Definition of the word music

Music is a form of art that uses sound organised in time. Music is also a form of entertainment that puts sounds together in a way that people like, find interesting or dance to. Most music includes people singing with their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, drums or violin.

The word music comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means «(art) of the Muses». In Ancient Greece the Muses included the goddesses of music, poetry, art, and dance. Someone who makes music is known as a musician.

Definition of music[change | change source]

Music is sound that has been organized by using rhythm, melody or harmony. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person bangs saucepans or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music.

There are four things which music has most of the time:

• Music often has pitch. This means high and low notes. Tunes are made of notes that go up or down or stay on the same pitch.
• Music often has rhythm. Rhythm is the way the musical sounds and silences are put together in a sequence. Every tune has a rhythm that can be tapped. Music usually has a regular beat.
• Music often has dynamics. This means whether it is quiet or loud or somewhere in between.
• Music often has timbre. This is a French word (pronounced: «TAM-br»). The «timbre» of a sound is the way that a sound is interesting. The sort of sound might be harsh, gentle, dry, warm, or something else. Timbre is what makes a clarinet sound different from an oboe, and what makes one person’s voice sound different from another person.

Definitions[change | change source]

There is no simple definition of music which covers all cases. It is an art form, and opinions come into play. Music is whatever people think is music. A different approach is to list the qualities music must have, such as, sound which has rhythm, melody, pitch, timbre, etc.

These and other attempts, do not capture all aspects of music, or leave out examples which definitely are music. Music is a special shared relationship between a person, the persons behavior, and a sounding object.^[1]p10 Musical experience and the music, together, are called phenomena, and the activity of describing phenomena is called phenomenology.

History[change | change source]

Even in the stone age people made music. The first music was probably made trying to imitate sounds and rhythms that occurred naturally. Human music may echo these phenomena using patterns, repetition and tonality. This kind of music is still here today. Shamans sometimes imitate sounds that are heard in nature.^[2][3] It may also serve as entertainment (games),^[4][5] or have practical uses, like attracting animals when hunting.^[4]

Some animals also can use music. Songbirds use song to protect their territory, or to attract a mate. Monkeys have been seen beating hollow logs. This may, of course, also serve to defend the territory.

The first musical instrument used by humans was probably the voice. The human voice can make many different kinds of sounds. The larynx (voice box) is like a wind instrument.

The oldest known Neanderthal hyoid bone with the modern human form was found in 1983,^[6] indicating that the Neanderthals had language, because the hyoid supports the voice box in the human throat.^[7]

Most likely the first rhythm instruments or percussion instruments involved the clapping of hands, stones hit together, or other things that are useful to keep a beat. There are finds of this type that date back to the paleolithic. Some of these are ambiguous, as they can be used either as a tool or a musical instrument.^[8]

The first flutes[change | change source]

The oldest flute ever discovered may be the Divje Babe flute, found in the Slovenian cave Divje Babe I in 1995. It is not certain that it is really a flute.^[9] The item in question is a piece of the femur of a young cave bear, and is about 43,000 years old.^[10][11] However, whether it is a musical instrument or just a bone that got chewed on is an ongoing debate.^[9]

In 2008, archaeologists discovered a bone flute in the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, Germany.^[12][13] The five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone. The discovery is the oldest confirmed find of any musical instrument in history.^[14] Other flutes were also found in the cave. This flute was found next to the Venus of Hohle Fels and a short distance from the oldest known human carving.^[15] When they announced their discovery in 2009, the scientists suggested that the find showed that there was a well-established musical tradition when humans colonized Europe.^[16]

The oldest known wooden pipes were discovered near Greystones, Ireland, in 2004. A wood-lined pit contained a group of six flutes made from yew wood, between 30 and 50 cm long, tapered at one end, but without any finger holes. They may once have been strapped together.^[17]

In 1986 several bone flutes were found in Jiahu in Henan Province, China. They date to about 6,000 BC. They have between 5 and 8 holes each and were made from the hollow bones of a bird, the Red-crowned Crane. At the time of the discovery, one was still playable. The bone flute plays both the five- or seven-note scale of Xia Zhi and six-note scale of Qing Shang of the ancient Chinese musical system.

