# Is Music the most powerful art form?



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

Obviously, I would be prejudiced, but however transformative and beautiful visual art can be, I find I've never had an experience like listening to a Bach passion or end of a Mahler symphony in any other art form. I guess you could make a good case that the literary and theatre forms can be as powerful. Or is it completely a subjective preference?


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## thejewk (Sep 13, 2020)

I'm not very receptive to visual art forms, with a few notable exceptions, but I couldn't choose between music and literature. They are both absolutely central to my existence.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

It depends entirely on the receptivity of the person concerned. But I would say that in general music is very powerful indeed


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Music is the only art form whose creators are considered more or less wizards


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Idly musing on this, does anybody think that music's physical, aural presence and subsequent development over time give it the edge over the other arts, which are even more imaginative or internally processed? Music with Dance would also have such an effect of course. Painted art, whilst I love it, is too static in comparison to music for me, even with its physical presence and intellectual invitation.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

powerful in what way? I would say that for me books and cinema are more powerful than music, at least in the department of storytelling and communication. Music is easier, not need to think when listening to it. I am now working and listening to music at the same time. I could not do it with a book.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

There can be a very strong and immediate sense conveyed by music, but what it can communicate is very limited. As Jacck suggests, it cannot communicate as much information as books or film, but within its own sphere, it can be very powerful indeed.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

JAS said:


> There can be a very strong and immediate sense conveyed by music, but what it can communicate is very limited. As Jacck suggests, it cannot communicate as much information as books or film, but within its own sphere, it can be very powerful indeed.


yeah, good point. I only considered music from a readily emotional impact. Of course all the arts can impact as such though. Music with words, Opera, Religious text, poetry, might be the most powerful with regard to your post. YMMV.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

JAS said:


> There can be a very strong and immediate sense conveyed by music, but what it can communicate is very limited. As Jacck suggests, it cannot communicate as much information as books or film, but within its own sphere, it can be very powerful indeed.


Communication? Communication of information? Huh? For me those are largely if not wholly irrelevant to the appreciation and value of music.

Is music the most powerful art form? For people who relate to the world musically and conceive their life experience in relation to it - and to many who just really love it, yes. For others, no.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Communication? Communication of information? Huh? For me those are largely if not wholly irrelevant to the appreciation and value of music.
> 
> Is music the most powerful art form? For people who relate to the world musically and conceive their life experience in relation to it - and to many who just really love it, yes. For others, no.


But it is very much relevant to the question asked, which was actually music in the broader context of other art forms.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

To me film is the most powerful. Combines both visual and aural. Soarin', the ride from Disneyland, combines even smell (oranges) when they fly over the orange groves, and physical feel on the ride. Soarin' is the highest form of art, combining 4 of the 5 senses.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> Idly musing on this, does anybody think that music's physical, aural presence and subsequent development over time give it the edge over the other arts, which are even more imaginative or internally processed? Music with Dance would also have such an effect of course. Painted art, whilst I love it, is too static in comparison to music for me, even with its physical presence and intellectual invitation.


I read somewhere that music is the art closest to God. But I have forgotten why.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

I believe that music, compared to other arts, best conveys or amplifies emotion. That's what makes it seem powerful. 

Is it the most powerful? Why does it matter if it is or it isn't, and how shall we measure the power?


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

*Yes*

Music has (or can have) an abstract purity which no other art form achieves. I think it is the strongest, most powerful art form, because it goes beyond the conscious mind.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I suspect that it is in part due to the abstract nature of music that it tends to be most powerful in communicating when it deigns to dip into worlds that are already somewhat familiar and known to us. The more esoteric its references, the less it connects with the listener. In general, authors don't write books in languages entirely unknown to the reader and expect the reader to figure it out.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

For me a resounding yes, and the best capacity that distinguishes humanity from the rest of animals is music making. The books are just a vessel for ideas not that the books themself are the art. The only competitor for music as a universal language is considered math, but math is dry, people who think math is the ultimate form of knowledge is the elaborate specimen of boredom. Music is the only form of art the impart the most immediate impact upon the pysche of all living things, scientifically it has been proven that music also influences the plants more even so the living creatures. 

Countless outstanding philosophers, writers and artists of all kinds of art also have been inspired by music, Roman Roland, Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler. Can anyone seriously imagine a world left without music but rich in all the other things?


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

No that would be television or the visual elements of film, the internet, or whatever other medium you choose to select.

I think music may have been the most powerful at one time but that time was several centuries ago. One reason classical music has declined so greatly since Shostakovich died 1975 is artists have moved to visual media which can be multimedia in presentation and include music.

As I have often postulated had Steven Spielberg been born 1850 instead of 1950 he'd have been a musician and written an opera of Moby Dick. Instead he made the film "Jaws" from a popular book.

I might add that just about any art form that can be seen has longer lasting value than those that cannot. Michelangelo's Pieta comes from the 15th century; what music goes back that far that is still revered? Same with architecture.

In his time Mozart's operas had the popularity of today's football games. Now football is the art form with that following.


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## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

Fabulin said:


> Music is the only art form whose creators are considered more or less wizards


Especially this one


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

It can certainly stir up some powerful arguments.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

larold said:


> I might add that just about any art form that can be seen has longer lasting value than those that cannot. Michelangelo's Pieta comes from the 15th century; *what music goes back that far that is still revered*?


The music of Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, and Josquin, among others.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

EdwardBast said:


> The music of Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, and Josquin, among others.


