Talk:Music

I haven't made any changes to this page, yet, but the first thing I'm planning on addressing is the opening statement and this sentence, "the broadest definition of music is organized sound and silence in time." Counter-examples of this definition are easy to come by, and thus, it is not the "broadest definition" of music. The main problem is with the use of the word "organized", as organized sound is not a common trait among all music. Many pieces by John Cage were entirely random, and the same can be said about certain pieces by, for instance, Xenakis. It could be argued that the planning process of a random (stochastic) piece is in effect an organizing process. For instance, while a Xenakis piece is highly random, the score is very precise and well defined. In a piece like 4'33", however, the idea is to turn the performance on its head, and cause the audience to be the performer. In this setting, the sounds that the audience creates are completely random, and thus the sound has not been organized in the slightest. I'm considering changing the opening sentence to something like "music is an an art form concerned with sound and silence". --Tom Gersic 23:19, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Note: These two sentences contradict each other: "The broadest definition of music is organized sound and silence in time. These two elements may be organized in an almost infinite variety of ways ranging from complete randomness to highly constructed systems." If it's random it can't be organized. The definition of music page would be a good place to discuss the difficulties in precisely defining music. --Tom Gersic 23:21, 8 February 2007 (CST)