Noun

Singular musician

Plural musicians

musician (plural musicians)

1. A person who performs or writes music.

Hyponyms

• See also Wikisaurus:musician

A musician is a person who writes, performs, or makes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:

• An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.
• A singer is a vocalist.
• Composers, songwriters and arrangers create musical compositions, songs and arrangements. These may be transcribed in music notation, performed or recorded.
• A conductor leads a musical ensemble. A conductor can simultaneously act as an instrumentalist in the ensemble.
• A recording artist creates recorded music, such as CDs and MP3 files.

Music is an art form that involves sounds and silence. Music may be used for artistic or aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The definition of what constitutes music varies according to culture and social context.

Sourced

• All aspects of musical practice may be disengaged, and privileged, in order to give birth to new forms of variation: variations on the relationships between the composer and the performer, between the conductor and the performer, between the performers, between the performer and the listener, variations upon gestures, variations on silence that end in a mute music that is still music because it preserves still something of the musical totality of the tradition...all elements belonging to the total musical fact may be seperated and taken as a strategic variable of musical production. This autonomization serves as true musical experimentation: little by little, the individual variables that make up a total musical fact are brought to light. Any particular music then appears as one that has made a choice among these variables, and that has privileged a certain number of them. Under these conditions, musical analysis would have to begin by recognizing the strategic variables characteristic of a given musical system: musical invention and musical analysis lend each other mutual aid.
  • Jean Molino quoted in Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, Abbate, Carolyn (translator) (1987 (original), 1990 (translation)). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. pp. 42–43. ISBN 0691027145.

• Being in a band is really great when you're 20. When you're 30, it's kind of 'Spinal Tap,' and when you're 40, it's just pathetic.
  • Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, quoted in "Make a Myth, Whip It Good", New York Times, 2001-04-18.

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Thu Jul 22 16:10:48 2010