Referential iconicity in music and speech within and across sensory modalities
Musical meaning is multifaceted: both highly sensory and yet often abstract, able to cross cultural boundaries and yet embedded in specific traditions. For the most part it is not denotational (Monelle, 1991). Nevertheless, in “programmatic music”, musical themes are intended to refer to worldly objects and events on the basis of iconic (and indexical) grounds. Such non-arbitrariness of the sound-