# The difference between music and sonic art



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

On an occasion I have written something like: classical music all sounds the same (has the same form/instrumentation) but each work is intrinsically or musically different and unique while pop music always strives for an unique sound/form but is musically - qua content - always the same. Analogous to the rise op pop music there has been a trend though in serious music during the 50's and 60's which also focused on form and creating interesting sounds like the electronic music by Boulez and others. So no wonder that rock artists took an interest in these modern art music which even radically broke with the concept of music as an intrinsically meaningful arrangement of notes in favor of an interesting arrangement of sounds as a sonic analogy to modern painting (visual art). I think the commentor on youtube which I quote in http://www.talkclassical.com/50936-tc-top-recommended-electronic.html#post1298295 puts it very eloquently:



> What does this piece 'say'? What does it 'communicate'? Is it supposed to communicate? No, it 'says' merely itself: it is variety in pure sound, nothing else. Virtuosic textures, total-chromatic vertical combinations repeating itself all the time, colour effects without a cause.... it is pure instrumentation where the notes are chosen for their contribution to the total colour. It is decorative art, not music. It is sonic art, without the psychological dimension which makes musical expression possible. This dimension can only be achieved through tonal relationships between the notes, who then can form a context, a dimension, an 'inner space'. Without this dimension, we deal with quite another art form. Nothing wrong with that, but the claim that it is music and therefore could form part of the regular repertoire of the central performance culture, is ludricrous..... It has been, in general, ignored in music practice and the rejection by music audiences is justified - it does not belong within the context of classical music. It is something totally different.... and a time capsule from the fities and sixties.﻿


I would like to know how you think about this. Is there a (fundamental) distinction between music and 'sonic art'? Also, this discussion may be related to the discussion about the concept of beauty in music. Someone conceived that beauty can only relate to visual arts and not to music. Maybe we now understand why: sonic art can be beautiful but music can't because music expresses an inner world of feelings and is about communication (instead of presenting a 'beautiful' constellation of sounds). Actually Schopenhauer's philosophy comes to mind: all arts express the world as representation (and can be ugly or beautiful) but only music expresses the world as will (and can move or not move us).


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

That's a heap of thought given to analyzing why people enjoy music, bro. Would it disappoint if I replied that "It's got a nice beat, and you can dance to it?"


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Triplets said:


> That's a heap of thought given to analyzing why people enjoy music, bro. Would it disappoint if I replied that "It's got a nice beat, and you can dance to it?"


Actually I consider that a confirmation of the theory: if you dance to the music then it apparently moves you (in a literal sense) so that would be genuinely music!


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

The only difference is the vibration


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Art or not one can certainly enjoy it.

I think that what distinguishes art is the intended multiple ways the piece can be appreciated. There is the whistle-able tune layer. There is the deliberately evoked emotional layer. There is the recapitulation of other themes, or themes from other music, layer. There is the symbolic layer. There is the music theory "look what is happening here" layer, and other layers.

A piece of popular music, one can love and appreciate, but it is so simple that you love one thing about it, and you are done. 

This is the most "objective" aspect I can identify. With it I can identify art, whether I like it or not, and I can identify non-artistic music, whether I like it or not.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

"Sonic art" as it's termed, is a branch of electroacoustic music that focuses on the study of acoustics (kind of like spectral music with spectral analysis).

The end result in the creation of sonic art pieces, often results in mixed-media works (often with sculptures and interactive visual art).

Here is a wiki article to look at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_art

:tiphat:


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

JeffD said:


> Art or not one can certainly enjoy it.


The question I would like to raise is whether music is a fundamentally different type of art than visual arts (and all other arts) and whether composers like Stockhausen and Boulez are actually sound artists instead of music composers...


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I don't have anything enlightening to say. All I can say is that I enjoy both, and consider both to be music without any doubt.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

ST4 said:


> "Sonic art" as it's termed, is a branch of electroacoustic music that focuses on the study of acoustics (kind of like spectral music with spectral analysis).
> 
> The end result in the creation of sonic art pieces, often results in mixed-media works (often with sculptures and interactive visual art).
> 
> ...


Thanks. This Wikipedia page suggests that the works of e.g. Stockhausen and Boulez are still musical works instead of sound art works. But is that right? Or could they be something in-between?


