Music

It is unsurprising that there are chapters on literature, painting and music in this volume – if they’re not arts, nothing is. It is almost as predictable that there are chapters devoted to topics such as depiction and metaphor. The issues raised by depiction and metaphor are central to the artistic use of pictures and language, yet these topics do not pertain exclusively to art (there are lots of pictures that are not artworks, such as maps, diagrams and holiday snaps; people use metaphors in all sorts of contexts). Should it be surprising that there is no such counterpart chapter for music? In short, can there be music that is not art? Most philosophers who have discussed music seem to have assumed that all

music is artistic; at least they have ignored nonartistic music. For instance, Jerrold Levinson argues that music is “sounds temporally organized by a person for the purpose of enriching or intensifying experience through active engagement (e.g. listening, dancing, performing) with the sounds regarded primarily, or in significant measure, as sounds” (1990a: 273). This is an “aesthetic” definition of music insofar as it requires the musician to aim at eliciting a certain kind of heightened experience in the audience. If you think, however, that a lullaby sung to put a baby to sleep is an example of music, then it is a counterexample to this definition, since the singer intends precisely the opposite of active engagement on the baby’s part. Levinson considers the example of muzak, claiming that his definition rightly excludes it (1990a: 274). But it seems plausible that muzak is music – albeit bad music – and thus that a definition that allows for nonartistic music, such as lullabies and muzak, would be preferable to one that doesn’t. Roger Scruton suggests that what makes a sound music is that it “exists within a

musical ‘field of force’” (1997: 17). For instance, when you knock your wine glass against another during a toast, the sound it emits will have a certain frequency, perhaps a frequency that corresponds to one of the keys on a piano. But the sound does not thereby have a pitch (e.g. middle C) because it is not heard as such. So if a glass further down the table emits the frequency corresponding to a G, you will not wait for the harmonic tension to be resolved by the appearance of another C, as you would if you were listening to a bass line. By putting it this way, Scruton makes being music a subjective matter – if you do hear the sounds of these wine glasses as

introducing harmonic tension, they are thereby musical notes. When we turn to central examples of music, however, this subjectivism has unfortunate consequences. If you do not hear the sounds produced by a musical group from an unfamiliar culture as music, they are thereby not music – at least for you. It would accord better with our conception of music (and human creation in general) to make the musical status of sounds depend on the actions of those producing them, rather than the attitudes of those listening. I have thus suggested an intentionalist definition along Scrutonian lines, according

to which music is “(1) any event intentionally produced or organized (2) to be heard, and (3) either (a) to have some basic musical feature, such as pitch or rhythm, or (b) to be listened to for such features” (Kania 2011: 12). Because this definition appeals to “basic musical features,” it allows for the distinction, argued for by Andy Hamilton (2007: 40-65), between music and (nonmusical) sound art. (By contrast, Levinson must count “sound art” as music, since it meets all the conditions of his definition.) But the disjunctive third condition allows for a further distinction between “indiscernible” works of music and sound art. Suppose Yoko Ono and John Cage independently took copies of the same recording of a toilet flushing and presented them as works of art. It would seem a significant difference if Ono intended you to listen to the sounds for features such as pitch and rhythm (even though these expectations would be frustrated), while Cage intended you to listen to them as the pure sounds they are in themselves. This definition captures the difference, classifying Ono’s work as music but not Cage’s, even though they sound the same. To return to the issue we opened with, since a lullaby has pitches and rhythms,

and is intended to be heard, it counts as music according to this definition. But is it art? On the present account, this is a separate question, presumably to be decided by a general theory of art, rather than a musical theory in particular. For instance, those with inclinations towards an aesthetic theory of art might argue that the lullaby is art in virtue of its beauty, while institutionalists may argue that the singer in this case does not possess the institutional authority in the art-music world to transform this music into art. (See “Definitions of art,” Chapter 21 of this volume.) Whatever theory of art is proposed, though, it is likely that some music will be excluded, such as musical exercises (scales, arpeggios and so on), doorbells and simple ringtones. The features that make these things music are what could be addressed in a chapter on music in the art-neutral sense, just as the chapters on pictorial representation and metaphor in this volume have application to nonartistic uses of pictures and language.