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?