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Music is the arrangement of
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
to create some combination of
form,
harmony,
melody,
rhythm, or otherwise
expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a
cultural universal that is present in all human societies.
Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of
specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human
creativity
Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...
.
Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of
composition,
improvisation, and
performance
A performance is an act or process 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.
Performance has evolved glo ...
. Music may be performed using a wide variety of
musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...
s, including the
human voice
The human voice consists of sound Voice production, made by a human being using the vocal tract, including Speech, talking, singing, Laughter, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically ...
. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a
music box,
barrel organ
A barrel organ (also called roller organ or crank organ) is a France, French mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of organ pipe, pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The basic ...
, or
digital audio workstation software on a computer.
Music often plays a key role in social events and
religious ceremonies. The techniques of making music are often transmitted as part of a cultural tradition. Music is played in public and private contexts, highlighted at events such as
festivals and concerts for various different types of ensembles. Music is used in the production of other media, such as in
soundtrack
A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television show, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of m ...
s to films, TV shows,
operas, and video games.
Listening to music is a common means of
entertainment
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...
. The culture surrounding music extends into areas of
academic study,
journalism,
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
, and
therapy. The
music industry
The music industry are individuals and organizations that earn money by Songwriter, writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music and sheet music, presenting live music, concerts, ...
includes songwriters, performers,
sound engineer
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a sound recording, recording or a Concert, live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization (audio), equalization, Dynamic range ...
s, producers, tour organizers, distributors of instruments, accessories, and publishers of
sheet music and
recordings. Technology facilitating the
recording and reproduction of music has historically included
sheet music,
microphones,
phonographs, and
tape machines, with playback of
digital musics being a common use for
MP3 players,
CD players, and
smartphones.
Etymology and terminology

The modern English word '
music
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
' came into use in the 1630s. It is derived from a long line of successive precursors: the
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
'' of the mid-13th century; the
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th of the 12th century; and the Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
of the 12th century; and the Latin .
The Latin word itself derives from the Ancient Greek ()— ()—literally meaning "(art) of the Muses". The Muses were nine Deity, deities in Ancient Greek mythology who presided over the arts and sciences. They were included in tales by the earliest Western authors,
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
and
Hesiod, and eventually came to be associated with music specifically. Over time,
Polyhymnia would reside over music more prominently than the other muses. The Latin word was also the originator for both the Spanish and French via spelling and linguistic adjustment, though other European terms were probably
loanwords, including the Italian , German , Dutch , Norwegian , Polish and Russian .
The modern
Western world usually defines music as an all-encompassing term used to describe diverse genres, styles, and traditions. This is not the case worldwide, and languages such as modern Indonesian (') and
Shona (') have recently adopted words to reflect this universal conception, as they did not have words that fit exactly the Western scope. Before Western contact in
East Asia
East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...
, neither Japan nor China had a single word that encompasses music in a broad sense, but culturally, they often regarded music in such a fashion. The closest word to mean music in
Chinese, , shares a character with , meaning joy, and originally referred to all the arts before narrowing in meaning. Africa is too diverse to make firm generalizations, but the musicologist
J. H. Kwabena Nketia has emphasized African music's often inseparable connection to dance and speech in general. Some African cultures, such as the
Songye people of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
and the
Tiv people of Nigeria, have a strong and broad conception of 'music' but no corresponding word in their native languages. Other words commonly translated as 'music' often have more specific meanings in their respective cultures: the Hindi word for music, ', properly refers to
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...
, while the many
Indigenous languages of the Americas have words for music that refer specifically to song but describe instrumental music regardless. Though the
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
' can refer to all music, it is usually used for instrumental and metric music, while ' identifies vocal and improvised music.
History
Origins and prehistory
It is often debated to what extent the origins of music will ever be understood, and there are competing theories that aim to explain it. Many scholars highlight a relationship between the origin of music and the
origin of language, and there is disagreement surrounding whether music developed before, after, or simultaneously with language. A similar source of contention surrounds whether music was the intentional result of
natural selection or was a byproduct
spandrel
A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...
of evolution. The earliest influential theory was proposed by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
in 1871, who stated that music arose as a form of
sexual selection
Sexual selection is a mechanism of evolution in which members of one sex mate choice, choose mates of the other sex to mating, mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex ...
, perhaps via mating calls. Darwin's original perspective has been heavily criticized for its inconsistencies with other sexual selection methods, though many scholars in the 21st century have developed and promoted the theory. Other theories include that music arose to assist in organizing labor, improving long-distance communication, benefiting communication with the
divine
Divinity (from Latin ) refers to the quality, presence, or nature of that which is divine—a term that, before the rise of monotheism, evoked a broad and dynamic field of sacred power. In the ancient world, divinity was not limited to a singl ...
, assisting in community cohesion or as a defense to scare off predators.
Prehistoric music can only be theorized based on findings from
paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...
archaeology sites. The disputed
Divje Babe flute, a perforated
cave bear femur
The femur (; : femurs or femora ), or thigh bone is the only long bone, bone in the thigh — the region of the lower limb between the hip and the knee. In many quadrupeds, four-legged animals the femur is the upper bone of the hindleg.
The Femo ...
, is at least 40,000 years old, though there is considerable debate surrounding whether it is truly a
musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...
or an object formed by animals. The earliest objects whose designations as musical instruments are widely accepted are
bone flutes from the
Swabian Jura, Germany, namely from the
Geissenklösterle,
Hohle Fels and
Vogelherd caves. Dated to the
Aurignacian (of the Upper Paleolithic) and used by
Early European modern humans, from all three caves there are eight examples, four made from the
wing bones of birds and four from
mammoth ivory; three of these are near complete. Three flutes from the Geissenklösterle are dated as the oldest, BP.
Antiquity
The earliest material and representational evidence of Egyptian musical instruments dates to the
Predynastic period, but the evidence is more securely attested in the
Old Kingdom when
harps,
flutes and
double clarinets were played. Percussion instruments,
lyres, and
lutes were added to orchestras by the
Middle Kingdom.
Cymbals
frequently accompanied music and dance, much as they still do in
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
today. Egyptian
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
, including the traditional
Sufi rituals, are the closest contemporary
music genre to
ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...
ian music, having preserved many of its features, rhythms and instruments.
The "
Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal", found on
clay tablets in the ancient
Syria
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
n city of
Ugarit, is the oldest surviving notated work of music, dating back to approximately 1400 BCE.
Music was an important part of social and cultural life in
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
, in fact it was one of the main subjects taught to children. Musical education was considered important for the development of an individual's soul. Musicians and singers played a prominent role in
Greek theater,
and those who received a musical education were seen as nobles and in perfect harmony (as can be read in the
Republic, Plato). Mixed gender
choruses performed for entertainment, celebration, and spiritual ceremonies.
Instruments included the double-reed and a plucked
string instrument
In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners.
Musicians play some ...
, the ''
lyre'', principally a special kind called a . Music was an important part of education, and boys were taught music starting at age six. Greek musical literacy created significant musical development. Greek
music theory
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...
included the Greek
musical modes, that eventually became the basis for Western
religious
Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...
and
classical music. Later, influences from the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
, Eastern Europe, and the
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...
changed Greek music. The
Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The oldest surviving work written about music theory is ''
Harmonika Stoicheia'' by
Aristoxenus.
Asian cultures
Asian music covers a swath of music cultures surveyed in the articles on
Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world.
Geographically, the ...
,
Central Asia
Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
,
East Asia
East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...
,
South Asia
South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...
, and
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
. Several have traditions reaching into antiquity.
Indian classical music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. Sculptures from the
Indus Valley civilization show dance and old musical instruments, like the seven-holed flute. Stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from
Harappa and
Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by
Mortimer Wheeler. The
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
, an ancient Hindu text, has elements of present Indian music, with musical notation to denote the meter and mode of chanting. Indian classical music (marga) is
monophonic, and based on a single melody line or
raga rhythmically organized through
talas. The poem ''
Cilappatikaram'' provides information about how new scales can be formed by modal shifting of the tonic from an existing scale. Present day
Hindi music was influenced by
Persian traditional music and
Afghan Mughals.
Carnatic music, popular in the southern states, is largely devotional; the majority of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. There are songs emphasizing love and other social issues.
Indonesian music
Indonesia is a country with many different Ethnic groups in Indonesia, tribes and ethnic groups, and its music is also very diverse, coming in hundreds of different forms and styles. Every region has its own culture and art, and as a result tr ...
has been formed since the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
culture migrated to the
Indonesian archipelago in the 2nd-3rd centuries BCE. Indonesian traditional music uses percussion instruments, especially
kendang
A ''kendang'' or ''gendang'' (, , , Tausug language, Tausug/Bajau/Maranao language, Maranao: ''gandang'', Buginese language, Bugis: ''gendrang'' and Makassarese language, Makassar: ''gandrang'' or ''ganrang'') is a two-headed drum used by peop ...
and
gongs. Some of them developed elaborate and distinctive instruments, such as the
sasando stringed instrument on the island of Rote, the
Sundanese angklung, and the complex and sophisticated
Javanese and
Balinese gamelan
Gamelan (; ; , ; ) is the traditional musical ensemble, ensemble music of the Javanese people, Javanese, Sundanese people, Sundanese, and Balinese people, Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussion instrument, per ...
orchestras. Indonesia is the home of
gong chime, a general term for a set of small, high pitched pot gongs. Gongs are usually placed in order of note, with the boss up on a string held in a low wooden frame. The most popular form of Indonesian music is gamelan, an ensemble of tuned
percussion instruments that include
metallophones,
drums
The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...
,
gongs and
spike fiddles along with
bamboo suling (like a
flute).
Chinese classical music, the traditional art or court music of China, has a history stretching over about 3,000 years. It has its own unique systems of musical notation, as well as musical tuning and pitch, musical instruments and styles or genres. Chinese music is
pentatonic-
diatonic, having a scale of twelve notes to an octave (5 + 7 = 12) as does European-influenced music.
Western classical
Early music

