What is music?

[Cenotaph]

I have found that throughout my innumerable conversations on music that people's definition on the art form vary.

It can range anywhere from John Cage's idea that any sound or sounds (composed or not) could be considered music to those who are more specific by looking in detail at the compositional make-up of a piece of music.

Just the other day, I encountered someone saying that this video is not an example of music and that it is merely noise (noise actually being considered by some to be a genre of music):

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWnVH2O6BX4]Keiji Haino @ Cafe Oto, London 9.4.11 - YouTube[/ame]

The man playing is also the man in my avatar.

Anyways, what is your definition of music?

 

[Sky Dancer]

I have found that throughout my innumerable conversations on music that people's definition on the art form vary.

It can range anywhere from John Cage's idea that any sound or sounds (composed or not) could be considered music to those who are more specific by looking in detail at the compositional make-up of a piece of music.

Just the other day, I encountered someone saying that this video is not an example of music and that it is merely noise (noise actually being considered by some to be a genre of music):

Keiji Haino @ Cafe Oto, London 9.4.11 - YouTube

The man playing is also the man in my avatar.

Anyways, what is your definition of music?

Interesting question. It's not unlike your other philosophical questons in the religion forum.

And my hit on it, as a Buddhist is similar. Without silence, we would have no music. There are notes or sounds and there is empty space.

Similarly, you could take any piece of music and dissect it into it's parts, melody, harmony, rhythm and so on, but would this dissection be music?

Is music a sum of it's parts?

This is the way that ultimate reality or truth is argued in Buddhism.

 

[syrenn]

Music is that which is pleasing for you to hear. Music is different things to different people.

 

[Sky Dancer]

I would still call music that I don't like to hear, music.

 

[American Horse]

I call architecture frozen music. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Now think of the obverse of that statement ...

 

[Unkotare]

What is music? "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."