# Is music important?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press? If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no?


Yes, music is important.



KenOC said:


> Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press?


Like all great things, it can be used to entertain and amuse in our lighter moments. Like all great things, it has its lesser attendants and underlings - popular music, folk, country dance music - which can serve to amuse and entertain.



KenOC said:


> If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


Look at my tag line. Music allows us to say things in ways that language does not allow. Another thread argued about math and music, music is like math another way of reaching into the basics of reality. The study of music allows us to comprehend the glory of reality. listening to music lifts us beyond our everyday reality. So, naturally, I consider music important.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

It's important because it's an expression of beauty, which *to me* is the whole point of the universe - a symphony by the Creator.  In its pattern, it seems to 'make sense' of things.

To some, it *is* only an entertainment; but to those who understand the power of music, it is their life-blood.

I have left it a little late in my own case, but now I *do* understand.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

"The truth is, I thought it mattered - I thought that music mattered. But does it? ********! Not compared to how people matter."


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press? If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


You could substitute more or less anything for XYZ in the question: "_Is XYZ important?_".

You have inserted "music" which is appropriate enough for a music forum.

But would the set of answers be expected to be significantly different if something else has been selected, like for example: poetry, education, reading history, keeping abreast of political developments, studying theology, watching your weight and general health, keeping a lookout for your neighbour, improving your social skills, etc (the list being almost infinite)?

I doubt it very much. The likelihood is that all these things, plus many more, and including of course music, have an importance from zero to very high for each individual. Quite how these activities/interests are ranked individually will be a matter of personal taste, and this could change almost by the minute for any individual depending on circumstances.

Therefore your question can only be answered on a personal basis, not in any general way upon which any kind of universal truths can be established.

As for the notion that music might be seen as "The Creation of Divinity", I would invite anyone who may be inclined to believe so to dig around this Forum for an interesting discussion on this matter some time ago.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think music runs the gamut. It accompanies up an elevator shaft and it's a go-to drug of choice when we're lonely. It's like a companion of sorts, and it's important on the level of human experience, the same as anything is important. Is it medicine? For the soul, maybe: for the spirit. It doesn't cure cancer or stop people fighting, but neither does space exploration - and that's important too. 

It's very important that humans create and express ourselves and it's important that we see ourselves expressed...


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press?


entertainment is important. I'd like to keep my sanity intact, yanno.


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## ericdxx (Jul 7, 2013)

For the individual, yes
In the material world, no


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Of course it is, in what other industry would musicians find employment if there was no music?


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

ericdxx said:


> For the individual, yes
> In the material world, no


ha, tell that to record company execs!


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## ericdxx (Jul 7, 2013)

Alright let's get the anthropologist on the phone...


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Music nourishes the soul: of course it's important!


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

It is important because, like other art forms, it has the power to enrich our lives. Important yes, essential no.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

There has got to be more purpose than merely existng efficiently. What is the reason we have been striving for thousands, even millions of years? Though my heart and soul is firmly planeted in scientific skepticism, I have often said that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, creativity must be the sincerest form of worship.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

I have raised a child (oddly enough a musician!),I have studied, taught and continue to read History with a fervour, I periodically draw and paint and follow a football team with an irrational concern and like most people I have relationships with others that have a huge value-but music!-if someone now even questions its value I would find it very difficult to even comprehend their argument-for one reason or another music has always been there and as my interests and habits are now established (I am in my 50's) for better or for worse there will be a continuity-and while I am on let me just say that this is not about one type of music or one piece or the contribution of one composer-I am composing this post whilst listening to Martinu symphony 5 and earlier in the day I went on to Youtube to listen to Medtner, essentially because I am ignorant of his works-five minutes ago I booked a ticket to see Television at the Sage Gateshead on Friday-responsible for the great album Marquee Moon I last saw them in 1978 and......well I suppose I am trying to say that music is a fundamental part of existence for those who choose to embrace it, and it is also a significant form of communication and can often frame and enhance the lives of individuals and communities........so there!


