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The definition of music is a contested evaluation of what constitutes music and varies through history, geography, and within societies. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. Definitions vary as music, like art, is a subjectively perceived phenomenon. A definition is a statement of the meaning of a Word or Phrase. Art refers to a diverse range of Human activities creations and expressions that are appealing to the Senses or Emotions of a human individual Its definition has been tackled by philosophers, lexicographers, composers, teachers, semioticians or semiologists, linguists, scientists, and musicians. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines Practical lexicography is the art or Craft of compiling writing and editing dictionaries A composer (literally meaning 'one who puts together' is a person who creates Music, usually in the medium of notation, for Interpretation and Performance In Education, a teacher is one who helps Students or pupils often in a School, as well as in a Family, religious or Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis or signification and communication signs and Symbols both Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields A scientist, in the broadest sense refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire Knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices A musician is a person who plays or writes Music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music An instrumentalist plays a

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.

Contents

The term "music"

Etymology

The word music comes from the Greek mousikê (tekhnê) by way of the Latin musica. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly It is ultimately derived from mousa, the Greek word for muse. In Greek mythology, the Muses ( Ancient Greek, hai moũsai: perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European root * men- "think" are 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 quadrivium comprised the four subjects or arts taught in Medieval universities after the trivium. Arithmetic or arithmetics (from the Greek word αριθμός = number is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics used by almost everyone Geometry ( Greek γεωμετρία; geo = earth metria = measure is a part of Mathematics concerned with questions of size shape and relative position Astronomy (from the Greek words astron (ἄστρον "star" and nomos (νόμος "law" is the scientific study 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 in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. 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, as God had created it in "measure, number and weight". The Universe is defined as everything that Physically Exists: the entirety of Space and Time, all forms of Matter, Energy God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. 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. "Globose" redirects here See also Globose nucleus. A sphere (from Greek σφαίρα - sphaira, "globe Sound' is Vibration transmitted through a Solid, Liquid, or Gas; particularly sound means those vibrations composed of Frequencies 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 physical and mental structure of a Human Organism. 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. Astrology (from Greek grc ἄστρον astron, "constellation star" and grc -λογία -logia) is a group of Systems A mineral is a naturally occurring substance formed through geological processes that has a characteristic chemical composition a highly ordered atomic structure and specific

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. Frequency is a measure of the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit Time. In Music theory, the term interval describes the relationship between the pitches of two Notes Intervals may be described as vertical

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. Inuit (plural the singular Inuk, means "man" or "person" is a general term for a group of culturally similar Indigenous peoples inhabiting For indigenous peoples in the United States other than Hawaii and Alaska see also Native Americans in the United States. 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). Aztec is a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who achieved political The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. Nahuatl ( is a group of related languages and dialects of the Aztecan or Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family

In Africa there is no term for music in Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Birom, Hausa, Idoma, Eggon or Jarawa. The Tiv are an Ethno-linguistic group or ethnic nation in West Africa. Yoruba (native name èdè Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language' is a Dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers Igbo (Igbo Asusu Igbo) is a language spoken in Nigeria by around 20-35 million people the Igbo, especially in the southeastern region The Efik people are a branch of the Ibibio, who in the early 1600s migrated down the Cross River from Cameroon and founded numerous settlements in 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 Idoma is an ethno-linguistic group in Nigeria. Their ancestors are from Kwararafa, Igalaland and Igboland. Eggon (also Egon, Ero, Mo Egon, Hill Mada, or Mada Eggon) is one of the Benue-Congo languages spoken in Nigeria 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). The Mapuche are the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Argentina topics.

In Czech, hudba is instrumental music and only by implication vocal music. Czech (ˈʧɛk čeština ˈʧɛʃcɪna in Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers it is the majority language in the Vocal music is Music performed by one or more Singers with or without non-vocal instrumental accompaniment Some languages in West Africa have no term for music but the speakers do have the concept (Nettl 1989,).

