Music can do many things—it can soothe jangled nerves, lift sagging spirits, communicate ideas, enrich communities, provide entertainment and, above all, get us in touch with beauty. It can even serve as a spiritual and moral guide.
The human brain is wired for music, and the experience of listening to music is deeply rooted in the cultures of the world. As such, any definition of music is essentially culturally defined and must take into account the history of musical development and related philosophical thought.
In general, most definitions of music emphasize its contrast with noise or speech and stress the role it plays in conveying meaning and emotion. Some go a step further and attempt to describe the nature of music itself in terms of an ideal that is not grounded in either physical or mental terms, such as a platonic notion of music that is unified in an ineffable way.
From ancient times until the present, music has been one of the primary forms of entertainment in human societies. It is a powerful medium that can influence attitudes and beliefs, inspire ideals, and stimulate intellectual curiosity. It can also serve as a means of resolving animosities between races and cultures and promote values that support humanity’s collective aspiration for a culture of peace.
Music can be enjoyed in a wide variety of settings and contexts, from private listening sessions to large concerts. Despite the individual differences of musicians and audiences, these experiences form a community whose members are connected through their shared love of music. This community has a unique history and a special set of common values that cannot be separated from the lives and thoughts of its members.
Although all healthy humans can recognize and interpret music, the brains of musicians are especially finely tuned to these processes. The cerebellum processes rhythm and the frontal lobes interpret the emotional content of music. Music that is emotionally moving can activate the reward center in the brain, much like the pleasure-seeking sensations triggered by drugs and alcohol.
Plato (428-348/347 bce) considered music an extension of ethics and was a stern musical disciplinarian. He prescribed the use of specific modes because he saw a connection between an individual’s character and his or her choice of musical representation. He equated rhythm and melody with the movements of heavenly bodies and delineated the “harmony of the spheres” as a reflection of divine order. The Platonists continued to hold this view well into the 17th century; Rene Descartes (1596-1650) viewed music as fundamentally mathematical and prescribed temperate rhythms so that they would not produce imaginative or exciting, and therefore immoral, effects. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) perpetuated the concept of the harmony of the spheres in his attempt to relate musical tones to planetary motion. These and other ideas about the purpose and nature of music dominated the cultural landscape until the Renaissance. During this period, music was characterized by the development of new styles and techniques and the emergence of a new era of humanistic philosophy and literature.