Music: a practical definition

Musical Times, Spring 2005 by Godt, Irving

EVERYONE KNOWS what it is, don't they? If pressed for a definition, most musicians begin with emotional evasions like 'I feel' or 'I believe'. That is not a helpful point of departure. Ethnomusicologists, philosophers, sociologists, and philologists have all defined music, but I don't remember ever having read a formal definition without an axe to grind: a composer's, a theorist's, a promoter's, or some other's. One of the great faux pas of music lexicography was the omission of an article on 'Music', in the first edition of the New Grove dictionary of music and musicians - and every earlier Grove!1 That was only natural, since few who commit their love and lives to music take the trouble to define it.

Definitions, like fashions, change with time. One of my colleagues favours a permissive definition of music. He declares: 'Music [in a given culture] is whatever people say it is.'2 His permissiveness is excessive. It springs from a laudable desire to meet unfamiliar cultures on their own terms, free from the prejudices of our own, but it says little to us about our culture. Although we can never free ourselves completely from our own ethnocentricity, does it make sense to adopt the ethnocentricity of others? There are romantics among us who do just that. They seem to reject western culture and seek approval abroad by neglecting their own roots. Vain effort! To their proud hosts they will never be other than what they really are: outsiders. Does our readiness to recognise kinship with other peoples justify accepting their prejudices? Can we, who foster the music of western culture, understand the music of another culture if we do not understand our own? Other peoples may define their musics tor themselves; we are responsible for defining ours.

A thing is not what it is simply because people say what it is. What they say tells us more about themselves than about the thing itself. Different cultures have different ideas about music. Must we accept all of them, or just some of them? Among some peoples, music is inseparably associated with some event, activity, or behaviour; it has no real existence apart from those associations.3 They do not regard music as a completely distinct activity; however, that is an internal matter for them; it is simply their convention.4

Social convention, consensus, can be as dangerous as it is useful. Definition by consensus is the province of the pollster. Definitions by poll are neither scientifically nor philosophically defensible. They would lead us to agree that the earth really is really flat if enough people say it is. That kind of thinking led to the defilement of some of the most respected dictionaries. Once they followed the time-honoured 'prescriptive' model, providing guidance through the twists of one of the largest and kinkiest languages of the planet; but, a few decades ago, 'prescriptive' definitions became unpopular. They began to be regarded as despotic. The prescriptive model was deemed too 'judgmental' and hence socially unacceptable. They found a profitable alternative in the 'descriptive ' mode which legitimises the right of illiterates to overrule their betters. Once authoritative dictionaries now wallow in that trendy descriptive mode. Feckless editors made this first and most destructive capitulation to political correctness, casting the linguistic and literary pearls of generations before intellectual swine.

IT is dangerous to ignore the lessons of history. There are forces in the world today exploiting the fact that if you can corrupt the language, you can enslave the people. A true philosophy of music requires terms that are historically consistent, verifiable, and defensible. A denatured dictionary is simply not good enough. We need to know what we are talking about, not what we may possibly - or even probably mean. I offer the following as a simple, serviceable definition of music, stating it first as a whole, then commenting on its elements.

Definition

(1) Unwanted sound is noise. (2) Music is humanly organised sound, (3) organised with intent (4) into a recognisable aesthetic entity (5) as a musical communication (6) directed from a maker (7) to a known or unforeseen listener, (8) publicly through the medium of a performer, (9) or privately by a performer as listener. (10) As far as I know, ethnologists have never found a human society that does not make music.

Commentary

(i) Noise is unwanted sound: let's get that out of the way from the start. This is no digression but an important limitation on the range of discussion. Is it sacrilege to confess that the Ninth Symphony is an unwelcome noise when I want to sleep? A Mozart string quartet does not reduce my 'discomfort ' when my dentist is drilling into my teeth. Musical simulacra are sprayed over us in elevators, poured into our ears, like poison into the the ear of Hamlet's father, while we hold the telephone. Somewhere, some scintillating MBA preaches that music will make us tractable. Curse him and his taste. Restaurants use live or recorded music to decorate 'the dining experience ' but it is surely not a musical experience; it raises background noise that obliges us to raise our voices over it. Experiment has shown that background music increases the productivity of milch cows; but, the equivalence of humans and cattle is neither a commendable assumption or an acceptable political doctrine. Nevertheless, the business world has institutionalised these tasteless practices so universally that 'The sonic environment has become a toxic-waste dump'.5