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Fri 21 Jul, 2017 03:51 pm
What is music or what isn't music?
Some would say they know it when they hear it. Or do they?
Some say that it has to be produced by a sentient being, in other words, a person, that bird songs or whale songs are not music. Or is the origin irrelevant so long as the listener is sentient?
One definition of music in the Webster dictionary is: vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony. Under this definition someone beating rhythmically on a hollow log or drum, or a woodpecker tapping a tree rhythmically with its beak would constitute music.
Although each of these qualities of rhythm, melody, or harmony can define music on its own, it would be hard to imagine harmony existing without melody or melody existing without rhythm. Rhythm seems to be the only quality that can exist on its own.
So, what is music?
@coluber2001,
Music is like any art, it's all in the eye of the beholder.
I would be inclined to agree that music is generally any sort of sound that has rhythm, tone, harmony, melody, etc. The source is irrelevant.
@coluber2001,
coluber2001 wrote:
Some say that it has to be produced by a sentient being
Who says that?
Could you cite your source?
@chai2,
We discussed this subject on this site some years ago, and there were people--still active on the site--claiming that the source of the music had to be a human. That other animals, such as whales and birds, produce music not for aesthetics, but for signaling, therefore it wasn't really music. Something to that effect.
At any time rate there are still many questions about the separation of music and noise.
@coluber2001,
For instance, can ambient sound be in any way be considered music? John Cage sat in a concert hall over a piano, raised his hands and played nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. That was the name of the composition. What was he saying? Ambient sounds are music? The silence in between the notes is music? I think it may have been a misguided attempt to explain Zen, which he claimed to be an adherent of, which itself is misguided.
@coluber2001,
coluber2001 wrote:
At any time rate there are still many questions about the separation of music and noise.
Then I guess that's all subjective. I personally would call a good 95% of music as noise. Yes, that includes all the "but you just haven't listened to..." or "Hear, listen to (subject me to) this...." etc.
I can really identify with the idea that the real music is the silence between the sounds.
@chai2,
That reminds me of this Huxley quote:
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
Aldous Huxley, "Music at Night and Other Essays"
@coluber2001,
Culturally, I think some of the earliest music was probably used in religious rituals, because music, by its nature, is a religious or spiritual state of mind. It is also what poetry aims for. There is a close connection between music and all but the most conservative religions.
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