# What is Music?



## raybenz (Apr 25, 2013)

According to Webster's II: New Riverside University Dictionary, music is "the art of arranging tones in an orderly sequence so as to produce a unified and continuous composition". In reality, music does not have any one concrete meaning. Music has different meanings for different people. Music is unique in each person's life. To a musician, music is their life. They eat, breathe, and live music. Music is their passion. For others, music is a hobby, a pastime. Music is something that arouses interest and is pleasurable. The casual fan may learn about music, how to read music, how to sing, or how to play a musical instrument, but they do not have the all encompassing passion a musician possesses. Music is a means of relaxation for some, while others simply enjoy listening to the sounds, melodies, and rhythms that music brings to their ears, minds, and hearts.


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## appoggiatura (Feb 6, 2012)

There are no words to describe the depth of certain feelings and matters of the heart. Music does.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

appoggiatura said:


> There are no words to describe the depth of certain feelings and matters of the heart. Music does.


I'll take Mendelssohn's word (and music!) for it:



> People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

According to Edgard Varese , music is "organized sound ". Pretty succinct .


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

what spontaneously came to mind was 'a sequence of sounds having different frequencies and a certain logical structure'.


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## nannerl (Aug 29, 2013)

Philip Ball has some interesting thoughts on what music is in *The Music Instinct* - "Auditory Cheesecake"


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

IMO, more than saying _'what is'_ music I would tend to approach the issue saying _'what makes music happen'_. I think that this is more flexible, relaxed and fluid than thinking in music as something already given. In this way chances could be open. Also widens the idea into the field of experiencing it.

Just gathering some thoughts. Maybe I am being to finicky.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

"Everything is Music, and everywhere is the best seat.” -John Cage


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

rrudolph said:


> "Everything is Music, and everywhere is the best seat." -John Cage


So, music happens everywhere... Mmm... I like the idea.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Music is _bent air_, willfully and systematically bent at that.

I would change your definition to read *organized sound.*

*"To some people music is like food; to others like medicines; to others like a fan."* ~ from the collected stories of the _Arabian Nights_


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

A train wailing lonesome in the night, the clickety clack of boxcars fading into the distance, birds at dawn, city scaped and shaped aurality, wind swept sonic textures... music to my ears.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

The oil in the machinery of my life


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

A world without it would be a dull place


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## Musician (Jul 25, 2013)

Music is Music.............but of course there can be books written about what music is...


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Music is sound for the sake of sound.

(I dunno. Just kinda made that up.)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

My definition at the moment: music is sound, and / or its lack, closely akin to but often excluding speech, organized with the intent to produce brain endorphins in the listener. The closer to achieving the intent, the more successful the music.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

superhorn said:


> According to Edgard Varese , music is "organized sound ". Pretty succinct .


But speech is also organised sound not it's not necessarily music


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

superhorn said:


> According to Edgard Varese , music is "organized sound ". Pretty succinct .


I agree. But what about pieces with some randomness in it like some of Cage's pieces (I forgot what the names are of those pieces), what about noise stuff? Not that I listen to these.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I agree. But what about pieces with some randomness in it like some of Cage's pieces (I forgot what the names are of those pieces), what about noise stuff? Not that I listen to these.


As I understand them, Cage's "chance operations" are not random in the true sense, there is a certain amount of choice and control afforded to the performer and a limited number of possibilities per performance, that is to say that the chance element is considered as part of the composition and the performance beforehand. I'm no expert on the inner workings of Cage's chance music, so don't take my word for it, that's just what I've been able to glean from interviews and liner notes.

Noise (note that I'm using this to mean "harsh noise") is generally separate from Cage's chance, though there are also regional scenes that have different characteristics from one another, and some artists will have undoubtedly utilised some of his ideas in the area of aleatory. In Japan, home of the most prominent scene, noise is largely an improvisational form like free jazz (I personally consider improvisation to be instantaneous composition) and early pioneers like Merzbow and JUKE/19 essentially came out of psychedelic rock, modern art (Merzbow's name is taken from Kurt Schwitters' _Merzbau_) and Dada. The European scene, or at least what I've heard of it, seems to owe more to musique concrète, with roots in the work of Varèse, Schaeffer and others. In some cases the influence of American pulse minimalists like Reich and Riley is also present. There are other scenes all over the world and, despite some considerable differences in style, they all have a common ancestor in Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, generally considered to be the originator of noise music through his manifesto _The Art of Noises_ and his _intonarumori_, the noise-making machines with which he made the first noise concerts in the 1910s.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

In Cage's _number pieces_, each instrument has a couple of score-cards. Each card has one note and possibly other indications (like dynamics) and an indication of the time (in minutes and seconds) when the note should start and when it should end. Some cards are fixed, in the sense that the time indications are strict, and some cards are flexible, in the sense that the time indications are flexible.