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press? If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


I believe music, as in classical music particular to this site, is more than important & far more than entertainment in the sense of sitting down and watching an episode of a soap opera. To paraphrase Donald Tovey talking about Beethoven; ' the music runs through our very existence reflecting our hopes and fears and reaches deep into our souls.' I think for many music is 'the more important thing,' and unlike other art forms lives with you when not actually engaged in listening to it. The understanding and love of classical music is hard earned and the more you work at it the more it repays carrying you through the most difficult of life's experiences which makes it very important indeed. Of course it all depends how important you rate music as an art form and where you are with it, as we all know there are people who will dismiss it out of hand, but how empty their lives must be.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

It's important to me but I know people who couldn't care less about it. Therefore in an absolute or universal sense it's not important.
Perhaps creativity of any kind is a by-product of an highly evolved intelligence (ours). Making and enjoying art, playing games, debating on forums (don't like the word fora) watching entertainments, learning for it's own sake; these are all things with which humans pass the time when the necessities of feeding, shelter and procreation have been met. 
I think it can be said that the 'subject' of the particular creation is tied to what preoccupies the mind of the creator. Whether it's the Cave paintings of animals, the hunting of which was the main occupation of the the pre historic artist. Or in later times, depictions of various Gods or offerings made_ to_ various Gods. Battles, Events or musings on the subject of Love, Death or the surrounding world. Music in particular has been a social art used in rituals, dance and ceremony and of course entertainment.
I think art is what people _do_ in their 'down time'.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I tend to lean toward Oscar Wilde's adage that "all art is useless"... but then:

One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "you're wasting your SAT scores!" On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the _Quartet for the End of Time_ written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece _Adagio for Strings_. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie _Platoon_, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching _Indiana Jones_ or _Superman_ or _Star Wars_ with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Karl Paulnack ~Music Director Boston Conservatory


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Blimey!! That above quotation from Karl Paulnack is somewhat um... over the top and purely subjective. For a minute I thought Stluke was speaking and thought eh? A welcoming speech to some undergrads to gee them up I guess but please...a schmaltz overkill.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I was 'taken in' myself, but I still really enjoyed reading StLukeGuild's post. :tiphat:

I'm going away *right now* to find Messaen's *Quartet for the End of Time*.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Music, and all art, is an "archive" for our lives. It is not life itself, but something which chronicles it, describes it, and is a storehouse for our emotions, fears, yearnings, and all that jazz. Therefore, I think, it's as important as having a healthy and working memory. If you are asking the question, "Is music important?", I am tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"

Music has touched us and "made sense" to us at different points in our lives. Even if we do not take music that seriously in a very conscious way, it has ways to move us when we least expect. So for most people, music has a place in their lives which is unique. Is it equal to an important person in our lives? Maybe not. But it has a position in our consciousness, and a significant one because to forget or let go of music would mean letting go of all the subconsciously remembered experiences. It would be like losing a diary, or moving to a new country and forgetting your old one. In such cases, what fills the void? New experiences, new horizons, new music... but we cannot go on living with the void with nothing there.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> Music, and all art, is an "archive" for our lives. It is not life itself, but something which chronicles it, describes it, and is a storehouse for our emotions, fears, yearnings, and all that jazz. Therefore, I think, it's as important as having a healthy and working memory. If you are asking the question, "Is music important?", I am tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
> 
> Music has touched us and "made sense" to us at different points in our lives. Even if we do not take music that seriously in a very conscious way, it has ways to move us when we least expect. So for most people, music has a place in their lives which is unique. Is it equal to an important person in our lives? Maybe not. But it has a position in our consciousness, and a significant one because to forget or let go of music would mean letting go of all the subconsciously remembered experiences. It would be like losing a diary, or moving to a new country and forgetting your old one. In such cases, what fills the void? New experiences, new horizons, new music... but we cannot go on living with the void with nothing there.


Music can also serve as a vehicle of letting go. Not everyone wants to fill the space they have inside with "things." Empty space is beautiful, it never requires or desires... it just is.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press? If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


No, of course it isn't important. Why would you even want to ask such a question?


