How to define music has long been the subject of debate; philosophers, musicians, and, more recently, various social and natural scientists have argued about what constitutes music Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses.". The definition has varied through history, in different regions, and within societies. Definitions A definition is a passage that explains the meaning of a term , or a type of thing. The term to be defined is the definiendum (plural definienda). A term may have many different senses or meanings. For each such specific sense, a definiens (plural definientia) is a cluster of words that defines it vary as music, like art Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, is a subjectively perceived phenomenon. Its definition has been tackled by philosophers of art Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical, lexicographers General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary. Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized, composers A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media[clarification needed]. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright[specify] and the, music critics Music journalism is criticism and reportage about music. It began in the eighteenth century as comment on what is now thought of as 'classical music'. This aspect of music journalism, today often referred to as music criticism , comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music and its performance. Modern art music, musicians, semioticians In linguistics, semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, signs and symbols. It is usually divided into the three following branches: or semiologists, linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words, sociologists, and neurologists. Music may be defined according to various criteria including organization, pleasantness, intent, social construction, perceptual processes and engagement, universal aspects or family resemblances, and through contrast or negative definition.
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Etymology
The word music comes from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of mousikê (tekhnê) by way of the Latin musica. It is ultimately derived from mousa, the Greek word for muse The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths. In ancient Greece, the word mousike was used to mean any of the arts or sciences governed by the Muses. Later, in Rome, ars musica embraced poetry Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns, lyrics, or prose poetry. It is published in dedicated magazines ( as well as instrument-oriented music. In the European Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in, musica was part of the mathematical quadrivium The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads": the completion of the liberal arts. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium: arithmetics Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers. In common usage, it refers to the simpler properties when, geometry Geometry "Earth-measuring" is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes, in the 3rd century BC geometry was put into an axiomatic form by, astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe and musica. The concept of musica was split into three major kinds by the fifth century philosopher, Boethius: musica universalis, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses". Of those, only the last—musica instrumentalis—referred to music as performed sound.
Musica universalis or musica mundana referred to the order of the universe The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all physical matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, although this usage may differ with the context . The term Universe may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos,, as God God is the English name given to the singular omnipotent being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism had created it in "measure, number and weight". The proportions of the spheres A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point. This distance r is known as the radius of the sphere. The of the planets and stars (which at the time were still thought to revolve around the earth) were perceived as a form of music, without necessarily implying that any sound Sound is a travelling wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations would be heard—music refers strictly to the mathematical proportions. From this concept later resulted the romantic idea of a music of the spheres. Musica humana, designated the proportions of the human body The human body is the entire structure of a human organism, and consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs. By the time the human reaches adulthood, the body consists of close to 50 trillion cells, the basic unit of life. These cells are organised biologically to eventually form the whole body. These were thought to reflect the proportions of the Heavens and as such, to be an expression of God's greatness. To Medieval thinking, all things were connected with each other—a mode of thought that finds its traces today in the occult sciences or esoteric thought—ranging from astrology Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs and other "earthly" matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer. Astrologers believe that the movements and positions of to believing certain minerals A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance that is formed through geological processes and that has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not have a specific chemical composition have certain beneficiary effects.
Musica instrumentalis, finally, was the lowliest of the three disciplines and referred to the manifestation of those same mathematical proportions in sound—be it sung or played on instruments. The polyphonic organization of different melodies to sound at the same time was still a relatively new invention then, and it is understandable that the mathematical or physical relationships in frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency. Loosely speaking, 1 year is the period of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the Earth's rotation on its axis has that give rise to the musical intervals as we hear them, should be foremost among the preoccupations of Medieval musicians.
