Love is a Song
Thursday, March 14, 2013

A brief follow-up to my last post on "classical music":

Musicians and non-musicians alike frequently use the word "song" incorrectly. Here are the seven definitions for the word provided on Dictionary.com:

1. a short metrical composition intended or adapted for singing, especially one in rhymed stanzas; a lyric; a ballad.
2. a musical piece adapted for singing or simulating a piece to be sung: Mendelssohn's “Songs without Words.”
3. poetical composition; poetry.
4. the art or act of singing; vocal music.
5. something that is sung.
6. an elaborate vocal signal produced by an animal, as the distinctive sounds produced by certain birds, frogs, etc., in a courtship or territorial display.
7. (idiom) "for a song"--at a very low price; as a bargain: "We bought the rug for a song when the estate was auctioned off."

None of these definitions approach the meaning people often colloquially intend: that "song" can essentially refer to any short musical experience.

Does it matter? No, not very much, except that by reducing all such experiences to a single word we deny ourselves the opportunity to use more colorful and specific words. What we're listening to may indeed be a song but it may also be a composition, a track, a recording, a performance, a tune, a sound, a noise. It may even be all of these at once. Why limit ourselves?