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

what an appalling question. Music is not only important it is highly necessary. Music nourishes the soul.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I have said before, that if we were to send thousands of spacecraft off in all directions, hoping that some day thousands of years in the future and hundreds of light years away some alien race would stumble upon one -- I would place a recording of Beethoven's Opus 127 Quartet on it as the best sign for others of what we were and what we could do.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> what an appalling question. Music is not only important it is highly necessary. Music nourishes the soul.


I wonder what nourishes the souls of the deaf. :devil:


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

GGluek said:


> I have said before, that if we were to send thousands of spacecraft off in all directions, hoping that some day thousands of years in the future and hundreds of light years away some alien race would stumble upon one -- I would place a recording of Beethoven's Opus 127 Quartet on it as the best sign for others of what we were and what we could do.


Didn't they already do that with some music? (I think Beethoven was included)

Music as we understand it is so specific to humans and human culture that I don't know that an alien civilisation would see any value in it. It would make more sense to send some of our best work in mathematics and theoretical physics, although even that might seem like child's play to them.

I don't think music is particularly important in the scheme of things. It's very important to me, but plenty of people don't care for it at all and they lead no less full lives. Many people get the same transcendental experiences we get from music from visual art, literature, sports, etc. Compared to things like social justice, music is a trivial diversion.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

During the War, one of Churchill's aides asked him "shouldn't we close the museums and stop all concerts?". Churchill's succinct reply was "what then are we fighting for?"


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

I think that music is very important. Every single human culture has developed its own musical forms - just like art, music is everywhere where there are people. It's there to communicate on the emotional level - human beings who don't know each other may connect through their enjoyment of the same music. I think it's a great unifying force. It's a great form of creativity and humans need that to add variety and another dimension to their lives.


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## YiQue (Nov 11, 2013)

Of course. Music is a sort of language. Do you think it is language important?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Garlic said:


> Didn't they already do that with some music? (I think Beethoven was included)
> 
> Music as we understand it is so specific to humans and human culture that I don't know that an alien civilisation would see any value in it. It would make more sense to send some of our best work in mathematics and theoretical physics, although even that might seem like child's play to them.
> 
> I don't think music is particularly important in the scheme of things. It's very important to me, but plenty of people don't care for it at all and they lead no less full lives. Many people get the same transcendental experiences we get from music from visual art, literature, sports, etc. Compared to things like social justice, music is a trivial diversion.


Although respectable, this is all opinion. However, is there objective meaning to anything at all? Or is it just a bunch of ideas we place varying degrees of belief on. For any thought to have inherent meaning, it would have to carry the same weight for everyone... and this isn't the case.


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Although respectable, this is all opinion.


Yes.



Vesuvius said:


> However, is there objective meaning to anything at all?


No.



Vesuvius said:


> Or is it just a bunch of ideas we place varying degrees of belief on. For any thought to have inherent meaning, it would have to carry the same weight for everyone... and this isn't the case.


Yep. What I mean is for me ethical concerns override anything else. Music is ethically neutral so I don't feel it's particularly important compared to other things.


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I wonder what nourishes the souls of the deaf. :devil:


Ask Evelyn Glennie.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

GGluek said:


> I have said before, that if we were to send thousands of spacecraft off in all directions, hoping that some day thousands of years in the future and hundreds of light years away some alien race would stumble upon one -- I would place a recording of Beethoven's Opus 127 Quartet on it as the best sign for others of what we were and what we could do.


"Great Zork, we have completed our analysis of this 'Opus 127' and have determined that the earthlings are a race of peaceful aesthetes."

"Excellent, Thangor. Assemble the battle fleet."


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Garlic said:


> Yep. What I mean is for me ethical concerns override anything else. Music is ethically neutral so I don't feel it's particularly important compared to other things.


The logical side of me agrees, but the romantic wants to hold on to some universal beauty that music can portray. Though I know that everyone is not going to see the same beauty in a Bruckner symphony that I do....


