What is Music?
A physicist would say it’s the vibrations of air molecules around your ear. A Neuroscientist would argue that it is the electric signals that flow from your ears to your brain. A composer might say that it’s the organisation of notes that musicians can interpret, and an improviser would boast that it just flows out of them. A rapper will insist that lyrics are a part of it, and a producer won’t rest till they find the ‘perfect’ mix. We each have unique tastes and backgrounds that influence our definition of music. So what is Music, really? Is there a difference between the Music of our ancestors and ours?
Genesis
A starting point would have been to examine the birth of music as we know it. However, scholars can only speculate (and disagree) over it. It is unknown if music predates language or not, or if it served a purpose. We can assume that singing and percussion were the first forms of played music, as they require nothing more than a voice, and at least a limb.
Our earliest physical evidence of music is in the form of a flute, carved out of bone. Whether or not a xylobonist accompanied the flautist is still unknown. We don’t know if everyone partook in musical practices, or whether there was a dedicated Rattle & Roll tour band (these flutes predate the agricultural revolution).
Swords ‘N Roses
In Medieval Europe, Music took its home in churches. During mass, the priests would sing biblical verses to the pious. In an effort to reinforce participation, the friars came up with a way of notating musical notes on paper. The higher the note was, the higher it would go in the staff. The longer the note was held, the more space it occupied. That’s the birth of today’s sheet music. The first composers did not write music for fame, fortune and everything that goes with it, but as a means to get others on the stairway to heaven. Eventually, music scripture gave rise to polyphony, and boosted musical education. Music played by bards became more complex, and pushed the development of more sophisticated musical instruments, culminating in the invention of the Organ.
Florence + the Printing Press
The printing press allowed for European music to travel further, and motivated musicians to be the ‘best’. The shift in the ways of thinking opened the doors for music to take alternate forms. As an example, Bach’s music was highly functional, most of it was composed for the church he served at the time. An exception would be the Well-Tempered Clavier, a set of 48 preludes and fugues composed out of boredom. By the time Beethoven rose to prominence, ideas of the ‘Sublime’ were developed by poets like Wordsworth and philosophers like Kant and Shopenhauer. This allowed composers to explore that idea too: Music whose function was to be sublime.
AM/FM Radiohead
In the 1880s, the first phonographs started popping up. For the first time, listeners could hear music without any musicians being in the room. The process of recording music was a highly technical job which required highly skilled engineers, giving birth to record labels. Once they had the music, they pressed it to a physical medium (cylinder, vinyl, tape, CDs) and used the radio for marketing. Once records became mainstream, music benefited from a massively increased audience. Electric instruments opened the door for new sounds and playing techniques, in turn leading to new genres of music. Knowing their work could be heard in a myriad of environments, artists tailored their music to be energetic enough to be driven to, cathartic enough to cry to, upbeat enough to dance to, and sometimes even monotonous enough to have dinner guests over to.
Pressplay
The internet’s rise in popularity induced a rise of music piracy, and eventually its legal twin, music streaming. People didn’t need to listen to the whole album when they were too lazy to get up and change the disc, instead they could listen to personalised, shuffled playlists, gradually allowing the listener to listen to many different tracks without being aware of who is/are behind what they are listening to. In a way, the art transcended the artists. In another way, music lost its personality.
The Role-ing Stones
Up until and through the mediaeval era, Music was being played as hunting tactics, as a means to synchronise labour, as a means to connect with the supernatural and as a means of storytelling. Aside from perhaps the hunting tactics, much of these roles are still fulfilled by Music today. Music was human, and involved the whole community.
Throughout the enlightenment, Music began to gain appreciation for its own sake. Musicians wrote their music with the goal of it being enjoyed and danced to, they pushed the limits of the forms they were familiar with, used music as a bonding mechanism in intimate settings, and even wrote music whose purpose was to blend into the background. Music was free to be whatever the artist wanted it to be. Sure, most composers had to write the music their patrons requested, but it was always human, and was always a community event.
The story of Orpheus tells us that music has a divine quality and can take you anywhere, even to the deepest depths of our souls. It can take anyone to a state of bliss, make them forget their pains, and can almost bring a loved one back from the dead. And with the ability to record and then stream music, people can now experience it whenever they please. On top of everything music is, it also has a supporting role in films, TV, video games and even adverts, heightening the experience of what the visual medium dictated.
So what is Music?
There is a divide between the music we listen to at home and the music we listen to live. At home, our music sounds the same every time we set the needle/press play, and after a few listens, we know exactly what to expect at every bar. This led to studio releases needing to be over-engineered for ‘perfection’.
Is music Music if the musician is not there to play it? Is music Music if it is always the same? Is music Music if it has been manipulated and engineered in post-production?
Is there a difference between music and Music?
I’ve often thought that for music to be Music, it needs to be human. Whales, birds, and artificial intelligences can certainly create sounds that we perceive as music, although they do so without ‘intending’ to. That begs the question, is music Music if it is not intended to be?