Research Article

RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION

Volume: 9 Number: 3 September 30, 2026
TR EN

RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines musical meaning from a semiological perspective by considering its relationship to AI-based music generation. In recent years, artificial intelligence has produced outputs that are increasingly compared with human creativity across many domains, including music as a cultural, aesthetic, and affective form of expression. These developments renew semiological debates by raising the question of how the formal relationships represented by AI systems may be related to musical meaning. To address this question, the study first outlines the relationship between semiology, structural analysis, and a formalist understanding of musical meaning. Nicolas Ruwet’s paradigmatic analysis, first articulated in 1966, is considered a central methodological reference for applying semiological concepts to music and for describing musical meaning in terms of structural relations. Against this background, conceptual and methodological parallels between Ruwet’s analytical procedure and the ways contemporary AI systems learn, model, and reproduce musical patterns are examined. Alongside human-centered studies of musical meaning, research on AI-generated music raises a multilayered set of questions concerning both how music is represented by AI systems and how it is perceived and interpreted by listeners. Communicative status, autonomy, authenticity, and creative value of AI-generated music are among the central concerns of computational creativity research, which draws on psychological, neuroscientific, and sociocultural approaches. Although these issues are highly significant, they fall outside the scope of the study’s structuralist-formalist focus, since the criteria used to evaluate them vary across individual, historical, and sociocultural contexts. By distinguishing structural representation from semantic understanding, the article reassesses the contemporary relevance and limitations of Ruwet’s method in discussions of AI-generated music. Accordingly, it argues that AI systems that model structural relations do not merely imitate musical surfaces; they also represent principles of organization that form the structural basis of musical meaning.

Keywords

References

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  7. Chung, A. J. (2019). What is musical meaning? Theorizing music as performative utterance. Music Theory Online, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.25.1.2
  8. Copet, J., Kreuk, F., Gat, I., Remez, T., Kant, D., Synnaeve, G., Adi, Y., & Défossez, A. (2023). Simple and controllable music generation. In A. Oh, T. Naumann, A. Globerson, K. Saenko, M. Hardt, & S. Levine (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 36, pp. 47704–47720). Curran Associates, Inc. https://doi.org/10.52202/075280-2066

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Music Cognition, Music Technology and Recording, Theories of Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Kıvılcım Yıldız Acar This is me
0000-0002-5454-2740
Türkiye

Publication Date

September 30, 2026

Submission Date

July 9, 2026

Acceptance Date

September 15, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 9 Number: 3

APA
Uzdil, A., & Yıldız Acar, K. (2026). RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION. Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.51576/ymd.1988072
AMA
1.Uzdil A, Yıldız Acar K. RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION. YMJ. 2026;9(3). doi:10.51576/ymd.1988072
Chicago
Uzdil, Aslı, and Kıvılcım Yıldız Acar. 2026. “RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION”. Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi 9 (3). https://doi.org/10.51576/ymd.1988072.
EndNote
Uzdil A, Yıldız Acar K (September 1, 2026) RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION. Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi 9 3
IEEE
[1]A. Uzdil and K. Yıldız Acar, “RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION”, YMJ, vol. 9, no. 3, Sept. 2026, doi: 10.51576/ymd.1988072.
ISNAD
Uzdil, Aslı - Yıldız Acar, Kıvılcım. “RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION”. Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi 9/3 (September 1, 2026). https://doi.org/10.51576/ymd.1988072.
JAMA
1.Uzdil A, Yıldız Acar K. RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION. YMJ. 2026;9. doi:10.51576/ymd.1988072.
MLA
Uzdil, Aslı, and Kıvılcım Yıldız Acar. “RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION”. Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi, vol. 9, no. 3, Sept. 2026, doi:10.51576/ymd.1988072.
Vancouver
1.Aslı Uzdil, Kıvılcım Yıldız Acar. RECONSIDERING MUSICAL MEANING THROUGH NICOLAS RUWET’S SEMIOLOGY AND AI-BASED MUSIC GENERATION. YMJ. 2026 Sep. 1;9(3). doi:10.51576/ymd.1988072

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