During a recent viewing of this Spielberg speilfest, I noticed a
scene involving a conference speech, given by Truffaut's character,
in which he demonstrates the symbolic gestural equivalents
relating to each note of the famous five-note musical sequence of
the aliens' greeting message. This system of gestural symbols is
said to derive from a pedagogical method for teaching musical
notation authored by the (Czech?) composer Zoltan Kodaly. What I
missed in this expositional scene, was, why was Kodaly's system
especially relevant to communication with the aliens?
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