Ancient times[change | change source]

It is not known what the earliest human music was like. Some architecture and paintings are thousands of years old, but old music could not survive until people learned to write it down. The only way we can guess about early music is by looking at very old paintings that show people playing musical instruments, or by finding instruments in archaeological digs (digging underground to find old things). The earliest piece of music that was ever written down and that has not been lost was discovered on a tablet written in Hurrian, a language spoken in and around northern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today), from about 1500 BC. ^[18]

Middle Ages[change | change source]

Another surviving piece of early written music was a round called Sumer Is Icumen In. It was written down by a monk around the year 1250. Much of the music in the Middle Ages (roughly 450-1420) was folk music played by working people who wanted to sing or dance. When people played instruments, they were usually playing for dancers. However, most of the music that was written down was for the Catholic church. This music was written for monks to sing in church. It is called Chant (or Gregorian chant).

Renaissance[change | change source]

In the Renaissance (roughly 1400–1550) there was a lot of music, and many composers wrote music that has survived so that it can be performed, played or sung today. Many new types of art and music was made during this time.

Some music was written for use in church services (sacred music) by the Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina (1525–1594). In Palestrina’s music, many singers sing together (this is called a choir). There was also plenty of music not written for the church, such as happy dance music and romantic love songs. Popular instruments during the Renaissance included the viols (a string instrument played with a bow), lutes (a plucked stringed instrument that is a little like a guitar), and the virginal, a small, quiet keyboard instrument.

Baroque[change | change source]

The Baroque (roughly 1600–1740) was a Western cultural era. It emphasised drama and splendor in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music.^[19] In music, the term ‘Baroque’ applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The upper class also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. In similar profusions of detail, art, music, architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns. Some traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque art.

The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun «barroco»^[20] which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is «elaborate», with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Classical period[change | change source]

In western music, the classical period means music from about 1750 to 1825. It was the time of composers like Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Orchestras became bigger, and composers often wrote longer pieces of music called symphonies that had several sections (called movements). Some movements of a symphony were loud and fast; other movements were quiet and sad. The form of a piece of music was very important at this time. Music had to have a nice ‘shape’. They often used a structure which was called sonata form.

Another important type of music was the string quartet, which is a piece of music written for two violins, a viola, and a violoncello. Like symphonies, string quartet music had several sections. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven each wrote many famous string quartets.

The piano was invented during this time. Composers liked the piano, because it could be used to play dynamics (getting louder or getting softer). Other popular instruments included the violin, the violoncello, the flute, the clarinet, and the oboe.

Romantic period[change | change source]

The 19th century is called the Romantic period. Composers were particularly interested in conveying their emotions through music. An important instrument from the Romantic period was the piano. Some composers, such as Frederic Chopin wrote subdued, expressive, quietly emotional piano pieces. Often music described a feeling or told a story using sounds. Other composers, such as Franz Schubert wrote songs for a singer and a piano player called Lied (the German word for «song»). These Lieder (plural of Lied) told stories by using the lyrics (words) of the song and by the imaginative piano accompaniments. Other composers, like Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt created narratives and told stories using only music, which is called a tone poem. Composers, such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms used the piano to play loud, dramatic, strongly emotional music.

Many composers began writing music for bigger orchestras, with as many as 100 instruments. It was the period of «Nationalism» (the feeling of being proud of one’s country) when many composers made music using folksong or melodies from their country. Lots of famous composers lived at this time such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner.

Modern times[change | change source]

From about 1900 onwards is called the «modern period». Many 20th century composers wanted to compose music that sounded different from the Classical and Romantic music. Modern composers searched for new ideas, such as using new instruments, different forms, different sounds, or different harmonies.

The composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) wrote pieces which were atonal (meaning that they did not sound as if they were in any clear musical key). Later, Schoenberg invented a new system for writing music called twelve-tone system. Music written with the twelve-tone system sounds strange to some, but is mathematical in nature, often making sense only after careful study. Pure twelve-tone music was popular among academics in the fifties and sixties, but some composers such as Benjamin Britten use it today, when it is necessary to get a certain feel.

One of the most important 20th-century composers, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), wrote music with very complicated (difficult) chords (groups of notes that are played together) and rhythms. Some composers thought music was getting too complicated and so they wrote Minimalist pieces which use very simple ideas. In the 1950s and 1960s, composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented with electronic music, using electronic circuits, amplifiers and loudspeakers. In the 1970s, composers began using electronic synthesizers and musical instruments from rock and roll music, such as the electric guitar. They used these new instruments to make new sounds.

