"Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions"
About this Quote
Barzun’s line draws a bright boundary around music: not as sonic wallpaper, not as math problem, but as an art built to meet a creature with a future. “Intended and designed” is a deliberate shove against the mid-century temptation to treat culture as either pure formalism (notes as self-sufficient structures) or pure commodity (pleasant noise for the market). He insists on teleology. Music has a “for,” and the “for” is the sentient being - a listener whose mind is always leaning toward something.
The compact list - “hopes and purposes and emotions” - isn’t poetic decoration; it’s a map of what music reliably hooks. Hope points to time (anticipation, arrival, release). Purpose points to action (marches, hymns, work songs, anthems: music that coordinates bodies and communities). Emotions points to interior weather (grief, desire, calm), the domain modernity often privatizes. By including purpose, Barzun quietly refuses the notion that music is only about feelings; it is also about direction, discipline, and shared intent.
As an educator and cultural historian, Barzun is also making an argument about listening. If music is made for beings with aims, then good listening is not passive consumption but participation: you bring your own stakes, your own narrative hunger. The subtext is a critique of dehumanized “appreciation” - the kind that reduces art to technique or data. Music matters because we do, and we do because we want, choose, and feel.
The compact list - “hopes and purposes and emotions” - isn’t poetic decoration; it’s a map of what music reliably hooks. Hope points to time (anticipation, arrival, release). Purpose points to action (marches, hymns, work songs, anthems: music that coordinates bodies and communities). Emotions points to interior weather (grief, desire, calm), the domain modernity often privatizes. By including purpose, Barzun quietly refuses the notion that music is only about feelings; it is also about direction, discipline, and shared intent.
As an educator and cultural historian, Barzun is also making an argument about listening. If music is made for beings with aims, then good listening is not passive consumption but participation: you bring your own stakes, your own narrative hunger. The subtext is a critique of dehumanized “appreciation” - the kind that reduces art to technique or data. Music matters because we do, and we do because we want, choose, and feel.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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