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Lisztian said:


> I don't have anything enlightening to say. All I can say is that I enjoy both, and consider both to be music without any doubt.


Only because I already spoke it, and they ignored it. But not everyone ignores. Some don't turn away. Some watch, if only to know their challenge later.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> Thanks. This Wikipedia page suggests that the works of e.g. Stockhausen and Boulez are still musical works instead of sound art works. But is that right? Or could they be something in-between?


And if you accept Wikipedia as "truth", you now have yours.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> Thanks. This Wikipedia page suggests that the works of e.g. Stockhausen and Boulez are still musical works instead of sound art works. But is that right? Or could they be something in-between?


Stockhausen and Boulez are straight music composers, I don't see why they would be mentioned.

Stockhausen was experimenting with light shows (predated by Scriabin btw) to accompany his music, but that is more of a precursor to light shows in rock concerts than sonic art, which is a different beast altogether.

Boulez barely even stepped his feet into electronic music, nevermind sonic art :lol:

Sonic art is a more contemporary thing than anything going on in the 50s and it's more tied to visual art community than the music community.

Sonic art has little to nothing to do with the massive polyphonic and textural explorations (stemming initially chronologically with the Renaissance and Bach) but rather pure (and altered) sounds.

They do cool stuff with midi lights, where the lights flicker alongside the sounds and so on, it's really interesting but something you really have to experience for yourself.

But to clear up your question, sonic artists and classical electronic composers are doing completely different things :tiphat:


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Regarding the wiki, one of the huge frustrations is that it usually doesn't elaborate on the degree that something is relevant to a topic. Often you find names mentioned that only have a very minor relation or small importance to a topic (even if they where influential to the topic).

The wiki struggles to create a balance between explaining it in enough detail and making it accessible to the average reader.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

ST4 said:


> Regarding the wiki, one of the huge frustrations is that it usually doesn't elaborate on the degree that something is relevant to a topic. Often you find names mentioned that only have a very minor relation or small importance to a topic (even if they where influential to the topic).
> 
> The wiki struggles to create a balance between explaining it in enough detail and making it accessible to the average reader.


Wikipedia is a tool until your brain tells you to weaponize it. Follow your heart


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

ST4 said:


> Stockhausen and Boulez are straight music composers, I don't see why they would be mentioned.


Please read the quotation in my OP: this is a quote of somebody on youtube about a piece by Boulez... But I understand that you think he is totally mistaken about Boulez' work.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I heard the first violinist of the Kronos Quartet say that the noise of a ceiling fan was music. I've been scratching my head ever since: so why am I paying you to play?

One of my favorite of the old Peter Gunn shows was when he was looking for a stolen seal and ends up with a sonic artist. The artist is at 13:51.

https://archive.org/details/PeterGunn-LetsKillTimothy


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> Please read the quotation in my OP: this is a quote of somebody on youtube about a piece by Boulez... But I understand that you think he is totally mistaken about Boulez' work.


Have you read the Iliad, and do you understand it? I think you do.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> Please read the quotation in my OP: this is a quote of somebody on youtube about a piece by Boulez... But I understand that you think he is totally mistaken about Boulez' work.


I won't get into that John Borstlap jerk but to put Boulez straight:

Boulez has as much to do with sonic art, as Beethoven has with K-pop.

Your quoted comment is one man's sour opinion, the man all throughout youtube states that things he doesn't like, is therefore illegitimate and should be re-categorized to suit himself.

This quoted comment is not about "sonic art", this is about disdain and segregation.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

ST4 said:


> I won't get into that John Borstlap jerk but to put Boulez straight:
> 
> Boulez has as much to do with sonic art, as Beethoven has with K-pop.
> 
> ...


Everyone's opinion is a sour one. Make Lemonade


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

scratchgolf said:


> Everyone's opinion is a sour one. Make Lemonade


But it is a pear......


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

ST4 said:


> But it is a pear......


Use YOUR imagination then. Mine has little value.


