Is it music?

[Amphissa]

Yes, I know this is a loaded question and has been discussed endlessly over the centuries by people much smarter than I am. Still, occasionally we are presented with a "sound thing" that raises the questions anew.

How do we really define music? What constitutes a musical experience? If Cage's 4'33" of silence is a musical composition, is an unending randomized sequence of notes music? If you enter that unending sequence at a different time that I do, and leave at a different time than I do, have we heard the same "composition"?

The Sounds of Wikipedia. I've had this going in the background as I've worked all evening. Is it music?

http://listen.hatnote.com/

Of course, if you click a "note" it opens the article, making it a unique sort of navigational tool. So it is practical. Does that change the answer?

[autoharp]

http://solomonsmusic.net/4min33se.htm

[ahinton]

http://solomonsmusic.net/4min33se.htm

We are all undoubtedly in your debt for posting this exposé of this celebrated 273-second work, but please be assured that it is by no means the only one to which the question posed in the thread topic has been applied; indeed, a published review of one of mine even asked that very question of it, although I am unsure whom the reviewer might have expected to provide an answer to it...