Philosophy and Music

Music has been a very big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I am a music education major and asked “Why do I need to take Philosophy to be a music teacher?” I quickly found that the two subjects are very closely related.

We began this course by asking the philosophical question in itself "What is Philosophy?" This question drove me to ask "What is Music?" “What is sound!?” I've played the flute for 10 years and have never questioned it. I played what I was told to and learned the theory part of music as it was taught to me.

Philosophy will help me to grow as a musician. Instead of just looking at a piece of music and accepting the notes on a page, I will look beyond it and start to question it. Why did the composer write this piece of music?

Music is related to philosophy because the great composers such as Bach and Beethoven have been dead for hundreds of years and they cannot give us the answers. We have to interpret their work and form our own opinions about the music, just as we do with philosophical questions such as "Who am I?"

So much in music is pre-determined. Pitch, notation, the buttons I press on a flute to get a certain pitch, ect. How can we be so sure that all of these things are true? Who decided that an “A” was an “A?” Are there people that have their own “rules” of music?

The outcome of music, however, is not at all pre-determined. There is no right way a piece of music should sound and every musician will contribute their own interpretation. No matter how many things of the music is set for us, (rhythm, pitches, ect.) the performance will sound the way you want it to sound.

Many things in our lives like our names and parents are set for us, but do we have control of the way our lives turn out, or is that set too?