# What Constitutes Music?



## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

What constitutes music? 
What constitutes not-music?

What aspects can be teased out - 
acoustic, psychological, 
rules, no rules,
control, random,
aesthetics, physics
intention, process,
objective, subjective...

Are there universals?
Are some or all constituents culture- or time-bound?

There may or may not be a consensus (what, if anything, can be agreed upon?). Consensus is not the goal here, it is discussion,_* an airing*_. I have questions, not answers; interest, not agenda.

(I considered carefully where to put this thread, I thought perhaps Music Theory but that may be limiting, and I didn't want that. So I put it here as the best option, although the OP is concerned with_* music in general*_, not just "classical.")

:tiphat:


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

There may be a worthwhile reason for asking the question, but it is analogous to the "What is art?" debate that quickly turns into antagonists piling up barricades and taking pot-shots at each other. 

My personal answer is that I don't know and, to a very large extent, I don't care what the definitions and limits are. I recognise that I have arbitrary and illogical 'likes' and 'dislikes' in art, music, poetry, literature, architecture, design etc etc etc and I have no need or desire to define the fields or the terms in my everyday enjoyment of music (or any other art form)

No doubt there will be fish that grab the bait, but I suspect there is a sharp hook attached to a strong line to give someone else enjoyment as they see me wriggle


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The composer may declare whatever piece she wrote as music, from pure silence to random sounds. *Equally however*, the listener may decide for himself if the said piece is acceptable to him as genuine music. And it is the collective majority over time, that tends to decide whether a piece sustains itself over time as accepted music. Pure and simple.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

This is a question that I find interesting, but in the current climate on TC may turn out to be provocative. 
I do not think that is dogen's :tiphat: intention.

And personally I think it *might* do better in the Music Theory forum.

I'll confess something here - I had to give up philosophy as one of my subjects at university after six weeks, because my head hurt. So when I see a word like 'universals' I run for the hills.

My definition of music is the everyday one of patterned sounds; just getting the backpack and mountain rations ready now.


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

Music is the stuff of which universes are made.

Music is encoded information.

Music is surreptitious subversion of complacency.

Music is a secret agent of change.

Music is the undistorted elaboration of truth and beauty.

Music is truth you can feel but not know.

Music is Love caressing parts of your body which you did not even know you had.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

What constitutes "not-music"? Let me see-sitting here typing....

All I know is when I hear music, I recognize it as such, and I'm glad someone a long time ago was smart enough and compassionate enough to invent it.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

I am hoping to create a thread that does not involve pot shots and barricades; no sharp hook is hidden. I am of course aware of that potential but hope for more geniality.
I can see how the OP can be akin to What is Art but would like to limit discussion only as far as "music" rather than other endeavours.

I didn't offer opinions up front, partly from not wanting to set up any particular view and partly due to my genuine ignorance.

For the record, I can find interest in varying musics. I don't like barricades.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I don't why, but I'll take a shot at starting this: Music is organized sound whose principal purpose isn't communication (to differentiate it from speech).


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Last year, mmsbls started a thread "The Boundaries of Music": http://www.talkclassical.com/32364-boundaries-music.html

It quickly turned into an argument about _you-know-what_ by _you-know-who_ but plenty more went on besides.

No universals were agreed upon!


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

I'm very tolerant, about anything "can" be music, don't mean that everything is! I generally feel that You do "music" a disservice by dismissing any form!

/ptr


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

MarkW said:


> I don't why, but I'll take a shot at starting this: Music is organized sound whose principal purpose isn't communication (to differentiate it from speech).


Music is like a language that it sometimes has syntax, but no semantics


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

hpowders said:


> What constitutes "not-music"? Let me see-sitting here typing....
> 
> All I know is when I hear music, I recognize it as such, and I'm glad someone a long time ago was smart enough and compassionate enough to invent it.


People seem to be naturally musical, just like they are naturally drawn to language. It is almost like it didn't need to be invented.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

All such questions are impossible to answer. 

What is love? 

What is thinghood? 

What is religion? 

What is duty? 

What is beauty? 

What is observation?

Et cetera. 

It's fine of course to talk about this kind of thing for fun if talking about this kind of thing is your idea of fun. But abandon before beginning any hope of finding an answer that is going to persuade all other reasonable people.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Random noise under the title _Sinfonia _.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

science said:


> All such questions are impossible to answer.
> 
> What is love?
> 
> ...


Fear not on that front!


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Piwikiwi said:


> People seem to be naturally musical, just like they are naturally drawn to language. It is almost like it didn't need to be invented.


Some dementia sufferers lose the ability to speak, yet can still sing.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> Last year, mmsbls started a thread "The Boundaries of Music": http://www.talkclassical.com/32364-boundaries-music.html
> 
> It quickly turned into an argument about _you-know-what_ by _you-know-who_ but plenty more went on besides.
> 
> No universals were agreed upon!


Ugh, maybe there'll only be soft drinks at this gathering!


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> The composer may declare whatever piece she wrote as music, from pure silence to random sounds. *Equally however*, the listener may decide for himself if the said piece is acceptable to him as genuine music. And it is the collective majority over time, that tends to decide whether a piece sustains itself over time as accepted music. Pure and simple.


The divide between creator and perceiver is interesting; the two can of course be at odds with each other, which on the face of it seems a little odd.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> I'll confess something here - I had to give up philosophy as one of my subjects at university after six weeks, because my head hurt.


My confession: I took Psychology of Music at uni; but that was a long time ago and remember zilch from it 



Ingélou said:


> So when I see a word like 'universals' I run for the hills.


That must be a long run; for you, in Norfolk.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

MarkW said:


> I don't why, but I'll take a shot at starting this: Music is organized sound whose principal purpose isn't communication (to differentiate it from speech).


Thank you!

Do you mean a particular type of communication here?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> My definition of music is the everyday one of patterned sounds; just getting the backpack and mountain rations ready now.


Before you break into the Kendal mint cake -

Do ALL patterned sounds constitute music?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Giordano said:


> Music is the stuff of which universes are made.
> 
> Music is encoded information.
> 
> ...


I like these. A lot of people seem to invoke "beauty" when speaking of music (and, of course, art). I'm wondering does music (or "good" music) have to have beauty?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

hpowders said:


> What constitutes "not-music"?


The other side of the same coin!?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Random noise under the title _Sinfonia _.


So...is this a way of saying it is a psychological construct?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

dogen said:


> I like these. A lot of people seem to invoke "beauty" when speaking of music (and, of course, art). I'm wondering does music (or "good" music) have to have beauty?


But then we'd have to define beauty. Lowry's industrial landscapes are not 'beautiful', yet his paintings have a pleasing quality and are saying something true and timeless, so they do have a 'higher-beauty'. (Thinking of Blake's Innocence, Experience and Higher Innocence.)

So presumably there is music that superficially has harsh or ugly qualities but they are pleasing in some way, or else the listener feels that it's a worthwhile experience, so 'beautiful' in that way.

I don't think all music has to be 'pretty' - and in fact great music needs to go beyond being *merely* aesthetically pleasing.
(In my humble opinion, she added quickly, and indeed humbly.  )


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

science said:


> All such questions are impossible to answer.
> 
> It's fine of course to talk about this kind of thing for fun if talking about this kind of thing is your idea of fun. But abandon before beginning any hope of finding an answer that is going to persuade all other reasonable people.


