The Dependence of Music on Human Beings

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- The Dependence of Music on Human Beings，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了音乐对人类的依赖。有研究证明，音乐必须依赖于人类意图背后的声音组织。首先，音乐被定义为有意识地组织和产生声音的作品，有观众，或包含音乐特征，或被感知与这些特征。这一定义提高了观众对音乐感知的重要性。基于这一定义，人类与音乐之间建立了密切的联系。音乐的表现力主要通过两种方式表现出来，一种是唤起，另一种是建立联想。与此同时，音乐被发现既与文化有关，又对全人类具有普遍性。情感的表达能力使音乐成为一种独立的语言，它由激发情感的声音的组织和对它们的感知所支持。

Music is a universal language that is relevant to all human beings. Most people are able to feel something or relate to a past experience listening to music. Different emotions can be generated in the music listening as well. In this essay, it is argued that music is dependent upon the presence of human intent behind the purposeful organization of sounds. The existence of music cannot be separated from either emotional intent or emotional perception. Building on a scope and definition of music, the arguments will be supported from two perspectives: the creators of music and the listeners. Finally, a connection will be established between the two perspectives, by comparing music with language, and the support from the cognitive and evolutionary theories.

Before exploring the relation between music and the human intent, a definition of music must be presented first. This definition must be derived from the purest form of music, that is, with no presence of non-musical elements, such as language and context. By understanding what the purest form of music is composed of, it would be much easier to expand the definition to a much larger musical domain, with the integration of pure musical elements with other non-musical elements (McKeown‐Green 394). Music in the modern world has been substantially broadened, and song is probably the most wide-spread form of music that most people listen to. In addition, music has also been expanded into the domains of plays, pictures, television, games, etc. Despite all these forms, the expressiveness of different types music is largely originated from the pure musical elements in them.

The basis of the understanding of music is that some form of sound organization must be present. However, organization of sound may be too ambiguous, as there are many instances where organization of sounds leads not to music, but to language, machines, and animals. In order to narrow down the definition, people have added further conditions to this definition. The first one is the involvement of musical characteristics, including pitch, tone, and rhythm (Stecker 376). This is a further elaboration of “sound.” However, this is not a very effective narrowing. Actually, almost all kinds of sounds can be integrated into a music performance. The sound of the keyboard being typed on, the sound of traffic in the background, the sound of wind blowing, and even the sound of water flowing in the toilet can all be part of the broadened definition of “music (Kania 2).” This leaves the categorization of sound rather extreme: a sound is either music or noise, and even some noise can be turned into music.

This leads to the question of whether some of its expressive musical characteristics are intrinsic to a sound or not. The answer may be negative. A sound is not music until it is organized with other sounds and perceived as music by an audience (Rakowski 126). The musical characteristics thus cannot be separated from how they are created and perceived. Different people may have different degrees of perception of music. For those who have a much stricter definition over the intrinsic musical nature of sounds, their range of musical is considerably smaller. In comparison, people which a more relaxed definition of music tend to have a much broader acceptance over different types of music. This shows that both musical characteristics and aesthetics are necessary conditions to define music. Based on these conditions, music is defined to be: intentionally organized and produced sound pieces, with an audience, and either to contain musical features, or to be perceived with such features (Kania 2).

Having derived a comprehensive definition of music, a correlation between music and humans are inseparable. From production to perception, human intent is present in every component in music. Regarding why humans and music have such an intimate relationship, the answer lies in the emotional expressiveness of music. Regarding how music is such an effective means to express emotions, two theories will be discussed in this essay. Moreover, the response to music is an area worth exploring as well. Different people have different responses listening to the same music. Many of the emotional responses are not exactly “positive,” as fear, sensitivity, sorrow are common emotions people get from music listening (Perrone-Capano 235). Based on the two conditions from the definition of music discussed above: the musical elements and the aesthetic features. These two conditions correspond to the two emotional aspects of music: the emotions in the music, and the emotions in the audience.

