#84

One of the reasons I keep bringing up the fact that music can be a subconscious perception, is that I am making an effort to point out that the socially constructed definition is necessarily over-constrained versus the actual experience of music, with the hope that as we continue to discuss the socially constructed linguistic definition of music we might seek to broaden, rather than continue to constrain, the definition.

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#85

But I guess I’ll also refer back to @ht73’s earlier post warning us about the pitfalls of definition-making in music because I think it’s a pretty important point.

Definition of music?

I just figure if you’re going to ignore the warning, then go broad.

#86

I am all for that effort, but I deal with it in a different way. I would say that in order to reach a further depth in the meaning of words, we need first to understand what they currently mean, and the mechanisms, history and development that have resulted in that meaning. If we do so, we can clearly point out its flaws and express better alternatives.

#87

That makes sense to me.

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#88

I’ve kept expanding my own definition over the years and at this point I just say that music is “appreciated time”

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#89

music is a language
different from other languages (english or spanish, por ejemplo) where we have to talk, wait, listen, talk, wait…
in making music together it’s possible to talk(play) and listen at the same time
some may say it’s even required :slightly_smiling_face:

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#90

I’m in this camp. I was working on the following unfinished thought, but you’ve captured it more succinctly. The temporal aspect is key.

Music is an interpreted experience. It is contingent upon, and inseparable from, emotion. Music can result from or be created by any shifting medium. A day can be music. Walking through thoughtful architecture can be music. Any non-deafening sound can be music.

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#91

I’ve never been convinced that time is a distinguishing factor in music. Lots of other mediums which we would all probably agree are distinct from music, like film or theater or even literature, also require a linear unfolding of time. Mediums with a different relation to time are things like painting and sculpture.

Then there’s a further complication: works that begin in linear time do not always continue to be be experienced or exist in linear time as such. See @zebra’s earlier point about memory.

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#92

Time is the time between peaks of an oscillating waveform. Time is the pattern of repetition (or lack of pattern) in a rhythm. Etcetera

#93

Well, only if one thinks of “the work” as a product. If, like me, one thinks of the process as an integral part of art experience, then time is absolutely a factor in these, and all media.

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#94

yes, :slight_smile: even in sidereal time
it is always right now…

playing the drum (frog)
and praying (reciting sutras)
can be the 'highest form…


'come in on the One

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#95

cage lectures on ubuweb!

http://www.ubu.com/sound/cage_lectures.html

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#96

I don’t know if this came up as I have not read the whole thread but an important factor to me is that if someone defines what they have created as music then I would never tell them it is not. I might not like what I hear (or however it is presented) but I don’t think it would give me the right to not call it music. That would feel like censorship to me. It might be my limited understanding that hinders me from seeing its beauty or it might in fact just be rubbish. I’ll mostly never know so I try not to judge what I hear/experience.

I think there is this important link between time, space and memory that makes music so compelling to me. And by space I don’t only mean the architectural room which, of course, has its impact, but also the sociology of the space.
I also find it very interesting that the non-lieu as defined by Marc Augé (from Wikipedia: anthropological spaces of transience where the human beings remain anonymous and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as " places") has such a specific sound to it.

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#97

This is becoming a little jewel of wisdom that is guiding my behavior and outlook on life in so many more ways than I can easily express. Constant reminders of how little I really know.

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#98

Agreed. Music uses time as an initial vehicle, but definitely latches into our emotional core (/memory, if that is separable) for the longer journey. Brün has some stuff about this:

The smallest group of motifs which expresses a Thought is called a sentence. If the motifs in this group are of equal meter, a metrical sentence results, as in a poem, a folkdance, almost all music up to Stravinsky, etc. If each motif in the group is of a different meter, the result is a prose sentence: of a tale, a movement, some new music since Schoenberg, etc.

Motives and sentences, quite independent of motif’s meter, become larger units in Time. Thus Time becomes divided again into accented and non-accented groups of motifs and of sentences. The inner division of these larger units and the time-relations between them display for us the Form and Forms of Time: Rhythm. All sentences, metrical or prose, can be presented in all kinds of rhythm, regular or irregular. There never is “no rhythm”.

When one can choose rhythm, the Artist must choose a rhythm. Only so will the nature of one’s Thought become known in Time. To be able to choose, the Artist must know all the possibilities. One must know the nature of Time and Rhythm, and how it serves the interpersonal requirements of one’s work. The Artist must beware of the damage which Time and Rhythm will do when used to serve the personal requirements of the Artist’s own nature, following the Artist’s laws instead of theirs, that is, from the Artist’s inside out, that is: superficially. The Artist must know that two sentences, each sound and strong in rhythm, may appear nevertheless weak and inexpressive when following one another, and why this is so, and how it can be corrected. One will have to revise one’s choice of Rhythm in each sentence for the benefit of both.

And so on, until the whole work stands and moves and speaks as one rhythmic unity, in which the varieties of motif and meter, sentence and rhythm, can be understood, remembered and related to the Thought, Idea, Feeling which the work proposes to convey.

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#99

from “remembering the future” (Berio in 1993!)

Only a reckless spirit, today, would try to give a total explanation of music, but anyone who would never pose the problem is even more reckless.

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#100

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From One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming, by Masanobu Fukuoka

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#101

The problem with not defining music, saying it is impossible, or that you do not wish to do so, is that that is a definition as well.

#102

And now “Yesterday” is stuck in my head…

#103

Schopenhauer:

But music, that goes beyond ideas, is completely independent from the phenomenal world; it absolutely ignores it and could in some ways continue to exist even if the universe wouldn’t exist .

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