""'Is music the art of combining sounds according to certain rules (which vary according to place and time) for organizing a durational unit [une durée] by means of sonorous elements?' (Petit-Robert). Here, music is defined according to the conditions of its production (it is an art) and by its materials: sounds. For another writer, 'the study of sound is a matter of physics. But choosing sounds that are pleasing to the ear is a matter of musical aesthetics' (Bourgeois 1946: 1). Definition according to conditions of production has ceded to definition according to effect produced in the "receiver": sounds, to be music, must be pleasant. For others, music is almost always identified with acoustics, a particular branch of physics: 'certainly the study of acoustics and the properties of sound in some sense goes beyond the domain of the properly musical, but these 'divergences' are much less important and numerous than is generally thought' (Matras 1948: 5)."
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Molino, J. (1975: 37). "Fait musical et sémiologue de la musique", Musique en Jeu, no. 17:37-62.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Definitions_of_music
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Definitions of music
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