Music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
can be
analysed by considering a variety of its elements, or parts (aspects, characteristics, features), individually or together. A commonly used list of the main elements includes
pitch,
timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
,
texture
Texture may refer to:
Science and technology
* Surface texture, the texture means smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object
* Texture (roads), road surface characteristics with waves shorter than road roughness
* Texture (c ...
,
volume
Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The de ...
,
duration
Duration may refer to:
* The amount of time elapsed between two events
* Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music
* Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...
, and
form
Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens.
Form also refers to:
*Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data
...
. The elements of music may be compared to the
elements of art
Elements of art are stylistic features that are included within an art piece to help the artist communicate. The seven most common elements include line, shape, texture, form, space, color and value, with the additions of mark making, and materiali ...
or
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
.
Selection of elements
According to
Howard
Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...
, there is little dispute about the principal constituent elements of music, though experts differ on their precise definitions. Harold Owen bases his list on the qualities of sound: pitch, timbre, intensity, and duration while John Castellini excludes duration. Gordon C. Bruner II follows the line of temporal-based deductions in association with musical composition, denoting music's primary components as "time, pitch, and texture."
Most definitions of music include a reference to sound and sound perception can be divided into six cognitive processes. They are:
pitch,
duration
Duration may refer to:
* The amount of time elapsed between two events
* Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music
* Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...
,
loudness
In acoustics, loudness is the subjectivity, subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as, "That attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The rel ...
,
timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
,
sonic texture and
spatial location
In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ...
.
A 'parameter' is any element that can be manipulated (
composed
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
) separately from other elements or focused on separately in an educational context.
Leonard B. Meyer
Leonard B. Meyer (January 12, 1918 – December 30, 2007) was a composer, author, and philosopher. He contributed major works in the fields of aesthetic theory in music, and of compositional analysis.
Career
Meyer studied at Columbia Un ...
compares distinguishing parameters within a culture by their different constraints to distinguishing independent parameters within music, such as melody, harmony, timbre, "etc." The first person to apply the term ''
parameter
A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...
'' to music may have been
Joseph Schillinger
Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger (Russian: Иосиф Моисеевич Шиллингер, (other sources: ) – 23 March 1943) was a composer, music theorist, and composition teacher who originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition ...
, though its relative popularity may be due to
Werner Meyer-Eppler
Werner Meyer-Eppler (30 April 1913 – 8 July 1960), was a Belgian-born German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist and information theorist.
Meyer-Eppler was born in Antwerp. He studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry, fir ...
. ''Gradation'' is gradual change within one parameter, or an overlapping of two blocks of sound.
Meyer lists melody, rhythm, timbre, harmony, "and the like" as principal elements of music, while Narmour lists melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, tessitura, timbre, tempo, meter, texture, "and perhaps others". According to McClellan, two things should be considered, the quality or state of an element and its change over time.
Alan P. Merriam
Alan Parkhurst Merriam (1 November 1923 – 14 March 1980) was an American ethnomusicologist known for his studies of music in Native America and Africa.Bruno Nettl, "Merriam, Alan P." in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (Londo ...
proposed a theoretical research model that assumes three aspects are always present in musical activity: concept, behaviour, and sound.
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassic ...
lists the "raw materials" of music in order of their supposed discovery: rhythm, melody, and harmony; including
counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
and
orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
. Near the end of the twentieth century music scholarship began to give more attention to social and physical elements of music. For example:
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
,
social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
,
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
,
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
, and
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
.
Definition of music
![Circular definition of musicality](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Circular_definition_of_musicality.png)
Does the definition of music determine its aspects, or does the combination of certain aspects determine the definition of music? For example,
intensional definition
In logic, extensional and intensional definitions are two key ways in which the objects, concepts, or referents a term refers to can be defined. They give meaning or denotation to a term.
Intensional definition
An intensional definition gives ...
s list aspects or elements that make up their subject.
Some definitions refer to music as a score, or a composition:) music can be read as well as heard, and a piece of music written but never played is a piece of music notwithstanding. According to Edward E. Gordon the process of
reading music, at least for trained musicians, involves a process, called "inner hearing" or "audiation", where the music is heard in the mind as if it were being played. This suggests that while sound is often considered a required aspect of music, it might not be.
Jean Molino
Jean Molino is professeur ordinaire at the University of Lausanne and a semiologist. His former students include Jean-Jacques Nattiez
Jean-Jacques Nattiez (; born December 30, 1945 in Amiens, France) is a musical semiologist or semiotician and ...
points out that "any element belonging to the total musical fact can be isolated, or taken as a strategic variable of musical production." Nattiez gives as examples
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer.
Biography
Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, his ...
's ''Con Voce''
ith voice where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments. In this example sound, a common element, is excluded, while gesture, a less common element, is given primacy. However Nattiez goes on to say that despite special cases where sound is not immediately obvious (because it is heard in the mind): "sound is a minimal condition of the musical fact".
