Towards a Semiotics of the Audible

In the following contribution I will propose a semiotics of the audible as the background, rooted in perception, of a semiotics of the music. My aim is to provide a theoretical framework as general as possible, and thus —of course — approximate and sketchy, by introducing a set of notions that are intended to fulfill the minimal requirements for a definition of the audible domain from a semiotic point of view. I will also advance some methodological hypotheses concerning the description of both listening and sound, based on a semiotic interpretation of Pierre Schaeffer’s proposals. Indeed, the whole plan may sound too ambitious, as it would require a much longer discussion than the following. In this sense, the contribution may be read as a sort of manifesto, posing in form of theses a number of notions and categories intended to be questioned in the future.