Edgard Varèse beautifully defined music as “organized sound;”
and people commonly speak of “making” music and of compositions
as “pieces” of music, as if “music” were some kind of solid,
stable, autonomous object — which it really isn’t. Even if a
musical recording can be embedded in a tangible media device, as
it so often is, the “music” is no such object. As an action,
music engages listening, imagination and sounding. There’s a
networking of relationships and interactions among perceptions,
imaginings, feelings, calculations, sensuosities, social
cooperations and techniques. But, without what’s ordinarily
considered “the music” — which is to say, its sound and sonic
image — there’d be no musical activity whatsoever. At the same
time, despite this pivotal indispensability, these very same
sounds depend absolutely on the nurturings of musical action in
order to exist as music at all. Music is something that happens
to sound; and the actions that are also music spin themselves
around, over and in sounds. Soun