Translations
The languages of many cultures do not include a word for or that would be translated as music. Inuit The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Denmark, Russia and the United States. The Inuit language is grouped under Eskimo-Aleut languages. An Inuk is an Inuit man or person and most North American Indian languages do not have a general term for music. Among the Aztecs The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology, the ancient Mexican In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory, which was administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain which would eventually become Mexico theory of rhetorics, poetry, dance, and instrumental music, used the Nahuatl Nahuatl (Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaː.watɬ] , with stress on the first syllable) is a group of related languages and dialects of the Nahuan (traditionally called "Aztecan") branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Collectively they are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico. All Nahuan term In xochitl-in kwikatl to refer a complex mix of music and other poetic verbal and non-verbal elements, and reserve the word Kwikakayotl (or cuicacayotl) only for the sung expressions (Leon-Portilla 2007, 11). In Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population there is no term for music in Tiv Tiv are an ethno-linguistic group or ethnic nation in West Africa. They constitute approximately 2.5% of Nigeria's total population, and number over 5.6 million individuals throughout Nigeria and Cameroon. The Tiv's traditional language is spoken by over 6 million people in Nigeria, with a few speakers in Cameroon. Most of the language's Nigerian, Yoruba Yorùbá is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the approximately 30 million Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil, Sierra Leone (where it is called Oku), northern Ghana (where it is spoken by urban, Igbo The Igbo language is a tonal language spoken by over 25 million people who are primarily of Igbo descent. In southeastern Nigeria and parts of the Niger Delta, Igbo is spoken natively. The language was used by John Goldsmith as an example to justify deviating from the classical linear model[clarification needed] of phonology as laid out in The, Efik Ibibio, Annang, Igbo, Ijaw, and Ejagham, Birom, Hausa Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more, Idoma The Idoma are an ethno-linguistic group that primarily inhabit lower and western areas of Benue State, Nigeria, and kindred groups can be found in Cross Rivers and Nasarawa States in Nigeria. Idoma is classified in the Akweya subgroup of the Idomoid languages of the Volta-Niger family. The Akweya subgroup is closely related to the Yatye-Akpa sub-, Eggon or Jarawa. Many other languages have terms which only partly cover what Europeans mean by the term music (Schafer). The Mapuche The Mapuche are one of the indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. Historically Mapuches were known as Araucanians by the Spaniards. This is now considered pejorative by some people. Mapuche make up about 4% of the Chilean population, who are particularly concentrated in the Araucania Region of Argentina The Argentine claims in Antarctica along with the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands (administered by the United Kingdom) shown in light green do not have a word for music, but they do have words for instrumental versus improvised forms (kantun), European and non-Mapuche music (kantun winka), ceremonial songs (öl), and tayil (Robertson 1976, 39).
Some languages in West Africa have no term for music but the speakers do have the concept (Nettl 1989,[citation needed]). Musiqi is the Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically word for the science and art of music, muzik being the sound and performance of music (Sakata 1983,[citation needed]), though some things European influenced listeners would include, such as Quran The Qur’an is the central religious verbal text of Islam, also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, Qur’ān, or Al-Qur’ān. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the verbal book of divine guidance and direction for mankind. Muslims also consider the original Arabic verbal text to be the final revelation of God chanting, are excluded. Actually, there are varying degrees of "musicness"; Quran chanting and Adhan The adhān is the Islamic call to prayer, recited by the muezzin. The root of the word is ʼḏn أَذَن meaning "to permit", and another derivative of this word is uḏun, meaning "ear" is not considered music, but classical improvised song, classical instrumental metric composition, and popular dance music are.
However, most Indian languages have specific words that mean music or in some way denote it, for example 'Sangeeth' in Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers spoken in northern and central India, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, and Suriname. Standard Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, the official language of the and 'Sangeetham' in Malayalam Malayalam (മലയാളം malayāḷam, pronounced [mɐləjaːɭɐm]) is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Mahé. It is spoken by 35.9 million people. Malayalam is also both mean music.
Definitions
Organized sound
An often-cited definition of music, coined by Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States, is that it is "organized sound" (Goldman 1961, 133). The fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes that "while there are no sounds that can be described as inherently unmusical, musicians in each culture have tended to restrict the range of sounds they will admit."
