Chapter 5 - Values of Music

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Abstract

In this chapter I survey the kinds of value that music can have, or the variety of ways in which music can be valued, and the relationships and correlations among those values or ways of valuing. First and foremost is music’s musical value, or the value of music as music, which is a species of artistic value, itself closely related to but not identical with aesthetic value. Yet music clearly has value beyond its purely musical value. Music obviously has economic value, whether as a commodity, a service, or a skill. More generally, music has, or can have, various sorts of practical value. Notable among the practical values of music would be social value, entertainment value, therapeutic value, functioning-enhancement value, and self-affirmation value. The relation between the practical or instrumental values that a piece of music can possess and its musical or artistic value is complicated, and will vary from case to case.

Introduction

I here survey the kinds of value that music can have, or perhaps equivalently, the variety of ways in which music is rightly valued. For music is multiply valuable and that is the central theme of this chapter.1

It is not uncommon for those who reflect on the value of the arts, from the perspective of either art makers or art appreciators, to propose that art is useless, and that it is precisely in being useless, or not satisfying any practical objective, that it is both most true to its nature and of greatest worth. It is not hard to understand the motivation of such an attitude toward art, sometimes described as ‘aestheticist’ or ‘art for art’s sake’. At bottom is the concern that art not be viewed in utilitarian terms, that it not be bound to the marketplace, that it not be rudely harnessed to social or political goals. For to treat art in such fashion would be at odds with the formal and expressive freedom that art must arguably be accorded if it is to achieve all that it might in artistic terms.

However, regarded soberly, the claim that art is useless is hyperbolic. It is true only in the limited sense in which usefulness is equated with the achieving of narrowly practical ends. However, the arts, and music among them, are certainly not, in the broad sense, useless. The arts answer to certain interests we possess, certain goals we entertain, and certain purposes that we embrace. They answer, perhaps, even to certain needs that we have, in the sense of goods without which our lives cannot fully flourish, even if we are not likely to actually perish without those goods.

Consider in this connection the well-known remark of Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘Without music, human life would be a mistake’. This can, of course, like the claim that art is useless, seem somewhat exaggerated. For if Nietzsche’s affirmation is valid, then why not, ‘Without flowers, human life would be a mistake’? Or ‘Without tennis, human life would be a mistake’? Or even, ‘Without Coca-Cola, human life would be a mistake’? Clearly, music, flowers, tennis, and carbonated beverages are all, in their different ways, good things, but is there really something special about music, such that its absence from our lives would be almost tragic, whereas that would perhaps not be so were those other good things to be absent? I return to that question throughout this chapter.

Section snippets

Preliminary Distinctions

Certain preliminary distinctions regarding the value of music are in order at the outset of our inquiry.2 It is convenient to distinguish, first, the intrinsic value of music from the instrumental value of music, where the former can be understand as the value of engagement with music for its own sake, whereas the latter can be understood as the value of music as a means to some good beyond that

Music’s Value for Listener, Performer, And Composer

It is helpful at this point to distinguish music’s value to listeners from music’s value to performers from music’s value to composers. These are, of course, different in theory, so it is hardly surprising that in practice they only partly overlap.5

Music can be more rewarding to listen to than it is to perform—perhaps it is technically too easy to challenge a player and yet manages to be melodically ravishing. An example that comes to mind is the Rodgers and Hart standard

Manners of Musical Value

It will be useful as well to distinguish different manners in which music can be valuable in regard to a given desirable end. Doing so is essential if we hope to justify in some measure Nietzsche’s rather hyperbolic pronouncement about music’s importance.

The different manners I have in mind are as follows:

  • i.

    Music might be valuable as one among many other things conducive to some desirable end.

  • ii.

    Music might be particularly conducive to a desirable end, despite there being a number of other things

The Centrality of Music in Human Life

In a recent book on our subject, Peter Kivy, the dean of American philosophers of music, nicely poses a version of Nietzsche’s remark, though in the form of a question: ‘Does music strike deep enough into human bedrock that it can be seen as partly defining our lives’? (Kivy, 2002, p. 8). Kivy is pretty sure that it does, going on to observe that there has never been, anywhere, a culture without music.

