A popular definition of Music is that it is an “organized sound”. 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 ”the organization of sound and silence into forms that carry culturally derived meanings; cultivated for aesthetic or utilitarian purposes”. This human organizing element appears crucial to our understanding of music though sounds produced by non-human agents such as waterfalls or birds can also be described as “musical”, but rarely as music.
According to the aesthetics, music is viewed as an artful or pleasing organization of sound and silence. Nattiez (1990) remarked “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.”
In the late 19th century, the trend for scientific analysis of the relationship between sound and perception started. Several definitions of music held that music is a communicative activity which conveys moods, emotions, thoughts, impressions, or concepts – philosophical; sexual, or political. Because of its ability to communicate, music is sometimes described as – the “universal language”. For Levi R. Bryant, musical experience is “not as a language, but as a marked-based, problem-solving method such as mathematics.” The considerable complexity in the structural elements of music however, warrants 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’.
Music as a Subjective Experience
Music is expected to be ‘pleasant’ (determined by the aesthetic level) or ‘melodic’ (determined by the neutral and/or aesthetic levels). This view is often used to argue that mere organization of sound need not be music.
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.
One example of shifts in the music/noise dichotomy, what organization is considered musical, is the emancipation of the dissonance, while Luciano Berio describes how the Tristan chord was once (19th century) considered as noise since it was sonority unexplainable by contemporary harmonic conventions.
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.
Cultural background is a factor in determining music from noise or unpleasant experiences. What is accepted as music in Bali may be dismissed by the British as just “a din”.
Historical era is also a determining factor in what is regarded as music. What would today be accepted as music in the west would have been a joke in the 17th century!
Music Cognition
The cognitive definition of music argues that music is not merely the sound, or the perception of sound, but: a means, by which perception, action and memory are organized. This definition is influential in cognitive science, which searches to locate the regions of the brain responsible for parsing or remembering different aspects of musical experience.
This article was published in “My Doctor” June 2010 – Pages 50, 51
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, August 9, 2021