: Its ending on V sounds incomplete or suspended, calls for continuation because tension is not resolved. Its multimodal meaning poses tension in wait for a resolution: it resembles a desperate cry with no answer. Deceptive cadence: when the dominant chord is not followed by the expected tonic but by another one, often the submediant, tension is not resolved but detoured, therefore, multimodal meaning resembles a reorientation of the meaning carried by the melody that creates a feeling of disappointment.
Perspective and social distance
Perspective and social distance involves an imaginary distance between the producer of the sounds and the listener, creating nearness, remoteness and positions in between. Following van Leeuwen (1999: 27) we identify: - Intimate distance: Extremely close instance, like a romantic encounter. In the song No time to die (2020), recorded by Billie Eilish as soundtrack for the homonymous film, both the softness of the instruments and the delicacy in the recording of the voice indicate a situation of extreme closeness between the person who produces the sound and the potential listener. Marginal cases can be considered: the song Justify my love (1990), performed by Madonna, the voice poses closeness while the instruments build a context a little more rough, closer to sexual contexts. - Personal distance: It is a conversation between two people who are less than a meter from each other, barely breaking each other’s personal space. The verses in the song Unstoppable (2016), recorded by Sia, establish a non-intimate but close relation between producer and hearer. - Informal distance: This is the distance among friends. You are The one (2018) by Greta Van Fleet exemplifies this case. - Formal distance: this is the distance that is established in a conversation between people who don’t know each other. We can find this distance in Do I Wanna Know? (2013) by Arctic Monkeys. - Public Distance: it is a remote situation. although this does not necessarily means producer and listener do not know each other. Hallucinate (2020) by Dua Lipa presents a good example of this distance.
However, when it comes to social distancing, we must remember given that the intrinsic nature of western music dynamics, no piece remains static in a single distance. In most pieces, regardless of the genre they belong to and the instrumentation they use, distance vary throughout the entire piece.
Tonal gravity
Griffith and Machin (2014: 88), quoted in McKerrell (2015: 8–7).
Note: 1 defines the note of the scale and, therefore, acts as anchor, bringing a sense of grounding whenever heard again. Note: 5 also grounds the melody. Note: 3 grants quality: happy, joyful, or lowered by half a note, giving a sense of sadness or tragedy to the melody (Cooke, 1959: 90). Note: 2 is associated with transition, the sense of movement about to occur, or the promise of something to follow. Note: 4 gives a sense of moving forward, space or possibility. Note: 6 has a similar value as Note 3 and adds a sense of brightness to the melody. It also provides a meaning of flux, so it is generally used to indicate pleasurable longing or nostalgia. Note: 7 is associated with longing and is often used in love songs; it can sound wistful and a little lamentful (Griffith and Machin, 2014: 88).
Voice quality and timbre
This category can be, according to van Leeuwen (1999: 125) subdivided in the following: tense/relaxed, rough/smooth, bright/opaque, high/low, intense/soft, vibrato/flat, nasality/orality, and finally the points of articulation (in the vocal tract for the human voice, or the point of note formation in instruments).
Modality
The concept of modality, in the same way as in language and images, is related to the concept of “naturalism” and representation in terms of degrees of truth. In pop music, modality is usually related to the production work in the making of records. When we consider the modality of sound, adapting van Leeuwen’s categories (1999: 159), we can think of the following elements to analyse: - Detail in articulation (Tenuto, Marcato, Staccato, Legato, etc.). - Detail in the background (contrast between two sounds playing together). - Colour saturation in sounds (distortion, flanger, electronic effects). - Colour differentiation (clean sound vs effects). - Articulation depth (“deep sounds” are commonly associated with low pitch and sustained duration, while “surface sounds” are related to medium to high pitch and a shorter duration). - Light and shadow (light is defined by treble and shadows by bass sounds). - Degrees of tonal variation (modulation).
Textual metafunction
In music, we refer to structure and form as the systems involved in the distribution of the meaning in the flow. Although both definitions may overlap at a certain point, we choose to keep both terms, using ‘form’ for the genre in social context, as a social practice; and reserve ‘structure’ for a formal description of its composition:
Musical form
The concept of musical form refers to a type of musical piece: Symphony, Sonata, Suite, Fugue, Concerto, Choral, Cantata, Minuet, etc. (Agawu, 2008: 22). We also include forms like song, score and modern ways to describe musical pieces that allow us to establish a connection between the piece and the social practice involved. The aim is to describe that relation instead of constructing a category to just name a piece.
