Ian Crisp wrote in response to 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]
>
>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?  ...
>
>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.

I suspect that what Dave may have meant is that there are some concepts,
music for one, that defy definition.  His somewhat self referential
explanation (which may not strictly be a definition) of what should be
considered "music" doesn't seem to me inferior to yours.  Accept the
warning siren of an ambulance as communication of some form of mood or
emotion or mind-state between performer and listener, and it becomes
music under your definition.  While it may already have done so in some
contemporary compositions, I'm not sure that your definition was intended
to be that broad.

If your definition was intended to be that broad, I think you'll agree upon
reflection that it doesn't differ significantly from Dave's explanation
that music is what listeners perceive to be music.

(I wrote this before I had fully scrolled down Ian's text and therefore
missed Dave's own more succinct reply to what I believe is the same
effect.)

Walter Meyer