“Is music an art or a science?”
This was the question my music professor asked during class this morning. Silence wafted in the air but I could tell that a general consensus had already been made. Finally a brave voice says, “Art.”
My professor then asks, “Is there anyone here that can define art?” Silence arises again.
“No.” Someone else responds.
My professor smiles then stands behind the grand piano in the room and asks our class to sing the musical patterns that he played. We hummed, sang short and long notes with different stresses and volumes all while receiving instructions on how best to perform these tasks. I began to pay special attention to the word choice in my professor’s instruction and explanation on the purpose of our recitations. They sounded like this, “More air suggests more volume.” and “Changing the shape of the mouth changes the tone quality [of the note].”
Almost instantly I was reminded of how academic disciplines can intertwine in ways that may not seem obvious at first, but hold significance to the discipline itself. In his Interdisciplinarity, Joe Moran expresses that, “…interdisciplinarity is always transformative in some way producing new forms of knowledge in its engagement with discrete disciplines.” (15). Sitting in my music class and watching my professor take a physiological approach to the “art” of music and musical performance proved Moran right. The difficulty in placing an exact definition on this term wasn’t something I understood until just then while hearing how science and art compliment each other to create music.
My professor goes on to explain how the vibration of strings affects the sound of a note, some moving as fast as 400 vibrations a second. After this fact he walks from behind the piano and says, “To [me,]a performing musician that’s not science, that’s art.”.