Dwelling in Music

From Pythagoras to Bach and on finding new grounding in Music

Part 1 of 11

1. Today music is understood as an art form, an art form the place of which is designated as aesthetically conveying experiences and ideas using the sound medium. This current view of music is the result of an entire age's worth of change and evolution and while persuasive and true in a very concrete way it begs the question of whether there is more to music than merely expressing inner states and feelings with musical instruments. In this essay I would like to show how the evolution of music didn't deepen our understanding of it, but rather, removed music from the everyday reality of dwelling and confined it to only those characteristics which belong to it as aesthetics. This aspect, which is now perceived to be the whole of music, is the aspect in which music is art. It is the art-as-aesthetics that has its value measured by the intellect and is employed to invoke both contemplative sense of order and beauty as well as an emotional response, in popular music genres particularly, by calling upon sounds and harmonies which awaken particular psycho-somatic responses to music. These are now more and more subject to scientific research into the human psyche and while not part of the classical music tradition they still operate in the same spirit of striving to define and confine the scope of music to its preconceived man ordained role.