Previous classifications I was unaware of, so I thought I'd share and spark some thoughts out there. Enjoy.

Four Characteristics of Music as Communication:

1. Epideictic Type or Mode of Discourse: Discourse can be classified and categorized in several ways, predominantly by its function and its temporal orientation. Several traditional forms can be considered as appropriate ways of thinking of the function and orientation of music:

A. Deliberative: Music is not a way of creating and implementing policy. It is not directly political in its intention nor does it seem to be a way of talking about the future. Accordingly, music would not typically or normally be considered to be deliberative discourse.

B. Forensic: Music can be a way of recalling a past event, but it does not seem to satisfy the requirements people have for seriously determine if something happened in the past and how one should classify a past event. In this sense, people seldom think of music as a form of legal communication in which past events are determined to fit one set of criteria or another.

C. Epideictic: Of the traditional classes of discourse, music would seem to most clearly fit the form of epideictic discourse. Epideictic communication is the rhetoric of the present, a rhetoric of celebration and rejection, and predominantly a rhetoric of praise and dispraise. The emotional immediacy and hyping of the live rock concert thus constitutes a vivid example of the epideictic quality of popular music. In this regard, epideictic rhetoric has been called a rhetoric of: (1) Display; (2) Inspiration; (3) Illumination; (4) Magnification and/or Minimization. (5) Revealing and/or Concealing. (6) ”share with the community in a child-like wonderment.”

2. Repetitive Form: The repetitive form involves a restatement of the same principle (i.e., idea, thought, experience, or sensation) under different guises. In music, this repetition is often achieved by borrowing lines or phrases from other recognized forms and by the use of clichés, rhyme, meter, antithesis, alliteration, punning, and double entendres.

3. Nondiscursive: While 90% of popular music employs lyrics, when popular music exerts its influence, the human body itself must be immediately and directly affected. Music is a physical mode that literally strikes the ear drum. Thus, for example, the volume of the lyrics at a rock concert is an independent variable apart from the content of the lyrics. All of the elements of music are profoundly physiological. They literally touch our body intimately in a greater variety and succession of ways than the spoken word, employing a broader range and larger variety of different melodies, rhythms, chord progressions, and instrumentations than are possible with only the spoken word. As Irvine and Kirkpatrick has put it, “Whereas the traditional discursive form of message emphasizes intellectual participation on the part of the receiver, the musical form necessarily involves and stimulates the body and its capacity for sensation.”

4. Experiental Form: Music resides in the artistic rather than the scientific domain. It is an experience about an experience. Rather than emphasizing the logical, argumentative, informational, or reality-testing dimensions of human symbol-using, the creation of a musical form involves a collecting and patterning of personal experiences. The musical form itself is a condensation of these personal experiences. The music itself then becomes the medium or vehicle transmitting the pattern of personal experience. When the auditor hears this musical form, she or he may ascribe or associate her or his own personal experiences to the musical pattern.