The use of metaphorical musical terminology for verbal description of music

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to indicate the importance of the metaphorical terminology and verbal description of music in education and performance due to inevitable role of emotions and embodiment in music experience. Metaphorical music terminology should follow the interpretative maturity, such as for the term scherzo, which would be joke for younger, but forced joke or all but prank for older musicians. For music beginners we can use extramusical verbal symbols: the pulse is represented as the stickman; major with the symbol of sun and minor with the symbol of rain; sequencing is presented with the picture of stairs; the picture of butterfly implies image-schematicity in interpreting the wave melodic contour; children understood duple meter through the picture of a soldier, while triple meter appreciated through the picture of a ballerina; staccato is experienced as a movement, but also as a visual and auditory metaphor. Multimodality plays an important role in music education, because it implies the integration of movement, sound, picture and verbal metaphors. Therefore, the musical experience is described and performance interpreted by following the direction from the emotional sound experience to its cognitive processing. Mul- timodal approach would increase associative thinking and enlarge individual associations on musical terms, which gives a better understanding of music and widens perspective in music education.