"Organization" also seems necessary because it implies purposeful and thus human organization.[citation needed] This human organizing element seems crucial to the common understanding of music. Sounds produced by non-human agents, such as waterfalls or birds, are often described as "musical", but rarely as "music". See zoomusicology Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology or more specifically, zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of animals, or rather the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals.
Additionally, Schaeffer (1968, 284) describes that the sound of classical music "has decays; it is granular; it has attacks; it fluctuates, swollen with impurities—and all this creates a musicality that comes before any 'cultural' musicality." Yet the definition according to the esthesic level does not allow that the sounds of classical music are complex, are noises, rather they are regular, periodic, even, musical sounds. Nattiez (1990, 47—48): "My own position can be summarized in the following terms: just as music is whatever people choose to recognize as such, noise is whatever is recognized as disturbing, unpleasant, or both." (see "music as social construct" below)
Language
Main article: Musical languageMany definitions of music implicitly hold that music is a communicative activity which conveys to the listener moods, emotions, thoughts, impressions, or philosophical, sexual, or political concepts or positions. "Musical language" may be used to mean style or genre, while music may be treated as language without being called such, as in Fred Lerdahl or others' analysis of musical grammar. Levi R. Bryant defines music not as a language, but as a marked-based, problem-solving method such as mathematics (Ashby 2004, 4).
Subjective experience
Main article: Aesthetics of music Traditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment of music. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy, however, many musicians, music critics, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music. The origin of this philosophic sub-discipline isThis view of music is most heavily criticized by proponents of the view that music is a social construction (directly below), defined in opposition to "unpleasant" "noise", though this view may be subsumed in the one below in that a listener's idea of pleasant sounds may be considered socially constructed. A subjective definition of music need not, however, be limited to traditional ideas of music as pleasant or melodious. This approach to the definition focuses not on the construction but on the experience of music. Thus, music could include "found" sound structures—produced by natural phenomena or algorithms—as long as they are interpreted by means of the aesthetic cognitive processes involved in music appreciation. This approach permits the boundary between music and noise to change over time as the conventions of musical interpretation evolve within a culture, to be different in different cultures at any given moment, and to vary from person to person according to their experience and proclivities. It is further consistent with the subjective reality that even what would commonly be considered music is experienced as nonmusic if the mind is concentrating on other matters and thus not perceiving the sound's essence as music (Clifton 1983, 9).
See also: extreme musicSocial construct
Main article: Ethnomusicology Coined by Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike (music), it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music. Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of "people making music." Although it is often thought of as a study of non-Western musics, ethnomusicology also includes the study ofPost-modern Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus and other theories argue that, like all art, music is defined primarily by social The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms . It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary context. According to this view, music is what people call music, whether it is a period of silence, found sounds, or performance. Cage, Kagel, Schnebel, and others, according to Nattiez (1987, 43), "perceive [certain of their pieces] (even if they do not say so publicly) as a way of "speaking" in music about music, in the second degree, as it were, to expose or denounce the institutional aspect of music's functioning."Cultural background is a factor in determining music from noise or unpleasant experiences. The experience of only being exposed to a particular type of music influences perception of any music. Cultures of European descent are largely influenced by music making use of the Diatonic scale.
It might be added that as well as cultural background, historical era is also a determining factor in what is regarded as music. What would today be accepted as music in the west without the blinking of an eye, would have been ridiculed in the 17th century. would almost certainly not have been music to William Congreve, who wrote that, "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Beast" (The Mourning Bride, 1697). Many people do, however, share a general idea of music. The Websters definition of music is a typical example: "the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity" (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, online edition). There are a number of potential objections to such a definition.
The composer John Cage challenged traditional ideas about music in his 4' 33", which is notated as three movements, each marked Tacet (that is, "do not play").
Musical universals
Main article: Aspect of musicOften a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition (see Definition of music#Musical universals). However, in addition to a lack of consensus, Jean Molino (1975, 43) also points out that "any element belonging to the total musical fact can be isolated, or taken as a strategic variable of musical production." Nattiez gives as examples Mauricio Kagel's Con Voce [with voice], where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments.