I suppose yes impossible for a definitive, agreed upon answer such as one might naively expect with the question What is Two Plus Two  but I do think it can be...instructive if not enlightening to mull over such issues; in light of changing musical endeavours over time. I'm not in the market of persuasion, certainly.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I found that recent discussions of this topic did help me formulate some ideas - either because I didn't agree with a post, or because I thought 'that's sensible'. It should be possible to discuss without drawing up battle lines, and I hope that this thread will remain a beacon of civilised discourse and urbanity.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> But then we'd have to define beauty. Lowry's industrial landscapes are not 'beautiful', yet his paintings have a pleasing quality and are saying something true and timeless, so they do have a 'higher-beauty'. (Thinking of Blake's Innocence, Experience and Higher Innocence.)
> 
> So presumably there is music that superficially has harsh or ugly qualities but they are pleasing in some way, or else the listener feels that it's a worthwhile experience, so 'beautiful' in that way.
> 
> ...


I know, and I don't want to get into having to define every term uttered. I just wonder if "beauty" tends to evoke notions of an aesthetic positive, but oftentimes music to me is anything but "beautiful" (yet still interesting or enjoyable in some way - eg Black Angels or Threnody).

Humbly. :tiphat:


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> I found that recent discussions of this topic did help me formulate some ideas - either because I didn't agree with a post, or because I thought 'that's sensible'. It should be possible to discuss without drawing up battle lines, and I hope that this thread will remain a beacon of civilised discourse and urbanity.


That is my hope too! (I hope I'm not offering the same dead horse for kicking...)

Mulling is good.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Music is everything that is the case.

No? The existance of the word "music" indicates that it is there to describe _something_, whatever that may be.

It would be interesting to see if all languages actually have the word "music". And if they do, whether it means the same (provided we know what _we_ mean by it).

I would distinguish between music as a mean of artistic expression and music as a sound phenomenon. The latter could include bird calls, traffic noise, etc.

"Music" means different things depending on who I am talking with. I have no problem limiting it to a very narrow definition, if that puts me on the same page as the person I am talking with. But I can also expand it indefinitely if needed.


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

1. "An art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color." 

2. "The tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line (melody) or multiple lines (harmony), and sounded or to be sounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both."

Dictionary.com


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

dogen said:


> Thank you!
> 
> Do you mean a particular type of communication here?


I guess so, but don't know how to define it. Music is not meant to convey: "I'm going to the store," "Do your homework," "Danger!" etc. But it does have a more abstract communicative aspect. Also, we would find much birdsong to be musical, but to birds, if serves a mainly communicative purpose. So the water is not so crystalline as we might like.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Piwikiwi said:


> Music is like a language that it sometimes has syntax, but no semantics


Fascinating idea. :tiphat: If you were to say that there are many languages of Music - Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque etc - and that each has its own specific (generative) syntax / grammar - or rules of composition - but no semantics then I would tend to agree. You would also have to say that like language, music can develop and change and acquire a different syntax - the move from scales through chromaticism to twelve tone methods and beyond for example.

Like a writer, a composer (or player or arranger) can "break" the rules to achieve effects that would not be otherwise possible - scordatura being one example, chromaticism an other.

Since all compositions are contained in the grammar (in the same way that Michelangelo's David was contained in the marble), the genius of a composer is in finding those expressions that "work". Equally, some people will find some languages too difficult or to harsh to comprehend; while finding other languages more amenable to their tastes. This is no different to Mathematicians who specialise in different areas of the family of mathematical languages because they find a subject that "speaks" to them.

It's all music and all a matter of taste - de gustibus non est disputandum.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

realdealblues said:


> 1. "An art of sound in time that *expresses ideas and emotions* in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color."


That will start an argument right there.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> The composer may declare whatever piece she wrote as music, from pure silence to random sounds. *Equally however*, the listener may decide for himself if the said piece is acceptable to him as genuine music. And it is the collective majority over time, that tends to decide whether a piece sustains itself over time as accepted music. Pure and simple.


I think you're conflating whether something is music with whether it's good.

We all agree Kenny G makes music, right? To say something is music is not to claim that it's any good.


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

I would assume music is sound that can be heard, but that would qualify radio talk shows as music so that doesn't make sense. I would imagine that there is a much more accurate definition but with no clear boundaries.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Then there's the idea that "art is whatever you put a frame around" -- and the best musical exemplification is the infamous 4'33".

Also "beauty" is in the ear of the beholder. As in, for instance, almost anything by Varese, or Satie's use of the fire siren in "Parade," or Gershwin's car horns in "An American in Paris."


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Sound organized for aesthetic purposes.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

MarkW said:


> Then there's the idea that "art is whatever you put a frame around" -- and the best musical exemplification is the *infamous* 4'33".
> 
> Also "beauty" is in the ear of the beholder. As in, for instance, almost anything by Varese, or Satie's use of the fire siren in "Parade," or Gershwin's car horns in "An American in Paris."


.... and the answer is 37!!!! ... who has ticket number 37? Come on .... first prize winner in the lottery to find the first mention of 4'33" is ....!


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

GreenMamba said:


> That will start an argument right there.


I have no doubt, but if the dictionary says it, it has to be right. Everyone else is just mistaken.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

realdealblues said:


> I have no doubt, but if the dictionary says it, it has to be right. Everyone else is just mistaken.


"The" dictionary is a great resource, yes. :lol:

Merriam-Webster's definition of music:


> *1 a:* the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity *b:* vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

realdealblues said:


> I have no doubt, but if the dictionary says it, it has to be right. Everyone else is just mistaken.


The dictionary doesn't tell us what words mean, we tell the dictionary.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I've read the dictionary definition about ordered sound and that is fine with me. I don't care if something is defined as or defined as not being music: I determine which sound orderings do and don't interest me. I set my musical boundaries.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Music is music. You can't define it.

The wonderful thing about music is that it's subjective. It isn't a science. This is why musical theory will always fall short, because you can't measure it or collect data or apply the scientific method to it. Music is art. It is a magic that you can't fully explain. In the end, any attempt to find a concrete definition will prove futile.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Dim7 said:


> Sound organized for aesthetic purposes.


This would make poetry in spoken form music though. And for some speeches it can perhaps be said that their primary purpose is aesthetic, so they would be music as well.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Headphone Hermit said:


> .... and the answer is 37!!!! ... who has ticket number 37? Come on .... first prize winner in the lottery to find the first mention of 4'33" is ....!


I have no problem with the work. Cage was making a point, made it, and as far as I'm concerned, it's valid.


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

dogen said:


> I like these. A lot of people seem to invoke "beauty" when speaking of music (and, of course, art). I'm wondering does music (or "good" music) have to have beauty?


Beauty is a label for science humans are not able to understand.

... Or whatever is "pleasant."


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

One can find definitions of music in dictionaries, and most people will readily agree that those definitions pretty much sum up their sense of music. I think there are several interesting definitions or ideas concerning music stated by composers, who in some sense can be thought of as explorers of sound.

Varese calls his music "organized sound" but suggests that the best definition comes from Hoene Wronsky, a philosopher and mathematician. Wronsky's definition is "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound" (from The Liberation of Sound). Varese views that definition as all inclusive. Both terms, organized and corporealization, seem to imply a creator (presumably a person) who "constructs" the work. I'm not sure if Varese and Wronsky intended that music must be created by a person.

Berio's definition is ""Music is whatever is listened to with the intention of listening to music." (From here) One problem with this definition is that a group of people who have more conservative musical taste would consider many fewer works as music than a group with more "open" musical tastes.

I like the term intentional sound which is similar to Varese's but maybe makes more explicit the requirement that the sound must be intentionally produced (by the composer or performer). I suppose some could argue that a listener can take sound and intentionally listen to it as music (as per Berio).

