Bob Draper:

>What does it mean organised sounds? Chiming clocks produce organised sound
>but they are not music in my view.  I have stood in the street and heard
>a car starting and been reminded of a piece of music.  Likewise when
>a workman bangs a nail into wood or a bird chirps.

Only "white noise" is really un-organised sound.  Just about any natural
sound shows some organisation of one kind and degree or another.  I have
never suggested that "organised sound = music".  The point I've made
several times in the 4'33" thread is that music *as it is generally
understood* requires some element of purposive organisation by human
intelligence and/or emotion, and also an element of human communication.
Natural sounds by themselves cannot qualify as music because although
they may show high levels of organisation to a mathematician analysing
them, that organisation is not the product of a human mind and carries no
information, no communication of any kind, from one human being to another.
A natural sound may be pleasant or enjoyable, but that does not make it
music - if only because the term "music" is devalued and its specific
meaning is abused if it is made to apply to things which are perfectly
adequately described by other terms - e.g.  "nice sound".  I submit that
subsuming all of Bach and Beethoven, Mahler and whoever else you like under
the same heading as the twitterings of birds and the babbling of brooks is
not exactly conducive to clear-headed thinking.  And the fact that those
sounds can be used or imitated or suggested in music by such composers does
not mean that they must have the status of music when isolated from the
contexts into which composers have put them.

>This whole question of what is music is utterly inponderable.  We can
>never agree on a suitable definition.

It definitely is ponderable, and there's been a good deal of pondering
going on recently.  It may well be undecidable, because there is no
objective reality involved.  To some extent, music is what anyone decides
that it is - but arbitrary or fanciful decisions are of little interest, as
they are likely to have few points of contact with the human race's body of
serious thought on the subject.  Bob may well be right that "we" will never
agree on a definition - but that does not mean that the pursuit of such a
definition is a pointless activity.  There may be valuable understandings
to be found along the way - and in my personal history of exploration of
the boundaries of music, there certainly have been.

Ian
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