The
medieval music era (500 to 1400), which took place during the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, started with the introduction of
monophonic (single melodic line)
chanting into
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
services.
Musical notation was used since ancient times in
Greek culture, but in the Middle Ages, notation was first introduced by the Catholic Church, so chant melodies could be written down, to facilitate the use of the same melodies for religious music across the Catholic empire. The only European Medieval repertory that has been found, in written form, from before 800 is the monophonic
liturgical plainsong chant of the Catholic Church, the central tradition of which was called
Gregorian chant. Alongside these traditions of
sacred
Sacred describes something that is dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity; is considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspires awe or reverence among believers. The property is often ascribed to objects ( ...
and
church music there existed a vibrant tradition of
secular song (non-religious songs). Examples of composers from this period are
Léonin,
Pérotin,
Guillaume de Machaut, and
Walther von der Vogelweide.
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ''ars nova'', the mus ...
( to 1600) was more focused on secular themes, such as
courtly love. Around 1450, the
printing press was invented, which made printed
sheet music much less expensive and easier to mass-produce (prior to the invention of the press, all notated music was hand-copied). The increased availability of sheet music spread musical styles quicker and across a larger area. Musicians and singers often worked for the church, courts and towns. Church choirs grew in size, and the church remained an important patron of music. By the middle of the 15th century, composers wrote richly polyphonic sacred music, in which different melody lines were interwoven simultaneously. Prominent composers from this era include
Guillaume Du Fay,
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina,
Thomas Morley,
Orlando di Lasso and
Josquin des Prez. As musical activity shifted from the church to aristocratic courts, kings, queens and princes competed for the finest composers. Many leading composers came from the Netherlands, Belgium, and France; they are called the Franco-Flemish composers. They held important positions throughout Europe, especially in Italy. Other countries with vibrant musical activity included Germany, England, and Spain.
Common practice period
= Baroque
=

The Baroque era of music took place from 1600 to 1750, coinciding with the flourishing of the
Baroque
The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
artistic style in Europe. The start of the Baroque era was marked by the penning of the first
opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
s.
Polyphonic contrapuntal music (music with separate, simultaneous
melodic lines) remained important during this period. German Baroque composers wrote for small
ensembles including
strings,
brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...
, and
woodwinds, as well as for
choir
A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...
s and keyboard instruments such as
pipe organ,
harpsichord, and
clavichord. Musical complexity increased during this time. Several major musical forms were created, some of them which persisted into later periods, seeing further development. These include the
fugue, the
invention
An invention is a unique or novelty (patent), novel machine, device, Method_(patent), method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It m ...
, the
sonata, and the
concerto
A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The ...
.
The late Baroque style was polyphonically complex and richly ornamented. Important composers from the Baroque era include
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety ...
(''
Cello suites''),
George Frideric Handel (''
Messiah''),
Georg Philipp Telemann and
Antonio Vivaldi (''
The Four Seasons'').
= Classicism
=

