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Music Metaphor refers to the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to study music cognition. Based on the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, linguists and cognitive scientists have analyzed music through the lens of orientational metaphor, metonymy, ontology, and force dynamics. Music metaphor is primarily a linguistic theory, the premise being conceptual mappings of music meaning are evidenced by the language used to describe it.

Such linguistic examples include music being described as “tense” or “relaxed,” the existence of “high” and “low” notes, and a “chord wanting to resolve.” As Lakoff and Johnson argue in Metaphors We Live By, metaphor is not only poetical, but also integral to our conceptual systems, with music as no exception. In other words, metaphor gives structure to music and gives it foundational, semiotic meaning.

Music and Metaphor before Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Consideration of metaphor in music has most often been approached by musicologists through a lens of aesthetics before Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual theory.

The British musicologist, Deryck Cooke, outlined specific aesthetic links between music, sensation, emotion in his book The Language of Music in 1959. Though regarded as a foundational classic for analyzing musical aesthetic meaning, the book did encounter significant criticism for its unscientific approach.

Nelson Goodman in Language of Art takes a more philosophical and structural approach, treating music as a symbolic, syntactic system. Part of his analysis discusses the debate surrounding the orientational origin of music notation.

Leonard Bernstein lectures on metaphors in music in his Harvard series, but with no concentration on orientation. By comparing music with Chomskian linguistics, Bernstein developed an aesthetic theory while utilizing concepts of metaphor in two types. The first type, extrinsic metaphor, illustrates music operating like Chomskian transformations with “deep structure” to “surface structure”. The second type, intrinsic metaphor, includes non-musical meaning and symbolism

Theoretical Applications of Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Lawrence M. Zbikowski writes at length on metaphorical language used to describe music, pointing out,"“Indeed, the notion that music is a language is the basis for some of the most prevalent metaphors used to describe music. But music is also not like language in at least one important respect: aside from a limited number of exceptional cases when music mimics natural sounds, music makes no reference to the outside world. Music does make reference to – or perhaps embody – the interior world of emotions or physiological states, but it is just this world that typically escapes the grasp of nonmetaphorical language” (2008: 508)."In the first part of Zbikowki’s chapter in Metaphor and Thought, metaphorical language is analyzed in context of musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory. He then approaches musical examples with a conceptual metaphor theory framework. .

Orientational Metaphor
Orientational metaphor is one of the foundational metaphors for music perception in multiple respects, and the subject most widely written about in music metaphor.

The writings of Robert Adlington, Mark Johnson, and Steve Larson delve into orientational metaphor and sensations of motion. In Adlington’s article Moving Beyond Motion: Metaphors for Changing Sound (2003) and Johnson and Larson’s “Something in the Way She Moves”: Metaphors of Music Motion (2003), the TIME IS A PATH metaphor is central to their analyses. For example, Adlington writes, “The ‘path-like’ quality of this kind of musical motion is reflected in common descriptive expressions, such as ‘this music leads us to’ or ‘heads towards’, ‘the music unfolds’ or ‘drives onwards’, and references to musical ‘journeys’ or ‘flow’” (2003: 398). The alternate available perceptions of time, namely are we moving through time or are events moving towards us, is also a subject of much discussion.

Steven Feld (1981) and Lawrence Zbikowski (2008) writes extensively on cultural alternatives of pitch orientation. As opposed to high and low notes, alternatives such as light and heavy in ancient Greece, small and large in Bali and Java, and young and old in Suyá cultures appear. Consequently, this line of inquiry has interested anthropologists as well. Steven Feld (1981) makes a famous case study of metaphorical language Kaluli music theory in Papua New Guinea. Some propose the vertical orientation of pitch is derived mainly from Lakoff and Johnson’s foundational MORE IS UP and LESS IS DOWN image schemata. Overall, linguists, cognitive scientists, and anthropologists have taken notice that though music exists in time, its spatial visualization is prevalent in Western culture at least.

Other Metaphors and Angles of Analysis
While orientational metaphor holds a great deal of importance for music, other metaphors linguistics have argued serve a prominent role.

Force Dynamics
Force dynamics, which is explained at length by Leonard Talmy’s cognitive semantics framework, also plays an active role. In some ways, parts of music can be viewed as agents and others as patients, the brain implying a cause-effect relationship. For example, Johnson and Larson propose a MUSIC IS A MOVING FORCE metaphor, which while spatial, also gives it properties of an entity that can affect other parts.

Metonymy
Metonymy is highly visible in rehearsal settings, such as in Johnson and Larson’s examples “the horns rushed at measure 34," "the violins were sluggish," and "the drums got lost,"” creating the metaphor THE INSTRUMENT IS THE PERFORMER. Force dynamics makes wide use of metonymy to represent actors in musical events and relationships. The classic call-and-response label for instruments playing complimentary phrases in alternation is a popular example of this.

Ontological Metaphors
Also integral to force dynamic discursive structure is ontological metaphor, a type of metaphor which Lakoff and Johnson describe, “understanding our experiences in terms of objects and substances.” For music, this can include container metaphors, evidenced by phrases like “the piece opens with an oboe” and “producing a full orchestral sound."

Experimental Applications
The work of Zohar Eitan and Roni Y. Granot explores a wide variety of conceptual metaphors in music from an empirical standpoint. In a 2006 study, they explored music movement and character in five different areas: dynamics, pitch intervals, attack rate, articulation, and pitch contour. They found while perceptions of motion are affected by these variables, they also discovered some asymmetries in in music-spatial analogies. For example, increased musical intensity was more closely associated with attack rate and tempo than pitch contour interval changes.