Emotions are based on the experiences of the composers of music. The level of expressiveness of a piece of music is closely associated with the installation of emotions by the creator of it. However, it is also common when composers fail to deliver the emotion that they want to express. In such cases, the music produced becomes something independent from the composers, with their sense of expressiveness to be differently interpreted by the listeners. The expressiveness of a piece of music is linked to perceived emptions through its tendency to arouse the audience (Robinson 15). Some emotions, such as fear and sadness, often require the object or event that people are fearful of, or sad about. However, there is no existence of such an object in music. Therefore, music does not generate fear and sadness. Instead, it plays the arousing role. The organization of sounds and musical elements serves as a device to trigger and amplify the fearful and sad emotions that are already present in the audience. This explains why different people may feel a different degree of sadness listening to the same piece: the effectiveness of arousal is directly associated with the amount of relevant emotions stored in the individual listeners. Meanwhile, the means of arousal is equally important, including tone, rhythm, etc.

When combined with other non-musical elements, such as linguistic and visual ones, the arousal in music becomes more intensified and directional (Stecker 375). There are other theories that further relates the expressiveness of music with the human intent and experience. Some argue that the expressiveness of music is derived from the established associations between musical elements and the human society (Kania 3). For example, the drumbeats in music are often associated with war in the physical world. This is not because the drumbeats contain any intrinsic feature of human conflict. Instead, people have established the connection between the two, leading to the enhanced expressiveness of drumbeats. Such associations are largely culturally based. It is highly likely that drumbeat contain entirely different meanings from the commonly accepted ones. Despite the individual differences, one’s interpretation of music is deeply rooted in the social and cultural context that they are positioned in. Again, this shows that music cannot be perceived independently from the human intent behind it.

The correlation between music and emotion is so profound that some refer to music as the “language of the emotions (Rakowski 129).” Just like a language can be interpreted differently by different cultures, a piece of music is the same (McKeown‐Green 402). There have been many failed attempts in distinguishing language from music, since the two shares multiple similarities. According to the definition above, both language and music are an organization of sound. Both of the two have an intended audience and a producer. The difference thus lies in the final term: languages may not always contain musical features. However, this is only looking from the creator’s perspective. Although the speakers of a language do not consider themselves to be producing music, if the listeners, usually from an entirely different culture, are able to perceive musical features from their language, then the language can be defined as music as well. This creates an intersection between music and language. Some instances include the Islamic Qur’anic recitations, and the chanting inside a Buddhism temple.

The claim that music is dependent on human intent has not only philosophical bases, but also physical ones (Mithen 11). Humans have acquired through evolution the ability to communication with each other through changing pitches, rhythms and the application of harmonic sounds. The emergence of primitive society further enhances the importance of such communication. Making sounds became an essential element in the survival of both individuals and the entire species. People feel emotionally attached to music pieces, not only because of the cognitive reasons, but also their instinctive nature as the product of evolution. Although the role of music has been largely defined as a recreational means, its fundamental importance should not be diminished. Listening to music is able to activate the multiple cognitive functions and the emotional neural circuits, which distinguishes music from other sounds (Perrone-Capano 243). Since the producers of music themselves are listeners as well, the composition of music can be regarded as a process of sharing. People with similar cultural backgrounds are able to generate similar emotional responses as the producers. Therefore, the producers and listeners of music are not isolated from each other, either.

In conclusion, this essay argues that music must be dependent on the human intent behind the organization of sounds. Firstly, music is defined as intentionally organized and produced sound pieces, with an audience, and either to contain musical features, or to be perceived with such features. This definition raises the importance of the audience in the perception of music. Based on this definition, a close correlation between humans and music is established. The expressiveness of music is mainly through two ways, creating arousal and establishing association. Meanwhile, music is found to be both culturally relevant and universal to all human beings. The emotional expressiveness makes music a language on its own, supported by both the organization of emotion-provoking sounds and the perception of them.

Works Cited

Kania, Andrew. "The Philosophy of Music." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/

McKeown‐Green, Jonathan. "What is Music? is there a Definitive Answer?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 72, no. 4, 2014, pp. 393-403.

Mithen, Steven. "The Music Instinct." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1169, 2009, pp. 3.

Perrone-Capano, Carla, Floriana Volpicelli, and Umberto d. Porzio. "Biological Bases of Human Musicality." Reviews in the Neurosciences, vol. 28, no. 3, 2017, pp. 235-245.

Rakowski, Andrzej. "What is Music?" Musicae Scientiae, vol. 5, no. 2_suppl, 2001, pp. 125-130.

Robinson, Jenefer. "The Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 52, no. 1, 1994, pp. 13-22.

Stecker, Robert. "Methodological Questions about the Ontology of Music." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 67, no. 4, 2009, pp. 375-386.

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