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from dictionary.com:

"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."


Of course, music is also the result of this art, that is, it is the "arrangement of sounds in time that produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."


More simply, is music just an arragement of sounds in time, regardless of structure?

More simply, is music just a pattern of sounds in time, regardless of naturalness or artificiality?


Once we can define what exactly music is, then we can discuss what makes "good" music vs. "bad" music, "meaningful" music and "crap" music.


There are a lot of folks who think that, for example, rap music is not music. Why? Is it not a pattern of sounds through time? (Of course, is the sound of a crystal glass shattering music in itself, simply because it is a pattern of sounds through time?)


There are some folks who think that classical music, by virtue of its complexity, is "pure", "good", "powerful", "moving" music, while pop music, by virtue of its simplicity, is "bad", "junk", "false" music. What makes classical music any more "musical" than pop music?


It's even been asserted quite recently in another thread that the injection of virtuosity into music during the end of the 18th Century / beginning of the 19th century (and up until modern times) "ruined classical music." What does this mean, and why is this so? Is virtuosic music not "good" or "correct" music, simply because it is so showy and elaborate? What makes baroque music so superior, and, as this argment might suggest, the only kind of "real" music?

PJ,

Good topic! Here's my take on it:

"Music is sound organized in such a way as to convey, through a physical medium, some idea which the Soul wishes to express."

One standard and widely accepted definition is that by Hoene Wronski: "The corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound."

And just to answer the most common thing that comes out of the Freshman's mouth who raises his hand in music history class when he first hears this:

No, the omission of emotion is not accidental. If you said "the corporealization of emotion...", it begs the question: "Which emotion?" As anyone with a passing knowledge of semiotics can tell you, emotions reside in the listener and are not objectively contained in the sound. So then our Freshman usually says something like "Well what about a definition like 'Organized sound that a human has an emotional reaction to...'." To that, one can bring up a baby crying or a wolf howling - both organized sounds that people have reactions to but which are not readily accepted as music.

That being said, when people say things like "rap isn't music," they mostly mean that rap doesn't sound good to them. Most people define music locally, for themselves. Chopin is music but Schoenberg isn't, Shaka-Khan is music but Shakuhachi isn't. What these people really want to do is make a distinction between what does and what doesn't measure up to their standard of something being good. This is the starting point for most of the debates in the Cultural Studies community on what constitutes "canon."

Hmm...okay I'll stop now. Is it obvious I've been preparing the syllabus and reading materials for my "Contemporary Issues in Arts and Culture" class?

The simplest I've ever heard it put is that it is "organized sound". Although that doesn't quite cut it, as there are plenty of aleatoric compositions out there that have no set organization... Even simply saying that music is "sound" may not be enough - take 4:33' for example.

It may be that music cannot be formally described - as once it has a formal description, someone will write something that breaks that description...

Interesting question.

That's like asking "what is Art."

The definition is beyond what we can describe in words.

That is exactly what I am asking.


As Saint-Saens said, "There is nothing more difficult than talking about music."

"Once we can define what exactly music is, then we can discuss what makes 'good' music vs. 'bad' music, 'meaningful' music and 'crap' music."

Any thing can be defined exactly as anything. But defining something as some thing tends to make the discussion rather artificially complex, or simply useless. We all have our own conception of 'music', and that's all we get (or at least the best we get, in my view). It doesn't stop us from pondering over the other questions, and discussing them in a meaningful way, though: rather on the contrary...

"What makes classical music any more 'musical' than pop music?"

Generally speaking... Pop music is like a story book written by somebody who had a very limited set of adjectives in his use, a bad habit of writing every paragraph four times in exactly the same way, an affinity for hackneyed subject matters, and no especial skill or inventiveness in handling his subject matter (almost anybody has the ability to write books like that)... Imagine the results? There is no way you could write Dostoevsky like that, or Mervyn Peake, or Lord Dunsany, or Shakespeare, or J.L Borges... or The Silmarillion... or Figures Of Earth... or Jurgen... or Fourth Mansions... or Not To Mention Camels...

What makes these books, writers, and their works 'better', then? Nothing really. They just have 'more' in them, and in a more distinctive form.

...Minimalism

A better question might be to ask: what is the limit of what one can call music? before it becomes noise, or instead perhaps "rhythm". I've always considered serial music for instance to be more math than music, especially total serialism. I would consider some types of minimalism to be more "experimental" than music (ie "Dripsody", if anyone has heard it).

