Bloody-minded Steve Schwartz refuses to leave this alone:

>So therefore a note isn't music either, but merely a component.

Yes.  I thought about going into that point in my last post, but decided
to spare long-suffering listmembers any more digressions in this thread.
So much for good intentions.

>How about a group of notes? Is that music?

Depends.  If it's the same note repeated without rests or any other
structuring (variation of loudness, tone quality, vibrato etc.) so that "a
group of notes" comes to the same thing as one longer note, then no. If
not, then possibly yes.

>If so, why not a group of rests?

Because a group of rests can be nothing more than one big rest.

>Ian goes on to point out that it's the organization of these components
>that gives rise to music.  I agree.

How happy I am!!

>I would, however, contend that Cage
>organizes the rests - etremely loosely, I admit, but it's there.  There
>are movements and timings, etc.  (although not much of an etc.).

Agreed - they are organised in that (very loose) sense, but that is not
organisation in terms of any kind of sound-structure, therefore it is not
musical organisation and the result is not music - any more than I would
have written a novel if I simply submitted a list of chapter numbers and
pages to a literary publisher:

127 PAGES, a novel by Ian Crisp

Chapter 1    page 3
Chapter 2    page 24
Chapter 3    page 47

I'll leave the remainder of this magnum opus to the imagination of my
readers.

I have suggested several times, and I become even more convinced as this
thread draws on, that such organisation as Cage provided is theatrical,
and is closely linked to the Theatre of the Absurd movement.  Others have
maintained that Cage intended the piece as a joke, and that it should only
be taken as such.  I'm inclined to agree, with the reservation that the
best jokes usually contain a germ of uncomfortable truth inside.

>Oh what the hell?  I'm giggling as I write.

Me too.

>An interesting question has always been to me bird song - natural sounds
>that many have taken as music, but is it?

No. Nor is the sound of the waves, the wind in the trees, or the sound
of silence.  But I'm not too sure about the music of the spheres.  All
of these could, of course, be used musically.

>Do birds sing or call?

Birds don't sing in any sense remotely comparable to what you mean when
you talk about human "singing".  Some bird "song" is pleasant on the ear
(speaking only for myself, of course), but a lot of it is a raucous and
unpleasant racket.  That doesn't mean I don't enjoy hearing birds - I do,
but not for musical reasons.  And before anyone jumps on me suggesting that
I have an extremely narrow range of "enjoyable / musical" sound, I'll say
again that I am one of the few people on earth to own a whole CD of Jon
Hiseman drum solos and to listen to it for pleasure.  Sometimes all the
way through in one go.  At realistic volume levels.

>Does a bird organize sound or does it simply emit what's been implanted
>in its birdy brain for survival?

The latter.  Birds have a limited repertoire of calls with fixed meanings.
These may evolve over time, but do not change significantly within the
lifespan of an individual.

>Where's David Attenborough when he's needed?

Don't know - except that he recently refused to front a big new natural
history series on dinosaurs for the BBC.  So you'll have to make do with:

Ian the biologist (although a specialist in freshwater bugs, not birds)
and occasional Philosopher of Science.  And novelist.

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