On "Malevolent" Music
Music communicates an emotional experience through sound. Sometimes that experience is happy or triumphant. Sometimes it is sad, dreadful, or angry. Just like great fiction, music has happy and sad moments. I'm not going to define "music" here, but for now, I wish to include a broad range of works of organized sound, from songs to movie music to symphonies to pure percussion works. I'm talking about sound organized (composed) by people for human consumption. Such work serves lots of purposes, but the overarching purpose is to communicate an emotional experience to the listener. One can question why the particular experience is being communicated, i.e. why the composer/producer considers the experience important enough to communicate in a given context, but I hold that the greatness of music as such lies in how effectively an experience is transmitted through the sound. Quality music is integrated for the sake of the emotional purpose at hand. Anything that distracts t...