The Universality of Music

I hear from time to time that music is the universal language. In many cases I agree with this statement, but I also don’t agree with this statement at all. I know this seems very oxymoronic, but bear with me and I’ll try to explain why I think this way. 
                Music for the most part is pitch and rhythm played in time, basically just organized sound. The individual sounds themselves have no particular meaning no real ‘universal’ lexicon that guides us to particular thoughts when we hear them. They are just soundwaves that hit our ears. Since humans are pattern seeking creatures, we try to organize those sounds into something meaningful, but as individuals we are going to do this in different ways.
Before we get into the more abstract ideas behind sound let’s look at sound from a scientific angle. Sound, as we know, is the effect that happens when objects vibrate and disturb the air molecules around it, which creates sounds waves. These waves are measured in frequency of the number of revolutions the object makes as it vibrates and these are labeled as Hertz (Hz), named after Heinrich Hertz. The speed at which something vibrates we hear as pitch. So something that is vibrating at 1000Hz we hear as a high pitch, while something vibrating at 400Hz sounds lower to our ears.
 So, now that we have some science behind our sounds, do we find any “universal” organization there? In the United States and in most of Europe we have a standard frequency for A, which equals 440Hz. There are parts of Europe where A has a range between 440Hz and 444Hz. Which isn’t a huge difference in frequency but changes a lot of things for musicians, especially string players. If we start throwing in music traditions and pitch standards from other countries outside of the US and Europe it starts to get really confusing. An example of this would be a Javanese Gamelan, since they don’t use exact pitch but relative pitches to a single instrument. A=440Hz has only been the standard for 48 years. The International Organization of Standardization didn’t adopt A=440Hz until 1975, before then the standard was 435Hz, which was the standard in Paris and Austria, which was mostly used in the Romantic Period (1830 – 1900). During the Baroque Period A=415Hz. (That’s a 25Hz difference, a huge difference from standard pitch today!) As we see pitch has changed drastically over time and with an increased interest in having historically accurate performances, the older tuning practices have been adopted by some modern ensembles.
                So, great pitch isn’t really standardized, but music expression is something that we can all understand, right? Well … yes and no. Yes, we can listen to music and make an interpretation about the music, but is your interpretation and my interpretation going to be the same. Probably not. When we interpret things our history, experience, belief systems, culture, etc. all play a part in how we make our judgements and interpretations. Most of the time we do this subconsciously and without realizing it.
                For example, a few months ago, me, my partner, and a friend went to listen to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic play Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. After the performance the three of us got into a discussion about the piece and what each of us thought about the performance and the music. My partner notice that the music at the being of the second act or Rite of Spring sounded very familiar to him. I point out the John Williams stole it for the theme for the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars (for you non Star Wars nerds it the desert planet that Luke and Anakin Skywalker lived on). This was the first time that our friend had heard this piece and loved the overall sound of the piece and the primal pictures that it invoked for him. As for me, it brought back memories of studying this piece in school and remembering the history of the piece and the many, many discussions I had about this piece with friends. Each of us in this situation walked away with different interpretations of this piece and thinking about different things.
                In the Baroque period a group of music theorist came up with this idea that certain music keys and intervals express different moods and feelings. This was called the Doctrine of the Affections.  Some of the ideas from this suggest that smaller intervals express sadness while larger intervals express joy.  Key signatures such as C Major was considered joyous, A minor was honorable and calm. Music from India also has a similar system for their Raga (scales/tonal centers). Indian music also takes it to a different level by restricting certain Raga to certain times of the year or for specific occasions.
                So, I’ve given many reasons why music isn’t universal. So why do I think it is. Honestly it’s a simple reason really. Music affects us all emotionally. We may not have the same reaction and it may not illicit the same emotions, but there are pieces and songs that we connect with, that give up hope, and joy, make us feel loved, make us cry, make us feel happy and sad. All of these emotions are universal and what helps define us as sentient beings. When we listen to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony we may not get the same emotional response, but as one listener to another we can connect over how it makes us feel, what we like about the piece, and what we don’t like the piece.
In the end music connects us in ways that we may not be able to in any other way. Just because I don’t fully understand a piece of music, what the text says, or why the composer wrote the music, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it and get meaning out of the piece.