# Where does music end and sound begin?



## Edward Elgar

Where does music end and sound begin?

I have a pretty firm idea of where I think music ends. Cage's 4'33" for me crosses the line and ceases to become music as the performer has no control over what the audience hears.

I'm sure you will have opinions on this matter, especially considering the abstract ways of thinking about art.

This question could also be applicable to the art world. Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" for me crosses the line between visual art and the environment as he had no control over any parameters of the toilet he chose.

Please choose a piece of music which you consider to be "on the line" or "over the line" and tell us why. You may do the same with visual art. Otherwise, tell us what you think makes the efforts of an artist fail to become a piece of music.


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## Earthling

Cage's point with 4'33" was not just a matter of a new piece of music, but a radical re-orientation of listening-- pointing out that your mind is really doing the "meaning making" of any sounds that you hear. 4'33" isn't so important in terms of the composition itself, but rather how it points to a very different way of listening to sound itself. It was necessary in Cage's music to relinquish control, set up only a minimal amount of parameters and let our ears do the rest. For Cage, the listener is just as much the composer as the composer is.

The problem for me is that, while I can understand that on an intellectual level, I don't always connect with his music. Sometimes I do, and that's wonderful. Some Cage "chance" compositions are better than others-- why is that I wonder? I suspect Cage would've rejected the idea that some of his chance compositions were better than others. I see that as a bit of a problem.

I don't know of a piece that goes "over the line" really. But some pieces are better than others. My problem is some avant garde pieces seem overly intellectual exercises to me. On the other hand, it can be used to great emotional effect, such as Charlemagne Palestine's *Schlingen-Blangen*, which is one 70-minute long sustained chord on a pipe organ (I highly recommend it). Its a very emotionally moving piece.

My problem isn't with "intellectual" music _per se_, but merely where intellect isn't really used as a means to a greater end, of beauty (and I don't mean just "prettiness" of course). Some of that lack of connection has to do with my own inability perhaps, but sometimes some music is just not as good as other music.


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## Argus

Edward Elgar said:


> Please choose a piece of music which you consider to be "on the line" or "over the line" and tell us why. You may do the same with visual art. Otherwise, tell us what you think makes the efforts of an artist fail to become a piece of music.


There is no line.










I'm also getting deja vu about this topic in a different thread. One to do with 'junk'.


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## emiellucifuge

The line is in the mind.

If the sound has been produced by a mind; its mucs. If not; its sound.


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## Poppin' Fresh

John Cage Documentary:

Part 1 



Part 2 



Part 3 



Part 4


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## Stip

To me, music is transcendental. It can be played on different instruments, can be transposed, etc., and still be recognized as the same piece of music. It is not bound by the wood/copper/string it is produced by, just like an philosophy is not bound by mind that comprehends it, just as poetry is not bound by the paper it is written on, just as mathematics are not bound by the symbols it uses. Look at "The art of fugue": dispite no clear indication of what instrument to play it on, it is undeniably music. Transcendental.

Thus Cage's 4'33" is not music, by my standards: it cannot be transposed, it cannot be recognized as 4'33", unless it is specifically named, since the piece does not have a constant core of identity. I never sat down and thought to myself: "Hey! They're playing Cage!", despite the fact that the sounds I am hearing at the moment could very well be the piece in question, should I have just put on a CD-recording of 4'33" (which would consist of silence, ofcourse). 

His "Water Walk" also doesn't account as music, by my definition: you simply can't play the smashing of a radio on a thrumpet. And while the firing of a cannon is also impossible to play on the harp, Overture 1812 is still recognizable when these un-musical sounds are omitted. "Water Walk" without its un-musical elements is, well, a remix of 4'33".

But that's just my opinion. I'm sure a lot people with more insight in music will correct me on this. I just hope you understand my point of view.


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## Poppin' Fresh

Honestly, what I think the more interesting question is why people feel the need to place these sorts of limits on art.

