For months, fans were relegated to watching their favorite singers and musicians over Zoom or via webcasts. Now, live shows—from festivals like Lollapalooza to Broadway musicals—are officially back. The songs that beamed into living rooms during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic may have featured an artist’s hits. But there’s just something magical about seeing music surrounded by other people….

Music, we are told by academics, consists of sounds that we have decided to call “music.” Tufts University professor Aniruddh Patel has declared that “there are no sonic universals in music, other than the trivial one that it must involve sound in some way.” This view is easily defended, as long as the concept of “meaning”…