Composers writing in the 1990s and the 2000s, such as John Adams (born 1947) and James MacMillan (born 1959) often use a mixture of all these ideas, but they like to write tonal music with easy tunes as well.

Electronic music[change | change source]

Music can be produced electronically. This is most commonly done by computers, keyboards, electric guitars and disk tables. They can mimic traditional instruments, and also produce very different sounds. 21st-century electronic music is commonly made with computer programs and hardware mixers.

Jazz[change | change source]

Jazz is a type of music that was invented around 1900 in New Orleans in the south of the USA. There were many black musicians living there who played a style of music called blues music. Blues music was influenced by African music (because the black people in the United States had come to the United States as slaves. They were taken from Africa by force). Blues music was a music that was played by singing, using the harmonica, or the acoustic guitar. Many blues songs had sad lyrics about sad emotions (feelings) or sad experiences, such as losing a job, a family member dying, or having to go to jail (prison).

Jazz music mixed together blues music with European music. Some black composers such as Scott Joplin were writing music called ragtime, which had a very different rhythm from standard European music, but used notes that were similar to some European music. Ragtime was a big influence on early jazz, called Dixieland jazz. Jazz musicians used instruments such as the trumpet, saxophone, and clarinet were used for the tunes (melodies), drums for percussion and plucked double bass, piano, banjo and guitar for the background rhythm (rhythmic section). Jazz is usually improvised: the players make up (invent) the music as they play. Even though jazz musicians are making up the music, jazz music still has rules; the musicians play a series of chords (groups of notes) in order.

Jazz music has a swinging rhythm. The word «swing» is hard to explain. For a rhythm to be a «swinging rhythm» it has to feel natural and relaxed. Swing rhythm is not even like a march. There is a long-short feel instead of a same-same feel. A «swinging rhythm» also gets the people who are listening excited, because they like the sound of it. Some people say that a «swinging rhythm» happens when all the jazz musicians start to feel the same pulse and energy from the song. If a jazz band plays very well together, people will say «that is a swinging jazz band» or «that band really swings well.»

Jazz influenced other types of music like the Western art music from the 1920s and 1930s. Art music composers such as George Gershwin wrote music that was influenced by jazz. Jazz music influenced pop music songs. In the 1930s and 1940s, many pop music songs began using chords or melodies from jazz songs. One of the best known jazz musicians was Louis Armstrong (1900–1971).

Pop music[change | change source]

«Pop» music is a type of popular music that many people like to listen to. The term «pop music» can be used for all kinds of music that was written to be popular. The word «pop music» was used from about 1880 onwards, when a type of music called music was popular.

Modern pop music grew out of 1950’s rock and roll, (for example Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard)^[21] and rockabilly (for example Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly).^[22] In the 1960s, The Beatles became a famous pop music group.^[23] In the 1970s, other styles of music were mixed with pop music, such as funk and soul music. Pop music generally has a heavy (strong) beat, so that it is good for dancing. Pop singers normally sing with microphones that are plugged into an amplifier and a loudspeaker.

Musical notation[change | change source]

«Musical notation» is the way music is written down. Music needs to be written down in order to be saved and remembered for future performances. In this way composers (people who write music) can tell others how to play the musical piece as it was meant to be played.

Solfège[change | change source]

Solfège (sometimes called solfa) is the way tones are named. It was made in order to give a name to the several tones and pitches. For example, the eight basic notes «Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do» are just the names of the eight notes that confirm the major scale.

Written music[change | change source]

Music can be written in several ways. When it is written on a staff (like in the example shown), the pitches (tones) and their duration are represented by symbols called notes. Notes are put on the lines and in the spaces between the lines. Each position says which tone must be played. The higher the note is on the staff, the higher the pitch of the tone. The lower the notes are, the lower the pitch. The duration of the notes (how long they are played for) is shown by making the note «heads» black or white, and by giving them stems and flags.

Music can also be written with letters, naming them as in the solfa «Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do» or representing them by letters. The next table shows how each note of the solfa is represented in the Standard Notation:

The Standard Notation was made to simplify the lecture of music notes, although it is mostly used to represent chords and the names of the music scales.

These ways to represent music ease the way a person reads music. There are more ways to write and represent music, but they are less known and may be more complicated.

