Alex Heywood What Is Music? In order to understand what is music it is essential to analyse its history and major movements.

From Pythagoras, Modernism, Improvisation, Silence to Semiotics it is possible to use these main areas of study to define what is music. Early Music he first signs of music were found almost !",""" years #.$, archaeologists found a flute created by neolithic men made of bone. %hat does this say about music& It tells historians that music was actually a part of life way before society as we 'now it was established. (lso, a picture of a woman playing a two fluted flute was found that dates bac' to !)" #.$, showing evidence that music was being practised before Pythagoras was alive, who many consider to be the father of music. Pythagoras

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras, ca. 570450

Pythagoras was born in *reece in ca. +,", he travelled as a child and studied under various philosophers. -e is considered the father of music for he was the first to thin' about music philosophically and apply mathematics to music. In doing so, he created what is now considered the fundamentals of music such as harmonies, octaves and scales. Pythagoras believed in multiple musical theories, the first being the Music of the Spheres. -e believed that the planets moving throughout the universe caused music that only some could hear, but still omnipresent. -e also had a theory called Music -umana which discusses the music of the body and soul, the sound of our nervous system and our mind. (nd finally, Music Instrumentalis which describes the music we create ourselves such as voice. -is wor' with the monochord and e.perimenting with a bloc' to create integers of fourths, fifths and octaves changed modern music and tuning. %ithout Pythagoras/ music research and ideas music therapy could not e.ist nor standard scales.

Modernism

'Music is organi ed sound.' - !dgar "erese #$%&&, p.$'( )$* Modernism emerged in the late 0)th century as a term to describe a new energy and ways of creative thin'ing. Mar., 1iet2che and Freud are considered the main modernist philosophers who changed the way society perceived se.ual protocols, social class and the rules of life. Edgar 3erese said that music is organi2ed sound which encapsulates how music in this era shifted and changed, such as natural sound that can be seen in the wor's of Pierre Schaefer was new and e.citing and it was the basis of what we now call sampling. hrough the modernist movement emerged E.pressionism which allowed artists to evo'e emotions or emotional meaning through a subjective point of view. 1o longer was reality portrayed in art and music but what the artist meant the piece to mean abstractly. (nother movement that emerged during the modernist period was /4ada/5 a group of creative artists, writers, musicians who strived to change their faulty culture and completely alter society/s perceptions on the norm of creativity. -ans 6ichter 70)8+9 called 4ada /anti5art/ :,; which reflected attitudes towards art in this period, it was no longer who or what determines art, but the fact that it e.ists ma'es it art. <urt Schwitters developed sound poems which foregrounded the sound of speech, a verse without words, which flourished when concrete music grew popular. (gain showing that music could be made with any sound, e.panding the then strict narrow interpretation and creation of music. Improvisation

+n $5 seconds the difference ,et-een composition and impro.isation is that in composition you ha.e a// the time you -ant to decide -hat to say in $5 seconds, -hi/e in impro.isation you ha.e $5 seconds. -0te.e 1acy #2004, p. 2&7( )2* (lthough it emerged hugely in the mid ="th century, improvisation pre5dates any other musical style in history as the first humans to ma'e music, who had no understanding of musical structure or progression must have improvised. It is the practice of music without preparation or

rehearsal which was widely used to develop creativity and to progress music e.perimentally. Mid5 ="th century improvisation grew at a rapid rate, which musicians such as ja22 pianist <eith >arrett became famous for. $onstantly evolving, improvisation is a music style that, as told by $ornelius $ardew 70),0, p. 0+= 9, /is gone forever from the moment it occurs, nor did it have any previous e.istence before the moment it occurred, so neither is there any historical reference available./ It is the basis of composition, although composition re?uires the musician to remember the piece long enough to ma'e note or record it. he )th century *regorian chants show that improvisation was an unavoidable part of composition, and #ach was 'nown for his improvisational composition methods. @nli'e music before, where composers would write music and ma'e notes, it freely allowed musicians to e.periment with sound and to develop music and song structure. It was much li'e the modernist idea that music must develop and alter the audience/s perception of the norm. Improvisation was 'ey to early >a22, foregrounding the players s'ill and development throughout the song. (lthough in >a22 they are playing a specific scale, it is not to be confused with a specific pattern5 improvisation is constantly evolving, allowing the future to develop and the past to change. Miles 4avis said that /while many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, >a22 e.emplifies the uni?ue characteristic of collective improvisation./ (round this time improvisation was considered by many to be liberating, even political5 directly symboli2ing their opinions towards society, and the repetitive nature of governments lying to its public5 much li'e their views towards their personal composition gradually becoming repetitive. Silence