Now the fact that music is ubiquitous in human societies is a striking one and suggests that

The Artistic Value of Music

As stated at the outset, the central theme of this chapter is how many and how various are the values that music possesses or how diverse are the sorts of value music has for us. That is, however, not to say that those values are all on a par. There are, rather, priorities and asymmetries among them. Some musical values are more important than others, and some musical values presuppose and depend on others.

Among the values that music can possess we must give pride of place to what one might

Music’s Extra-Artistic Value

So much for music’s artistic value. It is time to state squarely that music has considerable value beyond its artistic value (i.e. its musical value or value as music). Most obviously, as just recalled in passing, music clearly has economic value as well, whether as a commodity, a service, or a skill. Many people earn their living, in whole or in part, from music and from many angles: some from composing it, some from performing it, some from publicizing it, some from marketing it, some from

Music’s Aesthetic Value

Having acknowledged some of music’s manifold extra-artistic values, I now return to the most important of music’s artistic values (i.e. music’s aesthetic value). This, arguably the fundamental value of music as such, is the value of experiencing music’s patterns and qualities for their own sakes—a value that is accessed when we appreciate a piece of music for the distinct individual it is, formally, expressively, and in its specific fusion of the two (Levinson, 2009).

Schematically, we might say

Music’s Symbolic Value

I next draw attention to how music models in audible form myriad of ways of being, of moving, of developing, of unfolding and progressing (Beardsley, 1981). Its capacity to do so is rooted, to be sure, in its being a temporal art, but unlike, say, dance or film, which are equally temporal in nature, the abstractness of music imparts to such modeling a reach and a power beyond what those other arts can attain. Music, through the virtual movement that it delineates and the real movement that it

Music’s Self-Affirmation Value

Music also has undeniable value as a reflector of self and a definer of identity. This works differently, of course, for composers than for performers, for performers than for listeners, but it does work for them all, in one way or another. One’s involvement with music has the potential to be almost as absorbing and challenging as a relationship, amorous or otherwise, with another person, often leading to the same sorts of constructive self-questioning. Musical works arguably help to

Music’s Social Value

I come back now to music’s social value, probably the most important of its extra-artistic values. Music is of undeniable value as a sort of social glue and agent of solidarity, helping to create, maintain, and strengthen a sense of community. Music is notably more effective in this regard than almost any other art form. But why is that so? Comparing music with literature, painting, and film will bring out part of the reason.

The experience of a concert, of publicly performed music, is an

Music’s Idiosyncratic Value

I now put in evidence what one might call music’s idiosyncratic value. Music can have value for a given listener that need not be shared, or even shareable, with others. Music’s idiosyncratic value is a matter of the way some music speaks to someone in a completely individual way, resonating with his or her specific memories, associations, history, and physiology. Of course what I am calling idiosyncratic value, which is a cousin of sentimental value though not quite identical to it, can attach

Music’s Mood-Enhancement Value

Consider next music’s manifest value as an improver of mood and lifter of spirits. When one is down, there is almost nothing that works as well to bring one up again, or at least part of the way, as suitably chosen music. Even if the cheering effect of such music is transient, and cannot alone transmute unhappiness into its opposite, the cheering effect is undeniably real.

So, to which of my four categories does music’s mood-enhancement value belong? That depends on whether the music’s

Music’s Accompaniment Value

I lastly underline music’s obvious yet crucial value as an accompaniment to and facilitator of other activities, such as religious ritual, military parade, aerobic exercise, or dance in all its forms. With regard in particular to the latter, music is valuable for the spur and guide it affords to bodily movement of an organized, rhythmic, and fluid sort, the sort of movement that is experienced by almost everyone as unusually liberating, even those whose talent for dance is quite modest.

Music

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