The music of the Classical period (1730 to 1820) aimed to imitate what were seen as the key elements of the art and philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome: the ideals of balance, proportion and disciplined expression. (Note: the music from the
Classical period should not be confused with Classical music in general, a term which refers to Western
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...
from the 5th century to the 2000s, which includes the Classical period as one of a number of periods). Music from the Classical period has a lighter, clearer and considerably simpler texture than the
Baroque music which preceded it. The main style was
homophony, where a prominent
melody and a subordinate chordal
accompaniment part are clearly distinct. Classical instrumental melodies tended to be almost voicelike and singable. New genres were developed, and the
fortepiano, the forerunner to the modern piano, replaced the Baroque era
harpsichord and
pipe organ as the main keyboard instrument (though pipe organ continued to be used in sacred music, such as Masses).
Importance was given to
instrumental music. It was dominated by further development of musical forms initially defined in the Baroque period: the
sonata, the concerto, and the
symphony. Other main kinds were the
trio,
string quartet
The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...
,
serenade and
divertimento. The sonata was the most important and developed form. Although Baroque composers also wrote sonatas, the Classical style of sonata is completely distinct. All of the main instrumental forms of the Classical era, from string quartets to symphonies and concertos, were based on the structure of the sonata. The instruments used
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...
and orchestra became more standardized. In place of the
basso continuo group of the Baroque era, which consisted of harpsichord, organ or lute along with a number of bass instruments selected at the discretion of the group leader (e.g., viol, cello, theorbo, serpent), Classical chamber groups used specified, standardized instruments (e.g., a
string quartet
The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...
would be performed by two violins, a viola and a cello). The practice of improvised chord-playing by the continuo keyboardist or lute player, a hallmark of Baroque music, underwent a gradual decline between 1750 and 1800.
One of the most important changes made in the Classical period was the development of public concerts. The aristocracy still played a significant role in the sponsorship of concerts and compositions, but it was now possible for composers to survive without being permanent employees of queens or princes. The increasing popularity of classical music led to a growth in the number and types of orchestras. The expansion of orchestral concerts necessitated the building of large public performance spaces. Symphonic music including symphonies, musical accompaniment to ballet and mixed vocal/instrumental genres, such as opera and
oratorio
An oratorio () is a musical composition with dramatic or narrative text for choir, soloists and orchestra or other ensemble.
Similar to opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguisha ...
, became more popular.
The best known composers of Classicism are
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; ; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period (music), classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of th ...
,
Johann Christian Bach,
Joseph Haydn,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...
and
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; ; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a List of compositions ...
. Beethoven and Schubert are also considered to be composers in the later part of the Classical era, as it began to move towards Romanticism.
= Romanticism
=

Romantic music ( to 1900) from the 19th century had many elements in common with the
Romantic styles in literature and painting of the era. Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature. Romantic music expanded beyond the rigid styles and forms of the Classical era into more passionate, dramatic expressive pieces and songs. Romantic composers such as
Wagner and
Brahms attempted to increase emotional expression and power in their music to describe deeper truths or human feelings. With symphonic
tone poems, composers tried to tell stories and evoke images or landscapes using instrumental music. Some composers promoted
nationalistic pride with patriotic orchestral music inspired by
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
. The emotional and expressive qualities of music came to take precedence over tradition.
Romantic composers grew in idiosyncrasy, and went further in the
syncretism of exploring different art-forms in a musical context, (such as literature), history (historical figures and legends), or nature itself.
Romantic love or longing was a prevalent theme in many works composed during this period. In some cases, the formal structures from the classical period continued to be used (e.g., the
sonata form used in
string quartet
The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...
s and
symphonies), but these forms were expanded and altered. In many cases, new approaches were explored for existing genres, forms, and functions. Also, new forms were created that were deemed better suited to the new subject matter. Composers continued to develop opera and ballet music, exploring new styles and themes.
In the years after 1800, the music developed by
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...
and
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; ; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a List of compositions ...
introduced a more dramatic, expressive style. In Beethoven's case, short
motifs, developed organically, came to replace
melody as the most significant compositional unit (an example is the distinctive four note figure used in his
Fifth Symphony). Later Romantic composers such as
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky,
Antonín Dvořák, and
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic music, Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and ...
used more unusual
chords and more
dissonance to create dramatic tension. They generated complex and often much longer musical works. During the late Romantic period, composers explored dramatic
chromatic alterations of
tonality, such as
extended chords and
altered chords, which created new sound "colors." The late 19th century saw a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestra, and the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
helped to create better instruments, creating a more powerful sound. Public concerts became an important part of well-to-do
urban society. It also saw a new diversity in
theatre music, including
operetta, and
musical comedy and other forms of musical theatre.
20th and 21st century

In the 19th century, a key way new compositions became known to the public was by the sales of
sheet music, which middle class amateur music lovers would perform at home, on their piano or other common instruments, such as the violin. With
20th-century music, the invention of new
electric technologies such as
radio broadcasting
Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio signal, audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a lan ...
and
mass market availability of
gramophone records meant
sound recordings heard by listeners (on the radio or record player) became the main way to learn about new songs and pieces. There was a vast increase in music listening as the radio gained popularity and
phonographs were used to replay and distribute music; anyone with a radio or record player could hear operas,
symphonies and
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
s in their own living room. During the 19th century, the focus on sheet music had restricted access to new music to middle and upper-class people who could read music and who owned pianos and other instruments. Radios and record players allowed lower-income people, who could not afford an opera or symphony concert ticket, to hear this music. As well, people could hear music from different parts of the country, or even different parts of the world, even if they could not afford to travel to these locations. This helped to spread musical styles.
The focus of
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...
in the 20th century was characterized by exploration of new rhythms, styles, and sounds. The horrors of World War I influenced many of the arts, including music, and composers began exploring darker, harsher sounds.
Traditional music styles such as
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
were used by composers as a source of ideas for classical music.
Igor Stravinsky,
Arnold Schoenberg, and
John Cage were influential composers in 20th-century art music. The invention of sound recording and the ability to edit music gave rise to new subgenres of classical music, including the
acousmatic and
Musique concrète schools of electronic composition. Sound recording was a major influence on the development of popular music genres, because it enabled recordings of songs and bands to be widely distributed. The introduction of the
multitrack recording system had a major influence on
rock music
Rock is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdo ...
, because it could do more than record a band's performance. Using a multitrack system, a band and their music producer could overdub many layers of instrument tracks and vocals, creating new sounds that would not be possible in a live performance.
Jazz evolved and became an important genre of music over the course of the 20th century, and during the second half, rock music did the same. Jazz is an American musical artform that originated in the beginning of the 20th century, in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of
African and European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of
blue notes,
improvisation,
polyrhythms,
syncopation, and the
swung note.

