As a form of art

Jean-Gabriel Ferlan performing at a 2008 concert at the collège-lycée Saint-François Xavier

Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. When music was only available through sheet music scores, such as during the Classical and Romantic eras, music lovers would buy the sheet music of their favourite pieces and songs so that they could perform them at home on the piano. With the advent of sound recording, records of popular songs, rather than sheet music became the dominant way that music lovers would enjoy their favourite songs. With the advent of home tape recorders in the 1980s and digital music in the 1990s, music lovers could make tapes or playlists of their favourite songs and take them with them on a Walkman oriPod. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their favorite songs, which serve as a "self-portrait, a gesture of friendship, prescription for an ideal party... [and] an environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved."^[6]

Amateur musicians compose and/or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians are employed by a range of institutions and organisations, including armed forces (in marching bands, concert bands and popular music groups), churches and synagogues, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or film production companies, and music schools. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings. There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians. In community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras.

A distinction is often made between music performed for a live audience and music that is performed in a studio so that it can be recorded and distributed through the music retail system or the broadcasting system. However, there are also many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in both classical music and inpopular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers. In the jam band scene, live, improvised jam sessions are preferred to studio recordings.

Composition

Main article: Musical composition

The composer Michel Richard Delalande, pen in hand.

"Composition" is the act or practice of creating a work of music. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing also includes the creation of an object, such as ascore, which is then performed by the composer or others. In popular music and traditional music, the act of composing, which is typically called songwriting, may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In some cases, a songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings are given the weight that scores play in classical music.

Even when music is notated relatively precisely, there are many decisions that a performer has to make. The process of deciding how to perform music that has been previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers' interpretations of the same work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen and the playing or singing style. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others. The standard body of choices and techniques present at a given time and a given place is referred to as performance practice, whereas interpretation is generally used to mean the individual choices of a performer.^{[citation needed]}

Although a musical composition often uses musical notation and has a single author, this is not always the case. A work of music can have multiple composers, and it can also be composed with words, images, or computer programs that form a process for creating musical sounds. Examples of this range from wind chimes, to graphic notation, to text compositions such as Aus den sieben Tagen, to computer programs that select sounds. Music that makes heavy use of randomness is called aleatoric music, and is associated with such composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Witold Lutosławski.

Study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough to include spontaneously improvised works like those of free jazz performers and African drummers such as the Ewe drummers.