The musical language: Structural analysis in Gestalt perspective

In human civilisation, music has always represented a powerful means of communication. Our perceptual system, based on mechanisms of great complexity and extraordinary functionality, allows us to grasp the infinite melodic and harmonic combinations, the changes in the dynamic and agogic patterns, the infinitesimal subtleties of timbre that musical language offers us.

The process of acquiring and fruition of the musical message lives through three distinct phases: the perceptive, the elaborative and the emotional. The perceptual phase is based on the acquisition mechanisms of the sound waves that are picked up and sent to the brain; this is where the elaborative phase occurs and the sound message is given a clear, precise and identifiable structural dimension; the third phase concerns that process that is in some ways still mysterious thanks to whicht he sound language develops all its expressive power and arouses in us a whole range of emotions.

My contribution will focus above all on the elaborative phase, referring to the principles formulated by Max Wertheimer in a famous article of 1923, in which he describes the ways in which the human mind organises and interprets visual perception. These real ‘laws’ can also be applied, with rigorous and unquestionable correspondence, to auditory perception. Through the analysis of the most significant contributions of the scholars who have dealt with this subject, I want to highlight the absolute scientific and cultural importance that the Gestalt theory has acquired in the panorama of the psychological schools of the last century.

Even today, however, this current of thought represents an essential point of reference not only in the analysis of perceptual phenomena, but also in the understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying musical language and its engaging artistic and communicative function.