I think music might be the most beautiful thing ever.

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Think about it. Good music actually causes our brains to sync up to a specific beat, different from its regular beat, with a "spike" in awareness at a certain point in the tune. It's emotion, but it's controlled emotion. It's an obvious mathematical pattern that overwhelms our brains when we listen to it.

For centuries and centuries, we, our parents and grandparents and ancestors, have looked for a pattern in a world that seems chaotic. And maybe there's no easy meaning; maybe music is the meaning. If we like it, if it's good, it gives us a state of mind completely different, emotional, gratified, logical... It is its own logic and its own emotional gratification. It has a pattern that it follows, giving us logical satisfaction, while at the same time giving us the emotion we seek.

Emotional scenes in TV and movies have music to accompany them. This is to heighten our emotion. The happiest, saddest, and feeling I have ever been is while listening to music. It's different, pure logic/emotion, and doesn't need a context or grand meaning to mean. It feels transcendant, like everything I have ever felt or thought there to lead up to my listening to music. And life doesn't need a constant meaning, because when I listen to songs, everything starts to make its own sense for a few minutes. And I will live for those moments.

If you're here to hate, go home. I just needed to say it...

While I've no intention to 'hate', I am inclined to disagree with these oft-heard assertions that music would be 'the most beautiful art', 'the purest form of expression' or 'a universal language'. I would attribute the qualities you name to ALL of the arts, many of which have been part of human culture from the days we were still all nomadic hunter-gatherers. Aside from making music, people danced, told each other stories (a 'literary' tradition before the invention of the writing), enacted fictional scenarios ('theatre'), carved talismans and amulets, and made paintings on cave walls.

I am very fond of music; I listen to it often and it can elicit intense emotions in me. However, I am by no means a musician, not by profession/training, not as an amateur. I can't sing or play an instrument, and I won't pretend to understand musical notation. My primary mode of creative expression is in painting; my secondary is writing fiction. As a result, much as I enjoy listening to music, there will always be a distance between me and music, a lack of understanding which I can never cross. When I look at a painting, I can transport myself into the mind of the artist and attempt to re-trace the creative process far more easily.

If someone were to pierce both of my eardrums and drop me on an island void of human life, I'd not feel lost for not being able to perceive music, and would instead be perfectly content fashioning improvised paints out of natural resources and applying them to a suitable surface. If I were allowed to take some possessions with me, they would probably be an armful of paintings/drawings/sketches or an overview book of art history; I would be able to get over my inability to listen to recorded music. But poke out my eyes and you poke out my soul.

"of the writing" above should be "of writing"; I had originally typed "of the written word", before choosing to re-phrase it upon realizing that scripts typically started out as iconographic systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters) before morphing into syllabic and alphabetical scripts.

I was unable to edit, because the CAPTCHA prompt didn't accept the correct sequence of words or numbers, at least on my Android.

you have a good point, and there's a lot to agree with, especially since just about every generation and culture celebrates music in some form. but it's only a temporary feeling that can be relived, when i think "the most beautiful thing ever" i picture moments when i achieved something great in my life or witnessed something amazing. i could just be playing too deep into it, though.

As a music lover, and one who loves music that would seldom be referred to as "beautiful" i totally see it myself. It stirs emotions like nothing else can. Hits your heart like no one or nothing else can. Songs are my friends.

For me personally, music is really important. I've always felt like I need music to focus and I prefer to have it playing if I'm just hanging out. When I'm at my computer I have stuff playing the entire time.

Emotionally, music does a lot for me. In some instances I feel like it helps pull feelings out of me that I otherwise have trouble feeling, and it allows me to reflect and experience them in a controlled way. When I feel stressed and tired my preferred method of "recharging" is listening to music for hours and not talking to anyone. It becomes the background music to my thoughts and really aids me in tuning out the rest of the loud and otherwise abrasive world. I would struggle to function without it.

It's very magical to me!

I'm inclined to agree.

I think for the people on here the most beautiful thing ever for them is their special interest. So if your special interest is music then music is the most beautiful thing ever.

I think about this stuff, about harmony and dissonance and resolution. About the sounds of certain instruments.

It is incredibly powerful. I can no more be around someone listening to music than I can watch them watching pornography. It's a very intimate, private thing, to me.

Music is music.

If it is just music, it's beautiful, for it doesn't hurt anyone. Add lyrics and personal agendas and it can become very ugly. Add egoistic idiots full of themselves, who support their egos and narcissistic lifestyles with it, and it might become even uglier to the point of making me want to puke.

Art as a concept doesn't exist to me. Music is music.

I think that certain types of music are the most beautiful things ever [classical, instrumental, choir, and so forth]. To me, heavy metal and so forth only sound like noise to me. In fact, I only actually like classical, instrumental, choir, and video game soundtracks.