What is Music?

Occasionally I'll put up posts where I feel like I have an intimate knowledge of a subject, all the while rejecting all sense of it.  This is one of those kinds of posts.  It's a topic that I often think about and is best boiled down the the three words in the title, What is Music?

Over my short lifetime I've heard tens if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of music.  From Bach to Shostakovich, Alstroemeria Records to Mozart, Lady Gaga to Frank Sinatra, music takes on many forms.  Long ago there was Gregorian chant, music passed down much like history, through oral tradition.  Eventually, such things were written down, though not as specifically as things are now.  However, this is a wholly Western view as music also existed and evolved in the East, among other regions of the world.  From Indian ragas to the largely pentatonic stylings of ancient Chinese music to the music of Africa (which I know little about but is significantly different than other regions), it's pretty clear that music has grown organically from many roots.  What binds these threads together and why did humanity create music?

Looking into it online, the definition of music is hard to pin down.  Though not the most credible source of information, Urban Dictionary has no fewer than a hundred different definitions for music submitted by different people.  There's even an entire article on Wikipedia devoted to the 'definition of music'.  In that article, there's a bit saying that, "An often-cited definition of music is that it is "organized sound", a term originally coined by modernist composer Edgard Varèse".  For a while, I honestly thought this was a good enough answer.  In a world where tracks like these may or may not, depending on who you talk to, be classified as music, I don't think that that's a good enough description.  Especially with the last piece, John Cage's 4'33", the question needs to be asked, where do we draw the line on what music is?

If we look at the definition of music as "organized sound", then what of silence?  The negative spaces are equally important in music as they are in photography and other art forms.  What about radio talk shows that only exist to people as a collection of people talking?  Are podcasts music?  They are organized sound after all.

Let's leave the topic of 4'33" and podcasts for a bit though and get back to why humanity created music.  This, along with the definition of music, is a hotly contested topic.  Honestly, I can't really say why humanity originally created music.  Every culture in the world has its own art forms, it's own versions of what could constitute music.  As stated in the Wikipedia article above (it has sources!), many languages don't even have a word for what we call music.  Though what is clear is that music has a particular use in almost all cultures and it's the same across them all.  Music is a form of communication, a form of expression that occurs in the aural space.  Classically, music has always been an evocative art form.  Even without understanding lyrics or the theory, music has always been able to describe emotions and express thoughts.  With this in mind, let's go even further down the rabbit hole to a sentiment that perhaps only I hold.

Are songs music?  Notice carefully that above I wrote 'tens if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of music'.  The main difference being that songs are pieces written to be performed with vocals and thus generally have lyrics.  The answer to the posed question is obviously yes, especially if we take into account all of the things I've already said.  Songs are indeed "organized sound" and are very definitely an evocative art form.  At the same time, I can't help but think that songs are the least transparent of all musical compositions.  In songs, there's an inherent barrier to entry to getting at the emotions and thought process that other pieces don't have.  That barrier is human language.  While most songs have lyrics that match their musical backgrounds, there's also that distinct possibility that they won't.  It's not hard to sing about war to an upbeat tune.  It's not hard to sing gushing love songs to the tune of a funeral march, if you so want to that is.  If that juxtaposition of lyrics to music is intended it becomes lost to those who do not understand the lyrics.  For example, the track "You Go Down Smooth" by Lake Street Dive is, at cursory listen, quite an upbeat song.  The song can musically be enjoyed through sheer musical means for sure.  However, there's a juxtaposition in "You Go Down Smooth" between its upbeat and seemingly carefree sound and its quite troubled lyrics.  If you listen to the lyrics, it talks about struggles with alcoholism which are not apparent by the way the music flows.  With that knowledge in mind, you can actually step back and listen to it again and feel that juxtaposition in the music.  Without understanding the lyrics though, that perspective is lost and the song becomes an altogether different musical experience.

This discourse on lyrics affecting the transparency of songs lends itself to another property of music, context.  Obviously, understanding lyrics is central to understanding the context of a song.  Context extends beyond lyrics in songs however, as all pieces of music are written with some amount of context.  This context is largely historical as historical context can change the understanding and experience when listening to a piece of music.  This type of knowledge tells you things like, what was going on in the world at the time of a piece's writing or what was the composer exposed to during the period of a piece's writing.  It's how we separate an artist's earlier work from their later work.  Put simply, context is that bit of music that isn't existent in its pure aural form.  It's an external force that affects the experience created by a piece of music.

Two paragraphs ago, I would have said that music could be defined as "sound organized to express an intent".  For a while, in fact even as I started writing this post, I thought this was a good enough definition.  As I thought about it however, speeches and podcasts could fall into this category.  Namely this definition is too broad for what I think is music.  Maybe that's the answer though.  "What I think" is music.  Perhaps music can't be defined objectively, perhaps it's a word that describes a purely subjective categorization of sounds.  Just as beauty and art are in the eyes of the beholder, perhaps music is in the ears of the beholder.  With this, I'll leave it and wrap up.

Music is a nebulous term, one hard to define objectively.  To me, music is "sound organized to express an intent with the caveat that it can be enjoyed and understood in a context-less fashion".  This means that John Cage's 4'33"is music the instant a performer intends listeners to hear the sounds around them.  This means that Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room is music the instant the second pass happens.  This is an interesting point but before then, it's pure speech and can only be understood with the context of understanding his speech.  Songs are music irregardless of their reliance on lyrics to be fully understood.  Podcasts and speeches however are not music as they require that lingual context to be understood.  Yes, it's possible to enjoy the way a person speaks and their inflections but I don't believe that to constitute music.

I hope this post has allowed you to ask yourself "What is music?"  Music is such a personal and subjective idea that I don't wish you to take my definition by faith alone.  Music is constantly evolving and I hope that no matter how far in the future, you can think about some of the things I've said here and redefine music for yourself.  In the coming months I'll be starting up some projects that I hope you'll enjoy and will make you come back to this post and reevaluate your personal definition of music all the while changing how you listen to the world and sounds around you.  And with that, until next time.

--CsMiREK