Rock music is a genre of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
that developed in the 1950s from
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...
,
rockabilly,
blues, and
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric or acoustic guitar, and it uses a strong
back beat laid down by a
rhythm section. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody." The traditional rhythm section for popular music is rhythm guitar, electric bass guitar, drums. Some bands have keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s,
analog synthesizers. In the 1980s, pop musicians began using digital synthesizers, such as the
DX-7 synthesizer, electronic
drum machines such as the
TR-808 and synth bass devices (such as the
TB-303) or
synth bass keyboards. In the 1990s, an increasingly large range of computerized hardware musical devices and instruments and software (e.g.
digital audio workstations) were used. In the 2020s,
soft synths and computer music apps make it possible for
bedroom producers to create and record types of music, such as
electronic dance music, in their home, adding sampled and digital instruments and editing the recording digitally. In the 1990s, bands in genres such as
nu metal began including
DJs in their bands. DJs create music by manipulating recorded music, using a
DJ mixer.
Creation
Composition

"Composition" is the act or practice of creating a song, an
instrumental music piece, a work with both singing and instruments, or another type of music. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing also includes the creation of
music notation, such as a
sheet music "score", which is then performed by the composer or by other singers or musicians. In popular music and traditional music, the act of composing, which is typically called songwriting, may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the
lead sheet, which sets out the
melody,
lyrics
Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, ...
and
chord progression. In classical music, the composer typically
orchestrates his or her own compositions, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead, compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music.
Even when music is notated relatively precisely, as in classical music, there are many decisions that a performer has to make, because notation does not specify all of the elements of music precisely. The process of deciding how to perform music that has been previously composed and notated is termed "interpretation". Different performers' interpretations of the same work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen and the playing or singing style or
phrasing of the melodies. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting their songs, just as much as those who perform the music of others. The standard body of choices and techniques present at a given time and a given place is referred to as
performance practice, whereas interpretation is generally used to mean the individual choices of a performer.
Although a musical composition often uses
musical notation and has a single author, this is not always the case. A work of music can have multiple composers, which often occurs in
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
when a band collaborates to write a song, or in musical theatre, when one person writes the melodies, a second person writes the lyrics, and a third person orchestrates the songs. In some styles of music, such as the
blues, a composer/songwriter may create, perform and record new songs or pieces without ever writing them down in music notation. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or computer programs that explain or notate how the singer or musician should create musical sounds. Examples range from avant-garde music that uses
graphic notation, to text compositions such as ''
Aus den sieben Tagen'', to computer programs that select sounds for musical pieces. Music that makes heavy use of randomness and chance is called
aleatoric music, and is associated with contemporary composers active in the 20th century, such as
John Cage,
Morton Feldman, and
Witold Lutosławski. A commonly known example of chance-based music is the sound of
wind chimes jingling in a breeze.
The study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough to include the creation of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
and
traditional music songs and instrumental pieces as well as spontaneously
improvised works like those of
free jazz performers and African percussionists such as
Ewe drummers.
Performance

Performance is the physical expression of music, which occurs when a song is sung or piano piece, guitar melody, symphony, drum beat or other
musical part is played. In classical music, a work is written in
music notation by a composer and then performed once the composer is satisfied with its structure and instrumentation. However, as it gets performed, the interpretation of a song or piece can evolve and change. In classical music, instrumental performers, singers or conductors may gradually make changes to the phrasing or tempo of a piece. In popular and traditional music, the performers have more freedom to make changes to the form of a song or piece. As such, in popular and traditional music styles, even when a band plays a
cover song, they can make changes such as adding a
guitar solo or inserting an introduction.
A performance can either be planned out and rehearsed (practiced)—which is the norm in classical music, jazz
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
s, and many popular music styles–or
improvised over a
chord progression (a sequence of chords), which is the norm in small
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and
blues groups. Rehearsals of orchestras,
concert bands and
choir
A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...
s are led by a conductor. Rock, blues and jazz bands are usually led by the bandleader. A rehearsal is a structured repetition of a song or piece by the performers until it can be sung or played correctly and, if it is a song or piece for more than one musician, until the parts are together from a rhythmic and tuning perspective.
Many cultures have strong traditions of solo performance (in which one singer or instrumentalist performs), such as in Indian classical music, and in the Western art-music tradition. Other cultures, such as in
Bali, include strong traditions of group performance. All cultures include a mixture of both, and performance may range from improvised solo playing to highly planned and organized performances such as the modern classical concert, religious processions, classical music festivals or
music competition
A music competition is a public event designed to identify and award outstanding musical ensembles, solo (music), soloists, composers, conducting, conductors, musicologists or compositions. Pop music competitions are music competitions which are h ...
s.
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...
, which is music for a small ensemble with only one or a few of each type of instrument, is often seen as more intimate than large symphonic works.
Improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creation of spontaneous music, often within (or based on) a pre-existing harmonic framework,
chord progression, or
riffs. Improvisers use the notes of the chord, various scales that are associated with each chord, and chromatic ornaments and passing tones which may be neither chord tones nor from the typical scales associated with a chord. Musical improvisation can be done with or without preparation. Improvisation is a major part of some types of music, such as
blues,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
, and
jazz fusion, in which instrumental performers improvise solos, melody lines, and accompaniment parts.
In the Western art music tradition, improvisation was an important skill during the Baroque era and during the Classical era. In the Baroque era, performers improvised ornaments, and
basso continuo keyboard players improvised
chord voicings based on
figured bass notation. As well, the top soloists were expected to be able to improvise pieces such as
preludes. In the Classical era, solo performers and singers improvised virtuoso
cadenzas during concerts.
However, in the 20th and early 21st century, as "common practice" Western
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...
performance became institutionalized in symphony orchestras, opera houses, and ballets, improvisation has played a smaller role, as more and more music was notated in scores and parts for musicians to play. At the same time, some 20th and 21st century
art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...
composers have increasingly included improvisation in their creative work. In
Indian classical music, improvisation is a core component and an essential criterion of performances.
Art and entertainment
Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. When music was only available through
sheet music scores, such as during the Classical and Romantic eras, music lovers would buy the sheet music of their favourite pieces and songs so that they could perform them at home on the piano. With the advent of the
phonograph, records of popular songs, rather than sheet music became the dominant way that music lovers would enjoy their favourite songs. With the advent of home
tape recorders in the 1980s and
digital music in the 1990s, music lovers could make tapes or
playlists of favourite songs and take them with them on a portable
cassette player or MP3 player. Some music lovers create
mix tapes of favourite songs, which serve as a "self-portrait, a gesture of friendship, prescription for an ideal party...
ndan environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved".
Amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure and derive income elsewhere.
Professional musicians are employed by institutions and organisations, including armed forces (in
marching bands,
concert bands and popular music groups), religious institutions, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or
film production companies, and
music school
A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department (of a larger in ...
s. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or
session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings. There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take
lessons with professional musicians. In community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community
concert bands and community orchestras.
A distinction is often made between music performed for a live audience and music that is performed in a studio so that it can be recorded and distributed through the music retail system or the broadcasting system. However, there are also many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in both classical music and in
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
forms such as rock, where
illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers. In the
jam band scene, live, improvised
jam sessions are preferred to studio recordings.
Notation