Every limit that can be placed is going to be highly arbitrary. If it has to have the capability to be "transposed", then I guess much of the electronic music repertoire isn't music -- much of it creates sounds and melodic and rhythmic patterns which often cannot be replicated with traditional instruments and performing techniques. If it's about the performer controlling what the audience hears, well no performer can do that, evidenced by the fact that I can scarcely think of a musical genre or style that is universally considered "music". If a performer controlled what people heard, no one would consider Schoenberg "noise". If a sound has to be produced by a mind...well, sounds aren't produced by minds, they are organized by them.


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## Edward Elgar

Poppin' Fresh said:


> Honestly, what I think the more interesting question is why people feel the need to place these sorts of limits on art.


Because if everything can be art, how do we define art?


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## Poppin' Fresh

I don't feel the need to define it, and am not even sure it can be defined. That's what makes it art. If it was something that could be expressed by words, or defined, or explained, then there would be no need for it.


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## munirao2001

Edward Elgar,
To me Art is the work which gives intellectual satisfaction with very high potential for recall memory and capable of delivery of pleasure, simillar to the first experience, at every point of recall. The greatest work of Art must be capable of suspending the thought at the moment of real experience, beuty and the total enjoyment or pleasure is felt and realized after the moments of real and experience.


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## Sid James

"Music is the silence between the notes" - Claude Debussy.

This quote is probably known to you all. Obviously, not all silence is music. I think Cage's _4'33" _is more bound up with Zen philosophies, new ways of notation, and questioning the role of composers, musicians, and audiences in the making of music.

I don't really care if something "crosses the line," as long as it engages me on some level - intellectual, emotional, corporeal, etc. Composers have been using silence for yonks. Many people still criticise Bruckner for the constant pauses & silences in his music, as if he is stopping to take breath while on a mountain trek or something. Some critics said (and still say), that this prevents the music from "flowing" like say a piece by an earlier composer like Beethoven. I just say it was part of Bruckner's style, and there's little we can do about that. Same with Cage, many people are prejudiced against him for creating (if that is the word, since he didn't want total control in any sense) _4'33." _I've seen endless debates about this piece on this forum many times, but I think it's pointless to focus on this piece only - what about the "actual" music that he composed? Shouldn't we focus more on that? It's just like letting the silences in a Bruckner symphony (or a piece by Arvo Part, another composer who often uses silence as a device to build tension and contrast) stop us from enjoying the whole work? I definitely say no, don't be a perfectionist, you won't like ALL aspects of a given piece, maybe only some or hopefully most, but it's up to YOU the listener to find in it what you can.

I think that listening to music is bound up with our lives, perhaps this is part of what Debussy & Cage were saying. Recently, I went to a concert at Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The whole experience of going out there on a train, and walking through the town to the church was an "experience." The way I experienced the music at that concert was hugely related to the context of what happened on that day. One could also hear Australian birds, cockatoos, screeching outside in the surrounding bush area. Music does not only include that which is on the page, or coming out of the vocalist's mouths, or from instruments, it encompasses everything (perhaps Mahler, with his opinion that a symphony should encompass the whole world, would agree as well?)...


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## Vaneyes

It's all relativity.


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## Huilunsoittaja

I don't believe music should all be relative, because relativity leads to chaos, and music is *not *chaos, it is essentially the opposite.

I think there should be some sort of standard, although I couldn't come up with that.


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## Earthling

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I don't believe music should all be relative, because relativity leads to chaos, and music is *not *chaos, it is essentially the opposite.
> 
> I think there should be some sort of standard, although I couldn't come up with that.


The John Cage response to that might be: there is no such thing as "chaos" or "order"-- everything IS as it should be (you know, that whole Zen thing).

For Cage, it was all a matter of control (or the illusion of control). How much control should one exert on the composition or performance of a piece of music? In the case of 4'33", the only real parameter is the length of the piece-- what occurs within that frame is allowed to be just as it is (Quakerism comes to my mind just as much as Zen actually).

