Introduction

When provoking thinking about music in teaching I am used to asking my students how they personally conceptualize and position music in itself, asking them to describe and position music as a middle level category in between 2 contained subsets and 2 containing supersets. This assignment I call: categorizing music.

Below you find the beginning of a growing collection of original answers I received. There are many similarities, but I find the dissimilarities equally interesting. Finally, some thought-models proposed lack the required strict inclusiveness of mathematical sets. Here I conclude that musicians, as all artists, are used to thinking outside the box. On the other hand, thinking relies on the mental presence of such boxes: on the quality of the interconnections between a variety of concepts, each clearly envisioned. It is precisely for this reason, because thinking without boxes is practically impossible, that I find it important to research these individually differing existing thought-models together.

Oscar van Dillen

Survey of ideas

See also

• Students categorizing music 2016
• Outline of basic music theory
• IHMC Cmap Tools, free software for concept-mapping.