Music and Sonic Art

One of the questions people frequently ask me when I tell them I studied sonic art is “What’s sonic art?”. This interests me, because if I tell people that I studied music, no-one ever asks me what music is, they just assume that they already know. In this sense, we could look on the definition of music as being axiomatic, but what of sonic art?

I would argue that the phrase ‘sonic art’ actually has a more specific meaning than the word ‘music’, and that what people commonly think of as being music (the axiomatic definition) is the intersection of the meanings of ‘sonic art’ and ‘music’. ‘sonic art’ has a matter-of-fact, ‘does what it says on the tin’ feeling to it: it is art made with sound. Sound is the mechanical propagation of longitudinal waves in air, which oscillate at a frequency that is perceptible to humans and ‘sonic’ means ‘relating to or using sound waves’ (Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2007). So what about the art?

For me this is where it gets interesting, most definitions of art include ‘music’ as one of of ‘the arts’, and talk about such things as ‘expression’, ‘creativity’, ‘skill’, ‘aesthetics’ and ‘stimulating the senses’. Perhaps we could define ‘sonic art’ as being something that has the same socio-cultural function as visual art, but which uses sound as its medium. So next time someone asks me what sonic art is, I can tell them that: “it is like visual art, but it uses sound” - see what I mean about matter-of-fact? However, I now anticipate the counter-response: “…but isn’t that what music is?”.

If we take the definition of music as being axiomatic, then the answer to this question is “it could be…”! If we believe that music is ‘organised sound’, then music becomes a subset of sonic art…

However there is another definition of music, which separates it from sonic art, and creates only certain areas of overlap with the definition of sonic art. This definition states that music is what we perceive when we listen to music (!), and by implication: ‘music is a way of perceiving’. This is similar to defining music as ‘a way of hearing’, or ‘a way of listening’.

Now we get to the essence of this post. If one of the definitions of music focuses on the way in which our brains decode information received through our senses - music as a way of perceiving, then ‘music’ and ‘sonic art’ are certainly not the same. It could be argued that it is possible to perceive music in anything we sense, and also to perceive it internally without an external stimulus. By this definition music doesn’t require sound at all. The 2007 Compact Oxford Dictionary defines music as follows:

1 the art of combining vocal or instrumental sounds in a pleasing way.
2 the sound so produced.
3 the written or printed signs representing such sound.

I would argue that what the authors describe here is actually the very small subset formed by the union of ‘vocal music’ and ‘instrumental music’ and the intersection of this union with ‘pleasing music’ and sonic art!

Next time someone tells you that they have studied music - ask them what ‘music’ is, I dare you!