Bruno Nettl: The Universality Of Music

Music is ever so present in every country and is definitely a key part in every society. The definition and interpretation of music can differ hugely, depending on ones personal view, religious influences, cultural aspects and also how and when music is used in that one particular culture. Through the study of the Sardinian Chronicles and research by Bruno Nettl there are many ways in which the universality of music can be assessed. Music is a huge part in almost all people’s life and I believe there are genetic and biological reasons behind this.

“Music is the universal language of mankind, Longfellow said” (Nettl 31) is an idea that we can have about music due its huge sphere of influence. Nettl uses science as way to look into whether or …show more content…
Once a party establishes that something is in fact music there can still be differences in how it affects these individuals. A particular language is universal in the way in which that a particular word would mean the same thing to anyone that understands that one language. This is not the case with music; the same song or beat can have many different effects on different people. This would suggest that music is not universal, as people do not understand it in the same way. I also believe that music is not universal due to the huge variations in how it is learnt and played depending on which country one is in. First of all instrumentation changes massively throughout the world, many western instruments are not compatible with the musical systems in other countries. These differences in the musical systems make it impossible for a musician to simply pick up another instrument and start playing a melody. First of all the musician would need to learn the new system and then could begin to start playing with new instrumentation. In this case like a language music is not universal. Something universal wouldn’t need such a long amount of time or