Musiqi is the Persian word for the science and art of music, muzik being the sound and performance of music (Sakata 1983,), though some things European influenced listeners would include, such as Quran chanting, are excluded. The Qur’an ( القرآن, literally "the recitation" also sometimes transliterated as Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran 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. Adhan (also - Athaan IPA /ʔæðæːn/ ( أَذَان) is the Islamic call to Prayer, recited by the Muezzin. However, from a European influenced musicological analysis, or from the standpoint of an untrained European influenced listener, Quran chanting is structurally similar to classical singing (Nettl 1989,).

Definitions

As organized sound

An often-cited definition of music, coined by Edgard Varèse, is that it is "organized sound" (Goldman 1961, 133). WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse 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. " Michael Linton, took the definition a step further to add that the form in which music is organized is an important element of the music itself. His definition of music is "the organization of sound and silence into forms that carry culturally derived meanings, cultivated for aesthetic or utilitarian purposes". Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called

"Organization" also seems necessary because it implies purposeful and thus human organization. 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.

This definition determines music according to the poetic and the neutral levels (it must be composed sonorities), or more aesthetically, 'the artful or pleasing organization of sound and silence', which determines music according to the esthesic. Art refers to a diverse range of Human activities creations and expressions that are appealing to the Senses or Emotions of a human individual Silence is a relative or total lack of audible Sound you can not hear a thing it is quiet This definition is widely held to from the late 19th century forward, which began to scientifically analyze the relationship between sound and perception. The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning " Knowledge " or "knowing" is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information.

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)

As 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. Fred Lerdahl (born March 10 1943) is the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language. Levi R. Bryant defines music not as a language, but as a marked-based, problem-solving method such as mathematics (Ashby 2004, 4).

Because of its ability to communicate, music is sometimes described as the "universal language". Yet the "meaning" of music is obviously culturally mediated. For example, in Western society, minor chords are often perceived as "sad", an understanding other cultures rarely share.

There is significant complexity in the structural elements of music which warrant the perception of music as a language. For example, genres of music can be characterized by the manner in which sound and silence are articulated, organized, and disseminated. The composition of these elements gives rise to a system which is on par with the complexities and subtleties of 'language'.

See also: Musical language

As subjective experience

Main article: Aesthetics of music

Another commonly held definition of music holds that music must be 'pleasant' (determined by the esthesic level) or 'melodic' (determined by the neutral and/or esthesic levels). Musical languages are Languages based on Musical sounds either instead of or in addition to Articulation. Traditionally the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment ( Plaisir and In Music, a melody (from Greek μελῳδία - melōidía, "singing chanting" also tune, voice, or This view is often used to argue that some kinds of organized sound 'are not music', while others are, based on type of organization or its aesthetic effect. Since the range of what is accepted as music varies from culture to culture and from time to time, more elaborate versions of this definition admit some kind of cultural or social evolution of music, granting that definitions may vary but universals hold. This definition was the predominant one in the 18th century, where, for example, Mozart stated that "music must never forget itself, it must never cease to be music. The 18th century lasted from 1701 to 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, in accordance with the Anno Domini / Common Era numbering system " One example of shifts in the music/noise dichotomy, what organization is considered musical, is the emancipation of the dissonance, while Luciano Berio (1976) describes how the Tristan chord was noise in 1859 since it was a sonority unexplainable by contemporary harmonic conventions. The emancipation of the dissonance was a concept or goal put forth by Arnold Schoenberg (composer of Atonal music and the inventor of the Twelve tone technique The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the Notes F B D# and G#

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. Luciano Berio defined music as, "everything one listens to with the intention of listening to music. " 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 music. Extreme music is a term used to describe a variety of musical styles including subgenres of Extreme metal, Hardcore punk, Hardcore techno, industrial

