Music Is Not A Universal Language

Few, if any people, are likely to say that they have never had deeply personal experiences while listening to music at some point in their lives.  According to some, that so many people might affirm the power of music establishes that music is a "universal language," but this is not the case.  Music can certainly stir up an intended emotional reaction even when listeners do not understand the language used by the creators or any associated singers, yet to call music a universal language is to come to conclusions based in nothing but non sequitur assumptions.

As with any actual language, music has no inherent meaning.  The intended meaning is decided by the creator alone, even if music stirs emotions in its audience that the musician did not intend.  The emotional experience of music is itself purely subjective, and uniformity of emotional reactions to specific music would prove nothing except that people shared the same feelings.  Of course, debates over the nature of music alone illustrate that reactions to music are not uniform.

Music, just like spoken or written words, can still be an effective means of emotional communication, yet this is not because an audience is able to know exactly what the musician intended.  Due to its nonverbal nature, music is an even less precise communicative method than language, as communication becomes more and more ambiguous the further it departs from shared use of linguistics--of course, even if two people use the same words with the same meanings in mind, only the ability to gaze into the other person's mind could prove that the intended meaning of the words is identical.

The only perfect method of communication is telepathy.  Short of direct mind-to-mind communication, all that one is left with when trying to interpret another person's words or music is probabilistic evidence.  With words, one can at least operate within linguistic norms that can simplify verbal or written conversations, but with music, the reaction (short of intellectual appreciation) strictly occurs on an emotional, subjective level.  Different individuals and cultures approach music with different associations and emotional experiences, which inevitably means that two people or groups might associate certain music with varying ideas and feelings.

In the same way that some overestimate the epistemological purity of language, some overestimate the epistemological purity of music.  Non-telepathic communication is always arbitrary to some extent, yet language and music are nothing but utilitarian tools for the expression of thoughts, concepts, and feelings to begin with.  The fact that music and norms of genuine language alike are in no way universal does not mean that they have no usefulness, as it only means that they are used with subjective intentions on the part of the "sender" and are not capable of giving the "receiver" absolute certainty about the sender's actual thoughts.