Music notation typically means the written expression of music notes and rhythms on paper using symbols. When music is written down, the pitches and rhythm of the music, such as the notes of a
melody, are notated. Music notation often provides instructions on how to perform the music. For example, the sheet music for a song may state the song is a "slow blues" or a "fast swing", which indicates the tempo and the genre. To read notation, a person must have an understanding of
music theory
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...
,
harmony and the
performance practice associated with a particular song or piece's genre.
Written notation varies with the style and period of music. Nowadays, notated music is produced as
sheet music or, for individuals with computer
scorewriter programs, as an image on a
computer screen. In ancient times, music notation was put onto stone or clay tablets.
To perform music from notation, a singer or instrumentalist requires an understanding of the rhythmic and pitch elements embodied in the symbols and the performance practice that is associated with a piece of music or genre. In genres requiring
musical improvisation
Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of Emotion, emotions and Musical technique, instrumental techn ...
, the performer often plays from music where only the
chord changes and form of the song are written, requiring the performer to have a great understanding of the music's structure, harmony and the styles of a particular genre e.g., jazz or
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
.
In Western art music, the most common types of written notation are scores, which include all the music parts of an ensemble piece, and parts, which are the music notation for the individual performers or singers. In popular music, jazz, and blues, the standard musical notation is the
lead sheet, which notates the melody, chords,
lyrics
Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, ...
(if it is a vocal piece), and structure of the music. Fake books are also used in jazz; they may consist of lead sheets or simply chord charts, which permit
rhythm section members to improvise an
accompaniment part to jazz songs. Scores and parts are also used in popular music and jazz, particularly in large ensembles such as jazz "
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
s." In popular music, guitarists and electric bass players often read music notated in
tablature (often abbreviated as "tab"), which indicates the location of the notes to be played on the instrument using a diagram of the guitar or bass fingerboard. Tablature was used in the Baroque era to notate music for the
lute, a stringed, fretted instrument.
Oral and aural tradition
Many types of music, such as traditional
blues and
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
were not written down in
sheet music; instead, they were originally preserved in the memory of performers, and the songs were handed down
orally, from one musician or singer to another, or aurally, in which a performer learns a song "
by ear". When the composer of a song or piece is no longer known, this music is often classified as "traditional" or as a "folk song". Different musical traditions have different attitudes towards how and where to make changes to the original source material, from quite strict, to those that demand improvisation or modification to the music. A culture's history and stories may also be passed on by ear through song.
Elements
Music has many different fundamentals or elements. Depending on the definition of "element" being used, these can include pitch, beat or pulse, tempo, rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, style, allocation of voices, timbre or color, dynamics, expression, articulation, form, and structure. The elements of music feature prominently in the music curriculums of Australia, the UK, and the US. All three curriculums identify pitch, dynamics, timbre, and texture as elements, but the other identified elements of music are far from universally agreed upon. Below is a list of the three official versions of the "elements of music":
* Australia: pitch, timbre, texture, dynamics and expression, rhythm, form and structure.
* UK: pitch, timbre, texture, dynamics, duration, tempo, structure.
* USA: pitch, timbre, texture, dynamics, rhythm, form, harmony, style/articulation.
In relation to the UK curriculum, in 2013 the term: "appropriate
musical notations" was added to their list of elements and the title of the list was changed from the "elements of music" to the "inter-related dimensions of music". The inter-related dimensions of music are listed as: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure, and appropriate musical notations.
The phrase "the elements of music" is used in a number of different contexts. The two most common contexts can be differentiated by describing them as the "rudimentary elements of music" and the "perceptual elements of music".
Pitch
Pitch is an aspect of a sound that we can hear, reflecting whether one musical sound, note, or tone is "higher" or "lower" than another musical sound, note, or tone. We can talk about the highness or lowness of pitch in the more general sense, such as the way a listener hears a piercingly high
piccolo note or
whistling tone as higher in pitch than a deep thump of a
bass drum. We also talk about pitch in the precise sense associated with musical
melodies,
basslines and
chords. Precise pitch can only be determined in sounds that have a frequency that is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise. For example, it is much easier for listeners to discern the pitch of a single note played on a piano than to try to discern the pitch of a
crash cymbal
A crash cymbal is a type of cymbal that produces a loud, sharp "crash" and is used mainly for occasional accents, as opposed to a ride cymbal. It can be mounted on a stand and played with a drum stick, or by hand in clash cymbals, pairs. One ...
that is struck.
Melody

