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| quote: | Originally posted by diggerz
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As subjective experience
Main article: Aesthetics of music
Another commonly held definition of music holds that music must be 'pleasant' (determined by the esthesic level) or 'melodic' (determined by the neutral and/or esthesic levels).[citation needed] This view is often used to argue that some kinds of organized sound 'are not music', while others are, based on type of organization or its aesthetic effect. Since the range of what is accepted as music varies from culture to culture and from time to time, more elaborate versions of this definition admit some kind of cultural or social evolution of music, granting that definitions may vary but universals hold. This definition was the predominant one in the 18th century, where, for example, Mozart stated that "music must never forget itself, it must never cease to be music."[citation needed] One example of shifts in the music/noise dichotomy, what organization is considered musical, is the emancipation of the dissonance, while Luciano Berio (1976[citation needed]) describes how the Tristan chord was noise in 1859 since it was a sonority unexplainable by contemporary harmonic conventions.
This view of music is most heavily criticized by proponents of the view that music is a social construction (directly below), defined in opposition to "unpleasant" "noise", though this view may be subsumed in the one below in that a listener's idea of pleasant sounds may be considered socially constructed.
A subjective definition of music need not, however, be limited to traditional ideas of music as pleasant or melodious. Luciano Berio defined music as, "everything one listens to with the intention of listening to music."[citation needed] This approach to the definition focuses not on the construction but on the experience of music. Thus, music could include "found" sound structures—produced by natural phenomena or algorithms—as long as they are interpreted by means of the aesthetic cognitive processes involved in music appreciation. This approach permits the boundary between music and noise to change over time as the conventions of musical interpretation evolve within a culture, to be different in different cultures at any given moment, and to vary from person to person according to their experience and proclivities. It is further consistent with the subjective reality that even what would commonly be considered music is experienced as nonmusic if the mind is concentrating on other matters and thus not perceiving the sound's essence as music (Clifton 1983, 9).
Subjectivity
One of the problems with the grouping of music into genres is that it is a subjective process that has a lot to do with the individual's personal understanding and way of listening to music. This is especially true in sub-genres. One example is Led Zeppelin, which could be called heavy metal, hard rock, classic rock, folk, or blues, depending on one's interpretation (and not helped by the fact that they made excursions into other genres such as electric folk). Another difficulty with grouping artists into genres is that, for many, their style of music changes over time.
Some genre labels are quite vague. Many were originally contrived by marketing executives or music critics; post-rock, for example, is a term devised and defined by Simon Reynolds. Another example of this is video game music, which while defined by its media, can also represent its own style, as well as that of any other musical genre.
good i remembered terms from my musicology class
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