Relationship Between Music And Perception

Most people are familiar with the word "music", however they barely consider the definition of it. After carefully think, everyone has their own opinions on this term and it is hard to have an uniform criterion of music sounds. According to the text book, Michael B. Bakan states five propositions to define the music. The first one is about the tone and the second one talks about the music is organized in some way. The next two are claims that music is human organized and a product of human intention and perception. The last proposition argues music cannot separate from Western culture. Among these propositions, I think the music is a product of human intention and perception is most interesting and worth to discuss. So I assert that the most

Because of human intention, people have music. So I think music should be related to human intention. The next thing is about human perception. The interesting thing of music 's origin is that there is no clear record to tell the public when and how people have music. The time period, about 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, is an indecisive period and it only came from speculation. So maybe music emerged in different ways in different places, just as now in the world every country or even every city have its own musical cultures. In this perspective, music is really subjective since it is inescapable tied to culture and the experience of the audience. Hence, music is all about personal opinion, which is corresponding to perception. Even though music does have some basic component, everyone has different opinion on music. The definition of music should satisfies the subjective of music. "To be successful, a definition of music must balance these various stories, defining music in terms of its traditions"(Davis 552). The HIP approach solve this difficulty by reserving the subjective of music and balance various musical cultures and traditions in the world. This definition lets the audience judge if they think the sound belongs to music. Therefore, a successful definition of music should be related to human perception since only in this way can balance the various cultures. From the analysis

I want to discuss the function of music to combine intention and perception. I believe in the prehistoric, people sing or beat on the tough surface because they want to express their emotions, otherwise they have no reason to sing. Similarly, the composers also write the songs to express their feelings. Nevertheless, a piece of music which cannot trigger the change of feeling to audience cannot regarded as a musical sound. According to Thomas Schafer, "When people listen to music they usually try to attain specific goals. Those related to self-awareness and the regulation of mood and arousal are relatively important to them and those related to social relatedness less so"(12). From the research, Schafer get a conclusion that the music which can let people attain goals related to self-awareness and the regulation of mood and arousal will increase the strength of music preference(12). Hence, the function of music is to express the emotion and then influence the audience to let them have the same feeling as composers or performers. For example, Beethoven composed the famous Fate Symphony, or called Symphony No.5 in C major to show his determination to fight with the fate, for Beethoven the fate is the loss of his lover. While it is not the only purpose to write this symphony. The final goal is to move the