A melody, also called a "tune", is a series of pitches (notes) sounding in succession (one after the other), often in a rising and falling pattern. The notes of a melody are typically created using pitch systems such as
scales or
modes. Melodies also often contain notes from the chords used in the song. The melodies in simple folk songs and traditional songs may use only the notes of a single scale, the scale associated with the tonic note or
key of a given song. For example, a folk song in the key of C (also referred to as C major) may have a melody that uses only the notes of the C major scale (the individual notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C; these are the "
white notes" on a piano keyboard. On the other hand,
Bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...
-era jazz from the 1940s and contemporary music from the 20th and 21st centuries may use melodies with many
chromatic notes (i.e., notes in addition to the notes of the major scale; on a piano, a chromatic scale would include all the notes on the keyboard, including the "white notes" and "black notes" and unusual scales, such as the
whole tone scale (a whole tone scale in the key of C would contain the notes C, D, E, F, G and A). A low musical line played by bass instruments, such as double bass, electric bass, or
tuba, is called a
bassline.
Harmony
Harmony refers to the "vertical" sounds of pitches in music, which means pitches that are played or sung together at the same time creates a
chord. Usually, this means the notes are played at the same time, although harmony may also be implied by a melody that outlines a harmonic structure (i.e., by using melody notes that are played one after the other, outlining the notes of a chord). In music written using the system of major-minor
tonality ("keys"), which includes most classical music written from 1600 to 1900 and most Western pop, rock, and traditional music, the key of a piece determines the "home note" or
tonic to which the piece generally resolves, and the character (e.g. major or minor) of the scale in use. Simple classical pieces and many pop and traditional music songs are written so that all the music is in a single key. More complex Classical, pop, and traditional music songs and pieces may have two keys (and in some cases three or more keys). Classical music from the Romantic era (written from about 1820–1900) often contains multiple keys, as does
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
, especially
Bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...
jazz from the 1940s, in which the key or "home note" of a song may change every four bars or even every two bars.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds and silences in time.
Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings, called
measures or bars, which in Western classical, popular, and traditional music often group notes in sets of two (e.g., 2/4 time), three (e.g., 3/4 time, also known as
Waltz
The waltz ( , meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom dance, ballroom and folk dance, in triple (3/4 time, time), performed primarily in closed position. Along with the ländler and allemande, the waltz was sometimes referred to by the ...
time, or 3/8 time), or four (e.g., 4/4 time). Meters are made easier to hear because songs and pieces often (but not always) place an emphasis on the first beat of each grouping. Notable exceptions exist, such as the
backbeat used in much Western pop and rock, in which a song that uses a measure that consists of four beats (called 4/4 time or
common time) will have accents on beats two and four, which are typically performed by the drummer on the
snare drum, a loud and distinctive-sounding percussion instrument. In pop and rock, the rhythm parts of a song are played by the
rhythm section, which includes chord-playing instruments (e.g., electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, or other keyboard instruments), a bass instrument (typically electric bass or for some styles such as
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and
bluegrass, double bass) and a drum kit player.
Texture
Musical texture is the overall sound of a piece of music or song. The texture of a piece or song is determined by how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall nature of the sound in a piece. Texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices (see common types below). For example, a thick texture contains many 'layers' of instruments. One layer can be a string section or another brass. The thickness is affected by the amount and the richness of the instruments. Texture is commonly described according to the number of and relationship between
parts or lines of music:
*
monophony: a single
melody (or "tune") with neither instrumental
accompaniment nor a
harmony part. A mother singing a
lullaby to her baby would be an example.
*
heterophony: two or more instruments or singers playing/singing the same melody, but with each performer slightly varying the rhythm or speed of the melody or adding different
ornaments to the melody. Two
bluegrass fiddlers playing the same
traditional fiddle tune together will typically each vary the melody by some degree and each add different ornaments.
*
polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chord ...
: multiple independent melody lines that interweave together, which are sung or played at the same time.
Choral music written in the
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ''ars nova'', the mus ...
era was typically written in this style. A
round, which is a song such as "
Row, Row, Row Your Boat", which different groups of singers all start to sing at a different time, is an example of polyphony.
*
homophony: a clear melody supported by
chordal accompaniment. Most Western
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
songs from the 19th century onward are written in this texture.
Music that contains a large number of independent
parts (e.g., a double concerto accompanied by 100 orchestral instruments with many interweaving melodic lines) is generally said to have a "thicker" or "denser" texture than a work with few parts (e.g., a solo
flute melody accompanied by a single cello).
Timbre
Timbre, sometimes called "color" or "tone color" is the quality or sound of a voice or instrument. Timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For example, a 440 Hz A note sounds different when it is played on
oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites.
The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...
, piano, violin, or electric guitar. Even if different players of the same instrument play the same note, their notes might sound different due to differences in instrumental technique (e.g., different
embouchures), different types of accessories (e.g., mouthpieces for brass players, reeds for oboe and bassoon players) or strings made out of different materials for string players (e.g.,
gut strings versus
steel strings). Even two instrumentalists playing the same note on the same instrument (one after the other) may sound different due to different ways of playing the instrument (e.g., two string players might hold the bow differently).
The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include the
spectrum,
envelope, and
overtones of a note or musical sound. For
electric
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...
instruments developed in the 20th century, such as electric guitar, electric bass and
electric piano, the performer can also change the tone by adjusting
equalizer controls, tone controls on the instrument, and by using
electronic effects units such as
distortion pedals. The tone of the electric
Hammond organ is controlled by adjusting
drawbars.
Expression
Expressive qualities are those elements in music that create change in music without changing the main pitches or substantially changing the rhythms of the melody and its accompaniment. Performers, including singers and instrumentalists, can add musical expression to a song or piece by adding
phrasing, by adding effects such as
vibrato (with voice and some instruments, such as guitar, violin, brass instruments, and woodwinds), dynamics (the loudness or softness of piece or a section of it), tempo fluctuations (e.g.,
ritardando or
accelerando, which are, respectively slowing down and speeding up the tempo), by adding pauses or
fermatas on a
cadence, and by changing the articulation of the notes (e.g., making notes more pronounced or accented, by making notes more
legato, which means smoothly connected, or by making notes shorter).
Expression is achieved through the manipulation of pitch (such as inflection, vibrato, slides etc.), volume (dynamics, accent, tremolo etc.), duration (tempo fluctuations, rhythmic changes, changing note duration such as with legato and staccato, etc.), timbre (e.g. changing vocal timbre from a light to a resonant voice) and sometimes even texture (e.g. doubling the bass note for a richer effect in a piano piece). Expression therefore can be seen as a manipulation of all elements to convey "an indication of mood, spirit, character etc." and as such cannot be included as a unique perceptual element of music, although it can be considered an important rudimentary element of music.
Form

