“We could live without music. But less well.” - Claude Debussy
I agree with the fact that we would live less well without music. But I don't agree with the statement: “we could live without music”. In fact, we would live less well because we would survive and not live, we may even die. I can't imagine myself being deaf, it's the worst hypothesis that I can do. A world without music is like a rose without a smell and a colour. I know that deaf people are living well but some of them have been deaf since their birth so they have never heard music. I don't know how the other deaf people can do, maybe they didn't love music like I do or maybe they are just surviving. I love music so strongly that I cursed myself because I haven't a gift for playing music and singing well.
Music is so important! In everything! On the first hand, music in the first goal that you can imagine it has: just to be listened. You can listen to music thanks to CDs, DVDs, the Internet and MP3 players, it's portable! You can listen to music while you're walking, what a dream! On the other hand, music has meanings. For example in films and in video games. You can feel fear or sadness, thanks to music only: if you listen to the music only, you could feel fear but, if you watch the television without sound, it wouldn't be as scary. Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries” means action. Music is expression. Music is life!
It represents culture too. Two different examples: Soul for Blacks and Grunge for young. It's a stereotype but it can work. For all types of music you can find a meaning: sociological, moody, ... There is a huge quantity of types: Blues, Rock, Pop, Folk, Classical, Electro, Reggae, ...
Music matters for me. I do love music! I listen to music when I work, I'm listening to music! It would be hypocritical to speak about music without listening to it, wouldn't it? But I'm not an exception. Music is quite inborn for all of us. When you enter a shop and you hear music, you know it and thanks to this knowledge, you have a thrill. It's inborn, isn't it? Then, you can sing the music; even if you don't do it well, just because you like it. This is music: a strange power and an emotion. When you listen to music you can feel free, happy, sad, calm, ... Music is like a drug, a vital one.
In plus, this is a collecting drug. What is the stereotype of love? A man and a woman kissing while dancing, isn't it? My vision of friendship is close to it: many times I went with my friends in a room, we were close and the concert began. A friend of mine brought a guitar. He sang and he played the guitar, he is skilled, he brought a harmonica sometimes too, he played it when he didn't have to sing of course. This was a share, it's important in friendship and love. It's an evasion. Everybody was singing, it was a polyphony in which people sing well or bad, it didn't matter.
This was like in a dream. The voices, the lyrics (known by everybody or not) and the different instruments. All things around us can be instruments. A spoon and a saucepan, why not? Music is universal, it had to be, it's an universal language. You can perform music with everything and everybody; this is the spirit of this art. Even a laugh, a silence and a bird's sing can be music. I think music is the most important art. I love all the arts but music can mean everything and you can mix it with the other arts, it works well in all cases if it's well done. Is music base of arts?
But the whole meaning of music can't be told with words. As Kant said: “Music is the emotions language."