'There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is a/-ays something to see, something to hear.' 5 >ohn $age 70)80, p. A0=9 :A; >ohn $age once said that there is never silence in music and that music itself is constantly around us and that nature itself becomes music. In his piece !/AAB, he sits at his piano and allows the ambience of the room, the claws of hands, the coughs and whispers of the audience to create music. his new way of creating and thin'ing about music was revolutionary and truly changed modern music. he

premise was that even in an anechoic chamber, where there is complete silence, you could still hear your nervous system and blood running through the body. his was unnerving for musicians, whose main art was that of creating music, but as >ohn $age said /sounds occur whether intended or not/ 7>ohn $age 70)809, E.perimental Music, p. =9 :!;. his was mainly focused upon nature and its sounds, and its relationship with music li'e (nanda $oomaraswamy said that /art imitates nature/ 7$oomaraswamy, =""!, p.0="9. Semiotics
:+;

Semiotics is the study of signs and often language and its symbolic value to words. It analy2es the use of certain sounds to convey certain meanings, for e.ample we use the word table to describe a table, although the actual word table has no relevance to the object. It is a cultural invention, hereditary through language and worldwide. Music, aforementioned with Silence, is constant through natural sound, the most obvious being voice. Semiotics studies the relationship between our voice and the sounds that we ma'e and the meaning it conveys, which we can apply to music to determine what it is. ( sign is composed of two elements, the first being a concept, for e.ample, a tree, the second being the sound image 7or word9 /tree/. %e can apply this to music, for e.ample, a minor chord is thought to sound sad and sul'y, but what tells us that it/s sad& %hy is a major chord /happier/ than a minor chord& Semiotics would suggest that culturally we have been taught that the minor scale should be associated with sadness, heavy metal to be associated with anger and fol' music to be associated with rela.ation. Music is a mi.ture of signs, from the overall theme of a song, to the individual notes of a piece. Each sound being evo'ing certain moods and emotions. #ut what if the signs evo'e a different response to each individual& %endell 3. -arris 7="0", p. 8A9 said that /the relationship between the observer and the observed :C; becomes the only thing that can be observed./ :8;Essentially, the music is e.actly the same, the same note, the same scale and pitch, although the relationship between the audience listening and the music itself is what matters. he emotional response can alter between people from various cultures, as an Indian tribesmen may respond to a major chord with happiness. 6ather than the world being full of items, the world is full

of relationships to those items, and if the relationships between music and the audience are instantaneous and varied, then music must never be neutral and there can never be an innocent listener. (ccordingly, if music must have a relationship with an audience to /mean/ something, does music by itself mean anything at all&

In conclusion, music throughout history has changed and developed at such a rapid scale that to encompass it all and to define it in a sentence is impossible. (lthough, music is constant and omnipresent, it is natural and synthetic5 man made just as much as it is cosmic. Music is sound, whenever and wherever without order or linear narrative, without meaning or relation, it stands alone as an element, as a language and an art.

%ord $ountD 0+80

Bibliography $. "arese, !dgard #$%&&(, Perspecti.es of 3e- Music "o/. 5 3o. $, Perspecti.es of 3e- Music 2. 4 e-s5i, 6rederic #2004(, 7udio 8u/ture9 readings in modern music, 3e- :or59 8ontinuum ;. 8age, <ohn #$%&$(, 0i/ence9 1ectures and =ritings, =es/eyan >ni.ersity Press 4. 5. 8oomaras-amy, 7nanda #2004(, The !ssentia/ 7nanda ?. 8oomaras-amy, @/oomington, +nd. 9 =or/d =isdom &. Aarris, =ende// #20$0(, @eyond Poststructura/ism9 The 0pecu/ations of Theory and the !Bperience of 1iterature, Penn 0tate Press 7. 4ichter, Aans #$%&5(, Cada9 7rt and 7nti-art, 3e- :or5 and Toronto9 DBford >ni. Press