Above the treble clef of his compositions, Erik Satie used to write unusual notes for the performer, a series of vague, instructional poems, as though the dynamics weren’t enough. With the tip of your thought, Arm yourself with clairvoyance, So that you obtain a hollow. It was as if notation alone couldn’t translate meaning, as if something was lacking in plain musical language.

When asked about his music, the composer Olivier Messiaen spoke of the language of angels. I remember reading about his musical cryptograms, his alphabet of notes and durations, his transliterations into downward and upward movements. For Messiaen, composition was an act of translation too, an expression of language in a divine register. His tone paintings were works of theology in which God had his own theme—centuries earlier, in Gregorian chant, the resurrection was expressed in sol.

The literary critic George Steiner wrote about the translator as interpreter, as interprète. Interpretation, he wrote, is what brings a work to life beyond the moment of transcription. A sound is implied by an unplayable instrument; a song suggested by a broken record; a posture signaled by the sound of trumpets. There is never total silence, total void. As Satie wrote, Alone for an instant, In the pit of the stomach, Postulate within yourself.

Musicians and linguists often argue about music as language, about its grammar and syntax, but perhaps that isn’t the point. Meaning is intoned through an intangible feeling, something beyond vocabulary. It is translated by the sound waves moving through the chambers, by a grouping of voices rising under a rose window. There is no need for semantics, there is the weight in your chest when the movement ends.

Kate Nugent