Music Banter - View Single Post

chumb · 06-20-2007, 11:53 AM

Since Wikipedia always seems to get referenced sooner or later when it comes to online discussions, let me open this one with Wikipedia's definition of music:

Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence expressed through time. Elements of sound as used in music are pitch (including melody and harmony), rhythm (including tempo and meter), and sonic qualities of timbre, articulation, dynamics, and texture.

Basically, the reason I ask this question is because I seem to have been getting into a lot of arguments about it lately (with people in real life, gasp!) Basically, what I want to know is how far can a musician stray from the conventional idioms associated with music before what he has created stops being music. Is music, for instance, that relies solely on texture and dynamics and neglects tempo and pitch, still music? This ranges from free improv like AMM to drone like Boris (dronevil) and Sunn 0))) to noise. And then, of course, we have something like Cage's infamous piece, 4'33", which consists of a pianist sitting in front of his piano for 4 and a half minutes without playing anything.

So what do you think? Are chords necessary to make music, is melody, harmony? Can silence be music? Is it even possible to define music?

06-20-2007, 11:53 AM	#1 (permalink)
chumb awamba Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 133	What is music? Since Wikipedia always seems to get referenced sooner or later when it comes to online discussions, let me open this one with Wikipedia's definition of music: Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence expressed through time. Elements of sound as used in music are pitch (including melody and harmony), rhythm (including tempo and meter), and sonic qualities of timbre, articulation, dynamics, and texture. Basically, the reason I ask this question is because I seem to have been getting into a lot of arguments about it lately (with people in real life, gasp!) Basically, what I want to know is how far can a musician stray from the conventional idioms associated with music before what he has created stops being music. Is music, for instance, that relies solely on texture and dynamics and neglects tempo and pitch, still music? This ranges from free improv like AMM to drone like Boris (dronevil) and Sunn 0))) to noise. And then, of course, we have something like Cage's infamous piece, 4'33", which consists of a pianist sitting in front of his piano for 4 and a half minutes without playing anything. So what do you think? Are chords necessary to make music, is melody, harmony? Can silence be music? Is it even possible to define music? __________________ ... I begged her, shoot me in the head She took my gun and shot my leg instead