Musical structure
Structure refers to the organization of the constitutive elements of a work: its compositional architecture, its development, the arrangement of musical ideas, their imitations, their re-expositions, etc., that is, the way of organizing a musical piece, to present the different themes or musical ideas that make it up. Among the most used structures we find: Primary form: Consisting of a single phrase independent of the introduction or coda Binary Form: Formed by two sections A and B Ternary form: formed by three sections A, B and C Rondò shape: A, B, A, C, A, Theme with variations: A1, A2, A1, A3.
Atomic Blonde and Father Figure
Atomic Blonde is a 2017 American action thriller film based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City, which depicts a story about a spy who has to find a list of double agents that is being smuggled into the West on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The film is directed by David Leitch and it is written by Kurt Johnstad. Between minutes 30:00 and 32:50 a fighting sequence takes place involving the protagonist, Lorraine Broughton – played by Charlize Theron -, an MI6 agent, and four (at first, later two more come in) East German police officers. When the scene begins, Broughton has broken into her dead ex partner, also a MI6 agent, looking for clues about the list whereabouts as she notices police is arriving. She goes through the door to verify it and takes the hose she will later use to fight and escape. Realising she is trapped, Broughton locks herself in inside the apartment, puts a tape on the player, pushes play and hides herself waiting for the officers to arrive. Before police comes in, the song Father Figure 1987, played by George Michael, begins to sound in the speakers.
As in every audiovisual piece, participants and processes are constructed visually. As Lorraine Broughton and the police officers appear in the screen we acknowledge music will refer to them and the situation they are involved. Actually, this relationship it is set up by Lorraine pressing the play button on the stereo. This is the first important clue to keep in mind analysing this sequence because it establishes the place of music in the narrative. In audiovisual material like films, music is usually used as emotional background for the images and therefore, non-diegetic. In this case, music merges both dimensions: it is dialoguing with both worlds. Diegetically, music is an element used by Lorraine to surprise, stun and confuse police officers in order to gain some kind of advantage given the fact she is outnumbered. Nevertheless, analysis becomes much more fruitful considering the role of music as non-diegetic.
Non-diegetically, the song is not creating an emotional background in the way a score would do, but it is the sounding background in the room, and the movie reminds it to us when the shoot takes police officers outside the apartment. In this shoot, music volume is lower than it is inside the apartment. However, the song do creates an emotional atmosphere. Being a down tempo ballad with seductive lyrics, Father Figure does not constitute the prototypical fighting music in the Western world, that would require faster, heavier, stronger melodies and instrumentation. In this sense, the song seems to be ridiculing the audiovisual genre while it operates as a temporal mark of the eighties, the time depicted in the movie.
In terms of the ideational function, we can unfold the diegetic dimension in two: dimension 1 is the time and space where Lorraine is about to fight the police officers; and dimension 2, a conversation Lorraine has with George Michael about seduction that is really directed to the audience. In dimension 1, there is a violent situation going on and the music mediates between Lorraine and the officers, just because Lorraine included it into the fight. Dimension 2 presents a situation in which George seems to be seducing Lorraine through slow music and romantic lyrics. But if we keep in mind it was Lorraine who put the tape in the first place the table seems to turn: it is not George trying to seduce her but her refusing to be seduced by showing how she beats up six police officers and leaving the room in James Bond’ style. This meaning is not intended for George but for the audience. In this case, Lorraine is talking with the audience beating up six guys and turning George Michael down. The fact that the protagonist of the images is a woman, and the “I” in the lyrics of the song is a man, presumably -at the time-talking to a woman, a dialogue between them can be established in which the man is talking to the woman, trying to seduce her treating her as a child that needs a father figure. Instead, she shows that she is not in need of a father figure, evidencing she can stand up for herself and be in total control of the situation. And, going back to the tape, we can also think she is mocking the guy in the song who is treating girls as if they need a father figure when they can act as Lorraine is acting. In this sense, the scene -and the film - is also mocking the eighties vision of women and, for that reason, it anchors the movie in the second decade if the XXI Century, in which women’s rights are subject of strong debate. It constitutes a XXI vision of the misogynistic eighties.
