Attali’s “noise”

If there is one theoretical insight of consequence to be drawn from Attali’s “noise” it is that music is “a way of perceiving the world.” In this sense it is fully in the mainstream of western thinking of music as a carrier of meaning. The age-old debate within this orientation is between the idea of music as a model of divine harmony vs. music as a model of information as such. A contemporary example of this divide could be La Monte Young on one side and John Oswald on the other.