In fact alot of contemporary might come closer to "audio engineering" than anything, playing with limitations and extremes within the realm of the sonic spectrum rather than making a decisive attempt to "make music".

One of the quotes in my siggy sort of pertains to this topic.

The general definition that I was taught was that music is the organization and performance of silences and sounds.

Perhaps a definition of music could be "an art form in which the medium is sound". Such a sterile definition for the richness that is music... I almost prefer no definition at all - music is music, you just know what it is...

I wouldn't call pop music junk, but one thing that differs it from classical music is its banality. Pop music most strongly impacts our social emotions, i.e. the unspoken feelings between a boy and girl and the manifestation of it through the listener, along with personal experiences and beliefs; add some more variety with different beats and conpicuously different sounds mixed in.

As for classical music, i wouldnt associate it with pure or good because thats too subjective to determine. However, classical cognitively provokes more than pop music. It is justified in studies about connections between human intellect and classical music. It also appeals to us more universally with more freedom. You can interpret it however you want with no standards to go by like words already given to you in a pop/rap song. Therefore, it can never be narrowed down to a complete solution or criticism pertaining to our feelings. The sound we hear when we listen to a piece strikes us more on different levels than just contentment of our ears and mind, even if we dont notice it.

It's similar to the dilemma of the question "What is emotions"? Is it really just a bunch of neurochemical reactions to product effects of what we call emotion or is it beyond the physiology?

There is no fine line in understanding what is "good" or "bad" etc. We should really understand ourselves more extensively before being able to judge music in this degree, as music does not affect us all in the same way.

My favorite definition of music is by Ives, who definies it by saying what it's not: "Recreation for the ears."

Messiaen > Sissies

That which asks the question "what is anything" is, itself, the question. In order to ask any question, you, yourself, must already be in the form of question, which is already a state of dilemma. No words will, in and of themselves, solve this; therefore, no "answer" will satisfy. It is only in the undoing of the question, the sensation of dilemma, that will provide the feeling of "answer" - for it is finally beyond the mind, in feeling, in the heart-space, that all dilemma is gone beyond. Perhaps one of the things which can be said about music is that this is what it can do, what it can unlock, even if only conditionally and temporarily. That is what it "is". Defining abstractly is a poor substitute for the experience, itself, which is entirely subjective and, we must guess, slightly or vastly different from person to person.

If pressed, I might say that music is a succession of sounds that has the power to move our bodily energy in some specific way (and even many different ways during the course of a piece): down to the ground, through the energy-centers of the lower part of the body, as with the use of any kind of drumming; all the way to the ethereal music of ascent out of the body through the energy-centers of the head, as in the case of music like that of, say, Palestrina. Just to use some random examples. And so much music is hard to categorize in such a way, since composers generally just write what they hear, without any intention along any of these lines.

But again...words words words. If we have the need to define music, there is already something going on. The "answer" is in the listening, in the moment of the living participation with the sound, in whatever capacity, on whatever level(s) of perception, to the point of absolute ecstasy and forgetting of yourself entirely. It is only in that realm, in that possibility, that the question is truly undone.

Good post.

Exactly - and the definition is constantly morphing, and what one would consider art (or music) now wouldn't be 200 years ago.

Which brings me to a favorite quote: " There are no absolutes." I agree with your point, the abstract ways people try to define music. It's human nature to want to deduce anything we noticed present in this world. So we try to narrow it down for our own sake of knowledge.

However, i don't go along with the transcendentalism associated with music...not anymore. As i study more and more about neurology, the more objective everything seems. I believe it is in our minds. Beyond logical implications, we have emotions for music and how it bounces off us when we hear it. That alone isn't segregated from the brain, it's just a more complex input that it processes, a more deeper transmission in our limbic system or god knows what else it involves.

Great topic. I'm only going to add a link to an amazing book that can really turn your ideas of what music is and where it comes from, upside down:

The Mysticism of Sound and Music

It's not "religious mumbo-jumbo" or anything like that, although it may appear as such. I highly recommend it. It's one of those books you'll continue to go back to for more insight.

-Paul

Which brings me to a favorite quote: " There are no absolutes."

The problem with that statement is that it, itself, is an absolute. It cannot be true, because if it's true, it's false. It cannot be the case that there are absolutely no absolutes. Goshdarn duality. But I do subscribe to the notion that there is a Transcendental Realm, one in which all duality is gone beyond, but which, paradoxically, contains all dualities. That is the only "thing" that can truly be called absolute, and "it" is, finally, not something that one can wrap the mind around, because it is inherently beyond that limitation (and even all limitation).