In music,
form describes the overall structure or plan of a song or piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections. In the early 20th century,
Tin Pan Alley songs and
Broadway musical songs were often in AABA
thirty-two-bar form, in which the A sections repeated the same eight bar melody (with variation) and the B section provided a contrasting melody or harmony for eight bars. From the 1960s onward, Western pop and rock songs are often in
verse-chorus form, which comprises a sequence of
verse and chorus ("
refrain") sections, with new
lyrics
Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, ...
for most verses and repeating lyrics for the choruses. Popular music often makes use of
strophic form, sometimes in conjunction with the
twelve bar blues.
In the tenth edition of ''
The Oxford Companion to Music'',
Percy Scholes defines musical form as "a series of strategies designed to find a successful mean between the opposite extremes of unrelieved repetition and unrelieved alteration." Examples of common forms of Western music include the
fugue, the
invention
An invention is a unique or novelty (patent), novel machine, device, Method_(patent), method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It m ...
,
sonata-allegro,
canon,
strophic,
theme and variations, and
rondo.
Scholes states that European classical music had only six stand-alone forms: simple binary, simple ternary, compound binary, rondo, air with variations, and fugue (although musicologist
Alfred Mann emphasized that the fugue is primarily a method of composition that has sometimes taken on certain structural conventions.)
Where a piece cannot readily be broken into sectional units (though it might borrow some form from a poem, story or
programme), it is said to be
through-composed. Such is often the case with a
fantasia,
prelude,
rhapsody,
etude (or study),
symphonic poem,
Bagatelle,
impromptu or similar composition. Professor Charles Keil classified forms and formal detail as "sectional, developmental, or variational."
Philosophy
The philosophy of music is the study of fundamental questions regarding music and has connections with questions in
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
and
aesthetics
Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
. Questions include:
* What is the
definition of music? (What are the
necessary and sufficient conditions for classifying something as music?)
* What is the relationship between music and mind?
* What does
music history reveal to us about the world?
* What is the connection between
music and emotions?
* What is meaning in relation to music?
In ancient times, such as with the
Ancient Greeks, the
aesthetics of music explored the mathematical and
cosmological dimensions of
rhythmic and harmonic organization. In the 18th century, focus shifted to the experience of hearing music, and thus to questions about its beauty and human enjoyment (''
plaisir'' and ''
jouissance'') of music. The origin of this philosophic shift is sometimes attributed to
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
. Through their writing, the ancient term 'aesthetics', meaning
sensory perception, received its present-day connotation. In the 2000s, philosophers have tended to emphasize issues besides beauty and enjoyment. For example, music's capacity to express emotion has been foregrounded.
In the 20th century, important contributions were made by
Peter Kivy,
Jerrold Levinson,
Roger Scruton, and
Stephen Davies. However, many musicians,
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...
, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music. In the 19th century, a significant debate arose between
Eduard Hanslick, a
music critic and
musicologist
Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...
, and composer
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
regarding whether music can express meaning.
Harry Partch and some other
musicologist
Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...
s, such as
Kyle Gann, have studied and tried to popularize
microtonal music and the usage of alternate
musical scales. Modern composers like
La Monte Young,
Rhys Chatham and
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca (October 6, 1948 – May 13, 2018) was an American avant-garde music, avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, scordatura, alternative guitar tunings, minimal music, repetition, drone (music), dronin ...
paid much attention to a scale called
just intonation.
It is often thought that music has the ability to affect our
emotions,
intellect, and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
; it can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. The
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
suggests in ''
The Republic'' that music has a direct effect on the soul. Therefore, he proposes that in the ideal regime music would be closely regulated by the state (Book VII). In Ancient China, the philosopher
Confucius
Confucius (; pinyin: ; ; ), born Kong Qiu (), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the phil ...
believed that music and rituals or rites are interconnected and harmonious with nature; he stated that music was the harmonization of heaven and earth, while the order was brought by the rites order, making them extremely crucial functions in society.
Psychology
Modern music psychology aims to explain and understand musical
behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...
and
experience
Experience refers to Consciousness, conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience i ...
.
Research in this field and its subfields are primarily
empirical; their knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic
observation
Observation in the natural sciences is an act or instance of noticing or perceiving and the acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the percep ...
of and interaction with
human participants. In addition to its focus on fundamental perceptions and cognitive processes, music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music
performance
A performance is an act or process 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.
Performance has evolved glo ...
,
composition,
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
,
criticism, and
therapy, as well as investigations of human
aptitude
An aptitude is a component of a competence to do a certain kind of work at a certain level. Outstanding aptitude can be considered "talent", or "skill". Aptitude is inborn potential to perform certain kinds of activities, whether physical or ...
, skill,
intelligence, creativity, and
social behavior.
Neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities. It also is increasingly concerned with the brain basis for musical aesthetics and musical emotion. The field is distinguished by its reliance on direct observations of the brain, using such techniques as
functional magnetic resonance imaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
(fMRI),
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS),
magnetoencephalography (MEG),
electroencephalography (EEG), and
positron emission tomography (PET).
Cognitive musicology
Cognitive musicology is a branch of
cognitive science concerned with
computationally modeling musical knowledge with the goal of understanding both music and cognition. The use of computer models provides an exacting, interactive medium in which to formulate and test theories and has roots in
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
and
cognitive science.
Cognitive musicology investigates topics such as the parallels between language and music in the brain. Research often includes biologically inspired models of computation, such as neural networks and evolutionary programs. This field seeks to model how musical knowledge is represented, stored, perceived, performed, and generated. By using a well-structured computer environment, the systematic structures of these cognitive phenomena can be investigated.
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
and
physiological responses associated with sound (including
speech
Speech is the use of the human voice as a medium for language. Spoken language combines vowel and consonant sounds to form units of meaning like words, which belong to a language's lexicon. There are many different intentional speech acts, suc ...
and music). It can be further categorized as a branch of
psychophysics.
Evolutionary musicology
Evolutionary musicology concerns the "origins of music, the question of animal song, selection pressures underlying music evolution", and "music evolution and human evolution".
[Wallin, Nils L./Björn Merker/Steven Brown (1999): "An Introduction to Evolutionary Musicology." In: Wallin, Nils L./Björn Merker/Steven Brown (Eds., 1999): ''The Origins of Music'', pp. 5–6. .] It seeks to understand music perception and activity in the context of
evolutionary theory.
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
speculated that music may have held an adaptive advantage and functioned as a
protolanguage, a view which has spawned several competing theories of music evolution. An alternate view sees music as a by-product of
linguistic evolution; a type of "auditory cheesecake" that pleases the senses without providing any adaptive function. This view has been directly countered by numerous music researchers.
Cultural effects
An individual's culture or
ethnicity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
plays a role in their
music cognition, including their
preferences,
emotional reaction, and
musical memory. Musical preferences are biased toward culturally familiar musical traditions beginning in infancy, and adults' classification of the emotion of a musical piece depends on both culturally specific and universal structural features.
Additionally, individuals' musical memory abilities are greater for culturally familiar music than for culturally unfamiliar music.
Perceptual
Since the emergence of the study of
psychoacoustics in the 1930s, most lists of elements of music have related more to how we ''hear'' music than how we learn to play it or study it. C.E. Seashore, in his book ''Psychology of Music'', identified four "psychological attributes of sound". These were: "pitch, loudness, time, and timbre" (p. 3). He did not call them the "elements of music" but referred to them as "elemental components" (p. 2). Nonetheless, these elemental components link precisely with four of the most common musical elements: "Pitch" and "timbre" match exactly, "loudness" links with dynamics, and "time" links with the time-based elements of rhythm, duration, and tempo. This usage of the phrase "the elements of music" links more closely with ''Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary'' definition of an element as: "a substance which cannot be divided into a simpler form by known methods" and educational institutions' lists of elements generally align with this definition as well.
Although writers of lists of "rudimentary elements of music" can vary their lists depending on their personal (or institutional) priorities, the perceptual elements of music should consist of an established (or proven) list of discrete elements which can be independently manipulated to achieve an intended musical effect. It seems at this stage that there is still research to be done in this area.
A slightly different way of approaching the identification of the elements of music, is to identify the "elements of
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
" as:
pitch,
duration,
loudness,
timbre,
sonic texture and
spatial location,
[Burton, R.L. (2015)]
The elements of music: what are they, and who cares?
In J. Rosevear & S. Harding. (Eds.), ASME XXth National Conference proceedings. Paper presented at: Music: Educating for life: ASME XXth National Conference (pp. 22–28), Parkville, Victoria: The Australian Society for Music Education Inc. and then to define the "elements of music" as: sound, structure, and artistic intent.
Sociological aspects
Ethnographic studies demonstrate that music is a participatory, community-based activity. Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings from being alone, to attending a large concert, forming a
music community, which cannot be understood as a function of individual will or accident; it includes both commercial and non-commercial participants with a shared set of common values. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus.
In Europe and North America, there was a divide between what types of music were viewed as "
high culture
In a society, high culture encompasses culture, cultural objects of Objet d'art, aesthetic value that a society collectively esteems as exemplary works of art, as well as the literature, music, history, and philosophy a society considers represen ...
" and "
low culture." "High culture" included Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly. Other types of music—including jazz, blues,
soul, and
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, state with limited recognition, constituent country, ...
—are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may drink, dance and cheer. Until the 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was accepted as a valid distinction that separated out "art music", from popular music heard in bars and dance halls. Musicologists, such as David Brackett, note a "redrawing of high-low cultural-aesthetic boundaries" in the 20th century.
And, "when industry and public discourses link categories of music with categories of people, they tend to conflate stereotypes with actual listening communities."
Stereotypes can be based on
socioeconomic standing, or social class, of the performers or audience of the different types of music.
When composers introduce styles of music that break with convention, there can be strong resistance from academics and others. Late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores,
serialism,
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...
,
hip hop,
punk rock
Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...
, and
electronica were controversial and criticised, when they were first introduced. Such themes are examined in the sociology of music, sometimes called
sociomusicology, which is pursued in departments of sociology, media studies, or music, and is closely related to
ethnomusicology.
Role of women

