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Music, artful arrangement of sounds across time. This definition is obviously very broad, but a narrower one would exclude too much. Music is part of virtually every culture on Earth, but it varies widely among cultures in style and structure. Definitions of music can change dramatically over a short time, as they have across the world during the 20th century.
Can music exist without sound? Some philosophers argue that music should be defined as a kind of “mental image” and that the physical aspects of sound are simply by-products of this image. If you think you can have a musical experience by imagining the sound of a piece of music, then you think music can exist without sound. But most musical experiences involve producing or listening to physical characteristics of sound such as pitch and timbre (quality comparable to texture or color in sight).
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