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2013)

Of course, some might wish to make claims that music is not the only pursuit that nourishes the soul. Books, perhaps, or films. Or the quadrivium? Or the trivium? Where's millionrainbows when you need him?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I wonder what nourishes the souls of the deaf. :devil:


Painting and literature. They also nourish the souls of the hearing.
And if you love all the arts, your soul is exceptionally well-nourished.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Painting and literature. They also nourish the souls of the hearing.


Coincidentally, the first deaf person about which there is extant knowledge was brought up to be a painter (though he died young).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Pedius_(deaf_painter)


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

For Tesla, inventing and building machines nourished his soul.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

And soul music, of course, nourishes the soul completely.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> And soul music, of course, nourishes the soul completely.


God, I missed that one.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Just like rock music nourishes my rocks... wait a dang minute....


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> For Tesla, inventing and building machines nourished his soul.


Wasn't he just doing it for The Prestige?


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Wasn't he just doing it for The Prestige?


Yeah, just like Beethoven composed the Grosse Fuge for ducats.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Taggart said:


> Wasn't he just doing it for The Prestige?


That is truly obscure...


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Wasn't he just doing it for The Prestige?


I just read the plot. Why people choose to watch this over the opera, I have no idea. 
Even Wagner.... :lol:


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Hey, that's a good movie. Don't screw around.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Vesuvius said:


> Hey, that's a good movie. Don't screw around.


Any movie involving Tesla with murderous magicians has got to be good. I will watch it tomorrow night.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Any movie involving Tesla with murderous magicians has got to be good. I will watch it tomorrow night.


And Tesla is played by the "electric" David Bowie.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

As regards the question of whether music is able to nourish the soul of those who are deaf as well as those who can hear, I would humbly submit LVB as Exhibit # 1 and answer in the affirmative.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

samurai said:


> As regards the question of whether music is able to nourish the soul of those who are deaf as well as those who can hear, I would humbly submit LVB as Exhibit # 1 and answer in the affirmative.


This is so. You might add Smetana, who wrote his greatest works after he became deaf. But there are many people, deaf from birth, who have never heard a note of music and have no concept even of what "sound" is. Most, certainly, must look for other means of sustaining their souls. To say that music is "necessary" for this purpose is, to me, nonsensical.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

KenOC said:


> This is so. You might add Smetana, who wrote his greatest works after he became deaf. But there are many people, deaf from birth, who have never heard a note of music and have no concept even of what "sound" is. Most, certainly, must look for other means of sustaining their souls. To say that music is "necessary" for this purpose is, to me, nonsensical.


Point taken, Ken.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

_Is art necessary?_ 

Answer to this and the above: not pragmatically _but it seems a good deal of humanity finds music and other art one of those elements of life they would much prefer to live with than without._

"Half a loaf, and flowers."


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

KenOC said:


> To say that music is "necessary" for this purpose is, to me, nonsensical.


That's OK - I don't think anyone has claimed it is _necessary _- just important for them.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> That's OK - I don't think anyone has claimed it is _necessary _- just important for them.


See post #24 in this thread...


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

Music is important to *me* but it is not essential for my existence. However, my life would not be as rich without music. Some of my family members may think I have spent too much time, and too much money on music, and that it has been a cause of much waste of both my time and money. They are free to have their opinions as I have mine.

My Dad, in my opinion, has spent way too much of his life on sports and my Mom has spent a gosh awful lot of her life watching soap operas. To me both those things are a waste but only because I personally find little of redeeming value in them. They do however, and that's fine, but me? I'd rather listen to music.

Music has been my drug of choice for most of my life. I don't understand my psychological need for it, but I know I have one. I'm not just entertained by music either. I have been entertained by music but whether music entertains me or not I find it helps me cope with life in general. My Mom copes by her escape into soap operas. My Dad copes by his escape into sports. Everyone has interests in life and some of us have several, and maybe they occupy more of our time than they should. I don't really know. I do think though that if you find your relationships or your bank account hurting because of your interests then your interests have consumed you in an unhealthy way.

We live in a wonderful time in history where music is available to us 24/7. We can have music in our homes via CDs, records, tapes, radio, television, mp3s etc. and we can even take it with us wherever we go because of portable technologies. Past generations had to either play or attend live performances, but we are blessed to have instant gratification and consumption.

