ghmerrill wrote: âSat Feb 01, 2025 12:19 pm
Kbiggs wrote: âSat Feb 01, 2025 11:17 am
Another way to think of it: to impose a Western European classification of âmusic presupposes musicianâ ...
Color me skeptical about this being a particularly Western European "classification" -- to whatever degree it may be a "presupposition" -- and in addition skeptical that it's a Western European presupposition at all.
What there is -- in terms of application of the term "music" (or its correlate in various languages, European and otherwise) is a cluster of analogies and analogical thought. In English this appears in such phrases as "that's music to my ears," "the music of the stars," "the music of the spheres," etc. All of these decouple the concept of music from that of a musician (reference to a deity being involved are either non-existent or, at best, very vague and indirect).
In the "West" such analogies go back to mentions in very early literature/poetry/philosophy in such contexts as the "harmony of the spheres" and other views of the Pythagoreans, and then there was Kepler (something of a numerologist and astrologist!) who referred to the "music of the spheres," "celestial harmony," and the "song of the Earth" (and claiming that the Earth possesses a "soul" because it exists within the "astrological harmony"). He went so far (in his "The Harmonies of the World") as to attribute vocal parts (tenor, alto, ...) to each of the planets and say that each planet "sings a song". Of course, much earlier, Pythagoras had assigned each celestial body a note in the scale, and carefully thought out intervals among the planets. There was no talk of a "musician" in these traditions.
Those are just some examples. I'm surprised if music history courses aren't full of this sort of thing. But since I've never taken one ...
Maybe this information is confined to philosophy and physics courses.
I understand your points: that there is a long history of ascribing or assigning musical characteristics to naturally occurring phenomena; that this occurs in the Western and the non-Western world; and that most of these instances have no musician to point to other than some ill-defined non-corporeal/spiritual entity who somehow makes that music, as it were. But as we all know from our history and music courses, the music of spheres doesnât exist, and Medieval interpretations and misinterpretations of Greek, Roman, and other ancient texts are non-sensical.
I apologize that I wasnât more clear in my first post. I was referring to the relationship of humans and ordered, intentional sounds they make, not some magical result of the movement of celestial bodies. Max noted:
⊠who did not describe themselves as musicians, because their chanting and drumming is intimately tied to a ceremonial and spiritual role, and not meant to have an artistic meaning in itself outside of that context.
I understand this to mean that these indigenous peoples (Cherokee, IIRC) were observed singing, chanting, dancing, and beating drums. To the Western observerâsay, your everyday man in the street, or perhaps even an unenlightened musicologist or anthropologistâthe behavior might look like a singer, a dancer, and a musician.
We see an actor and an action. We see a person behaving in a certain way, i.e., they are beating a drum. In one view, they are a musician. But that description might carry no meaning to the actor. If asked, the actor (drum-beater) might say, âI am worshipping.â They might say, âI am talking to my ancestors.â They might say, âI am making the rain fall.â
I am not an expert. I have no training in musicology or anthropology other than undergraduate courses. What I remember from those courses, as well as other coursework, training, and experience, is that what I think I see might beâand often isâseen very differently by others. Asking these people what they are doing and accepting their answer without judgment might surprise us. If we put aside the temptation to label everything, along with the assumption that their activity must be defined and pigeon-holed into some type of Western-derived schema, we might be surprised by their answers.
Now, we might be tempted to say in response, âWell, it looks like youâre drumming,â or maybe, âHow does that converse with your ancestors,â or perhaps, âHow does that make the rain fall?â That kind of natural skepticism is understandable, but it fails to appreciate the answer provided: Worship comes in many forms, people talk with their ancestors all the time in different ways, and who is to say that beating a drum doesnât affect the weather?
Our Western minds might be tempted to say in response that belief is subjective and canât be measured, speaking with the dead is nonsense, and correlation is not causation.
But what ifâŠ? Itâs similar to the leap of faith we all make when we read fiction: we suspend disbelief. If we suspend disbelief (e.g,, Western skepticism) enough to accept other interpretations of the world, what might we find? Sometimes, another view, a different interpretation of the world, however incomplete or non-sensical it might appear to be, is enough.
