The Music, the Voice, the Language

The “grain of voice” is the presence of the body in the singing voice. It belongs to the body of the singer; it does not carry communication codes or universal meaning; it is neither style, nor expression. The grain of voice is “significance”, the space in which meaning is derived from “inside of the language, from its materiality” a some sort of meaning born out of sensuality, the body in the voice, where physis and sing unite. In these three short essays, Barthes analyzes the phenomenology of the singing voice, shedding new light on many well-known subject of music history, and contributing to the creation of a new terminology for musical analysis.