Different people will, of course, be drawn to different definitions.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Are the following music?

thunder
birdsong
wind chimes
a two-year-old banging on a piano
4'33"
Katy Perry
the _Ring _cycle


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The thunder, birdsong & windchimes are quasi-music. 4'33" is meta-music. Katy Perry, the two year old, and the Ring Cycle are the real McCoy. All merely in my opinion.
I think your list makes some very thought-provoking points, isorhythm. :tiphat:


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

GreenMamba said:


> The dictionary doesn't tell us what words mean, we tell the dictionary.


We don't...the editors do, and they decide based on how we the people use the word. Therefore we must have already decided what music is and anyone who disagrees must have missed the meeting we had with the editors.

And yes my answers to this entire post were done entirely in jest.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Headphone Hermit said:


> .... and the answer is 37!!!! ... who has ticket number 37? Come on .... first prize winner in the lottery to find the first mention of 4'33" is ....!


?!?!?!

You mean we made THIS particular thread go over 2 pages before it was mentio-*gets hit by a flying pig*


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Are the following music?
> 
> thunder
> birdsong
> ...


Aeolian harp? Real McCoy

I would agree with most of Ingélou's choices except that I would say that the two year old is quasi music and wind chimes are music - simply because they (should be) tuned to make pleasant noises, whereas the two year old ....

Good list. :tiphat:


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Thought...

I consider item M to be music.
I consider item X to be not music.
If combined, is XM music?
What role does X play in XM, if I consider XM to be music?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> The thunder, birdsong & windchimes are quasi-music. 4'33" is meta-music. Katy Perry, the two year old, and the Ring Cycle are the real McCoy. All merely in my opinion.
> I think your list makes some very thought-provoking points, isorhythm. :tiphat:


Meta and quasi being...?


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Silence or random/unorganized sounds are not music by themselves IMHO but can exist within music.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> One can find definitions of music in dictionaries, and most people will readily agree that those definitions pretty much sum up their sense of music. I think there are several interesting definitions or ideas concerning music stated by composers, who in some sense can be thought of as explorers of sound.
> 
> Varese calls his music "organized sound" but suggests that the best definition comes from Hoene Wronsky, a philosopher and mathematician. Wronsky's definition is "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound" (from The Liberation of Sound). Varese views that definition as all inclusive. Both terms, organized and corporealization, seem to imply a creator (presumably a person) who "constructs" the work. I'm not sure if Varese and Wronsky intended that music must be created by a person.
> 
> ...


Yes, intentional sound is a good framing.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

dogen said:


> Meta and quasi being...?


_*Meta*_ is usually used with the meaning 'about' - metadiscussions are discussions about discussions. So I think 4'33" is 'about music' rather than being music.
*Quasi* means 'as if' or 'almost'. So the thunder, birdsong and windchimes are 'accidental' music. 
Only the birds *intend* to make the songs, but they are not doing it for art's sake but to proclaim their territory. But we the listeners can hear these items on the list as music, so they act on our brains 'as if' they are music. 
The two-year-old may be producing horrible sounds, but s/he is organising sounds into an arrangement that pleases him or her, so is intending to make music.
That's the way I figure it, anyway. 
But I'm waiting for Edward Bast :tiphat: to come along and show me the error of my ways!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

dogen said:


> Thought...
> 
> I consider item M to be music.
> I consider item X to be not music.
> ...


Depends on the combining function. If X is noise then if XM is music X must be excluded otherwise XM is not music - the noise will win. If X is silence then either X and M can occur together or X can be excluded and XM is music. If X is some pleasant ambient background (random, aleatory, non-deterministic e.g. trickling water) then the same applies.

So the role of X when both X and M are present will depend on the nature of X and how far X differs from "music".


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

@ingelou

So football chants are quasi?! (Like birdsong)


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> This would make poetry in spoken form music though. And for some speeches it can perhaps be said that their primary purpose is aesthetic, so they would be music as well.


That's like calling live orchestration a visual art.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> Sound organized for aesthetic purposes.


Right to the point. Bravo.

Next question: What are aesthetic purposes?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

And what is sound? Typically it is detectable compression waveforms, and that raises the question of whether music can exist in a vacuum. As sound is a function of the medium through which it is traveling, then something that is considered pleasing sounds in one atmosphere maybe totally different on a different planet. Now I am not trying to be overly picky with this, but just to point out that music is (may be) a function of a given environment.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> Right to the point. Bravo.
> 
> Next question: What are aesthetic purposes?


"For aesthetic purposes" means "to entertain or to evoke any kind of emotion that is in some sense pleasurable."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Becca said:


> And what is sound? Typically it is detectable compression waveforms, and that raises the question of whether music can exist in a vacuum.


If we were to try to hear music in a vacuum, determining its existence would be the least of our worries. 

In any event, music can exist in a vacuum. Consider a radio wave of music passing through space. Surely the music doesn't cease to exist when it leaves one atmosphere and exists again when it enters another. That would be like saying that home music doesn't exist until it vibrates our speakers, since it not only passes through hostile mediums but exists in inaudible forms until it hits an ultimate transducer.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> The thunder, birdsong & windchimes are quasi-music. 4'33" is meta-music. Katy Perry, the two year old, and the Ring Cycle are the real McCoy. All merely in my opinion.
> I think your list makes some very thought-provoking points, isorhythm. :tiphat:


Why thank you.

It sounds like you're working with a definition similar to the one I've been thinking of...that there has to be a human intention related to the production of the sound.

But I can also see the value of Berio's view that what makes music is the _listener's_ intention.

Some things blur the line, like wind chimes, which are tuned by humans but played by wind, or 4'33", in which the listener's experience is certainly related to John Cage's intention, but no specific sound the listener hears is intended by Cage.

There are other things that are confounding, for example absent-mindedly tapping one's fingers rhythmically on a table: meaningless stray activity of the human nervous system, or an expression of humans' innate musicality?

I also wonder why stop with humans? Why not consider birdsong real music?

In the end, I'm unable to draw a sharp line between music and not-music, myself, but I do see the use of various definitions that have been proposed.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> "For aesthetic purposes" means "to entertain or to evoke any kind of emotion that is in some sense pleasurable."


I suppose that might be condensed into "to give pleasure."

That would make music "sound organized for the purpose of giving pleasure." I like it. Is there anything ordinarily considered music that wouldn't fit that definition? Or anything not considered music that would?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

KenOC said:


> In any event, music can exist in a vacuum. Consider a radio wave of music passing through space. Surely the music doesn't cease to exist when it leaves one atmosphere and exists again when it enters another. That would be like saying that home music doesn't exist until it vibrates our speakers, since it not only passes through hostile mediums but exists in inaudible forms until it hits an ultimate transducer.


I promise that I am not trying to hijack this thread but in fact the music does not exist in a vacuum or on a vinyl platter or ... etc., rather what you have is an encoded description from which the music can be reconstructed using appropriate technology. Also to some greater (MP3) or lesser (64 bit encoding) degree, that description is an approximation of the original.

Back to 'what is music'


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I suppose that might be condensed into "to give pleasure."
> 
> That would make music "sound organized for the purpose of giving pleasure." I like it. Is there anything ordinarily considered music that wouldn't fit that definition? Or anything not considered music that would?


Does a white noise machine (or ocean waves recording) used for relaxation meet that definition? Or is it not organized? Does creating the machine constitute organization?

Also, we need to make sure "pleasure" is interpreted broadly. Music can be harsh, unsettling, etc.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Steady now, let's not reach a consensus.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Becca said:


> I promise that I am not trying to hijack this thread but in fact the music does not exist in a vacuum or on a vinyl platter or ... etc., rather what you have is an encoded description from which the music can be reconstructed using appropriate technology. Also to some greater (MP3) or lesser (64 bit encoding) degree, that description is an approximation of the original.
> 
> Back to 'what is music'


I think you are correct, music being air disturbance cannot exist in a vacuum (albeit transmittable in another form).


