What is music?

As a music student, I am always confronted with such question, but have never been given a model answer. What is music eventually? According to dictionary, music is ¡§arts of arranging the sounds of voices or instruments or both in a pleasing sequence or combination¡¨(#1), which implies that music should be made by either our own voices or musical instruments of certain kinds, and it should be arranged rather than spontaneous. However, the first piece of ¡§music¡¨ that we heard in class was a live recording of the sounds of the forest consisting of sounds of birds, waters, leaves, inserts and other animals. Are they music at all? They are pleasant sounds that could bring tranquility and peace to our mind. In architectural principle, they are called ¡§white sound¡¨, which is an important source of naturalness and privacy. In much of the ¡§new age¡¨ music, the sounds of water and birds are distinct elements representing naturalness and bring...