Music is lopsided language

Music is just the same as language, just very unsuccessful but also very successful, at that. Music is lopsided language :P And maybe, before written language and logic, language used to be for past people, more like music is for us now?

(These ruminations have been with me for a while, I'm just revisiting them with an attitude shift.)

For the longest time, I just thought that the effect, or meaning, or chords and rhythms were "grounded" or "deterministic". I guess this is my gullibility, or default propositional/realist stance or upbringing. Although also, since I framed this thought in my mind, had a inkling that it might not be the case, and I'd perform this thought experiment over and over in my head, where I'd teleport to some distant past with a piano, and then play some music for hunter-gatherers. Would they like the music? Would they understand the emotions? The same experiment can be held in the now, with animals.

Slowly over the years, and with a few key moments of new conceptual understanding, I've been awknowledging that they would not. That musical meaning, just as linguistic meaning, is for a large part just social construct. But I've spent a considerable time trying to distinguish the cultural part from the "physiological", too. There's stuff to be said about ratios in chords, syncopation, analogy to human voices, etc.

But now I'm watching the intro to some new series, and I'm struck with a strong change of mind. Apart from having some superficial physiologically deterministic effects on our psyche, musical elements like chords and rhythms derive their meaning almost entirely just from totemic association. Similar to words, which have some stuff like the bouba-kiki effect. But mostly, these effects are just a "base environment" for cultural associations to flourish in.

What struck me watching the intro, was how easily I comprehended the (if maybe somewhat unimaginative) chord progression and other elements they used to set the tone for the series. There were two parts: an emotional part, and cultural associative part. Emotionally, I understood it would be beautiful, but also sometimes unexpected. Culturally, I understood it would relate to the fantasy genre, there will be magical elements in the storytelling to match the magical elements in the music, and then some discovery, and scary stuff, etc. The way in which the authors of the intro just "picked together" the elements was indeed, exactly like a writer pickes together the right words for a sentence.

Now, for how music is so unsuccessful at being like language, but also way more successful, that just has to do with how unguided, or maybe indirect, or indeterminate, the brought-about associations are. Words have a way more fixed meaning, musical elements do not. Words can "bootstrap themselves" and become more fixed over time (in historical development as well as reading time), defining themselves through usage. Musical elements can't do this, stay unhinged and open to other interpretations (in time, or by other people).

And finally, because I was skimming through James Gleick's The Information yesterday, I can't help fantastize how maybe this understanding of music could be used to understand what language felt like, before widespread written language and the discovery of logical structure. To quote him: "There are no syllogisms in Homer" (I should really go and fact-check this btw). There are no syllogisms in music either.