As social construct

Main article: Ethnomusicology

Post-modern and other theories argue that, like all art, music is defined primarily by social context. This article is about the concept For the society and academic journal see Society for Ethnomusicology. Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement' While " Modern " itself refers to something "related to the present" the movement of modernism Definition In the absence of agreement about its meaning the term "social" is used in many different senses referring among other things to attitudes According to this view, music is what people call music, whether it is a period of silence, found sounds, or performance. Silence is a relative or total lack of audible Sound you can not hear a thing it is quiet The term found art &mdashmore commonly found object (objet trouvé or readymade &mdashdescribes Art created from the undisguised but often modified A performance, in Performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people (the performer or performers behave in a particular way for another group of people 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. In Music theory, a diatonic scale (from the Greek διατονικος, meaning " through tones" also known as the heptatonia prima and Most modern music still uses this scale and due to constant exposure, the music of other cultures is not held with the same regard. What would be accepted as music in Indonesia may be dismissed by many westerners as just "a din. The Republic of Indonesia ( (Republik Indonesia is a Country in Southeast Asia. "

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. As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar And what would be music to The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious, who is said to have commented, "you just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music," 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). The Sex Pistols are an English Punk rock band that formed in London in 1975 John Simon Ritchie (born May 10, 1957, died February 2, 1979) better known as Sid Vicious, was an English Punk William Congreve ( 24 January 1670 &ndash 19 January 1729) was an English Playwright and Poet. All of which is to say that there can be no absolute definition of music that will be accepted by everybody.

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.

While some may find this definition too restrictive, arguing that "unity" and "continuity" are unnecessary, it is likely that more will find it too broad, thinking of music as being made of pitched sounds, and containing melody, harmony and rhythm. In Music, a melody (from Greek μελῳδία - melōidía, "singing chanting" also tune, voice, or In Western music, harmony is the use of different pitches simultaneously and chords actual or implied in Music. Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of The idea that music must contain these elements is widespread, but there are several examples of what would be widely regarded as music, which lack one or more of them. Plainsong for instance, or monophonic music in general, has no harmony. For the band see " Plainsong (band " For the song on The Cure's 1989 album see " Disintegration " Much percussion music lacks both harmony and melody; it is true that drums are tuned, but their pitches are indefinite, and they cannot be said to produce a melody in the traditional sense. The drum is a member of the percussion group technically classified as a Membranophone. If one takes rhythm to mean a regular pulse underpinning music, then many kinds of modern electronic music can be said to lack rhythm. Electronic music is music that employs Electronic musical instruments and Electronic Music technology in its production

Some attempts to define music concentrate on the method of producing it. Even though some of the first "instruments" in prehistory must have been rocks and bits of wood, it is only in the past one hundred years or so that the idea that music could only be produced by a singer or a traditional musical instrument (such as a violin in Europe, a sitar in India or a koto in Japan) has been challenged. The violin is a bowed String instrument with four strings usually tuned in Perfect fifths It is the smallest and highest-pitched member The sitar ( Hindi: सितार Urdu: ستار Persian: سی تار) is a Plucked stringed instrument. The koto ( 琴 or 箏) is a traditional Japanese stringed Musical instrument derived from the Chinese Zither ( Guzheng Erik Satie challenged what constituted a musical instrument, and therefore a musical sound, when he wrote the ballet Parade which included a part for a typewriter. Alfred Éric Leslie Satie ( Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French Composer and His justification was that since the typewriter made a noise, it was a musical instrument. In a lighter vein, Leroy Anderson also wrote music that included a manual typewriter, played with strict rhythm. Leroy Anderson ( June 29 1908 – May 18 1975) was an American Composer of short light concert pieces many of which were

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"). WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> John Milton Cage Jr 4′33″ ( Four minutes thirty-three seconds) is a three- movement composition by American Avant-garde composer John Cage The implication, as expanded upon by Cage himself, is that the background noises which are normally a distraction from the music (the humming of the lights, the shuffling of the audience, the sound of traffic outside) are to be regarded as the actual music in this case.

