Editing Definition of music (section)

==Specific definitions==

===Clifton===
In his 1983 book, ''Music as Heard'', which sets out from the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] position of [[Edmund Husserl|Husserl]], [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty|Merleau-Ponty]], and [[Paul Ricœur|Ricœur]], Thomas Clifton defines music as "an ordered arrangement of sounds and silences whose meaning is [[Presentationism|presentative]] rather than [[Denotation|denotative]] ... This definition distinguishes music, as an end in itself, from compositional technique, and from sounds as purely physical objects." More precisely, "music is the actualization of the possibility of any sound whatever to present to some human being a meaning which he experiences with his body—that is to say, with his mind, his feelings, his senses, his will, and his metabolism".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=1}} It is therefore "a certain reciprocal relation established between a person, his behavior, and a sounding object".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=10}}

Clifton accordingly differentiates music from non-music on the basis of the human behavior involved, rather than on either the nature of compositional technique or of sounds as purely physical objects. Consequently, the distinction becomes a question of what is meant by musical behavior: "a musically behaving person is one whose very being is absorbed in the significance of the sounds being experienced." However, "It is not altogether accurate to say that this person is listening ''to'' the sounds. First, the person is doing more than listening: he is perceiving, interpreting, judging, and feeling. Second, the preposition 'to' puts too much stress on the sounds as such. Thus, the musically behaving person experiences musical significance by means of, or through, the sounds".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=2}}

In this framework, Clifton finds that there are two things that separate music from non-music: (1) musical meaning is presentative, and (2) music and non-music are distinguished in the idea of personal involvement. "It is the notion of personal involvement which lends significance to the word ''ordered'' in this definition of music".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=3–4}} This is not to be understood, however, as a sanctification of extreme [[relativism]], since "it is precisely the 'subjective' aspect of experience which lured many writers earlier in this century down the path of sheer opinion-mongering. Later on this trend was reversed by a renewed interest in 'objective,' scientific, or otherwise non-introspective musical analysis. But we have good reason to believe that a musical experience is not a purely private thing, like [[seeing pink elephants]], and that reporting about such an experience need not be [[Subject (philosophy)|subjective]] in the sense of it being a mere matter of opinion".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=8–9}}

Clifton's task, then, is to describe musical experience and the objects of this experience which, together, are called "phenomena", and the activity of describing phenomena is called "phenomenology".{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=9}} It is important to stress that this definition of music says nothing about aesthetic standards.
<blockquote>Music is not a fact or a thing in the world, but a meaning constituted by human beings. ... To talk about such experience in a meaningful way demands several things. First, we have to be willing to let the composition speak to us, to let it reveal its own order and significance. ... Second, we have to be willing to question our assumptions about the nature and role of musical materials. ... Last, and perhaps most important, we have to be ready to admit that describing a meaningful experience is itself meaningful.{{sfn|Clifton|1983|loc=5–6}}</blockquote>

===Nattiez===
"Music, often an [[art]]/[[entertainment]], is a [[total social fact]] whose definitions vary according to [[era]] and [[culture]]", according to [[Jean Molino]].{{sfn|Molino|1975|loc=37}} It is often contrasted with [[noise (environmental)|noise]]. According to musicologist [[Jean-Jacques Nattiez]]: "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus ... By all accounts there is no ''single'' and ''intercultural'' universal concept defining what music might be".{{sfn|Nattiez|1990|loc=47–48, 55}} Given the above demonstration that "there is no limit to the number or the genre of variables that might intervene in a definition of the musical",{{sfn|Molino|1975|loc=42}} an organization of definitions and elements is necessary.

Nattiez (1990, 17) describes definitions according to a [[wikt:tripartite|tripartite]] semiological scheme similar to the following:
{|
|-
|colspan=3|Poietic Process
|colspan=2|Esthesic Process
|-
|Composer (Producer)
| →
|Sound (Trace)
| ←
|Listener (Receiver)
|}

There are three levels of description, the poietic, the neutral, and the esthesic:
*"<!-- If musical semiology's sole contribution were replacing what everybody calls "composition" and "perception" with barbarou neologisms like 'poietic' and 'esthesic', then semiology would entail risibly small profits. There is, of course, more to it than that. --> By 'poietic' I understand describing the ''link'' among the composer's intentions, his creative procedures, his mental schemas, and the ''result'' of this collection of strategies; that is, the components that go into the work's material embodiment. Poietic description thus also deals with a quite special form of hearing (Varese called it 'the interior ear'): what the composer hears while imagining the work's sonorous results, or while experimenting at the piano, or with tape."
*"By 'esthesic' I understand not merely the artificially attentive hearing of a musicologist, but the description of perceptive behaviors within a given population of listeners; that is how this or that aspect of sonorous reality is captured by their perceptive strategies".{{sfn|Nattiez|1990|loc=90}}
*The neutral level is that of the physical "trace", (Saussere's sound-image, a sonority, a score), created and interpreted by the esthesic level (which corresponds to a perceptive definition; the perceptive and/or "social" construction definitions below) and the poietic level (which corresponds to a creative, as in compositional, definition; the organizational and social construction definitions below).

Table describing types of definitions of music:{{sfn|Nattiez|1990|loc=46}}
{| class="wikitable"
!
!poietic level<br/>(choice of the composer)
!neutral level<br/>(physical definition)
!esthesic level<br/>(perceptive judgment)
|-
! music
| musical sound
| sound of the<br/>harmonic<br/>spectrum
| agreeable sound
|-
! non-music
| noise<br/>(nonmusical)
| noise<br/>(complex sound)
| disagreeable<br/>noise
|}

Because of this range of definitions, the study of music comes in a wide variety of forms. There is the study of sound and [[oscillation|vibration]] or [[acoustics]], the cognitive study of music, the study of [[music theory]] and performance practice or music theory and [[ethnomusicology]] and the study of the reception and history of music, generally called [[musicology]].

===Xenakis===
Composer [[Iannis Xenakis]] in "Towards a Metamusic" (chapter 7 of ''Formalized Music'') defined music in the following way:{{sfn|Xenakis|1971|loc=181}}
#It is a sort of comportment necessary for whoever thinks it and makes it.
#It is an individual [[pleroma]], a realization.
#It is a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities (cosmological, philosophical, ..., arguments)
#It is normative, that is, unconsciously it is a model for being or for doing by sympathetic drive.
#It is catalytic: its mere presence permits internal psychic or mental transformations in the same way as the crystal ball of the hypnotist.
#It is the gratuitous play of a child.
#It is a mystical (but atheistic) asceticism. Consequently, expressions of sadness, joy, love and dramatic situations are only very limited particular instances.