Frances to members who may be interested... In 1998 the Sixth International Conference on Musical Signification posited an interdisciplinary approach to the theory of musical semiotics. One of the participants there was Josi Luiz Martinez who presented his paper entitled A Semiotic Theory of Music: According to a Peircean Rationale which text might be accessed freely at www.pucsp.br/pos/cos/rism/jlm6ICMS.htm or perhaps via an online search. This paper intrigued me because it seems that the topic of music as an object of sign theory is usually approached from the francoeuropean position of semiologic socialism and its linguistic structuralism. This paper of course approached the topic from the angloamerican position of semiotic pragmatism. The topic of a musical sign theory may have been discussed here on this forum in the past, but if any listers might have some thoughts on the viability of such a comparative study and pragmatist theory, then your input would be welcome. Related to this preparatory topic of a musical sign theory would be the subsequent topic of a musical art theory; which could also probe whether all those objects found or deemed or called music and semiotic objects need indeed necessarily be held as aesthetic objects, and then of some craft or design or artistic object, and even only as made by normal gifted humans to the exclusion of other humans or nonhuman organisms.