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> there has been a trend though in serious music during the 50's and 60's which also focused on form and creating interesting sounds [...] modern art music which even radically broke with the concept of music as an intrinsically meaningful arrangement of notes in favor of an interesting arrangement of sounds


May I ask who those composers were who focused on making interesting sounds, rather than something meaningful? To give just a few examples, Xenakis' book 'Formalized Music' begins with the statement that music "has a fundamental function, which is [...] to draw [one] towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect." Cage's famous dictum was that music should be composed "to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences". It's equally well-known how Messiaen's and Scelsi's music reflects their deep spiritual beliefs. I could go on, and while YMMV, I've gotten roughly the same ideas from the music of all these composers long before I read anything about them, let alone their interviews or books.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

That youtube comment seems confused. Wouldn't it also apply to a Bach fugue? Why would music, as opposed to sonic art, need to be "about" anything? To what extent can it be?


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Myriadi said:


> May I ask who those composers were who focused on making interesting sounds, rather than something meaningful? To give just a few examples, Xenakis' book 'Formalized Music' begins with the statement that music "has a fundamental function, which is [...] to draw [one] towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect." Cage's famous dictum was that music should be composed "to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences". It's equally well-known how Messiaen's and Scelsi's music reflects their deep spiritual beliefs. I could go on, and while YMMV, I've gotten roughly the same ideas from the music of all these composers long before I read anything about them, let alone their interviews or books.


I was referring to Boulez and others like him (e.g. Stockhausen, Berio). Now your quotes by Xenakis and Cage are interesting because perhaps they suit the theory very well. Because the effect they are after is the same effect as e.g. the paintings of Rothko evokes. BTW, the loss of subjectivity ('losing' yourself in the art work) is what according to Schopenhauer is characterisic of visual arts (but not music!). Perhaps music should have a totally different effect in which communication and feeling is pivotal. When I listen to e.g. a violin concerto by Brahms or Grieg I feel moved at the point my heart is almost in pain: there is no loss of consciousness but - quite the opposite - an intense feeling. Now that is music!


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I guess it's hard to explain wat is meant (although I understood immediately what Borstlap from the youtube comment meant and I hoped you would too). Perhaps I am making it even more difficult now but I guess it has to do with what Bergson meant by his distinction between intrinsic time and external time. Music is a typical time-based art (it develops in time and not in space) but you can apply this temporal essence of music in an external, that is mathematical, way (and I suspect composers like Boulez and Stockhausen exactly do that) while 'real' music should be about development in 'real', that is intrinsic, time... In the mathematical treatment of time, time is a projection of space and so another spatial dimension (the fourth dimension, if you want to refer to Einstein). That's why sonic art is simply visual arts projected upon time (time treated as space and thus sounds as colors).


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> I was referring to Boulez and others like him (e.g. Stockhausen, Berio).


They're three extremely different composers to me, sorry - I can't understand this.



Agamemnon said:


> Now your quotes by Xenakis and Cage are interesting because perhaps they suit the theory very well. Because the effect they are after is the same effect as e.g. the paintings of Rothko evokes. BTW, the loss of subjectivity ('losing' yourself in the art work) is what according to Schopenhauer is characterisic of visual arts (but not music!). Perhaps music should have a totally different effect in which communication and feeling is pivotal. When I listen to e.g. a violin concerto by Brahms or Grieg I feel moved at the point my heart is almost in pain: there is no loss of consciousness but - quite the opposite - an intense feeling. Now that is music!


I gave those quotes only in response to your statement, which was in effect that some composers pursued interesting sounds for interesting sounds' sake - maybe some did, but sure enough many of the big names didn't (or didn't admit so, but that's no way to have a meaningful discussion). Now in this paragraph you're talking about a very different thing, which is how music is perceived. And I'm sure you realize your experiences with the violin concerto may be completely different from somebody else. Just think of how many people simply don't like Romantic era composers...

What you write next, in the following post, is - in my view - undermined by your perception of "composers like Boulez and Stockhausen" as some single entity. I assure you there is a world of difference between Boulez and Stockhausen, and you can't really lump them together with e.g. Scelsi, Cage, Xenakis, Grisey, and Lachenmann, to name a few. And if you're interested in musical time in 20th century music, you should at least try locating a copy of Grisey's famous article "Tempus ex machina - A Composer's Reflections on Musical Time". And there's also a rather dense text by Xenakis, called "Concerning Time"... I think after those two you'd be less inclined to make generalizations such as the ones you've been making in this thread.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> I was referring to Boulez and others like him (e.g. Stockhausen, Berio). Now your quotes by Xenakis and Cage are interesting because perhaps they suit the theory very well. Because the effect they are after is the same effect as e.g. the paintings of Rothko evokes. BTW, the loss of subjectivity ('losing' yourself in the art work) is what according to Schopenhauer is characterisic of visual arts (but not music!). Perhaps music should have a totally different effect in which communication and feeling is pivotal. When I listen to e.g. a violin concerto by Brahms or Grieg I feel moved at the point my heart is almost in pain: there is no loss of consciousness but - quite the opposite - an intense feeling. Now that is music!


