ABSTRACT
That music communicates in some way or other is a commonplace—but what does this mean and how does this process of communication operate? When we speak of communication we always work in the shadow of language as the touchstone of human communication—and clearly, however one defines music, it differs greatly from language. To work through this question and to disentangle music as communication from language as communication, this chapter will provide a framework for considering human communication broadly, and then locate musical behaviors more specifically within that framework. We will need to consider many topics covered in this Companion (see, inter alia, those by Clarke, Eitan, Fachner, Gjerdingen, Henry & Grahn, Margulis, Timmers, and Zbikowski) from the standpoint of communication, limiting ourselves largely to Western tonal music for tractability’s sake.