How much of what we control is really "controlled" after all? Performers with years of discipline have a lot of control over their instruments, but there are many other factors that have an effect on the performance as well (physical well-being, the emotional state of mind of the composer, the acoustics, the condition of the instrument(s), the audience, etc.). We tend to filter these things out, creating a dividing line between "music" and "noise." Cage's point is that we could do with out trying to control everything, which is an illusion anyway.

That's Cage's POV, and its not necessarily a bad one, though certainly it is not the _only _one.


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## Major Minor

Poppin' Fresh said:


> I don't feel the need to define it, and am not even sure it can be defined. That's what makes it art. If it was something that could be expressed by words, or defined, or explained, then there would be no need for it.


Sounds vaguely deep.

....until you think it through then it's just popular quasi-mystical ******** that strips away meaning.

"If, like, you can define it then, like, there's no need to like, understand, like the deep vastness of it. Because, like, words are, like expressing, like, things that , like, don't need it... THAT'S, like, for real"!

Although when I think about it... what you originally "expressed by words" here ... there really is "no need for it"... so that part you got right.


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## Vaneyes

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I don't believe music should all be relative, because relativity leads to chaos, and music is *not *chaos, it is essentially the opposite.
> 
> I think there should be some sort of standard, although I couldn't come up with that.


I hope you didn't hurt yourself in that leap of logic.

Standard? Don't be foolish.


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## Kopachris

My view is that art is defined and has purpose. A composer knows what he's trying to do when he writes, a artist knows what he's trying to do when he paints, and a performer knows what he's trying to do when he plays. As such, 4'33" and the like cross the line—the performer has no control over the performance and therefore can't have any idea of what he's trying to accomplish. Above all, though, you have to be able to put it in some unchanging form. For composers, the form is sheet music. For painters, it's canvas. For performers, it's a recording. For 4'33", it's nothing.


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## munirao2001

I welcome your comments/replies for my reply " To me Art is the work which gives intellectual satisfaction with very high potential for recall memory and capable of delivery of pleasure, similar to the first experience, at every point of recall. The greatest work of Art must be capable of suspending the thought at the moment of real experience, beauty and the total enjoyment or pleasure is felt and realized after the moments of real and experience".


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## Yanick Borg

emiellucifuge said:


> The line is in the mind.
> 
> If the sound has been produced by a mind; its mucs. If not; its sound.


I'm not sure this definition would completely differentiate between plucking a string, or turning an ignition key. But why should it ?


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## Yanick Borg

One only needs to listen to the state of British composition, and more over, further begs the question, what exactly is an instrument ? I've seen an interesting piano recently, rigged up with little motors that when activated rotorise percussion.


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## Yanick Borg

Stip said:


> To me, music is transcendental. It can be played on different instruments, can be transposed, etc., and still be recognized as the same piece of music. It is not bound by the wood/copper/string it is produced by, just like an philosophy is not bound by mind that comprehends it, just as poetry is not bound by the paper it is written on, just as mathematics are not bound by the symbols it uses. Look at "The art of fugue": dispite no clear indication of what instrument to play it on, it is undeniably music. Transcendental.
> 
> Thus Cage's 4'33" is not music, by my standards: it cannot be transposed, it cannot be recognized as 4'33", unless it is specifically named, since the piece does not have a constant core of identity. I never sat down and thought to myself: "Hey! They're playing Cage!", despite the fact that the sounds I am hearing at the moment could very well be the piece in question, should I have just put on a CD-recording of 4'33" (which would consist of silence, ofcourse).
> 
> His "Water Walk" also doesn't account as music, by my definition: you simply can't play the smashing of a radio on a thrumpet. And while the firing of a cannon is also impossible to play on the harp, Overture 1812 is still recognizable when these un-musical sounds are omitted. "Water Walk" without its un-musical elements is, well, a remix of 4'33".
> 
> But that's just my opinion. I'm sure a lot people with more insight in music will correct me on this. I just hope you understand my point of view.


Give me three diesel engines and I'll give you mary had a little lamb. Give me six, and I'll give it to you in polyphony, harmony, and perhaps even rhythmic percussion.


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## Yanick Borg

emiellucifuge said:


> The line is in the mind.
> 
> If the sound has been produced by a mind; its mucs. If not; its sound.


