Message to Don Satz, who is known to appreciate brevity and concision:
there's a bit for you right at the end, if you make it that far.

Dave Lampson wrote:

>I think you guys are making this way too hard,

But some of us enjoy it . . .

>but then this is a little difficult to come to terms with isn't it.  One
>of the biggest surprises I had when I got on the net more than a decade
>ago was that there were educated, erudite, perceptive people who actually
>listened to the works of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ligeti, Berio, Boulez, etc.
>as music.

I completely understand that experience, although for me it was at the
end of the 60s and it was with avant-garde jazz, spontaneous "free"
improvisation, late John Coltrane etc..  I only started listening to
(rather than "hearing") modernist classical music after having my ears
opened by Coleman, Cherry, Ayler, Bley and of course Trane.  And Hindustani
music, but that's another story.

>The definition I've come to accept is:
>
>Music is anything someone listens to as music.
>
>This isn't very satisfying emotionally, but it does work.  For instance,
>take a random, disorganized collection of sounds, like ten washers on
>spin cycle in the local laundromat (sort of a naturally occurring version
>of Steve Reich's "Drumming", if you will).  If you don't listen to it as
>music, then it's just noise, but if you listen carefully you can detect
>the rhythmic interaction of these ten machines,

Then it isn't random and disorganised - there is an underlying pattern
determined by the speeds of the machines, the weight of each load,
systematic irregularities caused by uneven distribution of the contents
in some of the machines, a main bearing about to fail in machine number
4, etc..  Although such organisation may exist, it is not the product of
purposive human design (OK, people designed the washing machines, but
neither the machines themselves nor their loads would have been calculated
with sound-patterns as an important consideration).

Alternatively, the perception of rhythmic interaction and pattern may be
the result of the listener's brain searching out any suggestion of order
and imposing patterning on the incoming sound.  We all do that on railway
trains, seeking out recognisable shapes in the clatter of the wheels on the
track-joints and all the other mechanical noises.

This is from a post I sent to another list on another 4'33" thread a year
or so ago. It seems relevant now, and I wouldn't change a word:

   I draw a line at the point that music is sound *organised* by
   deliberate human action. If we allow that random, unorganised sounds
   can constitute music, then the category of "music" would become
   meaningless, as there is no imaginable sound or sequence of sounds
   that would not qualify for inclusion. Music would equal sound, all
   sound would be music. The element of organisation can be imposed upon
   sound by composer, performer, or listener, or some combination of
   the three.  If all the organisation is provided by the listener alone,
   then whatever "music" results must be a totally private experience
   and there could therefore be no possibility of communication. I also
   stand firm on the point that if there is no communication or possibility
   of it, then there is no music. If the human brain's constant attempt
   to impose order and meaning on the stream of incoming sense data is
   to be regarded as a species of musical composition, then musical
   creativity is a constant of the human condition and again, the concept
   of music becomes so diffuse as to lose meaning. So I cannot agree
   that 4'33" can reasonably be defined as music, because if that were
   so, then any and all other sound would also be music and the purpose
   of distinguishing between music and other sound would be lost.


>and I would say that it can be considered music if it is listened to as
>such.  It might not be great music, or even good music, but it's every bit
>as musical (perhaps more so) than any number of Cage compositions.

See above!  I'm not going to buy outright relativism here.  If I listen to
the sound of a semi-submerged hippopotamus in a state of digestive distress
"as music" that doesn't make it music - it makes me a fool.  To enlarge a
definition to such an extent that it becomes impossible to exclude anything
achieves nothing, clarifies nothing, leads nowhere.  If I fold a sheet of
A4 into a paper aeroplane and write "Boeing 747" on the side of it, that
doesn't mean I'm going to buy a ticket and sit in it to fly across the
Atlantic.  Calling it an airliner, or even the fact that it can (after a
fashion) fly, doesn't change what it is.  A paper aeroplane isn't a
multi-engined jet aircraft complete with pilot, cabin crew and in-flight
meals; and a flatulent hippopotamus isn't another Beethoven.  You don't
change things into other things simply by treating them as if they are what
they are not, and one of the ways humanity got out of swinging around in
the trees to where we are today is by clear thinking about what's what and
what's not.

>it also goes to the heart of music, and that is that listening is
>required.  Simply hearing is not sufficient.

Almost agreed.  My "definition" of music (in quotes because I have never,
on the net or off it, set out a finalised formal definition and this isn't
going to be one either!) requires (1) three "logical" human beings,
although any two of them could be combined into one "physical" person.
They could be called C (composer), P (performer), and L (listener); (2)
sound-content which has been organised / structured / planned / shaped /
given form by C and which is realised into physical sound by P who will
therefore make detailed contributions not necessarily calculated or
intended by C; and (3) some communication of an idea or an emotional state
or experience or sense of "this is what it's like to be inside someone
else's head" from C or P or a combination of them to L, the audience.
As Dave observes, this communication will not take place without active
listening.  Passive hearing (i.e.  no conscious focusing on the music) may
lull the listener into a mental state that was potentially in him to begin
with (not unlike that "soothing and comfortable" classical radio station so
rightly vilified elsewhere), but is unlikely to lead to the apprehension or
assimilation of new experience.  So we can say that it is a necessary
condition of "music" that L is actively engaged in experiencing the output
of C and P.  Fortunately this does not require that L is doing nothing but
furiously concentrating on the music - the human brain is always actively
processing sensory input, searching for patterns, comparing new input
with memory, trying to make sense of the information coming in.  Even
when asleep - that's a large part of where dreams come from.  This
active/passive listening/hearing thing is a question of degree, not the
absolute distinction that Dave implied - so I don't see that it can be made
the centre-piece of a clear distinction between "music" and "non-music".


