In a footnote to a Karl Miller post, Dave Lampson wrote:

>Like I said before: music is anything someone listens to as music.
>Other definitions may feel better, but no other definition works.  -Dave]

I've been busy on other things recently and I haven't been following this
thread in detail.  I've also been doing my best to avoid getting drawn into
the definition of music game again.  But the logician in me won't let this
one lie undisturbed, even if it is old ground.

Dave's definition is unsatisfactory because it is not a definition.  It
does not draw a boundary around a set of sounds and state that those on one
side are music and those on the other are not.  Neither is it descriptive
- reading it and understanding it tells me nothing at all about music as
distinct from anything else that might be listened to.  A sprattle is
anything that someone sees as a sprattle.  Now what do you know about
sprattles, except that they may be seen?

Consider a sound - whatever sound you like.  According to Dave's
definition, in order for it to be music we have to find someone who
will listen to it as music.  Is it reasonable to class a sound as music on
the basis of one response by perhaps just one individual from the entire
past and present (and, perhaps, future) of the human race? Does that
classification apply to just that individual, or to a limited class of
which he may be representative, or is it universal, no matter how many
others may not listen to it as music? Do we need some kind of democratic
decision-making process here?

Turn it around.  What is needed in order to use Dave's definition to
establish that some sound is not-music? We have to demonstrate that no-one
listens to it as music; possibly that no-one ever did or ever will do.
Clearly an impossible task - and a definition that does not allow the
possibility of excluding some example from the defined set manifestly
fails to perform the function of a definition.

Either Dave's definition is 100% relativist, having validity only for the
individual and one person's use of it being independent of everyone else's,
or it is not a definition at all.  In either case, it is of no use.  If it
works, it cannot be connected to anything else; if it doesn't - well, it
doesn't.

Music, I have argued here before, is sound (plain speech excluded) with
structure imposed upon it by conscious human design and with the capacity
to act as a medium for the communication of some form of mood or emotion or
mind-state between at least two out of the trinity of composer, performer
and listener.

Such a definition easily encompasses tonal music, pantonal, atonal,
twelve-tonal, whatever-you-like-tonal music; any organisational principle
from sonata form through strict serialism to phase-shifting or Indian
ragas or anything else I can think of; it can include any or all or any
combination of melody and harmony and rhythm and timbre; it embraces
everything from rap to the most high-flown pinnacles of Western classical
music; and it neatly excludes natural sounds, animal noises (birdsong
included), mechanical noises etc.  as music in themselves while still
admitting the possibility of their being used as components within music.

This definition does work.  It describes what music is and it draws a
clear boundary line to distinguish music from non-music.  It can easily
be extended (both intensionally and extensionally) to greater precision
in distinguishing one kind of music from another.  In point of fact, it
does the job.

Fully expecting that this will not be the last word -

Ian Crisp
[log in to unmask]

 [Thanks, Ian, I couldn't have asked for a better defense of my position
 than your verbose disagreement.  -Dave]