Music

Many scholars regard music as the most important of all temporal arts. In ancient Greece music was called μOνσιKή τέχνη—the art of the muses, or music drama, as it consisted in a combination of dance, singing, and instrumental music. The word music can still refer to musical genres like opera or music drama. There are, however, scholars who employ the notion “music” to refer solely to instrumental, or absolute music. For two reasons, a wider notion of music will be used in this entry, one that includes not only instrumental but also noninstrumental music. First, operas, musicals, and songs are usually referred to as music. Second, the etymology of the word music is such that the word has usually been connected with a broad meaning.

If they wish to define what music is in a short and specific phrase, scholars have to face many problems, as there are always musical pieces that are clearly musical but that do not correspond to the definition given. On the other hand, if they put forward a wider definition, it is usually the case that too many examples are included. Are bird songs music? The safest way to define music is to hold that music is everything that experts such as composers, musicologists, or music critics regard as music.

A central idea about music is that it is a temporal art, which implies that music needs to be performed in order for it to exist. All arts that need to be performed for their realization are temporal arts. Drama is a temporal art based upon a text, dance is one based upon corporal movement, and music is one based upon sounds. In temporal arts, an interplay between objective, inter subjective, and subjective time exists. Objective time refers to the time from God's perspective or from the perspective of an eternal realm of ideas in which [Page 888]musical works might exist. The existence of objective time can certainly be doubted.

Inter subjective time, on the other hand, is the time a watch tells us. This kind of time is based upon an interhuman agreement concerning the duration of intervals and how we calculate the duration of time. Human beings agreed to relate time to contingent natural constants like the period of time taken by the earth turning around the sun or the moon turning around the earth. Inter subj ective time can be found on musical scores as tempo, which is discussed later in this entry.

Another type of time relevant for temporal arts is subjective time. Subjective time depends on our perception of something. If we perceive a musical piece as boring, instants seem to have a longer duration than when we regard the music as entertaining. Another kind of subjective time is related to the stage of life in which the maker or the listener happens to be. Human interests differ significantly between, say, a teenager and an adult in midlife. Concerning the difference between music makers and listeners, some distinctions need to be presented. In the case of music, there are makers of various orders. The first-order maker is often the composer who is responsible for the score. The score needs to be read and interpreted direcdy by the makers of the second order, whether musicians or a conductor. If the conductor is on the second level, then on the third order would be musicians. Even though the maker of the first order creates the music, the maker of the third order performs it and enables the audience, the receivers of music, to listen to it.

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