Re: (Uh,) What is music?

[Alex J. Lubet <lubet001...>]

Responding to the message of <F192e8P3HTNOAC8znlk0000e4b2 (at) hotmail(dot)com>
from jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org:
> 
> I enjoyed Seth's delicious sardonicism; but as for John Cage's dictum, it 
> does not follow at all that because All A is B, therefore all B is A.  All 
> men are mortal; (hence) all mortals are men?  This is called reasoning by 
> converse, and it ain't necessarily so; in fact, it ain't so, period.  I'm 
> not sure what he was getting at.
> 
I had a nice off-list exchange with Seth and I think the point he was trying to 
make was that defining music is as complex as defining Jewish.  Cage's 
definition is certainly not universally accepted by as he would have said 
(quoting his Zen mentor, D. T. Suzuki), it 'thickens the plot.'

I noted in our exchange that there are numerous other approaches to defining 
music that make it even more complex.  There are Muslim, Christian, and even 
Jewish fundamentalist groups that distinguish between (certain kinds of) singing
and music.  They all chant, but none of them consider it music, which the Muslim
and Jewish groups (the ones of which I am familiar) condemn outright.  The 
Christian group I am thinking of allows for 'music' but not in their services 
and their attitude is guarded.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that there is both 'music physically made' and 'the 
music that is always present.'  I won't claim to fully understand the latter, 
but it is the one definition I've seen that doesn't require actual sound.

Precolonization, no Sub-Saharan African or Native American group had a word that
simply meant 'music.'  The Hmong of Southeast Asia, although they sing and play 
instruments in their own, highly logocentric way, claim not to have had music 
until they learned it (rock music, to be precise) from American GI's.

My contribution to thickening the plot.



Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
Adjunct Professor of American and Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota
2106 4th St. S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 624-7840 612 624-8001 (fax)

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