Music – Cheap Research Essays

Final Reflection

During the semester, this class discerned two broad and deceptively simple questions: What is music? and Why does it matter?

With regard to the first question, works of music – unlike paintings or sculptures, for example, which can be identified with particular physical objects – seem elusive. Is a musical work an idea in the composer’s mind? Is it a score? Is it a performance – if so, which? And are there important differences between the works of classical music, and, for example, jazz or pop songs?

If anything, the question as to why music matters is even more puzzling. We commonly think that music can be meaningful, but how? Music (without lyrics) has no clear semantic content. Many have thought that musical meaning has something to do with the relationship between music and human emotions, but then what exactly is this relationship? One need not be sad to write sad music, and sad music does not necessarily make the listener sad, so how is it that it is sad music? Arguably, some music is meaningful at least partly because it represents ideas or objects. But how can sounds or tones represent ideas or objects? Of course, music matters to us partly because it can be really good, but what makes music good, and how can evaluative judgments about music be grounded or substantiated?

These are difficult questions to answer, but they are also fascinating; by examining some traditional and contemporary responses to them, we have attempted to refine our own thinking about music and our relationship to it.