User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar)/Group1/Evidence/Evidence in Music

Definition of Evidence

"Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened."

In this definition, a sense of both subjectivity and objectivity is to be understood. These aspects will be relevant to out analysis.

Types of Evidence in Music

Notation

In this discipline, what highlights the existence of music are very specific universal criteria. Indeed, we recognize music, even without sound, through the writing of concepts such as: notes, timbres, rhythms, dynamic nuances. From a general point of view, these notions distinguish sound that is music from sound that is simply noise. Compositons regroup these ideas into the writing of music. Thus, compositions are written evidence of the existence of music

We will see that these concepts are being challenged.

The Hearing

Music is primarly associated with sound. Before being written down as it is today, music was an oral practice. This discipline is largely associated with performance. Indeed, the greek ethymology of music means "the art of the Muses". The Muses embodied the arts, with music and poetry. Even today, music can be recognized by the sound of multiple instruments and voices. The traditional melodies that have survived through the centuries without necessarily having been written at the beginning are proof of this.

Thus, what prooves a sound to be related to music or not is rather subjective. It deals with the Hearing and the brain and, if most people will agree on what is music and what is not, to appreciate a sound like music.

Intellectual property laws

Over the last centurys, what legally proved that a music is one and makes its status inviolable were the laws of intellectual property. They make music immutable in the eyes of the Law and Justice and distinguise them from one another.

Questionning what music is

Deconstruction of the idea of music via Music Genres

Music where melody prevails is only a very small part of the discipline.

Some genres questioned what proved the music. Indeed, jazz mainly uses different scales, for example pentatonic scales. The notes used sound different, sometimes even almost false to the ear used to melodies. However, despite these major differences with what is commonly understood by music, jazz is one of the greatest musical genres.

Similarly, contemporary music plays a lot on what is proven to be music. Thredony to the victims of Hiroshima in Penderecki, is entirely made of thundering and high-pitched sounds. It uses notes from the dodecaphonic musical scale.  In the same way, what reinforces the idea of "music" is totally different from the classical idea that it is possible to avoid.

Neuroscience Perspective

Neuroscience studies music from a scientific point of view. Evidence of music is completely different here, since it is the response of parts of the brain in relation to listening, practicing or writing music.