My personal definition is different. I think if it has a score, or is scorable, it is music. Architects solved this problem long ago. A building can never be considered architecture. A building is only a building. Only the documents that delivered the design of that building is architecture. The problem in music nomenclature, is that sound is never attributed to music apropo to the architecture/building distinction.

Architecture is music. Building is sound. This makes musicians builders, and architects composers, composers architects, and builders musicians.


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## Richard22

*newbie here*

Hi I'm Richard!

New to this forum, I'm nuts about music!

Looking forward to sharing some tips with you guys


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## Earthling

Kopachris said:


> As such, 4'33" and the like cross the line-the performer has no control over the performance and therefore can't have any idea of what he's trying to accomplish.


Actually, Cage had no control over the performance and had a _very precise _idea of what he was trying to accomplish.


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## Edward Elgar

Earthling said:


> Actually, Cage had no control over the performance and had a _very precise _idea of what he was trying to accomplish.


Exactly, he knew precisely the amount of human input involved. None.

My question is why? Why did he think everything could be music? Was he trying to tell everyone they too could be artists?


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## Kopachris

Earthling said:


> Actually, Cage had no control over the performance and had a _very precise _idea of what he was trying to accomplish.


Cage, the composer, knew what he was trying to accomplish, but couldn't put it in an unchanging form. Therefore, 4'33" isn't music. The performer of 4'33", having no control, can't realistically expect any particular result, and so any idea of what he (the performer) is trying to accomplish is invalid and can be ignored. Therefore, 4'33" isn't music.

On the other hand, if a composer wrote a piece consisting of the songs of particular birds for specific durations, an unchanging medium could be used: paper listing the birds and the durations of their arias. The performer could even have some level of control by doing something to cause the birds to sing at the right times, and the result could be recorded.


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## Vaneyes

Nothingness is art unto itself. It is what it is. It's up to the critic or 
the appreciator to "create" something else from it.

You may be surprised to learn, when artists are honest, how much is 
ill-defined (odd inspirations) and has little purpose, except to make 
jollies for one's self and hopefully make money.

A performer, or the aforementioned critic or appreciator, is not bound 
completely by the artist. And that's a good thing. Especially if the artist, 
if he's honest, didn't really truthfully know what/where the hell he was 
doing/going.

Hope this helps clear things up.


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## Poppin' Fresh

Major Minor said:


> Sounds vaguely deep.
> 
> ....until you think it through then it's just popular quasi-mystical ******** that strips away meaning.
> 
> "If, like, you can define it then, like, there's no need to like, understand, like the deep vastness of it. Because, like, words are, like expressing, like, things that , like, don't need it... THAT'S, like, for real"!
> 
> Although when I think about it... what you originally "expressed by words" here ... there really is "no need for it"... so that part you got right.


Heh. Well go ahead and tell me the meaning, the definition of a Beethoven symphony. And if you could do such a thing, why the need to listen to it?

But really, there's no need for hostility. I didn't intend for my statement to sound deep or quasi-mystical. I was just expressing what I thought was obvious: that art is an _experience_, and one that no definitions or boundaries can ever encompass.



Edward Elgar said:


> Exactly, he knew precisely the amount of human input involved. None.


There's plenty of human input involved in it.



> My question is why? Why did he think everything could be music? Was he trying to tell everyone they too could be artists?


Cage believed something that I too have come to believe. Sounds are interesting. Even the most commonplace, if really sat down and _listened_ to, digested, are fascinating. People are bombarded by sounds every single second of every day, and it's impossible to take them all in. It would take too much time, too much concentration to appreciate them all. 4'33" is set in an environment where people traditionally come to really listen to and appreciate sounds. A concert hall. And the piece gives the audience the opportunity to take in sounds that they usually simply ignore.

