Don Satz wrote:

>Considering my wife fairly typical of most folks concerning music, I
>asked her if she considered natural sounds to be music.  Her answer was
>"Sometimes.  There are some sounds I like, some I don't." Not a very
>illuminating answer but another view from one individual.  And I keep
>saying that the individual determines what constitutes music.
>
>But a definition of music being useful? I don't think so, but I'm very
>willing to alter that opinion if I hear/read something that's better than
>what I'm thinking.

I've said some of this as part of '4'33"', but in case Don missed that,
I'll repeat myself here:  there is no doubt in my mind that for something
to be art rather than nature it needs to involve in some way the conscious
communication of ideas between an artist and another person, and for a
collection of sounds to be music, those sounds must be the vehicle for
communicating those ideas.  Why is this a useful distinction? For one
thing, because if you don't make it, you are liable to come to rash and
possibly false (yes, there is such a thing!) conclusions:  you will either
reject a musical composition or other work of art as meaningless merely
because you don't understand it, or on the other hand fall prey to
anthropomorphism and superstition, and see and hear things in nature that
aren't there.  Of course, there is much in the world around us to *suggest*
aesthetic or human qualities - and such associations are rich material for
real artistic creations - but these qualities aren't immanent in nature,
whereas they are immanent in a musical composition, and if we want to do
critical justice to a musical work, we have to have regard not only to our
own reaction, but to the ideas that went into it.  It's a two-way process.

Felix Delbruck
[log in to unmask]