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> I suppose that might be condensed into "to give pleasure."
> 
> That would make music "sound organized for the purpose of giving pleasure." I like it. Is there anything ordinarily considered music that wouldn't fit that definition? Or anything not considered music that would?


To refute my own definition, yes there is: think about some short tune used in advertisement for example. The point isn't really "pleasure" but to make the advertisement more memorable. There are other utilitarian uses for music as well, for example music played at formal occasions to create a solemn, dignified atmosphere. Is the pleasure really the main point? Not quite, IMO. Or to go back to advertisement, or propaganda: to manipulate emotions (scary music used in a film warning against some threat like terrorism for example).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> That would make music "sound organized for the purpose of giving pleasure." I like it. Is there anything ordinarily considered music that wouldn't fit that definition?


Well, I'd bring up a certain piece whose name is a measurement of time, but that would be quite thread-derailing! :lol:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

dogen said:


> I think you are correct, music being air disturbance cannot exist in a vacuum (albeit transmittable in another form).


If I'm reading a score and hearing the piece in my head, is that not music?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

KenOC said:


> If I'm reading a score and hearing the piece in my head, is that not music?


Are you really hearing it? (Involving ear drum stimulation).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

dogen said:


> Are you really hearing it?


Matter of definition I suppose. But the term "inner ear" was invented for a reason.

But whether you consider that "hearing" or not, is it music?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> To refute my own definition, yes there is: think about some short tune used in advertisement for example. The point isn't really "pleasure" but to make the advertisement more memorable. There are other utilitarian uses for music as well, for example music played at formal occasions to create a solemn, dignified atmosphere. Is the pleasure really the main point? Not quite, IMO. Or to go back to advertisement, or propaganda: to manipulate emotions (scary music used in a film warning against some threat like terrorism for example).


Then perhaps the feelings music is designed to elicit can be more varied than pleasure, and might include relaxation, excitement, or alarm? And perhaps something that sounds like what we normally consider music - say, a sequence of notes to which an advertising slogan is sung, designed purely to make the slogan memorable - should not be considered music. Is there any purpose which all music, to be music, must fulfill?

Maybe the kind of response elicited is not really relevant. How about "music is sound organized according to aesthetic principles"? In other words, the sequence of sounds has to make some sort of sense to the mind, have something recognizable as order, and not seem merely random.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> Then perhaps the feelings music is designed to elicit can be more varied than pleasure, and might include relaxation, excitement, or alarm?


Relaxation and excitement I would consider pleasurable in the broad sense.



Woodduck said:


> And perhaps something that sounds like what we normally consider music - say, a sequence of notes to which an advertising slogan is sung, designed purely to make the slogan memorable - should not be considered music. Is there any purpose which all music, to be music, must fulfill?


I think it would be absurd to define the advertisement tune as non-music. There would be something wrong with the definition if it didn't include something like that.



Woodduck said:


> Maybe the kind of response elicited is not really relevant. How about "music is sound organized according to aesthetic principles"?


We're going back to that problematic word "aesthetic" which we previously defined incorrectly I think. If we don't have to define that word the definition works I think.



Woodduck said:


> In other words, the sequence of sounds has to make some sort of sense to the mind, have something recognizable as order, and not seem merely random.


Spoken language would fit that definition as well.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Matter of definition I suppose. But the term "inner ear" was invented for a reason.
> 
> But whether you consider that "hearing" or not, is it music?


I think I'd say you are imagining music, rather than hearing music.

(and the Inner Ear is a physical anatomical structure)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

dogen said:


> I think I'd say you are imagining music, rather than hearing music.


My question wasn't whether it was "hearing" or not, but whether it was music.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

How about "sounds organized to give pleasure or to manipulate emotions, excluding purely linguistic sounds."


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

KenOC said:


> My question wasn't whether it was "hearing" or not, but whether it was music.


I think I'd say not. But I am open to suggestions!


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> How about "sounds organized to give pleasure or to manipulate emotions, excluding purely linguistic sounds."


Is the pleasure reference not covered by manipulate emotions?

What about "stimulate psychologically" instead of "manipulate emotions" ?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> I think I'd say not. But I am open to suggestions!


If Schubert's Ninth did not exist as a piece of music until its first performance, you realize that this means that:

Schubert's Ninth Symphony is a piece of music; it did not exist until after the composer's death.
or
Schubert's Ninth Symphony is not a piece of music.
or
Composers do not create music.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

dogen said:


> Are you really hearing it? (Involving ear drum stimulation).


so ..... can a deaf composer write music? Can a deaf performer enjoy music?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

dogen said:


> I think I'd say you are imagining music, rather than hearing music.


Ah, but the neurological basis of hearing (perceiving and making sense of) music may be very similar to the neurological basis of imagining it (apperception). (Obviously the detection of the external sound waves does involve a different 'apparatus').

I was intrigued by MarkW's earlier thought about music being "...organized sound whose principal purpose isn't communication" because I've been thinking that its principal purpose might actually be communication. I was thinking here of the intuitive non-verbal and non-cognitive atunement between mother and baby or small child.

Rather than directly communicating a message (we have words, that is, organised symbols which carry agreed meanings, to do this) music is capable of evoking phenomena in another person - feelings or affects, thoughts, imaginings, memories, fantasies etc. (all of which can be pleasant or unpleasant in varying degrees). What is evoked is, I suspect, particular in its details to each person who hears it, though there might be broad agreement between like minded people (members of TC, for example).

Music might be considered in relation to some modern / contemporary psychological ideas about how infants communicate with their caregivers and vice versa, by means which evoke subtle and not so subtle 'resonating' responses in the other. And of course mothers (and others) sing to their babies. Some of my earliest memories are blissful ones of hearing my grandmother sing to me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If we define music as vibrations in air (or some other compressible medium), then Bizet's Symphony in C wasn't music until it was first performed in the 1930s. And as soon as that performance was over, it ceased being music. I sense some problems here!

Heh. I see Mahlerian got to this one first.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

dogen said:


> The divide between creator and perceiver is interesting; the two can of course be at odds with each other, which on the face of it seems a little odd.


That's because music is a *two way street*, never one.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

nathanb said:


> ?!?!?!
> 
> You mean we made THIS particular thread go over 2 pages before it was mentio-*gets hit by a flying pig*


The challenge is set for the next time this topic is discussed - get to three pages and/or to over 40 posts without mentioning it

let's see if we can start the count again on this thread :devil:


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> That's because music is a *two way street*, never one.


I knew I should be drinking something stronger than tea .... because I'm sober, I *know* that I don't have a clue what this means


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

dogen said:


> Is the pleasure reference not covered by manipulate emotions?
> 
> What about "stimulate psychologically" instead of "manipulate emotions" ?


Yes, stimulate psychologically is better: it would perhaps better describe the use of short tunes in advertisement for example. The tune makes the ad more memorable, therefore it is more "psychologically stimulating." It's more fitting in this case than "manipulate emotions".


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

KenOC said:


> If we define music as vibrations in air (or some other compressible medium), then Bizet's Symphony in C wasn't music until it was first performed in the 1930s. And as soon as that performance was over, it ceased being music. I sense some problems here!
> 
> Heh. I see Mahlerian got to this one first.


Indeed, but this thread is asking what are the constituents of music. A score is one, but is that of itself sufficient? I'm asking, not telling.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

And then music was precisely defined at TalkClassical and all debates about the definition of music were ended. 