A similar idea can be seen in the work of other modern artists. In our day and age, we are constantly being bombarded with man-made images. Hundreds of years ago, people saw much fewer; in fact the only image they might see is a painting at the local church. And this was venerated. Of course we just take most of it for granted, but if you were to take a neon-lit McDonald's sign and place it in the middle ages, they'd think it was fascinating. But you have these modern artists who take these images, frame them, and put them in a context where they are studied, dissected, and appreciated.

I think taking time to appreciate these bits and pieces of our world that we take for granted is not only engrossing and compelling in it's own right, but gives us a better understanding of who we are and the world around us.



Kopachris said:


> Cage, the composer, knew what he was trying to accomplish, but couldn't put it in an unchanging form. Therefore, 4'33" isn't music. The performer of 4'33", having no control, can't realistically expect any particular result, and so any idea of what he (the performer) is trying to accomplish is invalid and can be ignored. Therefore, 4'33" isn't music.
> 
> On the other hand, if a composer wrote a piece consisting of the songs of particular birds for specific durations, an unchanging medium could be used: paper listing the birds and the durations of their arias. The performer could even have some level of control by doing something to cause the birds to sing at the right times, and the result could be recorded.


The performer of 4'33" has no control, but as always, with any form of music, the listener is ultimately the one with complete control. I mean really. A performer can never realistically know what to expect when performing a piece of music. There may be desired results, but that's about it.

When a performer gets up in front of their audience, their intention is for the audience to listen to particular sounds. It may be a piano, it may be a violin. Depends on what the composer calls for. It's the same principle for 4'33". The performer sets the parameters that people to hear the sounds that the composer wishes them to hear. In this case, not a piano or violin but coughs, shifting in seats, and anything else that might be heard in a concert hall.

Does sound really need to exist in some abstract, unchanging form to be considered music? Hey, you may think, and others obviously have their own (often differing) opinions, but again, I don't see how this is any set definition of music. If I were to hear a saxophonist, in a spur of the moment urge, play a completely improvisational passage of random notes and squeals, and he were to never try to write the passage down in some "unchanging medium" or to ever produce those same exact sounds in the same exact way ever again, it doesn't discount what I heard as music.


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## Major Minor

Poppin' Fresh: That came out much harsher than I meant it to.
I apologize for my tone.


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## Yanick Borg

The architect never bakes or picks up a brick, but make no mistake, he is the master of that device. Composer's often lack reprise to disicpline. A composer should never raise an instrument, but have mastered (in the virtual space of the score) that instrument in all of its capacities. 

Outside of this, then the composer has become a performer. This is not to say that a composer should stop playing instruments (despite that they shouldn't be required to).

The difference between mastering oneself on an instrument, and writing for that instrument, only exists an athletic quality of co-ordination. The athletic instrumentalist, will post rationalise his physical abilities and score accordingly. The physically unco-ordinated master of that instrument will set the new challenges.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

Edward Elgar said:


> Where does music end and sound begin?


I look at this in a slightly different way: what is good art and what is bad/junk art? I don't believe all art is good. That helicopter string quartet (I forgot who wrote it, but there was a link of it here), is trash; not good art and nor is it music. And I even extend that further by questioning the sanity of its composer (and maybe even the performers) if they thought it was pretty good stuff.


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## Argus

Yanick Borg said:


> The architect never bakes or picks up a brick, but make no mistake, he is the master of that device. Composer's often lack reprise to disicpline. A composer should never raise an instrument, but have mastered (in the virtual space of the score) that instrument in all of its capacities.
> 
> Outside of this, then the composer has become a performer. This is not to say that a composer should stop playing instruments (despite that they shouldn't be required to).
> 
> The difference between mastering oneself on an instrument, and writing for that instrument, only exists an athletic quality of co-ordination. The athletic instrumentalist, will post rationalise his physical abilities and score accordingly. The physically unco-ordinated master of that instrument will set the new challenges.


Using the architect=composer and musician=builder analogy (which makes sense in a classical setting), where do improvising musicians fall? Was Miles Davis both an architect and a builder? How do you explain Terry Riley's In C?

What if a musician only improvises and never plays the same improvisation twice? Those sounds exist but once, but are surely still music/sonic architecture.



