What's the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel

[ahinton]

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.

Many thanks for this; I could not agree more with all that your write here!

[ahinton]

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.)

Whilst I take your point here, what would you take to be the other questions that need to be asked alongside this one in order to work towards the attainment of all those discoveries?

[ahinton]

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?

What music is "for" - or what might be the "point" of its existence - will obviously have as many possible valid answers (if not even more!) than your "what's the best malt whisky" question, although, since you (rhetorically) ask the latter, it occurs to me that each of these questions must of itself be amenable to many valid answers whereas, for example, the questions "what's the point of the term "Classical Music?" (as has been discussed at length elsewhere on these boards of late) and "what's the point of blending whisky (which hasn't!) might each be capable of inviting rather fewer...

[jean]

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 anser is to be found.

That's what I thought.

I remember a piece Alpie posted some time ago - an analysis of a piece of music as found among some sorts of gospel congregations, entitled Charismatic manipulation. the implication was that whoever wrote the music has a cynical understanding of how music could affect the emotions, which they were able to employ to override any rational response on the part of the hearers.

But if you really could do this, you could accuse any musician of manipulation.

[jean]

Whilst I take your point here, what would you take to be the other questions that need to be asked alongside this one in order to work towards the attainment of all those discoveries?

What I wrote there was in response to

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

I meant that 'what is the point' is in danger of leading to a single answer, rather than to an exploration of the different possible functions and meanings of music however defined.

So long as one does move on to the larger questions, it doesn't matter too much where one starts, I suppose. To see where de Botton gets to, someone will have to attend the discussion.

Here's a quite sympathetic account of him doing the same sort of thing with visual art:

https://decorrespondent.nl/1395/The-critics-of-Alain-de-Botton-have-got-it-all-wrong-heres-why/39329235-4a48015e

[ahinton]

That's what I thought.

I remember a piece Alpie posted some time ago - an analysis of a piece of music as found among some sorts of gospel congregations, entitled Charismatic manipulation. the implication was that whoever wrote the music has a cynical understanding of how music could affect the emotions, which they were able to employ to override any rational response on the part of the hearers.

But if you really could do this, you could accuse any musician of manipulation.

But is that really an "if"? OK, whilst I'm not referring here to the notion that a musician could consciously, wilfully and deliberately seek to manipulate specific responses in his/her listeners and possibly by so doing override their "rational response" (by which I assume you to mean the response/s that they might have had in the absence of such manipulation), but the very fact that music can affect the emotions of the listener (as you have yourself agreed to be the case) is surely in some way suggestive of its inherent manipulative powers?

[MrGongGong]

I meant that 'what is the point' is in danger of leading to a single answer, rather than to an exploration of the different possible functions and meanings of music however defined.

My experience is that it is the opposite of what you suggest.

[Serial_Apologist]

The "meaning" of music must surely change from age to age, and from social system to social system? What music meant to the peasantry in Mediaeval Germany would have been different to hunter-gatherers in the Iron Age, and from today's consumer.

[teamsaint]

The "meaning" of music must surely change from age to age, and from social system to social system? What music meant to the peasantry in Mediaeval Germany would have been different to hunter-gatherers in the Iron Age, and from today's consumer.

And from time to time, moment to moment, for the individual.

I've never heard of hunter gatherer music......

I wonder if the early stuff is the best of it ?

[Beef Oven!]

I've never heard of hunter gatherer music......

'ere ya go

[MrGongGong]

Surely you mean this one?

[Beef Oven!]

Surely you mean this one?

Love this number

Byerk is an amazing artist (but with all her dosh, you'd think she'd swap-out her amalgam fillings with some nice porcelain ones).

[BBMmk2]

Peter Gabriel, you can't go wrong there!

[Beef Oven!]

Peter Gabriel, you can't go wrong there!

Well said, BBM!

[MrGongGong]

Well said, BBM!

BBM ?
Never heard of him?
and who is this Sheik Espeir they are talking about?

There was some play about a bloke who lost his horse but apart from that .....

It's not natural I tell ye