>Attention must be paid,

Consciously?

>and the experience, knowledge, and emotional state of the listener must be
>brought to bear before a musical situation can take occur.

Definitely yes.  Communication in any of the arts is not simply a one-way
transfer of some content from one person to another, like taking some water
from a big full tank (Beethoven's huge musical genius) and pouring it into
an empty little jar (my modest equivalent).  It is the product of an
interaction between what Beethoven left of himself expressed in his music,
the contribution of the performer(s), and whatever I, or any other
listener, may have to bring to the meeting.  And if the audience for a
performance of one of the late quartets were to contain, for example, Don
Satz, David Stewart, our esteemed moderator Dave Lampson, Sir Simon Rattle
and myself, then we would all experience that communication differently and
gain different things from it.  We each take what we have to offer, and
bring away what we can absorb - the common factor is the interaction, not
its result.  This is also why my trinity of C, P & L cannot be absorbed
into one single individual - because then there would be no possibility of
communication between one human being and another.  What a composer does in
a room by himself when he is simultaneously creating, playing the sounds he
imagines, and listening to them - is certainly a musicAL activity, but it
is not yet music.  Just as the architect, when he draws lines on a sheet of
paper, is not building a house or living in it as a home.  The
specifications for something are not the same as the thing itself.

>So, music is defined not by the organization of sounds, but by the
>perception and assimilation of sounds.

I don't entirely disagree.  But Dave has pivoted that sentence around
the second comma, seeming to imply another "either / or" between
"organisation" (I refuse to give in to American spellings!) and "perception
and assimilation".  I don't accept that things are that simple.  You can't
assimilate unless you have first perceived organisation or structure.  What
could it mean to "assimilate" pure random white noise?

Let's try an example.  Listen to a metronome.  The sound is simple:
"tick pause tick pause tick pause tick pause" etc.  etc..  The structure
is equally simple, easily analysed and described.  There is a basic unit
"tick pause" which is repeated indefinitely.  You perceive the organisation
(recognise the structural element), and you assimilate it (recognise that
it repeats, and become able to predict how it will continue).  Now for
something a bit harder:  a pianist practising the scale of Cmajor, or Len
Fehskens or myself behind the drums, playing eight in the bar on the ride
cymbal, one four and five on the bass drum, three and seven on the snare
drum.  The patterns are a bit more complex, but the processes of
recognising the basic elements, fitting them into a structure and then
using that to grasp the shape of the whole thing remain exactly the same.
This thought-exercise has a pattern of its own, not difficult to extend
once you've recognised and assimilated it.  Go on to a simple piece in
strophic form, then on to a by-the-book sonata form piece, then on to a
Mahler symphony, etc.  etc..  The sophistication increases dramatically,
but the same processes apply.  As it gets more complex it may be difficult
or impossible to predict (I certainly wouldn't claim to be able to
second-guess Mahler!), but there will be a sense of underlying logic, of
things "fitting an overall shape" or of "having meaning" that gradually
takes over from straightforward predictability.

Now try it with white noise, and you will fall at the first hurdle.  You
can't recognise any structural elements because there aren't any.  There
are no repeating units, no matter how loosely you define them.  You can't
predict what will come next, except that it will be as shapeless as what
went before (i.e.  a failure to predict).  Exactly the same would apply to
complete silence, if such a thing were possible.  The idea of "perceive and
assimilate" as built up through the previous examples just doesn't apply.
Unless we're prepared to include "imaginary" structures imposed on the
white noise or silence by the listener's own pattern-seeking nervous system
- but that would mean we're talking about neurology not about anything
actually present in the sound (or silence).

Conclusion from all of this:  Music requires organisation.  If that
organisation is purposive and is perceived, then the assimilation process
will contribute to some form of communication.

If Dave had written "music is defined by the purposive organization of
sounds, and by the perception and assimilation of sounds" then I would have
had little to disagree with, and this post would have been a lot shorter.
Oh well . . .

For Don Satz and anyone else who may care: What does all this matter?

Probably not much.  Certainly it has zilch impact on the way 99.999% of
the human race go about their days, listening to (or often barely being
aware of) the music that fills or at any rate surrounds so much of our
lives.  But if people didn't worry about meanings and distinctions, you and
I and the whole of the Berlin Philharmonic would still be swinging about up
in the trees, peeling bananas with our feet and bopping each other over the
head with coconuts.  Or something.  Probably not even in time with each
other.  Sometimes the simple arboreal life has its attractions, but on the
whole I prefer it down here, even if I have just wasted an hour writing
this when I could have been doing something more useful like picking fleas
out of my beard.  I'm off for lunch now - just brachiating downstairs to
see if my wife's left any bananas in the fruit bowl.

Ian Crisp
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