Noise, sound, musical sound, note

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Nattiez described the progressive shift of the border between noise
and musical sound in the course of the evolution of Occidental music. A closer
examination of acoustical or semiotic definitions of noise on the one hand, of
musical sound on the other, shows that the border tends to blurring rather than to
moving. The paper discusses the couples noise / musical sound, dissonance /
consonance, out-of-tuneness / in-tuneness.