As a teenager in the late 1960s and early 70s I spent a lot of time with my headphones on because my parents hated my music. Today I wish I had more time to listen than I do, and when I do it's quite often still with my headphones on so as to not disturb my wife, whose tastes in classical are simpler than mine and she finds some of my music disturbing and irritating. How I do cherish those moments with my headphones though. Others may see it as a waste of my time but I see it as my time to relax, unwind, and displace myself if even for a moment by letting the music take me along for a ride. One in which I often have no idea where it is taking me, and if I find someplace especially delightful and interesting on a particular ride I might come back to visit it again sometime, or I might just stay a while. For me music is freedom without really being free, and a way to find temporary peace in a world that's become less peaceful every day. I'm grateful for all those artists and composers who have given so much to me and my life would have been so much poorer without them.

Kevin


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

KenOC said:


> See post #24 in this thread...


You're right. My bad.

Scipio overstates.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Yes or no? Is it only an entertainment to divert us when more important things don't press? If it's really important, in an absolute sense, why?


Art is important. Fine art is critical.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> Art is important. Fine art is critical.


As the OP asks...why? ............


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

From what we can find from through anthropological history, music and art, tied to "religion" as well as tribal ritual and community, were at the top of the list, perhaps before mankind had even learned to sew those hides together they were calling clothes.

Music and art probably came to mankind along with or long before the invention of the wheel.

People in general, whatever the actual use, seem to think it is highly important.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> As the OP asks...why? ............


It IS the half a loaf and flowers adage -- which I don't think needs any explaining, but if you want a hint, it is about the importance of a certain quality of life itself, all other pragmatics included.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

KenOC said:


> As the OP asks...why? ............


So that I can get to meet you and converse with you at wonderful online places such as TalkClassical. In short, fine art brings people together, from all walks of life and across all times.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> and across all times.


Watch it, buddy. I'm _not_ that old!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think Taggart already summed it up in his post #2 (see post #2). Music serves spiritual needs, so true art is "useless" in a utilitarian sense. But if push comes to shove, and the water starts rising and the market crashes, a side of beef will become "art" of the highest order. The rest of it, along with Vivaldi, is just wallpaper.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I think Taggart already summed it up in his post #2 (see post #2). Music serves spiritual needs, so true art is "useless" in a utilitarian sense. But if push comes to shove, and the water starts rising and the market crashes, a side of beef will become "art" of the highest order. The rest of it, along with Vivaldi, is just wallpaper.





> Classical music-instrumental works, art songs, opera-was also produced and performed during this period, notably by prisoners at the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto and transit camp in Czechoslovakia, as well as in several other ghettos and camps.
> 
> For many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity.


United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

If push comes to shove, Music will preserve our humanity.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Well, water has risen, over and over again, for centuries. And markets have crashed. Over and over again. For centuries.

A side of beef will no more become "art" than the moon will become a chair in my apartment. It's just not that kind of thing. No matter what else happens or doesn't happen.

If one is starving, a side of beef will certainly seem to be a bit on the important side. But one is not always starving. And not everyone is starving all at once.

All sorts of bad things have happened over hundreds of thousands of years, and yet humans continue to value and put effort into all sorts of things that are "inessential." Sometimes putting in that effort under very negative circumstances indeed. Almost as if even to a starving person, beef is not the only desirable thing.

Somehow the arts, the frivolous, inessential, unimportant, unnecessary for survival arts seem to be a permanent part of the human condition. Somebody, somewhere, somehow, is valuing them very much indeed. Pragmatically, it would seem that the answer to the frivolous question posed in this thread is unquestionably a simple "yes."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Not at all. A person's folio holdings of shares in the Pharmaceutical companies is by far much more important, and something one can actually use and benefit from. How can music take care of any of that?


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Not at all. A person's folio holdings of shares in the Pharmaceutical companies is by far much more important, and something one can actually use and benefit from. How can music take care of any of that?


How can a pharmaceutical company ever provide for what they do in church, like sing a mass?