Anyone expect that happening?


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Ah, but the neurological basis of hearing (perceiving and making sense of) music may be very similar to the neurological basis of imagining it (apperception). (Obviously the detection of the external sound waves does involve a different 'apparatus').
> 
> I was intrigued by MarkW's earlier thought about music being "...organized sound whose principal purpose isn't communication" because I've been thinking that its principal purpose might actually be communication. I was thinking here of the intuitive non-verbal and non-cognitive atunement between mother and baby or small child.
> 
> ...


OK, but the neurological part is the internal response to music, rather than music itself?


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Dim7 said:


> And then music was precisely defined at TalkClassical and all debates about the definition of music were ended.
> 
> Anyone expect that happening?


The definition of music is far too subjective to elicit any resemblance of a consensus. Who wants an agreement, anyway? Disagreements keep this forum alive, my friend!


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2015)

Headphone Hermit said:


> so ..... can a deaf composer write music? Can a deaf performer enjoy music?


Yes and presumably ( but qualitatively different?)


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

dogen said:


> OK, but the neurological part is the internal response to music, rather than music itself?


Well, in my mind it's an idiosyncratic copy of the music, sometimes surprisingly accurate. So is that or isn't that music itself? I lean towards saying that it's a form of music itself.

Edit: I should add that I find music of this sort qualitatively indistinguishable from the original music I improvise in my head all the time, and to complicate matters further some of my internal 'compositions' are very clearly derived from existing works that I have actually heard. (I do a mean 1 hour set of variations on the scherzo from Bruckner's 9th, you ought to hear it!) So - music or a response to music - or, an organic fusion of the two?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

dogen said:


> Indeed, but this thread is asking what are the constituents of music. A score is one, but is that of itself sufficient? I'm asking, not telling.


A score is sufficient but not necessary. Given oral transmission of music including canterach, music can exist purely in people's memory. Hence one can say that music is independent of an actual performance just as a play is.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Taggart said:


> A score is sufficient but not necessary. Given oral transmission of music including canterach, music can exist purely in people's memory. Hence one can say that music is independent of an actual performance just as a play is.


Even transmission and memory are not necessary. Improvisation.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Dim7 said:


> And then music was precisely defined at TalkClassical and all debates about the definition of music were ended.
> 
> Anyone expect that happening?


But then again _maybe we did just that_. Music is "sounds which are not purely linguistic organized to stimulate psychologically." Any objections?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> But then again _maybe we did just that_. Music is "sounds which are not purely linguistic organized to stimulate psychologically." Any objections?


Not a disagreement, but as I have said, I think there's also something intrinsically and intentionally _communicative_ about music, although not primarily at a conscious level.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Do you think it's even possible for music to be completely non-communicative?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Not a disagreement, but as I have said, I think there's also something intrinsically and intentionally _communicative_ about music, although not primarily at a conscious level.


A composer might put sounds together solely because they sound interesting to him, because they make a pleasing arrangement in his mind, or because the process of doing it is enjoyable. Would that music be "communicating" anything?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

> Do you think it's even possible for music to be completely non-communicative?


No, I don't know that it can be (though I am thinking about whether, e.g. computer generated music might sometimes be non-communicative).

Of course music might in some way communicate uncommunicativeness, which is a completely different thing.



Woodduck said:


> A composer might put sounds together solely because they sound interesting to him, because they make a pleasing arrangement in his mind, or because the process of doing it is enjoyable. Would that music be "communicating" anything?


Well, from a certain point of view he might be communicating his fascination with the sounds that he's arranged, I suppose.

But I can't help thinking I'm painting myself into a corner here, so I'll stop!


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I don't think music is inherently any more communicative than any other art, to be honest it is possibly the least communicative of the arts.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Dim7 said:


> But then again _maybe we did just that_. Music is "sounds which are not purely linguistic organized to stimulate psychologically." Any objections?


I think that's a very good start within such a short time. I'm not sure one can really define all music and only music in such a short definition.

For example, a warning horn sounded regularly to signify a fire or emergency situation certainly contains non-linguistic sounds which are organized and likely stimulate psychologically (the horn elicits some sense of fear or concern).


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Well, from a certain point of view he might be communicating his fascination with the sounds that he's arranged, I suppose.


That's like Stravinsky's statement "music expresses itself", which was his way of rephasing his controversial statement that music is essentially powerless to express anything at all. I think it's really stretching the definition of communication/expression.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

What constitutes music?: That could be the entrance exam question for who gets to post on TC.

If you can't answer it satisfactorily, one can still be a member, but must pay $100 a year to post.

So, to whom do I make the check out?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> That's like Stravinsky's statement "music expresses itself", which was his way of rephasing his controversial statement that music is essentially powerless to express anything at all. I think it's really stretching the definition of communication/expression.


Without wanting to take this point any further, Dim7, I think this is in line with some current ideas about interpersonal communication / expression.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm finding Dim7's first definition most satisfying so far. "Sound organized for aesthetic purposes" doesn't exclude other purposes, but it identifies the two things which ordinarily make a sound event identifiable as music: the fact that the sounds are put into some recognizable order, and the fact that the perception and recognition of this order is an essential reason - I would say the one indispensable reason - for creating it. The recognition of order is not the whole of an aesthetic response - there may be feelings involved too - but there is no aesthetic response without it. We can have a _physiological_ response to sound as such, and that response may be one of pleasure, but the concept of "aesthetic" only becomes useful if a perception of order as well as sheer physical excitement is involved.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> I knew I should be drinking something stronger than tea .... because I'm sober, I *know* that I don't have a clue what this means


That simply means that both composer and listener collectively agree that it is music. I may compose a new piece of music that is say, random noise generated by a computer and I (the composer) consider it music. But if a listener does not, then it is not music to that listener. I go further to suggest that over time, listeners tend to decide whether the piece will be broadly considered as music for the simple reason that listeners are numerous, and composer is just one individual (of the composed piece X).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I'm finding Dim7's first definition most satisfying so far. "Sound organized for aesthetic purposes" doesn't exclude other purposes...


I like that definition too, and it has the virtue of being simple. However definitions are usually exclusive; if this is a good definition, then anything that doesn't fit it isn't music. And anything that does fit it, is. We need some counter-examples! And please don't bring up Cage.

OK, a counter-example: A poetry reading.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ Yes... Good one. Somewhere back there Dm7 suggested excluding "purely linguistic sounds," which in some way I agree with. Words are spoken by means of sound, but their basic nature is not sonorous but conceptual; they are _represented_ by sounds, print, hand signals, etc. Spoken or sung words can be an element in music, but the music is then in the sound of them and not in their conceptual content. So we need a way to distinguish the "music" in poetry and other spoken words from literal music.

Perhaps our definition already does that in part, since it isn't the sound in poetry that's organized but the words (concepts). A poet doesn't specify the way a poem will sound. Someone reading aloud does, however, at least to some extent, and the communicative power of vocal inflection in speech certainly seems akin to, or even on a continuum with, song. Is this where music bleeds over into something else, and if so, where should we draw the line?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> A poet doesn't specify the way a poem will sound. Someone reading aloud does, however, at least to some extent, and the communicative power of vocal inflection in speech certainly seems akin to, or even on a continuum with, song. Is this where music bleeds over into something else, and if so, where should we draw the line?


A perfect example of the borderline of speech and song might be _Pierrot Lunaire._ I don't think we can dispute that the piece is music in spite of the speech-like articulation of much of the text, since the words are embedded in a larger entity which is not speech but is an organization of abstract sounds. Ancestral to Schoenberg's "speech-song" might be some of Wagner's vocal writing, which he intended specifically to approximate the cadences of speech, though he didn't depart from traditional fixed pitches as does Pierrot. If specified pitch is abandoned altogether in the voice - if poetry or prose is recited to a musical accompaniment - we have a hybrid art form, melodrama. But we recognize it as a hybrid when we refer to musical accompaniment; the vocal part is not music, but the accompaniment is.