Following Wittgenstein, cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch proposes that categories are not clean cut but that something may be more or less a member of a category (Rosch 1973, 328). As such the search for musical universals would fail and would not provide one with a valid definition (Levitin 2006, 136–39).
Specific definitions
Clifton
In his 1983 book, Music as Heard, which sets out from the phenomenological position of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricœur, Thomas Clifton defines music as "an ordered arrangement of sounds and silences whose meaning is presentative rather than denotative. . . . This definition distinguishes music, as an end in itself, from compositional technique, and from sounds as purely physical objects." More precisely, "music is the actualization of the possibility of any sound whatever to present to some human being a meaning which he experiences with his body—that is to say, with his mind, his feelings, his senses, his will, and his metabolism" (Clifton 1983, 1). It is therefore "a certain reciprocal relation established between a person, his behavior, and a sounding object" (Clifton 1983, 10).
Clifton accordingly differentiates music from nonmusic on the basis of the human behavior involved, rather than on either the nature of compositional technique or of sounds as purely physical objects. Consequently, the distinction becomes a question of what is meant by musical behavior: "a musically behaving person is one whose very being is absorbed in the significance of the sounds being experienced." However, "It is not altogether accurate to say that this person is listening to the sounds. First, the person is doing more than listening: he is perceiving, interpreting, judging, and feeling. Second, the preposition 'to' puts too much stress on the sounds as such. Thus, the musically behaving person experiences musical significance by means of, or through, the sounds" (Clifton 1983, 2).
In this framework, Clifton finds that there are two things that separate music from nonmusic: (1) musical meaning is presentative, and (2) music and nonmusic are distinguished in the idea of personal involvement. "It is the notion of personal involvement which lends significance to the word ordered in this definition of music" (Clifton 1983, 3–4). This is not to be understood, however, as a sanctification of extreme relativism, since "it is precisely the 'subjective' aspect of experience which lured many writers earlier in this century down the path of sheer opinion-mongering. Later on this trend was reversed by a renewed interest in 'objective,' scientific, or otherwise nonintrospective musical analysis. But we have good reason to believe that a musical experience is not a purely private thing, like seeing pink elephants, and that reporting about such an experience need not be subjective in the sense of it being a mere matter of opinion" (Clifton 1983, 8–9).
Clifton's task, then, is to describe musical experience and the objects of this experience which, together, are called "phenomena," and the activity of describing phenomena is called "phenomenology" (Clifton 1983, 9). It is important to stress that this definition of music says nothing about aesthetic standards.
Music is not a fact or a thing in the world, but a meaning constituted by human beings. . . . To talk about such experience in a meaningful way demands several things. First, we have to be willing to let the composition speak to us, to let it reveal its own order and significance. . . . Second, we have to be willing to question our assumptions about the nature and role of musical materials. . . . Last, and perhaps most important, we have to be ready to admit that describing a meaningful experience is itself meaningful. (Clifton 1983, 5–6)
Nattiez
"Music, often an art/entertainment, is a total social fact whose definitions vary according to era and culture," according to Jean Molino (1975, 37). It is often contrasted with noise. According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez: "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be" (Nattiez 1990, 47–8 and 55). Given the above demonstration that "there is no limit to the number or the genre of variables that might intervene in a definition of the musical," (Molino, 1987, 42)[citation needed] an organization of definitions and elements is necessary.
Nattiez (1990, 17; see sign (semiotics)) describes definitions according to a tripartite semiological scheme similar to the following:
| Poietic Process | Esthesic Process | |||
| Composer (Producer) | → | Sound (Trace) | ← | Listener (Receiver) |
There are three levels of description, the poietic, the neutral, and the esthesic:
- " By 'poietic' I understand describing the link among the composer's intentions, his creative procedures, his mental schemas, and the result of this collection of strategies; that is, the components that go into the work's material embodiment. Poietic description thus also deals with a quite special form of hearing (Varese called it 'the interior ear'): what the composer hears while imagining the work's sonorous results, or while experimenting at the piano, or with tape."