> I look at this in a slightly different way: what is good art and what is bad/junk art? I don't believe all art is good. That helicopter string quartet (I forgot who wrote it, but there was a link of it here), is trash; not good art and *nor is it music*. And I even extend that further by questioning the sanity of its composer (and maybe even the performers) if they thought it was pretty good stuff.


1) The composer is Stockhausen.

2) Why isn't it music?



> My question is why? Why did he think everything could be music? Was he trying to tell everyone they too could be artists?


I believe every sound can be music and every person can make sound.

Like Poppin' Fresh has said. Cage simply enjoyed sounds. He didn't care about art or music but the creation and reception of sound.

Most people don't enjoy listening to sounds, they enjoy listening to sounds that fall within their own personal definition of music.


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## Edward Elgar

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I look at this in a slightly different way: what is good art and what is bad/junk art? I don't believe all art is good. That helicopter string quartet (I forgot who wrote it, but there was a link of it here), is trash; not good art and nor is it music. And I even extend that further by questioning the sanity of its composer (and maybe even the performers) if they thought it was pretty good stuff.


Mmm, you say the helicopter string quartet is not music. Does that mean you consider it just sound or noise? It seems you consider it to be art, so why does that not make it music?

Is Stockhausen the "line" for you? If so, why?


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## Yanick Borg

Argus said:


> Using the architect=composer and musician=builder analogy (which makes sense in a classical setting), where do improvising musicians fall? Was Miles Davis both an architect and a builder? How do you explain Terry Riley's In C?


I would describe Miles Davis as both a composer and musician. There is a convenient loop in my logic. The purpose of my logic is rather simple; that is to categorise the roles of a composer, using the architect / builder analogy.

Roles is a word that ought to be repeated here. It allows the prevarication of the roles definitions to be more grounded.

The social expectation of a composer to be a brilliant instrumentalist seduces prevarication, a departure from the "composer" definition. Surely others have played the Rach 3, better possibly so than the Rach himself ? The Rach 3 is a good example, where the composer writes to a high level of what I call "capacity". Capacity (in the Rach 3) being the relationship between a single pianist, and a piano. Does it reach the level of impossibility, or is it possible for anyone, or someone special to play? In the case of the Rach 3 we know that the piece can be played by someone special.

In the case where the capacity of a written voice is disputed, the onus would obviously fall on the composer to prove that this is not so. In that beautiful moment, where he succeeds in doing so, we can all remark and admire at this union. An electronic artist elects musicians that are non-human and escapes the landscape of humankind using the robotic. Their own tools for composition have begun to sing to them. One must also consider that, in this space, of singing tools, timbre is very important. As the use of notes creates foundations or desires for what is to come next, so does timbre. Foundation in sound comes from timbre, and from pitch.

When an architect produces a design that is seemingly impossible to build, the onus falls upon him to show how it can be built, and if he fails to do so, it doesn't really reflect very well on his abilities does it ? He might be designing a virtual museum to be experience immersivly online, but in the context of landscape, a floating room without foundations would raise eyebrows and criticisms.



Argus said:


> What if a musician only improvises and never plays the same improvisation twice? Those sounds exist but once, but are surely still music/sonic architecture.


Consider this. A home built in the suburbs by a master builder, is not a piece of architecture. An architect who chooses to abandon his drawing board, to create buildings out of raw material from the top of his head, (or perhaps even from aquired skill) is not creating architecture, even if he chooses to rebuild the pantheon from memory, he is still only creating a building. When people refer to actual buildings as architecture, they are making a mistake. Architecture has, and only ever will exist on the page. A piece of architecture can be found in the blue print of a design.

There are three words in the nomenclature. Composition, Music and Sound. Perhaps music therefore, is the union of sound and composition.



Argus said:


> 1) The composer is Stockhausen.
> 
> 2) Why isn't it music?
> 
> I believe every sound can be music and every person can make sound.


I think i just explained myself into a point of difference on this view.



Argus said:


> Like Poppin' Fresh has said. Cage simply enjoyed sounds. He didn't care about art or music but the creation and reception of sound.