This is contrary to the usual view that music is, if nothing else, deliberate. Furthermore, Cage does not state the length of the piece - the duration of the first performance (given by David Tudor seated at a piano) was arrived at by consulting the I Ching, but it is not stated in the score (although whenever the piece is performed nowadays, the original duration is usually maintained). David Eugene Tudor ( January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American Pianist and Composer of Experimental The piano is a Musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with Felt covered hammers The I Ching ( Wade-Giles) or “Yì Jīng” ( Pinyin) also called “Classic of Changes” or “Book of Changes” is one of the oldest of the Some people deal with the challenges posed by 4' 33" by simply refusing to consider it as music. 4′33″ ( Four minutes thirty-three seconds) is a three- movement composition by American Avant-garde composer John Cage

Of course, even in conventional music, the "silent" gaps between notes are part of the music. The pianist Artur Schnabel, when asked what made him a great pianist, said "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. Artur Schnabel ( April 17, 1882 &ndash August 15, 1951) was an Austrian classical Pianist, who also composed But the pauses between the notes? Ah, that is where the art resides!" In Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 45, Farewell, the entire composition anticipates the silence at the end as the musicians one by one stop playing and walk from the stage. Symphony No 45 in F-sharp minor, known as the "Farewell" Symphony (in German: Abschieds-Symphonie) was composed by Joseph Haydn

The American composer La Monte Young took this line of thought to an extreme by suggesting that even sound itself was not necessary for a piece of music to exist. La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14 1935) is an American Composer and musician Sound' is Vibration transmitted through a Solid, Liquid, or Gas; particularly sound means those vibrations composed of Frequencies In Composition 1960 #5, one of a series of similar pieces, he instructed the performer to "Turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose in the performance area," the piece being considered complete when the butterflies have flown away. A butterfly is an Insect of the order Lepidoptera. Like all Lepidoptera butterflies are notable for their unusual life cycle with a The choice of a butterfly is significant in that it is perceived as a silent animal. During the performance, there will be background noises, just as there are in a performance of 4' 33", but this is not the thrust of the piece. Rather, Young is interested in the theatrical element of music.

Young's point in this instance is that when one goes to a performance of a piece of music, seeing the musicians perform is as much a part of the music as hearing them, so why not remove the hearing element altogether? In this sense, his interest is similar to that of Mauricio Kagel, who carefully notates the theatrical element of performance in his works (although he usually maintains a significant sonic element also). Mauricio Kagel ( December 24, 1931 – September 18, 2008) was a German - Argentine Composer who was notable

As a category of perception

Main articles: Music cognition and Music psychology

Less commonly held is the cognitive definition of music, which argues that music is not merely the sound, or the perception of sound, but a means by which perception, action and memory are organized. Music cognition is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mental processes that support musical behaviors including perception comprehension memory attention and performance Music psychology, or the psychology of music may be regarded either as a branch of Psychology or as a branch of Musicology. This definition is influential in the cognitive sciences, which search to locate the regions of the brain responsible for parsing or remembering different aspects of musical experience. Cognitive science may be broadly defined as the multidisciplinary study of mind and behavior The brain is the center of the Nervous system in animals All Vertebrates and the majority of Invertebrates have a brain This definition would include dance. Dance (from French danser, perhaps from Frankish) is an Art form that generally refers to movement of the body usually rhythmic The Boulangers established a school of thought centered around this concept which included the idea of eurhythmics, which is gesture guided by music. Several notable persons share the very typical French / Francophone surname Boulanger which is the equivalent of the English surname Baker, of