Speaking of Xenakis (completely irrelevant but however)

"_The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss_"

One of my favorite quotes of all time <3


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## Guest (Aug 19, 2017)

ST4 said:


> Stockhausen and Boulez are straight music composers, I don't see why they would be mentioned.
> 
> Stockhausen was experimenting with light shows (predated by Scriabin btw) to accompany his music, but that is more of a precursor to light shows in rock concerts than sonic art, which is a different beast altogether.
> 
> ...


Completely agree; sonic art is not music. When I hear this stuff it reminds me of some elements of 'sound design' which is, of course, a feature of modern cinema. And, I'll be honest...when hearing a lot of sonic art I think much of it must have been used to accompany drug-taking!! It sprang from that era.

Composer and musicologist Howard Goodall has much to say about the movements in contemporary and avant garde music and its affect upon popular culture. He discusses this in his series, "Twentieth Century Greats: The Beatles" which I notice has just been taken down from U-Tube. Goodall argues that it was the Beatles who kept tonality alive in the 20th century when it was under threat from art music.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> The question I would like to raise is whether music is a fundamentally different type of art than visual arts (and all other arts) and whether composers like Stockhausen and Boulez are actually sound artists instead of music composers...


You are asking a much better question than I thought I was answering.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Completely agree; sonic art is not music. When I hear this stuff it reminds me of some elements of 'sound design' which is, of course, a feature of modern cinema. And, I'll be honest...when hearing a lot of sonic art I think much of it must have been used to accompany drug-taking!! It sprang from that era.
> 
> Composer and musicologist Howard Goodall has much to say about the movements in contemporary and avant garde music and its affect upon popular culture. He discusses this in his series, "Twentieth Century Greats: The Beatles" which I notice has just been taken down from U-Tube. Goodall argues that it was the Beatles who kept tonality alive in the 20th century when it was under threat from art music.


So just to make clear, there is nothing similar about a Stockhausen electronic work w/ light show to a sonic art exhibition.

One explores sounds and timbres with the same age old techniques (but much, much more nuanced) as Bach and the other (sonic art) doesn't.

Sound design is a good comparison in many ways, though it doesn't do justice to the intentions of a sonic artist, which is to create the auditory accompaniment to a multi-media and/or visual exhibition.

I wish you hadn't mentioned Goodall, I think I'm going to puke. That documentary is trite, but that is on a different topic entirely 

Anyhow, I hope that I've helped you a bit in understanding this topic. Cheers :cheers:


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

ST4 said:


> Speaking of Xenakis (completely irrelevant but however)
> 
> "_The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss_"
> 
> One of my favorite quotes of all time <3


Translated into a more "romantic" language, he is saying exactly what Beethoven says and the ancient Greek's who inspired himself. In his opinion, music should grip you emotionally and sensually without needing any technical knowledge of the music (as with all music). His aim was to create music that fed of the rawest and strongest of human emotion, which resonates strongly with ideas in Greek art, philosophy and drama. It's beautiful and I relate directly to his proposition. :tiphat:


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## Guest (Aug 20, 2017)

ST4 said:


> So just to make clear, there is nothing similar about a Stockhausen electronic work w/ light show to a sonic art exhibition.
> 
> One explores sounds and timbres with the same age old techniques (but much, much more nuanced) as Bach and the other (sonic art) doesn't.
> 
> ...


..* to create the auditory accompaniment to a multi-media and/or visual exhibition*.

I was mistaken in thinking that's what film really was; a 'visual exhibition'. How I wasted my years working in television documentary film-making!!! I wonder what D.W. Griffiths would make of that definition!!

I disagree that Bach is "sonic art". And I think Howard Goodall's documentary is excellent. I particularly liked his series on "Musical Big Bangs" in which he magnificently explains the development of scales from Pythagorean theory.


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