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Not at all. A person's folio holdings of shares in the Pharmaceutical companies is by far much more important, and something one can actually use and benefit from. How can music take care of any of that?


That's a very utilitarian view of life PetrB. Someguy's post reminds me of the scene in Jurassic Park where Dr Black (Jeff Goldblum) asserts that "life will find a way", irrespective of man's efforts to manage, control, subdue the creative principles.

"Art" will find a way.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

You're going to die one day anyway. Why not live like a beautiful, expressive being than some robot worried about their timeshares? You can have all the money in the world, but you can't take it with you when death comes. Maybe there's something more lasting to invest your energy in... just maybe?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

shangoyal said:


> How can a pharmaceutical company ever provide for what they do in church, like sing a mass?


How can singing a mass in church ever provide us with penicillin? :devil:


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Music is important, but that isn't the same as _indispensability_. The world _can _go on without music. We don't actually _need_ it to breath or achieve homeostasis in the body. In fact, I think I'd live on just fine without it, my heart won't stop beating due to a lack of hearing music in my life. What makes music important is that it, among many other things, gives us a reason TO live. Without a doubt, music improves the quality of our life, even if we can never empirically test it. We humans need a psychological/emotional/spiritual nourishment that food and drink can't quite satisfy. But still, there are plenty of other things that can satisfy this need besides music, so if there were literature/poetry but not music, it wouldn't make a difference.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

some guy said:


> A side of beef will no more become "art" than the moon will become a chair in my apartment.


Damien Hirst says: be careful you don't sit on a crater.









Art will find a way.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> You're going to die one day anyway.


Really guys. I'm not that old!

(Oh, OK. Maybe I am.)

Anyway, second that idea. After I've died, nothing is going to matter to me. While I'm alive, however, I'm going to use my pharmaceutical holdings to buy...

...paintings and recordings and books--and give money to struggling artists so they'll make even more.

Wait a minute. Going to? I've already done it.

And now it's me who's the poor one. Oh well. Better get a job, I guess.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2013)

KenOC said:


> How can singing a mass in church ever provide us with penicillin? :devil:


Um, how did it turn out that only one thing gets to be important? Lots of things are important, simultaneously. And singing a mass in church has certain effects. As it turns out, penicillin provides none of those effects.

Nor does singing a mass in church provide any of the effects of penicillin.

Heigh presto, I do believe that we need both.:angel:


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

While we were talking,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Um, how did it turn out that only one thing gets to be important? Lots of things are important, simultaneously. And singing a mass in church has certain effects. As it turns out, penicillin provides none of those effects.
> 
> Nor does singing a mass in church provide any of the effects of penicillin.
> 
> Heigh presto, I do believe that we need both.:angel:


Why do yo speak so clearly? It's making me think rationally again.


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

Sorry. I try to make the attempt to more obscurely make utterances that aren't so transparent any more than mirrors in the morning with sparrows in the sense that whatever matters is a matter of material of a nature.

Better?


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

some guy said:


> Sorry. I try to make the attempt to more obscurely make utterances that aren't so transparent any more than mirrors in the morning with sparrows in the sense that whatever matters is a matter of material of a nature.
> 
> Better?


Were you trying to do a Van Vliet, by any chance?


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

I know quite a lot less about Captain Beefheart than I should.

But I know enough to admire his work very much, and recognize similarities between how he liked to play with language and how I like to play with language.

I think, while I'm writing,* that it's almost as if I'm channeling Gertrude Stein, whom I admire above all others. But then when I read what I've written, it doesn't sound like Stein at all. (Which is, I needn't tell ya, a huge relief. I want to be simply me, neither a Stein nor a Joyce nor a Queneau nor (I now realize) a Van Vliet.)

Sorry for the serious answer to your tongue-in-cheek post!! Inappropriate, I know.

*Excluding posts to TC. Those are a wee holiday from the rigors of fiction and poetry.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Haha!

Yeah, it does sound like Stein, except that her writing has a puzzlement which is the real charm of it. Perhaps a lot more than that, but who am I to know?


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