Music - Science or Art?

[invictus]

As you can see from the music theory workbooks, they make music sound like a science subject, all those jargon. Things like anticipation, ahem, passing notes, atchoo, Neapolitan Sixth Chord, great, i thought music was an art, now its a science.

[zheer]

I like to think that music is food for the soul, and where words end music begins. So haw is it possible to examine a musician on paper?      Well i say that because i faild music A level when i was young and i was heart broken, i was also expeld from a music course, which ended my music education.

[Motrax]

I'll answer your question with two of my own:

Is Art a Science, and is Science an Art?

 

-M

[princessdecadence]

I would say Art (not science)

Everyone's trying to call everything science nowadays.  Political Science, Psychology (as a soft science) I hope they're not calling music a science.

[invictus]

By the way that they make it, its a science, i am not sure if some of those things are intentional.

And what is the use of learning intervals anyway, sure i know this is major 3rd, now what.

[panic]

I might sound dumb making a generalization like this, but if you think of classical music as a great arch starting in the Middle Ages, reaching its peak in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and starting to dip down in the mid-20th, you could say that the moment at which attractive music began its decline was the moment at which people turned down the art aspect of music and turned up the science aspect, going for science-like exploratory innovation over art-like attractive and coherent sound. Just like i love xenakis said in the Mozart thread, mathematics finds a much larger place in 20th-century music. Composers have replaced staff paper with graph paper, as it were. Perhaps that's to blame for the decline in popularity of classical music, as the general (often misinformed) public will simply find mathematical music ugly as opposed to artful music.

[tompilk]

I would say playing the expression is an art but playing the notes is a science. So it is a bit of both... 

[leahcim]

Everyone's trying to call everything science nowadays.  Political Science, Psychology (as a soft science) I hope they're not calling music a science.

Yeah, you're right. Computer science is another, Christian science, Scientology etc.

I think it's partly because science using experimentation or formal method isn't the same as saying that by experimenting or using a method, you're doing science [and similary with other things from the scientific method or bits of known / accepted science used ad hoc and anecdotally]

A good example is pedagogues that claim some "science" credibility. Either because they're using the latin lingo to name bits of your arm or because they'll say "try practising one piece this way, the other mine" as though that were being "scientific"

[rc]

Which came first, the chicken, the egg, or the biology that explains them?

My take: Music is art, no question about that. Theory and analysis is more of a science (why does it sound that way)... The two aren't to be confused. Music as an art came first, analytic theory came after and is a tool in service of the music.

I might sound dumb making a generalization like this, but if you think of classical music as a great arch starting in the Middle Ages, reaching its peak in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and starting to dip down in the mid-20th, you could say that the moment at which attractive music began its decline was the moment at which people turned down the art aspect of music and turned up the science aspect, going for science-like exploratory innovation over art-like attractive and coherent sound. Just like i love xenakis said in the Mozart thread, mathematics finds a much larger place in 20th-century music. Composers have replaced staff paper with graph paper, as it were. Perhaps that's to blame for the decline in popularity of classical music, as the general (often misinformed) public will simply find mathematical music ugly as opposed to artful music.

I agree, somewhere along the line that music lost its purpose. edit: actually, changed its purpose, lost the original one

[rc]

By the way that they make it, its a science, i am not sure if some of those things are intentional.

And what is the use of learning intervals anyway, sure i know this is major 3rd, now what.

Can be useful in writing counterpoint. Theory is also useful for communication, so everyone can understand each other when talking about music (which is a difficult thing to talk about in the first place).

I remember being young and playing music with some friends, none of us knew any theory. In order to get an idea across, we'd have to show it, or write it down, or hum it, or describe it metaphorically. Like retards who didn't know how to speak

[contrapunctus]

Science is only the search for knowledge and understanding. Religion is a science. And art is a science too.