It seems that even when spoken words are involved, if we are to call something music there must be, as the primary attribute of the composition, an organization of sounds based on their quality as sounds, regardless of the conceptual meanings some of those sounds may carry.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Trying to define music seems somewhat akin to the Judge who said that while he couldn't define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. My earlier comments about the problems with the use of the word 'sound' and the subsequent posts regarding whether music exists before or after it is expressed as sound also points out just how slippery are attempts at definition. Consider as an example, someone like Messaien who had synaesthesia wherein his perception of sound and visual stimuli overlapped - is music the same thing to someone like that as it is for you or me?

To [mis-]appropriate a statement by J.****** Haldane - the definition of music is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

Added note: for really, REALLY strange, we only have to consider the software which converted a person's initials to a row of asterisks!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> A perfect example of the borderline of speech and song might be _Pierrot Lunaire._ I don't think we can dispute that the piece is music in spite of the speech-like articulation of much of the text, since the words are embedded in a larger entity which is not speech but is an organization of abstract sounds. Ancestral to Schoenberg's "speech-song" might be some of Wagner's vocal writing, which he intended specifically to approximate the cadences of speech, though he didn't depart from traditional fixed pitches as does Pierrot. If specified pitch is abandoned altogether in the voice - if poetry or prose is recited to a musical accompaniment - we have a hybrid art form, melodrama. But we recognize it as a hybrid when we refer to musical accompaniment; the vocal part is not music, but the accompaniment is.


Schoenberg was not the first to use the technique, which had previously appeared in the opera Konigskinder by Humperdinck (and also Part III of Schoenberg's own Gurrelieder), and the technique was also, originally, a takeoff on cabaret style vocal performances. Pierrot was commissioned by such a performer and was a theatrical work in large part.

You are right that the drama of melodrama is also an important antecedent.

Author Allen Shawn makes an intriguing case that a very important predecessor for Schoenberg in the blending of speech and song was the experience of Jewish liturgical traditions, and this is why several of his works on sacred themes, such as Der Jakobsleiter, Moses und Aron, and the op. 50 choral settings, use the two together.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> But then again _maybe we did just that_. Music is "sounds which are not purely linguistic organized to stimulate psychologically." Any objections?


Canntaireachd? The linguistic notation of music.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> If we define music as vibrations in air (or some other compressible medium), then Bizet's Symphony in C wasn't music until it was first performed in the 1930s.


This reminds me of a scene in _Aguirre_, where a priest presents a Bible to an Indian chief, saying "This is the word of God", and the Indian holds it to his ears and is like, "I don't hear anything". The situation escalates quickly.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Taggart said:


> Canntaireachd? The linguistic notation of music.


Thanks so much for this, Taggart!

I clicked on that link. The first thing I read was "This article may be confusing or unclear to readers." Well, I thought, I already can't pronounce "_canntaireachd_," so I might as well not know what it means! But, determined not to be deterred, I read on.

_Canntaireachd_ looks like a Gaelic relative of solfeggio, in which pitches are represented by letters or syllables rather than notes on a staff. One could represent a melody by a sequence of syllables, written or memorized, and someone would be able to sing the melody from that and pass it along to someone else. The article says it wasn't entirely standardized, and it does look awfully complicated. I was surprised to find that there are still people using it, and when I went to YouTube I found these:





 (The _cainntearachd_ is found from 2:14 to 3:19.)

And here's a guy who combines it with physical gestures as a tool for teaching it:






I'm not Scottish, but for some reason this guy singing these sounds brings tears to my eyes. I don't know - maybe _tha mo chridhe 'sa ghàidhealtachd._


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> Perhaps our definition already does that in part, since it isn't the sound in poetry that's organized but the words (concepts). A poet doesn't specify the way a poem will sound. Someone reading aloud does, however, at least to some extent, and the communicative power of vocal inflection in speech certainly seems akin to, or even on a continuum with, song. Is this where music bleeds over into something else, and if so, where should we draw the line?


A poet DOES specify quite a lot of how a poem will sound - most obviously rhymes are an important part for a lot of traditional poetry. But I'd think poets would quite often choose certain words also because of their phonetic qualities (and not just rhymes). One might even write a poem purely in gibberish where none of the words mean anything, but the phonemes, rhymes etc. are chosen to sound pleasing to the poet (or to the audience). Would that be music?


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> A poet doesn't specify the way a poem will sound. Someone reading aloud does, however, at least to some extent, and the communicative power of vocal inflection in speech certainly seems akin to, or even on a continuum with, song. Is this where music bleeds over into something else, and if so, where should we draw the line?


A poem is definitely something that should be heard, not read. You can also draw the comparison between sheet music and a poem; they are both instructions on how to perform something and they both leave quite a lot of room for interpretation.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Taggart said:


> A score is sufficient but not necessary. Given oral transmission of music including canterach, music can exist purely in people's memory. Hence one can say that music is independent of an actual performance just as a play is.


Is a score music? Actual music? A constituent of music? Is a score not analogous to a map? A map is not the journey, nor the terrain. Music can surely exist without a score? If a score is never performed it remains a document, a set of instructions not actioned.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

KenOC said:


> If we define music as vibrations in air (or some other compressible medium), then Bizet's Symphony in C wasn't music until it was first performed in the 1930s. And as soon as that performance was over, it ceased being music. I sense some problems here!


I *am *asking about the constituents of music _per se_ though, the vibrations in the air.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

dogen said:


> Is a score music? Actual music? A constituent of music? Is a score not analogous to a map? A map is not the journey, nor the terrain. Music can surely exist without a score? If a score is never performed it remains a document, a set of instructions not actioned.


I agree, a score is like a play in that regard.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> If Schubert's Ninth did not exist as a piece of music until its first performance, you realize that this means that:
> 
> Schubert's Ninth Symphony is a piece of music; it did not exist until after the composer's death.


The instructions did (the score).



Mahlerian said:


> If Schubert's Ninth did not exist as a piece of music until its first performance, you realize that this means that:
> 
> Schubert's Ninth Symphony is not a piece of music.


I believe it is.



Mahlerian said:


> If Schubert's Ninth did not exist as a piece of music until its first performance, you realize that this means that:
> 
> Composers do not create music.


They do.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> Yes, stimulate psychologically is better: it would perhaps better describe the use of short tunes in advertisement for example. The tune makes the ad more memorable, therefore it is more "psychologically stimulating." It's more fitting in this case than "manipulate emotions".


Well, the intended purpose that music is used for is a different matter as to whether or not it is music.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Even transmission and memory are not necessary. Improvisation.


Does an improviser not need musical memories?


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> For example, a warning horn sounded regularly to signify a fire or emergency situation certainly contains non-linguistic sounds which are organized and likely stimulate psychologically (the horn elicits some sense of fear or concern).


I have that in a piece by Penderecki! (Fluorescences)


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> A perfect example of the borderline of speech and song might be _Pierrot Lunaire._ I don't think we can dispute that the piece is music in spite of the speech-like articulation of much of the text, since the words are embedded in a larger entity which is not speech but is an organization of abstract sounds. Ancestral to Schoenberg's "speech-song" might be some of Wagner's vocal writing, which he intended specifically to approximate the cadences of speech, though he didn't depart from traditional fixed pitches as does Pierrot. If specified pitch is abandoned altogether in the voice - if poetry or prose is recited to a musical accompaniment - we have a hybrid art form, melodrama. But we recognize it as a hybrid when we refer to musical accompaniment; the vocal part is not music, but the accompaniment is.
> 
> It seems that even when spoken words are involved, if we are to call something music there must be, as the primary attribute of the composition, an organization of sounds based on their quality as sounds, regardless of the conceptual meanings some of those sounds may carry.