If that is the case, I would say that Cage was an more or less an artist that claimed not to be an artist. A sound artist perhaps, or a soundist ?



Argus said:


> Most people don't enjoy listening to sounds, they enjoy listening to sounds that fall within their own personal definition of music.


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## Yanick Borg

I mean, isn't this a ridiculous thing to be thinking about ? I woke up this morning and said a whole bunch of things, but doesn't make me a novelist, or an author, or a poet.


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## tahnak

Edward Elgar said:


> Where does music end and sound begin?
> 
> I have a pretty firm idea of where I think music ends. Cage's 4'33" for me crosses the line and ceases to become music as the performer has no control over what the audience hears.
> 
> I'm sure you will have opinions on this matter, especially considering the abstract ways of thinking about art.
> 
> I agree. Cage's piece should be the unanimous voted item that crosses the line from being music to sound and randon chaotic sound that too!
> Modern Art for ar's sake could be a fried egg described as a sunset.
> Decadence has taken over and like in human spirit there is no beauty left. It is mechanical mushack now!


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## Kopachris

Perhaps music needs a better definition? Wiktionary lists "music" as a noun with three definitions:


Wiktionary said:


> 1. A sound, or the study of such sounds, organized in time.
> 2. (figuratively) Any pleasing or interesting sounds
> 3. A guide to playing or singing a particular tune; sheet music.


From this, I think we (or at least I) may be able to derive three properties that something must have to be called music:

It must be sound that is organized and has some sort of rhythm.
It must be pleasing to someone (even if it's just the composer).
It must be notatable; that is, it must be able to be put into some constant form so that it can be played again and sound largely the same as before.

I don't know about the rest of you, but that's the definition I'm gonna go by.


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## Earthling

Kopachris said:


> 1. A sound, or the study of such sounds, organized in time.
> 2. (figuratively) Any pleasing or interesting sounds
> 3. A guide to playing or singing a particular tune; sheet music.


1. 4'33" has a beginning and an ending marked very clearly in the score.
2. This is entirely subjective of course, but then, this was Cage's whole point: to listen (_there is no such thing as silence_).
3. 4'33" is written down.

What is more, Cage's "Water Music" (for radios, bathtub, glasses, teapot, etc) is another piece of music that is notated. And, while people thought it was odd and many people laughed, apparently they were pleased. So was Cage.

As regards #3, this would exclude most jazz and blues. Yes, Robert Johnson's music could be notated, but were someone else to play reading such a score, all the nuances that makes a blues song a blues song would be absent (becuase those rhythmic and melodic inflections CAN'T be notated). This is why, for example, Paul Whiteman had people with jazz experience perform Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Or as Miles Davis would've said, classical musicians play "robot ****." (I'm not merely talking about _interpreting_ the score, but rather that some types of music cannot be played from a score without adding _an entirely different element _that is absent from the score-- in the case of jazz, _swing_.) I've heard jazz musicians perform the same piece of music twice, back-to-back, and both sounded like two completely different piece.

The definition I was taught in uni when I was in music theory is this: *music is organised sound. *The method and the parameters can be as specific or as broad as possible. This of course, is no guarantee that the music being composed or performed is worth the time engaging with, but it is nevertheless "music."

I don't like Lady Gaga (to pick a name at random), but as much as I absolutely detest her music, it would be _hyperbole _to say "its *not music*, its just *trash*." Just because we think a musician is terrible or we just hate hearing it, or we question the motives of a musician, it still is music. It is organised sound, whether we understand it or not, whether we like it or not.


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## Yanick Borg

Earthling said:


> The definition I was taught in uni when I was in music theory is this: *music is organised sound. *The method and the parameters can be as specific or as broad as possible. This of course, is no guarantee that the music being composed or performed is worth the time engaging with, but it is nevertheless "music."


This is a good definition too. The only issue I'd have with it, would be that the term organisation can be a bit ambigous with regards to process.

I think that the process of writing a lady gaga song is composition. There seems to be a flurry of opinons which attempt to estrange popular music from the word composition.