[Tash]

seeing music as a more sciencey subject is not a new thing- in the ancient times and medieval music was placed with mathematical and sciencey subjects, eg. around the time of charlemagne and Louis the Pious (ie. somewhere around the 8th-9th centuries) in the 7 areas of study the 'Quadrivium' (inferior) subjects were maths, astronomy, geometry and music (vs. the 'Trivium' (superior) subjects that were grammar, rhetoric and dialectic). and ancient greece and rome had a similar kind of thing

i believe that everything has logic behind it- perhaps because i just really like logic, so the theoretical side of music i think is excellent- but, all arts have something to do with science, and all science has something to do with art- just think of the visual side of science and maths- there are some lovely artistic things in there!

so don't bother trying to place music into an art OR science- it doesn't work because everything has a 'subjective' as well as an 'objective' side to it.

[gorbee natcase]

It is both Science, Art and Labour.

[I Love Xenakis]

Depends on what period we're talking about I suppose.  Liszt and Xenakis...

[leahcim]

Depends on what period we're talking about I suppose.  Liszt and Xenakis...

He wrote this I believe :-

But in addition to these two modes - inferential and experimental - art exists in a third mode, one of immediate revelation, which is neither inferential nor experimental. The revelation of beauty occurs immediately, directly, to someone ignorant of art as well as to the connoisseur. This is the strength of art and, so it seems, its superiority over the sciences. Art, while living the two dimensions of inference and experimentation, possesses this third and most mysterious dimension which permits art objects to escape any aesthetic science while still enjoying the caresses of inference and experimentation.


So I think he'd hope what he created was art rather than science. He seems to state that art and science share some characteristics.

But, he seems to differentiate between experimentation being in art and science, inference being in art and science and "truth" being in art and science and any erroneous [imo] conclusions that might be drawn from that observation that art might be science or or that something might be "science" because it has experimentation / inference and "truth"

Although what he did [in the sense of what he did with the material he took influence from, rather than the whole process of his composition, which I would call art] sounds more like applied maths, to me, rather than science.

There's a song called Einstein a go go or something that has E=MC² in it.
That seems as influenced by science as his work is. What he seems to do that is very different from singing about Einstein is use the mathematics. Some of the same maths that is applied within science too. [Which is obviously because that's his influence rather than a coincidence, although the maths is most probably used elsewhere]

So, to me, the results could be applied maths or art and I'd favour the latter description.

[princessdecadence]

Bla bla bla everything is a science.  I think art sounds better than science.

[gorbee natcase]

A man who works with his hands is a labourer,

A man who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman,

A man who works with his hands, his head, and his heart is an artist

                                                                                               (St Francis)

[pianistimo]

well said.  that explains why some people play in different ways.  just think of them like the lion, the straw man, and the tin man in 'the wizard of oz.'  only when you have all three in abundance does is sound really good.  only a few artists around - and they trick you because they make it sound like they're not working as hard as they are.  or, they put a lot more effort into learning and practicing with their heart.

sometimes when first learning a piece, i take my heart out and set it near the metronome.  then, when the piece is memorized i try to put heart into it.  much better - i'm learning to start with the heart, too - and actively look for areas to exploit as if i was trying to seduce the music.  sounds crazy, but much better that than trying it on a man since i'm married. 

i've learned that tri-tones really put zing into all the normal harmonies.  was told to bring them out in brahms op. 118 #2 - so i highlighted all the ones i could find and tried it.  amazingly interesting results.   

[cfortunato]

1) The theory books make it sound more like math than science, in my opinion.

2) Just because something can be expressed mathematically doesn't make it math.

3) Unless someone can come up with something in music that vaguely resembles the scientific method - a system of hypothesis, testing and falsification - it sure ain't science.

Of course it's art.  You can write all the theoretical books you want to, but the books aren't music.  The music is the stuff that makes people go "ah!" or makes them feel happy, or sad, or wanting to dance.  If it does that, it's music and it's good music, even if it breaks every single theoretical rule in those books, and even if it would look like a freaking mess if expressed mathematically.