Book: Musicophilia

What a strange sight it is to watch an entire species - billions of human beings - playing and listening to meaningless tonal combinations, seriously devoting much of their time to the subject they call "music." At least, this feature of the human race greatly perplexed the intelligent aliens, the Overlords from the novel by Arthur Clarke "The End of Childhood." Curiosity made them disembark and attend the concert. They politely listen to the music, after the concert they congratulate the composer on his "greatest masterpiece", but in reality the music itself remains completely incomprehensible to them. Aliens cannot understand what happens to human beings when they listen to or compose music, because absolutely nothing happens to them. They themselves are devoid of music as a species.