Organised sound might could also account for an array of full or empty milk bottles suspended, and precariously attached to strings across a street, till someone comes along with the scissors. lol.


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## Kopachris

Earthling said:


> 1. 4'33" has a beginning and an ending marked very clearly in the score.
> 2. This is entirely subjective of course, but then, this was Cage's whole point: to listen (_there is no such thing as silence_).
> 3. 4'33" is written down.
> 
> What is more, Cage's "Water Music" (for radios, bathtub, glasses, teapot, etc) is another piece of music that is notated. And, while people thought it was odd and many people laughed, apparently they were pleased. So was Cage.


Am I to take it you're the only one here who thinks 4'33" _is_ music? As for "Water Music," I have no arguments against it.


> The definition I was taught in uni when I was in music theory is this: *music is organised sound. *The method and the parameters can be as specific or as broad as possible. This of course, is no guarantee that the music being composed or performed is worth the time engaging with, but it is nevertheless "music."


That's pretty much exactly the point I'm trying to make. If the performer is instructed not to play his instrument for the entire duration of the piece, can the piece truly be considered "organized sound?" If the "music" is supposed to be whatever background noise happens to be going on at the moment, is the sound organized?


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## Earthling

Kopachris said:


> Am I to take it you're the only one here who thinks 4'33" _is_ music?


I think it is music. I'm not sure I am the only one here that thinks so, but what does that matter?



> If the "music" is supposed to be whatever background noise happens to be going on at the moment, is the sound organized?


You've missed Cage's point. It isn't *background *noise. However, it is framed by a beginning and an end. It is music taken to its barest minimum.

You can call it bad music, or pointless music, but its still music nevertheless:


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## Argus

4'33'' has been well covered in this thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/8325-john-cage-433-music.html


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## Poppin' Fresh

Kopachris said:


> Am I to take it you're the only one here who thinks 4'33" _is_ music? As for "Water Music," I have no arguments against it.
> 
> That's pretty much exactly the point I'm trying to make. If the performer is instructed not to play his instrument for the entire duration of the piece, can the piece truly be considered "organized sound?" If the "music" is supposed to be whatever background noise happens to be going on at the moment, is the sound organized?


I consider 4'33" music, and having seen it in performance I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Like any piece of music, it is ultimately in the mind of the listener that the connections between sounds are made, understood and determined to be music.

Instead of simply admiring the sounds made by performers, 4'33" invites the audience to understand their role in the process of sound organization and allows them to appreciate the sounds sounds that are usually ignored.


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## Tapkaara

I've learned that discussions like this are without much point. They can be sort of though-provoking for a while, and then they just become "provoking." Someone once said:

"Music is what someone listens to when they want to hear music."

This is very true. If someone gets musical pleasure and satisfaction from listening to something I'd deem as garbage, so be it. The way some people think, there is no line or demarcation between "sound" and "music" and if they like listening to junk they have the right to do so, prop it up on a pedestal and call it art.


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## Stip

Yanick Borg said:


> Give me three diesel engines and I'll give you mary had a little lamb. Give me six, and I'll give it to you in polyphony, harmony, and perhaps even rhythmic percussion.


My point exactly. Music is not bound by musical instruments, and can be recognized in different and unexpected contexts. Cage's 4'33" can not.


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## munirao2001

Edward Elgar/Poppin Fresh
I keenly look forward to your replies for my reply#10, an honest attempt to define Art.


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## Edward Elgar

munirao2001 said:


> Edward Elgar/Poppin Fresh
> I keenly look forward to your replies for my reply#10, an honest attempt to define Art.


Yes, I think it was Thomas Beecham who said something along the lines of; "good music is easy to remember and hard to forget".

I think the best art is the art you enjoy for whatever reason, be it intellectual or instantly gratifying. Although too much of the latter can lead to a shallow appreciation of art.

What would you guys say to someone who made the assertion; "if you can't sing or dance to it, it's not music".


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## Km7

Music ends at the moment it stops making sense to you. It's as simple as that.


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