The scene ends with a spectacular fall that seems taken from another spy movie: James Bond’s The World is Not Enough (1999) opening scene ends the same way: the spy jumping out of a window with his waist tied to a passed out person. But in the case of Bond, music is incidental and marks an emotional up tempo development of the scene and its violence. In Atomic Blond, the final words of the song are pronounced right after Lorraine punches the last two guards in the ground floor and leaves the building.
On the other hand, it also can be argued that the song is emphasising the concentration and mastery Lorraine is showing in her performance, being in total control of the situation; considering the relaxed affect of the song is enhancing this sense of control while, at the same time, contrasting with the violent sequence in the visual mode. Here, it can be bared in mind the concept of Moore of considering music analysis as an invitation to hear the piece rather than decode it (2013: 3). Music analysis evidences a wide range of possibilities in the interpretation of the song in context. Nevertheless, it must be read within the limits of the film and its meaning constructions. In any case, visual mode takes the lead establishing participants and processes, but music adds many features to the situation that expand the construction in terms of ideational meaning.
The interpersonal metafunction presents at least one act of demand. Although the bridges at the end of each verse create tension that resolves in the chorus, going back to the tonic, maximum tension is created trough the modulation from B♭ to G♭ and resolved back in B♭. This part of the sound is what we hear in the moment that Lorraine takes one of the men as prisoner with the hose around his neck and two other police officer chase her, this is, tension in the song as well as in the screen. This can be thought as a moment of reflection or a moment of patience only expertise can achieve: considering the situation it is a moment of tension among the three participants involved. Any of them can immediately die. But if we focus on Lorraine, the tension created by the modulation can represent a moment of carefully thinking about her next step in the fight. In the song, the tension in G♭ resolves when the lyrics pray “Hold on Hold on, I wont let you go” as Lorraine runs jumping out the window with rope around a police officer’s neck, bonding this way, the situation, the instrumental music and the lyrics. Thus, music is not just adding ideational meaning but, as part of the interpersonal construction, is adding to the visual dynamics among participants in the screen. This tension in the dynamics in the screen is transferred outside the screen because the viewers understand this tension and will also expect a resolution of the conflict.
Perspective and social distance shows an intimate-personal construction in the song. Related to the images there is some opposition: music states an intimate distance and images also in some way, but the intimate distance in the images is not that of lovers, as in the song, is that of people fighting. Therefore we can think of a “love as fight” or “love/hate” relationship. In any case the song could suggest that fights are part of love or love and hate are both sides of the same coin.
Regarding tonal gravity melody unfolds over B♭ (tonic) and A♭ (leading note). In the song, vocal melodies are supported by an instrumental base that moves between B♭ and A♭ in the verses and the chorus. The point of maximum tension is developed by modulation to G♭ (submediant) in the bridge. This is also related to the act of demand above mentioned and the tension that helps to create in the visual mode. The leading note gives the melody a kind of wishful colour – part of the seductive air of the song – and the tension created by the submediant makes the longing for resolution of the cadence – and the hostage situation that is taken place visually – sounds nostalgic, almost sad.
Voice quality and timbre: B♭ major key, a positive emotion sound. And the high octave is associated with sharpness. Bright voice, relaxed, variations between intense and soft moments, oral. It all helps build the intimate situation a lover wants.
Modality is also closer to “naturalism” in terms of Kress and van Leeuwen: there is no electronic or “out of this world” sounds. Instruments sound more or less clear, They can be identified easily. Voices too: there are no strange effects that modify them in ways that make them sound non-human or non-natural. Even though it sounds like a studio recording it could be a band playing live. The song does not introduce futuristic sounds, although there can be pre-recorded elements. It pretends to be just voices and instruments even when pre-recorded and synthesized sounds can be there. No saturated tracks either. This characteristics make the scene very clear too and establish that the meaning added by music is not that of non-diegetic music, at least primarily: it is not the emotional atmosphere. Instrumentation during the verses create a shadow background while in the chorus throw light on the song. As mentioned above, there is not much modulation in the song, only that serves the creation of tension in particular passages. Besides, the song seeks an emotional connection with the audience in another way: making them remember what the eighties sounded like and confronts them with their own experience of the eighties.