Universal aspect
There is disagreement about whether some aspects of music are
universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a t ...
, as well as whether the concept of music is universal. This debate often hinges on definitions. For instance, the fairly common assertion that "tonality" is a universal of all music may necessarily require an expansive definition of tonality. A
pulse
In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the nec ...
is sometimes taken as a universal, yet there exist solo vocal and instrumental genres with free and improvisational rhythm--no regular pulse--one example being the
alap
The Alap (; ) is the opening section of a typical North Indian classical performance. It is a form of melodic improvisation that introduces and develops a raga. In dhrupad singing the alap is unmetered, improvised (within the raga) and unaccompani ...
section of an
Indian classical music
Indian classical music is the classical music of the Indian subcontinent. It has two major traditions: the North Indian classical music known as '' Hindustani'' and the South Indian expression known as '' Carnatic''. These traditions were not ...
performance. Harwood questions whether a "cross-cultural musical universal" may be found in the music or in the making of music, including performance, hearing, conception, and education.
One aspect that is important to bear in mind when examining multi-cultural associations is that an English-language word (i.e. the word "music"), not a universal concept, is the object of scrutiny. For this reason it is important to approach apparently equivalent words in other languages with caution. Based on the many disparate definitions that can be found just in English language dictionaries,) it seems there is no agreement on what the word "music" means in English, let alone determining a potentially equivalent word from another culture.
Kenneth Gourlay describes how, since different cultures include different elements in their definitions of music, dance, and related concepts, translation of the words for these activities may split or combine them, citing Nigerian musicologist Chinyere Nwachukwu's definition of the Igbo term "nkwa" as an activity combining and/or requiring singing, playing musical instruments, and dancing. He then concludes that there exists "nonuniversality of music and the universality of nonmusic".
Other terms
Other terms used to discuss particular pieces include:
*
Note
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
—an abstraction that refers to either a specific pitch or rhythm, or the written symbol
*
Chord—a
simultaneity
Simultaneity may refer to:
* Relativity of simultaneity, a concept in special relativity.
* Simultaneity (music), more than one complete musical texture occurring at the same time, rather than in succession
* Simultaneity, a concept in Endogeneit ...
of notes heard as some sort of unit
*
Chord progression
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice ...
—a succession of chords (
simultaneity succession)
For a more comprehensive list of terms see:
Outline of music
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to music:
Music – human expression often in the medium of time using the structures of sounds or tones and silence. It may be expressed in terms of pitch, rhythm, h ...
See also
*
Combinatoriality
In music using the twelve tone technique, combinatoriality is a quality shared by twelve-tone tone rows whereby each section of a row and a proportionate number of its transformations combine to form aggregates (all twelve tones). Whittall, Arnold ...
*
New musicology
*
Noise in music
In music, noise is variously described as unpitched, indeterminate, uncontrolled, loud, unmusical, or unwanted sound. Noise is an important component of the sound of the human voice and all musical instruments, particularly in unpitched percus ...
*
Permutation (music)
In music, a permutation (order) of a set is any ordering of the elements of that set. A specific arrangement of a set of discrete entities, or parameters, such as pitch, dynamics, or timbre. Different permutations may be related by transformati ...
*
Philosophy of music
Philosophy of music is the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of music and our experience of it".Andrew Kania,The Philosophy of Music, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Spring 2014 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. The ph ...
*
Process music
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed.
Primarily begun in the 1960s, diverse composers have employed divergent methods and styles of process. "A 'music ...
*
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method of Musical composition, composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other elements of music, musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, thou ...
*
Set (music)
A set (pitch set, pitch-class set, set class, set form, set genus, pitch collection) in music theory, as in mathematics and general parlance, is a collection of objects. In musical contexts the term is traditionally applied most often to collect ...
*
Sound art
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...
References
Sources
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*
* Cited in and , p. 78.
*
* Cited in .
*
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* Cited in .
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Further reading
*
Agricola, Martin (1991). ''The Rudiments of Music'', new edition, translated from the Latin edition of 1539 by John Trowell. Aberystwyth: Boethius Press.
* American National Standards Institute, "American National Psychoacoustical Terminology".
.p. American Standards Association
*Macpherson, Stewart, and Anthony Payne (1970). ''The Rudiments of Music'', revised edition, with a new chapter by Anthony Payne. London: Stainer & Bell; New York: Galliard. .
*Ottman, Robert W., and Frank D. Mainous (2000). ''Rudiments of Music'', second edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. .
* White, John D. (1976). ''The Analysis of Music''. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. .
External links
*
The Elements of Music
{{Music theory
Musical analysis
Musical composition
Philosophy of music
Serialism
de:Universalien der Musikwahrnehmung