What's the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel

[doversoul1]

I'd never heard of him

I’ve never heard of Peter Gabriel (I have now, the name anyway). I must say I don’t have much time for someone who asks (and write an article about) a question like what’s the point of music. I like music and cats because there is no point to them.

[MrGongGong]

but I still wouldn't go to him for an understanding of the point of music.

I'm not a 100% fan
BUT given the diversity of what he has done and the musicians from many traditions he has collaborated with and supported I would suggest that he is exactly the right kind of person to ask about this.


(and the god of horn that is Pip has been touring with him )

[vinteuil]

I like music and cats because there is no point to them.

.

[ahinton]

I'd never heard of him, but I played the song that accompanied the article and I thought it banal in the extreme.

The interesting question is why its effect on me is so very different from its efffect on everyone else.

Everyone else, jean? The lady doth exaggerate too much, methinks!

[ahinton]

It doesn't do you any favours you know

Things played at funerals rarely do!

[Radio64]

Perhaps i should have started this thread in the World Music section . .apologies.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28510936

[jean]

It's a strange sort of question though, isn't it?

Nobody denies the emotional effect of music, surely; but the article appears to be saying that musicians are too ready to let their music speak for itself, whereas Gabriel can explain not only how his own music works, but can do the same for music in general.

This is a huge claim. Can it really be justified?

[jean]

...I must say I don’t have much time for someone who asks (and write an article about) a question like what’s the point of music...

The article was written by Alain de Botton, for whom I have no time at all (am I allowed to say that?) who manages to be both limited and pretentious.

If anyone goes along to hear the conversation the piece is advertising, perhaps they could summarise it here?

[ahinton]

It's a strange sort of question though, isn't it?

Nobody denies the emotional effect of music, surely; but the article appears to be saying that musicians are too ready to let their music speak for itself, whereas Gabriel can explain not only how his own music works, but can do the same for music in general.

This is a huge claim. Can it really be justified?

I very much doubt it, even if only on the grounds that no one can possibly have immediate comprehensive access to everyone's responses to his own music, let alone to everyone else's as well.

[jean]

Behind it lurks the belief (which I have come across before) that if only one had a correct understanding of the physics of sound, the mechanism of the ear and how the brain processed the information supplied to it through these channels, one could definitively answer the question how music works.

[Richard Barrett]

I do find it a bit strange that people would not have heard of Peter Gabriel (whose work has never done much for me with one or two exceptions like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and one or two songs from his solo output), but very few people have comprehensive knowledge across the board of musical genres, I certainly don't. I also find it strange that for someone who knows as much about the world of musical diversity as Gabriel does would have such a narrow and Anglo-European-pop-music-centred view of its possible functions, at least as interpreted by Alain de Botton (for whom I also have little time).

But I find it strangest of all that anyone should think that music has no point. If it had no point it wouldn't be a feature of every known human society through both history and geography. What its point may be is another question, and an endlessly fascinating one, which no doubt has very many possible answers. At least I find it endlessly fascinating. What's the point of it? is a question I ask myself very often - and have to answer, at least provisionally.

[MrGongGong]

Behind it lurks the belief (which I have come across before) that if only one had a correct understanding of the physics of sound, the mechanism of the ear and how the brain processed the information supplied to it through these channels, one could definitively answer the question how music works.

I don't think that is true at all.
I do think its a good question to ask, it is often assumed that musics functions and meanings are universal.
Thinking and talking about what music is for, how it "works", what it's purposes are etc are essential to try and gain a greater understanding of music beyond that of taste and genre.

In many ways the stuff PG did with Genesis is the least interesting of his work but the one that is always referred to.

[jean]

I do think its a good question to ask, it is often assumed that musics functions and meanings are universal.

Thinking and talking about what music is for, how it "works", what it's purposes are etc are essential to try and gain a greater understanding of music beyond that of taste and genre.

But these sorts of discovery aren't facilitated by a single question What is the point?

(Especially as the point of anything has so many possible meanings.)

[MrGongGong]

But these sorts of discovery aren't facilitated by a single question What is the point?

It's a good start.
I've asked first year undergraduate music students "what's music for?" many times.

Some things that are interesting in the responses are

1: that many of them have never thought about it before and struggle with the idea that it might be a question
and
2: Once they start to think about it they come up with lots of possible answers

There are many answers which doesn't mean it's not worth asking the question IMV

What's the best malt whisky?

[ahinton]

Behind it lurks the belief (which I have come across before) that if only one had a correct understanding of the physics of sound, the mechanism of the ear and how the brain processed the information supplied to it through these channels, one could definitively answer the question how music works.

I've also come across this, or at least something broadly similar and, whilst all of these things, especially in combination one with another, could not be other than of help towards finding such an answer, there remains so much else that would seem to be essential if that answer is to be found.