Textually, its form is that of a pop ballad in B♭, with a structure AABA, although the first two verses end in a bridge to the chorus and there are also two instrumental parts that develop with the A sections structure. Bridges at the end of the A sections create the tension that must be resolved by the chorus, that goes back to the tonic. The B section is the point of maximum tension in the song because of its modulation to G♭.
The scene naturalises the violence and constructs the British as the fair side of the struggle between the East and the West during the Cold War. Britain and MI6 are the hero against a communist Germany, constructed as “the bad guys”. We can also find animal cruelty: Lorraine’s ex partner is a hunter: during the scene a photo of him and another character, with guns and dead non-human animals is shown. The part music plays in this construction does not evidence these prejudices built by images and verbal discourse, but it serves their purposes: tension created in B♭, when Lorraine is chased by two police officers while she keeps another as hostage adds drama to a construction in which she is presented as some kind of victim. In the 1980s – the times the movie portraits - a woman would not have occupied that role of a man, an agent of mi6. And hardly would have appeared in a movie giving that kind of beating to six guys. The use of a female character – an individual belonging to a group that is being currently empowered - reinforce the position of the British as good guys: there is a heroine that brings the movie up to date and makes possible for the audience to relate. The dialogue between Lorraine and George Michael is a declaration of principles typical of the 21st century and the empowerment of women, it allows us to think about the empowerment of Lorraine as a woman who does not need a father figure or a dirty seduction like Michael’s. She fights six guys just to tell George Michael – and us - she does not need a man to protect her.
Multimodal music
Ideational meaning in music constitutes a complex issue. Considering music by itself, it clearly signals participants and movement, although perhaps not in the way verbal or visual discourse do. These ideas of action and movement are enriched in multimodal contexts when the specific features presented by music establish relations with what is built through the verbal or visual modes. Dynamics of music contribute providing a sense of emotional atmosphere for the processes or events developed verbally or visually. In this way, music adds information about the quality of the participants or the process, as we have seen in 3, establishing a sort of graduation from intimate to far distant/violent events. Sometimes it can be signal social aspects within the narrative – the mastery of Lorraine as MI6 agent -, sometimes can describe aspects outside the screen – the place grant by the West to the participants in the Cold War in the eighties -. But even keeping Moore’s perspective and just listen to the song, the multimodal construction imposes certain limits about the meaning and what can be recovered from the audiovisual piece. Therefore, having several possibilities for meaning in music, visual and verbal modes restrict the range.
At interpersonal level, music makes its more important contribution, establishing complex relations among participants in the narrative and between them and the audience, also eliciting emotional frames that work as background and as particular trails directed to capture the audience’s attention. The tension posed by music to create demand can follow two paths: direct or indirect. In the first case, we must consider the fact that non-diegetic music is intended for the audience, therefore, the need for resolution, established by the cadences, is directed to the public’s attention: the demand is directly established. On the other hand, diegetic music, intended for the characters, is not usually used to convey tension for resolution, given the characters cannot consider the music they hear as emotional background for the narrative of their lives. Nevertheless, that music tells something to the audience regarding the ideational world in which represented participants live. In this case, music signals more a social background than an emotional one. But cadences still operate as generators of tension. In the example presented in 3, both worlds mix and combine, creating tension in and out screen. In both cases, tonal gravity plays its part, shaping social meaning within the music. Quality, pitch and modality provide also a sense of familiarity or strangeness to the sound.
At textual level, analysis allows to identify social practices for which the particular piece is intended. Can be a song, a sonata, an original score; or a song used as soundtrack, which involves two social practices and their contexts: the original social context of the song in its first release; and the social practice in which it is inserted in the audiovisual. Besides, emotional motifs by means of repetitions and other resources bring information that must be taking into account too.
Musical meanings, as linguistics meanings, are associated to certain values in societies and circulate carrying it. We live through these meanings without even notice them. In the same way newspapers headlines, music can highlight some meanings and mitigate others. It can even construct violence or smoothness, intimacy or strangeness, targeting our emotional system when we face a multimodal text. For these reasons, meaning constructed by music in multimodal contexts must be considered as social meaning and, therefore, part of an ideological construction that ought to be analysed as such.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.