As musical universals

Main article: Aspect of music

Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition (see Definition of music#As musical universals). An aspect of music is any Characteristic, Dimension, or element taken as a part or component of Music. The definition of music is a contested evaluation of what constitutes Music and varies through history geography and within societies 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. Jean Molino is professeur ordinaire at the University of Lausanne and a Semiologist. " Nattiez gives as examples Mauricio Kagel's Con Voce [with voice], where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments. Mauricio Kagel ( December 24, 1931 – September 18, 2008) was a German - Argentine Composer who was notable In this example sound, a common element, is excluded, while gesture, a less common element, is given primacy. In classical music of the common practice period, for instance, melody and harmony are often considered to be given more importance at the expense of rhythm and timbre. The common practice period, in the history of European Art music (broadly called Classical music) spanning the Baroque, Classical, and John Cage considers duration the primary aspect of music as, being the temporal aspect of music, it is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence". WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> John Milton Cage Jr

The categorization of what is and isn't music through definition or universal aspects dates back to Aristotle. Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Anything up for consideration as music is compared to the category definition of music through analysis of and comparison of their properties. Ludwig Wittgenstein however questioned this hypothesis for category formation by noting that for any universal aspect proposed for the category "game" an example which does not share that aspect may be found. He proposed that categorization is by family resemblance and not definition. Turned, by Wittgenstein, from philosophy to cognitive psychiatry Eleanor Rosch proposes that categories are not clean cut but that something may be more or less a member of a category. Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider) is a professor of Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, specializing in Cognitive 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's phenomenological definition

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. Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (ˈhʊsɛrl April 8 1859 – April 26 1938) was a philosopher, known as the father of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (mɔʁis mɛʁlopɔ̃ti in French March 14, 1908 – May 3, 1961) was a French phenomenological Paul Ricœur (born February 27, 1913 in Valence France; died May 20, 2005 in Chatenay Malabry, France was a Presentationism (from Latin prae-esse praesens present a philosophical term used in various senses deriving from the general sense of the term presentation This word has distinct meanings in other fields see Denotation (semiotics and Connotation and denotation. . . . 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. Compare Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism, Social constructionism, Cultural relativism, and Cognitive relativism. 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). "Seeing pink elephants" is a Euphemism for drunken Hallucination, caused by Alcoholic hallucinosis or Delirium tremens. Not to be confused with the subiectum or Hypokeimenon in Aristotelianism

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":

  1. “we have to be willing to let the composition speak to us, to let it reveal its own order and significance”
  2. “we have to be willing to question our assumptions about the nature and role of musical materials. ”
  3. “we have to be ready to admit that describing a meaningful experience is itself meaningful. ”

(Clifton 1983, 5–6)

Nattiez's tripartite definition

"Music, often an art/entertainment, is a total social fact whose definitions vary according to era and culture," according to Jean Molino (1975, 37). Art refers to a diverse range of Human activities creations and expressions that are appealing to the Senses or Emotions of a human individual See also Entertainment (disambiguation and The Entertainer (disambiguation Entertainment is an activity designed to give people In Positivist Sociology, social facts are the values cultural norms and social structures that are external to the individual An era is a commonly used word for long period of time When used in science for example geology eras denote clearly defined periods of time of arbitrary but well defined Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic Jean Molino is professeur ordinaire at the University of Lausanne and a Semiologist. It is often contrasted with noise. Noise pollution (or environmental noise) is displeasing human- or machine-created sound that disrupts the activity or balance of human or animal life 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. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (born December 30 1945, Amiens, France) is a Musical semiologist or semiotician and professor of . . . 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) 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:

Table describing types of definitions of music:

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

(Nattiez 1990, p. 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. Oscillation is the repetitive variation typically in Time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of Equilibrium) or between two or more different states Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of Sound, Ultrasound and Infrasound (all mechanical waves in gases liquids and solids Music theory is the field of study that deals with the Mechanics of music and how Music works This article is about the concept For the society and academic journal see Society for Ethnomusicology. Musicology ( Greek: μουσική = "music" and λόγος = "word" or "reason" is the scholarly study of Music

Xenakis's definition

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. Iannis Xenakis (Ιάννης Ξενάκης (May 29 1922 - February 4 2001 was a Greek modernist composer musical theoretician and architect
  2. It is an individual plemora, 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)

Sources

See also

External links

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