- "By 'esthesic' I understand not merely the artificially attentive hearing of a musicologist, but the description of perceptive behaviors within a given population of listeners; that is how this or that aspect of sonorous reality is captured by their perceptive strategies." (Nattiez 1990, 90)
- The neutral level is that of the physical "trace", (Saussere's sound-image, a sonority, a score), created and interpreted by the esthesic level (which corresponds to a perceptive definition; the perceptive and/or "social" construction definitions below) and the poietic level (which corresponds to a creative, as in compositional, definition; the organizational and social construction definitions below).
Table describing types of definitions of music (Nattiez 1990, 46):
| poietic level (choice of the composer) | neutral level (physical definition) | esthesic level (perceptive judgment) | |
| music | musical sound | sound of the harmonic spectrum | agreeable sound |
| nonmusic | noise (nonmusical) | noise (complex sound) | disagreeable noise |
Because of this range of definitions, the study of music comes in a wide variety of forms. There is the study of sound and vibration or acoustics, the cognitive study of music, the study of music theory and performance practice or music theory and ethnomusicology and the study of the reception and history of music, generally called musicology.
Xenakis
Composer Iannis Xenakis in "Towards a Metamusic" (chapter 7 of Xenakis 1971) defined music in the following way:
- It is a sort of comportment necessary for whoever thinks it and makes it.
- It is an individual pleroma, a realization.
- It is a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities (cosmological, philosophical, . . . , arguments)
- It is normative, that is, unconsciously it is a model for being or for doing by sympathetic drive.
- It is catalytic: its mere presence permits internal psychic or mental transformations in the same way as the crystal ball of the hypnotist.
- It is the gratuitous play of a child.
- It is a mystical (but atheistic) asceticism. Consequently expressions of sadness, joy, love and dramatic situations are only very limited particular instances.
(Xenakis 1971, 181)
Sources
- Ashby, Arved, ed. 2004. The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology. Eastman Studies in Music 29. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
- Clifton, Thomas. 1983. Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02091-0
- Goldman, Richard Franko. 1961. “Varèse: Ionisation; Density 21.5; Intégrales; Octandre; Hyperprism; Poème Electronique. Instrumentalists, cond. Robert Craft. Columbia MS 6146 (stereeo)” (in Reviews of Records). Musical Quarterly 47, no. 1. (January):133–34.
- Leon-Portilla, Miguel. 2007. "La música de los aztecas / Music Among Aztecs", Pauta, no. 103:7–19.
- Levitin, Daniel J. 2006. This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0525949690.
- List, George. 1985. "Hopi Melodic Concepts". Journal of the American Musicological Society 38, no. 1 (Spring): 143–52.
- Molino, Jean. 1975. "Fait musical et sémiologue de la musique", Musique en Jeu, no. 17:37–62.
- Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. 1990. Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music . Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09136-6.
- Nettl, Bruno. 1989. Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives. Ohio: The Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-370-2
- Robertson-De Carbo, C. E. 1976. "Tayil as Category and Communication among the Argentine Mapuche: A Methodological Suggestion", Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 8:35–42.
- Rosch, Eleanor. 1973. "Natural Categories". Cognitive Psychology 4, no. 3 (May): 328–50.
- Sakata, Lorraine. 1983. Music in the Mind, The Concepts of Music and Musicians in Afghanistan. Kent: Kent State University Press.
- Schafer, R. Murray. 1996. "Music and the Soundscape," in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music: A Continuing Symposium, edited by Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby, with Matthew Santa. New York: Schirmer Books; London: Prentice Hall International. ISBN 0-02-864581-2 (pbk)
- Xenakis, Iannis. 1971. Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.
See also
External links
| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Definition of music |
- What is Music? A brief sketch of some definitions found throughout history by Marcel Cobussen
- MusicNovatory.com The Science of Music, a generative music theory
Categories: Music | Philosophy of music | Semantics
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Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:06 GMT+00:00
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Asked by the_egale2000 - Sat Jul 12 11:14:13 2008 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments
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Answered by Jenny D - Tue Jul 15 02:09:31 2008


