Composition of Vocal Music. Against Primacy of Content

This article critically examines the common idea that language itself carries pure content, while the acoustic or musical dimensions are something additional. According to philosopher Vibeke Tellmann, a ‘gap’ has emerged between music and language, especially where the formalist approach to music, deriving from 19th century romanticism, is concerned. Building further on the idea of this gap, five ‘myths’, in the sense of established but possibly false ideas about the relationship between music and language, are discussed in this article. The aim is to investigate the issue specifically from the perspective of composition of vocal music. The emphasis lies on theories that focus on timbral, embodied, and cultural aspects of performed language, such as the phenomenological concept of ‘dramaturgical voice’, presented by Don Ihde, and the ‘grain’ of the voice, as Roland Barthes describes it. A central question is whether language can ever be denied its musical or dramaturgical axis as constitutive of its