Rapping.

Sorry.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Even transmission and memory are not necessary. Improvisation.


As someone who regularly improvises music(jazz), I can safely say that improvisation is based on a lot of standard phrases and mutual understanding. Memory is a very important aspect of improvising music.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

dogen said:


> Taggart said:
> 
> 
> > A score is sufficient but not necessary. Given oral transmission of music including canterach, music can exist purely in people's memory. Hence one can say that music is independent of an actual performance just as a play is.
> ...


Nope. If a score is read with understanding then the instructions are actioned. Just as one can see a play in the mind's eye, one can hear music in the same way.

I use necessary and sufficient in the logical sense. See wiki. I said "A score is sufficient but not necessary." and then talked about oral transmission where there are no dots. So of course music can exist without a score.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

dogen said:


> Is a score music? Actual music? A constituent of music? Is a score not analogous to a map? A map is not the journey, nor the terrain. Music can surely exist without a score? If a score is never performed it remains a document, a set of instructions not actioned.


A score isn't analogous to a map: maps generally won't exist unless preceded by real physical geography.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> The instructions did (the score).
> 
> I believe it is.
> 
> They do.


Then you are in fact saying that Schubert's Ninth, a piece of music created by Schubert, did not exist as a piece of music until it was performed.

Therefore, Schubert created a piece of music which did not exist until after his death.

Scores are not "instructions" for music. They are a written form analogous to the novel which contains the music but is not identical to it, just as the book is not itself the text, which may be reproduced in other forms.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Then you are in fact saying that Schubert's Ninth, a piece of music created by Schubert, did not exist as a piece of music until it was performed.
> 
> Therefore, Schubert created a piece of music which did not exist until after his death.


Yeah, I don't understand that one either!

To repeat how Merriam-Webster defines music:


> *1 a:* the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity *b:* vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony


Demanding that something be performed and/or heard before it counts as music is rather misunderstanding the nature of composition, I think.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Perhaps (only perhaps) we are talking at cross purposes? If I write some symbols down and lock the document in a drawer, throw the key away, and then I die, have I created a piece of extant music?


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> Yeah, I don't understand that one either!
> 
> To repeat how Merriam-Webster defines music:
> 
> Demanding that something be performed and/or heard before it counts as music is rather misunderstanding the nature of composition, I think.


1a and b are not the same though are they? I think Mahlerian is referring to 1a (composition), my OP was meant to be about b (sounds).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> Perhaps (only perhaps) we are talking at cross purposes? If I write some symbols down and lock the document in a drawer, throw the key away, and then I die, have I created a piece of extant music?


If those symbols indicate a piece of music, of course.

Even if no one ever discovers that drawer and it rots without ever revealing the document, the piece of music isn't any less or more a piece of music.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

dogen said:


> 1a and b are not the same though are they? I think Mahlerian is referring to 1a (composition), my OP was meant to be about b (sounds).


That makes sense, but you didn't specifically mention sounds in your OP.

And it would seem to me that some of what you said here:


> What aspects can be teased out -
> acoustic, psychological,
> rules, no rules,
> control, random,
> ...


requires composition to be taken into account.

Though the two definitions are indeed different, they are related; actually by the typographic conventions of the dictionary, they are "subsenses" of a single sense of the word.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm told by a mathematician friend that there is a philosophical debate among mathematicians about whether math is "real" in a deep sense or whether it is a human invention that happens to describe the world we observe.

This debate strikes me as similar.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> That makes sense, but you didn't specifically mention sounds in your OP.
> 
> And it would seem to me that some of what you said here:
> 
> ...


I fully take your point about the OP. In my defence I can only say I was listing the various possible constituents to try to make the discussion as broad as possible.


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> I'm told by a mathematician friend that there is a philosophical debate among mathematicians about whether math is "real" in a deep sense or whether it is a human invention that happens to describe the world we observe.
> 
> This debate strikes me as similar.


Hmmmm yes deep doo doo. I saw a Horizon science programme about quantum theory recently and I got the idea being floated of the universe actually consisting of what we humans call mathematics.


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> ... whether math is "real" in a deep sense or ...





dogen said:


> ... the universe actually consisting of what we humans call mathematics.


I already said that.



Giordano said:


> Music is the stuff of which universes are made.
> 
> Music is encoded information.
> 
> ...


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## Guest (Mar 26, 2015)

You did! And would probably have understood the programme better! The music of the spheres...


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Everything is music to my ears... even hearing running water from my sink has a wonderful melody .


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

dogen said:


> You did! And would probably have understood ...


... that this discussion needed to boldly go where no one has gone before...

... into deep doo doo...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Piwikiwi said:


> Music is like a language that it sometimes has syntax, but no semantics


There are whole books on musical semantics, _Musical Meaning in Beethoven_ by Robert Hatten, _Music and Meaning_, edited by Jenefer Robinson, to name two.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> If those symbols indicate a piece of music, of course.
> 
> Even if no one ever discovers that drawer and it rots without ever revealing the document, the piece of music isn't any less or more a piece of music.


The art object in music is a performance. The document is a set of directions for creating a musical work.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> The art object in music is a performance. The document is a set of directions for creating a musical work.


No, a performance is an instantiation of a work. The work itself is singular and exists apart from any particular performance.

If this were not true, and music did not exist apart from performance, then Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would not designate a single musical work, but infinitely many musical works.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> No, a performance is an instantiation of a work. The work itself is singular and exists apart from any particular performance.
> 
> If this were not true, and music did not exist apart from performance, then Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would not designate a single musical work, but infinitely many musical works.


A revised formulation: The aesthetic object in music is a performance. The score is a set of directions for creating a performance. Any accurate performance (within whatever limits) is an instance of the work.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> A revised formulation: The art object in music is a performance. The score is a set of directions for creating a performance. Any accurate performance (within whatever limits) is an instance of the work.


"art object in music"

I am having difficulty parsing that phrase, would you expand on it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Becca said:


> "art object in music"
> 
> I am having difficulty parsing that phrase, would you expand on it.


I probably should have used "aesthetic object," which is the term philosophers use to talk about artworks as a general class. In whatever art form one considers, the aesthetic object is that which the listener, viewer, or reader contemplates, whether a physical object, a text, or a performance. The aesthetic object in sculpture is a statue or bust or whatnot, in painting it is a painting, in drama it is a play enacted. In music it is a performance, as opposed to the score from which that performance derives.

I've edited the other post accordingly.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I probably should have used "aesthetic object," which is the term philosophers use to talk about artworks as a general class. In whatever art form one considers, the aesthetic object is that which the listener, viewer, or reader contemplates, whether a physical object, a text, or a performance. The aesthetic object in sculpture is a statue or bust or whatnot, in painting it is a painting, in drama it is a play enacted. In music it is a performance, as opposed to the score from which that performance derives.


But the very fact of performance means there's a huge difference between sculpture, painting, and literature on one hand and music and drama on the other. A sculpture doesn't require instructions for the viewer to view it; a novel is the words the author wrote, not the author's instructions for how the reader should string some words together. ("First sentence: the word "Call", with an initial capital letter; then a space followed by the word "me"; then another space followed by the word "Ishmael", with an initial capital letter. End of sentence..."). But plays and music are dependent on the following of instructions by intermediaries, so surely those instructions need to also be taken into account in any definition we use. 
If we say "Beethoven wrote a great piece of music", do you think we're wrong and we should say "Beethoven wrote the instructions for a great piece of music"?