Flexible and fixed.

The chance element enters in the performance when the player makes the decision about when to play the notes in the flexible cards. 
But that is still ordered sound. The order is not in the actual notes, but in the way in which the notes are allowed to be random. It's a "meta-order", if you want.
Pretty cool pieces:


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

cwarchc said:


> A world without it would be a dull place


Not only dull, but pretty impossible to imagine. In order to get rid of music you would pretty much have to get rid of tonality (in the more broad sense of the term than it's usually used) altogether, which would get rid of almost all languages on earth and most animal noises I think.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ORGANIZED SOUND(s). .........................


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## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

If you go onto Youtube you can find a very interesting and thought provoking interview with John Cage on this subject!


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

superhorn said:


> According to Edgard Varese , music is "organized sound ". Pretty succinct .


I like that term, but it does raise some questions. Does that definition then make any other kinds of works that are meant to be performed with sound, such as stand-up comedy routines, or poems or plays, or even films, not just the scores but the films themselves kinds of musical compositions? Is the work of foley artists music? If you go by John Cage's logic, then everything is music because everything makes sounds and to him I think sound is indistinguishable from music. I don't agree with that logic personally, though I respect Cage, and I agree with alot of his ideas. I think I'd define it more specifically as "art of sounds". The art is in the expressive or imaginative use of sounds. Still by that definition poetry and foley work might count as music. I personally consider spoken word parts in music to be musical elements, so maybe I'm just inconsistent?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> I like that term, but it does raise some questions. Does that definition then make any other kinds of works that are meant to be performed with sound, such as stand-up comedy routines, or poems or plays, or even films, not just the scores but the films themselves kinds of musical compositions? Is the work of foley artists music? If you go by John Cage's logic, then everything is music because everything makes sounds and to him I think sound is indistinguishable from music. I don't agree with that logic personally, though I respect Cage, and I agree with alot of his ideas. I think I'd define it more specifically as "art of sounds". The art is in the expressive or imaginative use of sounds. Still by that definition poetry and foley work might count as music. I personally consider spoken word parts in music to be musical elements, so maybe I'm just inconsistent?


I think that is a bit petty academic hair-splitting, in that Organized Sound (didn't know Varese was the source of the phrase) as a definition of music rather eliminates all those sound organizations not intended to be music. The latter could be lumped under the sort of usage as in "the music of nature" which may be to human perception, _musical,_ but in no way a deliberate piece of music. There will always be one or more parties who want to stretch the usage of a word for their own means and ends, just think of Real Estate Agent Speak, where most "garden apartments" are actually basement apartments 

P.s. I usually consider music and the spoken word a massive fail (indeed, usually find it downright repellent, the one medium drastically at odds with the other) and can think of only one piece where its presence seems truly integral, Berio's Sinfonia.


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

PetrB said:


> P.s. I usually consider music and the spoken word a massive fail (indeed, usually find it downright repellent, the one medium drastically at odds with the other) and can think of only one piece where its presence seems truly integral, Berio's Sinfonia.


What about Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon and A Survivor from Warsaw?


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## febo (Sep 2, 2013)

BurningDesire said:


> I like that term, but it does raise some questions. Does that definition then make any other kinds of works that are meant to be performed with sound, such as stand-up comedy routines, or poems or plays, or even films, not just the scores but the films themselves kinds of musical compositions? Is the work of foley artists music? If you go by John Cage's logic, then everything is music because everything makes sounds and to him I think sound is indistinguishable from music. I don't agree with that logic personally, though I respect Cage, and I agree with alot of his ideas. I think I'd define it more specifically as "art of sounds". The art is in the expressive or imaginative use of sounds. Still by that definition poetry and foley work might count as music. I personally consider spoken word parts in music to be musical elements, so maybe I'm just inconsistent?


Maybe "intentionally created sound that is not speech with an aesthetic and/or expressive intend" would be appropriate?
I would not consider the sounds of birds or wind to be music, although I do enjoy these kind of things. That would probably be "sound art not created by humans or created unintentionally", which is very close to noise music. But to me there is a distinction in the enjoyment of the sound itself and enjoyment of music (where the latter includes the former).

As for poems, they are related to music for me. Many poems do have a melody and rhythm, also they tend to have repeating structures within themselves. Modulations are quite common too. That said I still very much prefer any music over any poem.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

rrudolph said:


> "Everything is Music, and everywhere is the best seat." -John Cage


Even Yanni ?
................


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