When you first start to learn a new language you translate each word into your language before extracting meaning. Once you gain fluency you can read or hear a word in another language and instantly grasp the meaning without going through the intermediate step of referring back to your mother tongue.
When you first lean to read music, you learn that each note on the staff has a letter name. You also learn that the keys/strings/pitches of your instrument have corresponding letter names. You begin to play by seeing the note on the page, recognizing it as middle C, then finding middle C on your instrument. When you become fluent, you go from note on the page to note on the instrument without thinking about note name.
This is the most obvious way in which spoken language and music are similar. But I have been thinking that music, like spoken language, consists of three parts: written form, spoken/played form, and meaning. The thing is that with music sound and sense are intricately connected. You may be able to have sound without sense, but you can't have sense without sound. People don't go around silently reading books of music the way we might read a book of poetry. And this makes me wonder (poetry is a good example since rhythm and rhyme live in the world of sound) why we are so willing to do without the sound element of language.
Music could be our guide. Writing music down preserves it and allows many people to have access to it. But it isn't really music until it is performed.