How to enjoy music[change | change source]

By listening[change | change source]

People can enjoy music by listening to it. They can go to concerts to hear musicians perform. Classical music is usually performed in concert halls, but sometimes huge festivals are organized in which it is performed outside, in a field or stadium, like pop festivals. People can listen to music on CD’s, Computers, iPods, television, the radio, cassette/record-players and even mobile phones.

There is so much music today, in elevators, shopping malls, and stores, that it often becomes a background sound that we do not really hear.

By playing or singing[change | change source]

People can learn to play an instrument. Probably the most common for complete beginners is the piano or keyboard, the guitar, or the recorder (which is certainly the cheapest to buy). After they have learnt to play scales, play simple tunes and read the simplest musical notation, then they can think about which instrument for further development. They should choose an instrument that is practical for their size. For example, a very short child cannot play a full size double bass, because the double bass is over five feet high. People should choose an instrument that they enjoy playing, because playing regularly is the only way to get better. Finally, it helps to have a good teacher.

By composing[change | change source]

Anyone can make up their own pieces of music. It is not difficult to compose simple songs or melodies (tunes). It’s easier for people who can play an instrument themselves. All it takes is experimenting with the sounds that an instrument makes. Someone can make up a piece that tells a story, or just find a nice tune and think about ways it can be changed each time it is repeated. The instrument might be someone’s own voice.

The fact is, there are tons of instruments in the world.

[change | change source]

• Classical music
• Jazz music
• Cuban music
• Musical instrument
• Orchestra
• Pop music
• Traditional pop
• Scale (music)

References[change | change source]

Books[change | change source]

• The Oxfords Companion to Music, ed. Percy Scholes, London 1970
• The New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, London 1980

Other websites[change | change source]

Find more about Music at Wikipedia’s sister projects
	Definitions from Wiktionary
	Media from Commons
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Learning resources from Wikiversity

• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Archived 2022-11-09 at the Wayback Machine
• Music City the free music encyclopedia Archived 2010-10-24 at the Wayback Machine

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. The definition has varied through history, in different regions, and within societies. Definitions vary as music, like art, is a subjectively perceived phenomenon. Its definition has been tackled by philosophers of art, lexicographers, composers, music critics, musicians, semioticians or semiologists, linguists, 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.

Etymology

The word music comes from the Greek mousikê (tekhnê) by way of the Latin musica. It is ultimately derived from mousa, the Greek word for muse. 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 as well as instrument-oriented music. In the European Middle Ages, musica was part of the mathematical quadrivium: arithmetics, geometry, astronomy and musica. The concept of musica was split into four major kinds by the fifth century philosopher, Boethius: musica universalis, musica humana, musica instrumentalis, and musica divina. Of those, only musica instrumentalis referred to music as performed sound.

Musica universalis or musica mundana referred to the order of the universe, as God had created it in «measure, number and weight». The proportions of the spheres 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 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. 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 to believing certain minerals 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 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 and most North American Indian languages do not have a general term for music. Among the Aztecs, the ancient Mexican theory of rhetorics, poetry, dance, and instrumental music, used the Nahuatl 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 there is no term for music in Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Birom, Hausa, Idoma, Eggon or Jarawa. Many other languages have terms which only partly cover what Europeans mean by the term music (Schafer). The Mapuche of Argentina 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,^{[page needed]}). Musiqi is the Persian word for the science and art of music, muzik being the sound and performance of music (Sakata 1983,^{[page needed]}), though some things European influenced listeners would include, such as Quran chanting, are excluded. Actually, there are varying degrees of «musicness»; Quran chanting and Adhan 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 and ‘Sangeetham’ in Malayalam both mean music.

Definitions

Organized sound

An often-cited definition of music, coined by Edgard Varèse, is that it is «organized sound» (Goldman 1961, 133). The fifteenth edition of the Encyclopædia 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.

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

Many 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

This 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).

Post-modern and other theories argue that, like all art, music is defined primarily by social 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[vague]

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

Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition. 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:

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):

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:

1. It is a sort of comportment necessary for whoever thinks it and makes it.
2. It is an individual pleroma, a realization.
3. It is a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities (cosmological, philosophical, . . ., arguments)
4. It is normative, that is, unconsciously it is a model for being or for doing by sympathetic drive.
5. It is catalytic: its mere presence permits internal psychic or mental transformations in the same way as the crystal ball of the hypnotist.
6. It is the gratuitous play of a child.
7. 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)

See also

• 4′33″
• Noise (music)
• Sound art

References

• 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.

External links

• 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

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