Gregorian chant is from the 9th century.

Trouvéres and Troubadours 11th-12th centuries

Leonin 12th century

Perotin 13th century

Guillaume Machaut is from the 14th century

The composers you listed are from the 15th century

And the _Pieta_ dates from 1498-99 the very end of the 15th century.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

This is a very subjective question, but as for me, yes, music is the most powerful!


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

Wrt staying power, I think the music that can hold a candle to Michelangelo is vanishingly small. The key point is that his Pieta has been revered for its artistry (maybe to a greater or lesser extent at different periods) ever since it was made.

Of the musical examples given, only Gregorian chant can boast that kind of continuity, and its continuity doesn't rest on artistic merit. All the others have been revived (or in the earlier cases, speculatively reconstructed) in very modern times after centuries of oblivion. 

Music composed about the same time as the Pieta was doing exceptionally well if it was still heard a century later. And its shelf-life in revived form can be measured in a few decades at best. Mozart and Beethoven have 'lasted' longer.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

What I find intriguing about music is a quality that it shares with dance and, to a lesser extent, with drama: its insubstantiality. At any given moment, the overwhelming majority of musical compositions do not exist in the form in which they are accessible as art to the average person. A painter produces paintings; an architect produces buildings; a sculptor produces physical sculpture. But a composer does not produce a sonata, or a symphony, or a concerto - the composer produces a score. It is inaccessible to the untrained eye as art; it must be "activated" and interpreted through the combined efforts of musicians and conductors. Only then does the work emerge as art. I say drama to a lesser extent, because a reasonably literate person can pick up a script and perceive the artistry, some more than others. I wonder if this "esoteric" nature of the musical "objet d'art" is where some of its power comes from. And I believe that I would be hard-pressed to choose which is more powerful: sacred music, or the cathedral in which it is presented.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Is Music the most powerful art form?

No. Not for one born deaf, especially.
Nor is painting, or literature, or sculpture, or dance, or theatre. And I'm a person of the theatre.

Just as a deaf person can not process the "power" of musical art, a blind person can not process the "power" of visual art.

Just as a powerful Chinese novel is meaningless to one who has no access to the Chinese language, the meaningfulness of, which may be termed "the power of", any work of art depends upon the recipient's capability of processing it. Some folks spend their lives in the study of music; for them music likely provides more "power" than do other art forms. Others spend their lives pursuing literature, or painting, or dance, or architecture ...; these others likely discern depths in their chosen arts of study that most of us on the outside can never even imagine.

So, the "power" of an art form depends upon its ability to communicate. Thus, I suggest that the most powerful art form is _communication_ itself. However this communication is perceived allows for a powerful art.

I wonder what Helen Keller may have answered to the question: Is Music the most powerful art form? Keller's writings reveal a unique intellect, but it remained her entire life one incapable of comprehending music or visual arts like painting or watercolor. But she certainly knew art. And she certainly felt its power. As can any human sensibility, though on its own terms.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I think this question is probably best answered by another question: what is the most powerful art form of the 21st century? Would anyone still say music? I doubt it.

Clearly the most powerful art form after Gutenberg was literature. Shakespeare, after five centuries, is still considered the greatest writer in history. He is still relevant in the 21st century.

Our time has diminished literature, music and other forms of art because of electronics -- a musical art form that started in the postwar era and flourished in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today classical music is an amalgam of styles and composers. Electronics have flourished in the 21st century and taken over arts. If you trace the decline of classical music it goes back to about the time of the invention of television. Radio, born several decades earlier, did not diminish classical music in any way, In fact it helped transmit it to new audiences. Television did that in its early days but soon thereafter abandoned it.

Now the Internet is the principal purveyor of art forms. Most of the classical music we concur today to be great works of art were borne several centuries ago.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I think so. At least for me it can stir emotions far more than art, dance, sculpture, poetry. As a stand alone art music has the widest range of expression in the arts as long as the listener is receptive. A great reading of the Tchaikovsky 6th can be thrilling and depressing just as much as a symphony by Silvestrov. It's when arts are combined that they work together to create even more potent forms, hence opera. That was Wagner's idea. But nowadays it's movies. A well made movie that combines great cinematography, acting, scene design, and yes - a great soundtrack - can be more powerful than anything else. Think political propaganda like Triumph of the Will.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

It is for me, and I suspect for most forum members - that's why we're here.

I've known people who get the same kind of experience from painting or dance that I get from music - experiences that are inaccessible to me, however much I may enjoy those art forms.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

I've been a theatergoer longer than I've been a classical music lover. Contrary to what someone said above, theatre - and other literature - convey more than information. At their best they convey insight into the human condition. Theatre in particular has offered me moments of catharsis that surpass those provided by any other art form. (Maybe opera could match it if it were in English. I don't speak any other language - my loss.)

I am often captivated by classical music - caught up by its power and beauty. But I am not as moved by it as I am by great theatre. Anything from _Medea_ to _The Three Sisters_ to Brian Friel's _Faith Healer_ (a favorite of mine).

Perhaps I am feeling this way right now, because this almost certainly the longest I've gone in my adult life without attending a live theatre performance. Music on my stereo is a pretty good substitute for a live concert. Theatre on Zoom is not.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

I attend to the art of dreams , and am these days not much stimulated by community . And so , awake
to an inclination of playing with a grand thump the big drum of the Earth .


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