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> No, a performance is an instantiation of a work. The work itself is singular and exists apart from any particular performance.
> 
> If this were not true, and music did not exist apart from performance, then Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would not designate a single musical work, but infinitely many musical works.


You been readin' that _Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music_ by Lydia *Goehr* again, Mahlerian? Not a bad read, as it 'appens.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3333368?sid=21106260707153&uid=4&uid=2&uid=3738016


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> But the very fact of performance means there's a huge difference between sculpture, painting, and literature on one hand and music and drama on the other. A sculpture doesn't require instructions for the viewer to view it; a novel is the words the author wrote, not the author's instructions for how the reader should string some words together. ....


I thought about this, too, but I think EdwardBast was speaking strictly about the definition of "aesthetic object" as used by philosophers.

BTW, I don't concern myself with what "philosophers" say.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Giordano said:


> I thought about this, too, but I think EdwardBast was speaking strictly about the definition of "aesthetic object" as used by philosophers.
> 
> BTW, I don't concern myself with what "philosophers" say.


Well, yes, but EdwardBast also said that a performance is an instance of the musical work, which implies (by omission) that the score isn't - which is what I'm disagreeing with.

I also don't care much about the philosophers.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Music scores are copiable without loss of "information" or "content" (if they stay within the alphabet, so to speak, of the standard notational system). All these copies are identical in terms of their content. This means that no one copy, not even the original manuscript, can claim to be _the_ work - or, of course, they all can with equal justification. In other words, there is no _original_ the way that each physical painting is an original. A music score, learned by heart, can even continue to exist without any physical copies, as long as it is preserved in memory, from which it can at any time be reproduced and copied again.

A work of music, in that sense, at least before the age of electronics, was a certain configuration of elements of the music notation system - just like any work of literature is a certain configuration of elements of a language's alphabetic/character system.


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

Music exists as information, like a thought. It is a potential, like an intention to act. The score is a physical linguistic graphic representation of the information to be used to manifest the music in physical 3D reality of limited perception. All manifestations are real and, in common parlance, music, but only those manifestations that faithfully translate the information into physically perceptible reality have the effect faithful to the information. The information is unalterable in the sense that it is what it is created to be and nothing else. Faithfulness does not mean correctness, as all manifestations are distortions. Music is independent of sound or perception; however, physical perception can only be connected to the information through sounds, what humans normally call music.




A moment later:

Holy sh..!! This sounds too much like philosophy!!


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

opinion 
15 char


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> But plays and music are dependent on the following of instructions by intermediaries, so surely those instructions need to also be taken into account in any definition we use. If we say "Beethoven wrote a great piece of music", do you think we're wrong and we should say "Beethoven wrote the instructions for a great piece of music"?


No, we aren't wrong. Saying Beethoven "wrote" a great piece of music acknowledges the particular contribution of the composer to the creation of the aesthetic object, that is, the inscription of the score. To add "the instructions for" would (normally) just be clunky and superfluous, since wrote by itself already distinguishes the composer's role from those who play or perform the work. I used the words "instructions for" above only for emphasis because the person to whom I was responding seemed to have forgotten that the score is not the aesthetic object.


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> No, we aren't wrong. Saying Beethoven "wrote" a great piece of music acknowledges the particular contribution of the composer to the creation of the aesthetic object, that is, the inscription of the score. To add "the instructions for" would just be clunky and superfluous, since wrote by itself already distinguishes the composer's role from those who play or perform the work.


I agree; the distinction is but one of linguistic convention.


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2015)

Giordano said:


> Holy sh..!! This sounds too much like philosophy!!


Too late, you've outed yourself!


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> Everything is music to my ears... even hearing running water from my sink has a wonderful melody .


Flushing the toilet must be a crescendo. :angel:


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> No, we aren't wrong. Saying Beethoven "wrote" a great piece of music acknowledges the particular contribution of the composer to the creation of the aesthetic object, that is, the inscription of the score. To add "the instructions for" would (normally) just be clunky and superfluous, since wrote by itself already distinguishes the composer's role from those who play or perform the work. I used the words "instructions for" above only for emphasis because the person to whom I was responding seemed to have forgotten that the score is not the aesthetic object.


But just for a final clarification: are you saying that for our purposes of defining music, "music" equals the aesthetic object, i.e. the performance, and _not_ the score?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Didn't we just get something like 60+ pages of this kind of discussion in a recent John Cage thread? TC still wants more?


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2015)

tdc said:


> Didn't we just get something like 60+ pages of this kind of discussion in a recent John Cage thread? TC still wants more?


Well, my OP was meant as a more general discussion (and hopefully more congenial in nature!)

I don't expect 60+ pages and I think it's been an interesting discussion (for me at least). In fact I think Dim7 may even have broached a consensus a page or two back!


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)




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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

How about this definition: "Non-linguistic sounds that are not purely communicative organized to stimulate psychologically."

It may seem redundant to have both "non-linguistic" and "not purely communicative" in the definition, but they are both important. Spoken poetry and even stories or jokes, are not purely communicative but do not count as music because they are linguistic sounds. The warning horn example given by mmsbls is a non-linguistic sound but purely communicative so it doesn't count as music.

And yes, I still don't think that communication in the normal, non-poetic sense of the word is all that important part of music. Think about a piece of music that conveys anger for example. While the composer may have used his own anger as an inspiration, that is not necessary by any means and the main point is still not to communicate the composer's or any particular person's anger - there are better and more direct ways to do that. It's like a picture drawn for aesthetic reasons (rather than used in a sign for utilitarian purposes for example) - sure, it may "communicate" a mood or something but it's not like it's directly trying to inform or inquire anything.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> No, we aren't wrong. Saying Beethoven "wrote" a great piece of music acknowledges the particular contribution of the composer to the creation of the aesthetic object, that is, the inscription of the score. To add "the instructions for" would (normally) just be clunky and superfluous, since wrote by itself already distinguishes the composer's role from those who play or perform the work. I used the words "instructions for" above only for emphasis because the person to whom I was responding seemed to have forgotten that the score is not the aesthetic object.


No, I never said the aesthetic object is the score, I said that the aesthetic object is the work of music.

The work of music may be transmitted by the score, or it may be transmitted via performance, but it is not identical with or fully contained by either.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> No, I never said the aesthetic object is the score, I said that *the aesthetic object is the work of music.*
> 
> The work of music may be transmitted by the score, or it may be transmitted via performance, but it is not identical with or fully contained by either.


The aesthetic object is not the work of music. The work includes its written embodiment, whereas the aesthetic object is the performance alone. The score only transmits the aesthetic object to the extent that it is mediated by a mental performance of the person reading it.


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## JoanAlfonsPiano (Jun 25, 2014)

Specially, feelings!


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

tdc said:


> Didn't we just get something like 60+ pages of this kind of discussion in a recent John Cage thread? TC still wants more?


In my view, this discussion is enjoyable, and different in content.

The other one is sometimes amusing....


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

dogen said:


> Well, my OP was meant as a more general discussion (and hopefully more congenial in nature!)
> I think it's been an interesting discussion (for me at least).





Giordano said:


> In my view, this discussion is enjoyable, and different in content.
> 
> The other one is sometimes amusing....


Fair enough guys - to each their own. Thank you for the polite answers I'll have to take your words for it, as I haven't read very much of this thread.

From my perspective the futility of the question has already become apparent. I think the answer is in the ear of the listener.


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