Women have played a major role in music throughout history, as composers, songwriters,
instrumental performers, singers, conductors,
music scholars,
music educators,
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...
/
music journalists and other musical professions. In the 2010s, while women comprise a significant proportion of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
and classical music singers, and a significant proportion of songwriters (many of them being singer-songwriters), there are few women record producers,
rock critics and rock instrumentalists. Although there have been a huge number of
women composers in classical music, from the medieval period to the present day, women composers are significantly underrepresented in the
commonly performed classical music repertoire, music history textbooks and music encyclopedias; for example, in the ''Concise Oxford History of Music'',
Clara Schumann is one of the few female composers who is mentioned.
Women comprise a significant proportion of instrumental soloists in classical music and the percentage of women in orchestras is increasing. A 2015 article on concerto soloists in major Canadian orchestras, however, indicated that 84% of the soloists with the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra were men. In 2012, women still made up just 6% of the top-ranked
Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Women are less common as instrumental players in popular music genres such as rock and
heavy metal, although there have been a number of notable female instrumentalists and
all-female bands. Women are particularly underrepresented in
extreme metal genres. In the 1960s pop-music scene, "
ke most aspects of the...music business,
n the 1960s,songwriting was a male-dominated field. Though there were plenty of female singers on the radio, women ...were primarily seen as consumers:... Singing was sometimes an acceptable pastime for a girl, but playing an instrument, writing songs, or producing records simply wasn't done."
Young women "...were not socialized to see themselves as people who create
usic"
Women are also underrepresented in orchestral conducting, music criticism/music journalism,
music producing, and
sound engineering. While women were discouraged from composing in the 19th century, and there are few women
musicologists, women became involved in
music education "...to such a degree that women dominated
his fieldduring the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century."
According to
Jessica Duchen, a music writer for London's ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', women musicians in classical music are "...too often judged for their appearances, rather than their talent" and they face pressure "...to look sexy onstage and in photos."
Duchen states that while "
ere are women musicians who refuse to play on their looks,...the ones who do tend to be more materially successful."
According to the UK's Radio 3 editor, Edwina Wolstencroft, the music industry has long been open to having women in performance or entertainment roles, but women are much less likely to have positions of authority, such as being the
conductor of an orchestra.
In popular music, while there are many women singers recording songs, there are very few women behind the
audio console acting as music producers, the individuals who direct and manage the recording process.
One of the most recorded artists is
Asha Bhosle, an Indian singer best known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema.
Media and technology

Since the 20th century, live music can be broadcast over the radio, television or the Internet, or
recorded and listened to on a
CD player or MP3 player.
In the early 20th century (in the late 1920s), as
talking pictures emerged in the early 20th century, with their prerecorded musical tracks, an increasing number of moviehouse orchestra musicians found themselves out of work. During the 1920s, live musical performances by orchestras, pianists, and
theater organists were common at first-run theaters. With the coming of the talking motion pictures, those featured performances were largely eliminated. The
American Federation of Musicians (AFM) took out newspaper advertisements protesting the replacement of live musicians with mechanical playing devices. One 1929 ad that appeared in the ''
Pittsburgh Press'' features an image of a can labeled "Canned Music / Big Noise Brand / Guaranteed to Produce No Intellectual or Emotional Reaction Whatever"
Sometimes, live performances incorporate prerecorded sounds. For example, a
disc jockey uses
disc records for
scratching, and some 20th-century works have a solo for an instrument or voice that is performed along with music that is prerecorded onto a tape. Some pop bands use recorded
backing tracks. Computers and many
keyboards can be programmed to produce and play
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) music. Audiences can also ''become'' performers by participating in
karaoke, an activity of Japanese origin centered on a device that plays voice-eliminated versions of well-known songs. Most karaoke machines also have video screens that show lyrics to songs being performed; performers can follow the lyrics as they sing over the instrumental tracks.

The advent of the Internet and widespread high-speed broadband access has transformed the experience of music, partly through the increased ease of access to recordings of music via
streaming video and vastly increased choice of music for consumers. Another effect of the Internet arose with
online communities and
social media
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
websites like YouTube and Facebook, a
social networking service. These sites make it easier for aspiring singers and amateur bands to distribute videos of their songs, connect with other musicians, and gain audience interest. Professional musicians also use YouTube as a free publisher of promotional material. YouTube users, for example, no longer only download and listen to MP3s, but also actively create their own. According to
Don Tapscott and
Anthony D. Williams, in their book ''
Wikinomics'', there has been a shift from a traditional consumer role to what they call a "
prosumer" role, a consumer who both creates content and consumes. Manifestations of this in music include the production of
mashes,
remixes, and music videos by fans.
Education
Non-institutional

The incorporation of music into general education from
preschool
A preschool (sometimes spelled as pre school or pre-school), also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, play school, is an school, educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they ...
to
post secondary education, is common in North America and Europe. Involvement in playing and singing music is thought to teach basic skills such as concentration,
counting, listening, and cooperation while also promoting understanding of
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
, improving the ability to
recall information, and creating an environment more conducive to learning in other areas. In elementary schools, children often learn to play instruments such as the
recorder, sing in small choirs, and learn about the history of Western art music and traditional music. Some elementary school children also learn about popular music styles. In religious schools, children sing
hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' d ...
s and other religious music. In secondary schools (but rarely in primary schools), students may have the opportunity to perform in some types of musical ensembles, such as
choir
A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...
s (a group of singers),
marching bands,
concert bands, jazz bands, or orchestras. In some school systems, music lessons on how to play instruments may be provided. Some students also take private
music lessons after school with a singing teacher or instrument teacher. Amateur musicians typically learn basic
musical rudiments (e.g., learning about
musical notation for
musical scales and
rhythms) and beginner- to intermediate-level singing or instrument-playing techniques.
At the university level, students in most arts and
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...
programs can receive
credit for taking a few music courses, which typically take the form of an overview course on the
history of music, or a
music appreciation course that focuses on listening to music and learning about different musical styles. In addition, most North American and European universities have some types of musical ensembles that students in arts and humanities are able to participate in, such as choirs, marching bands, concert bands, or orchestras. The study of Western art music is increasingly common outside of North America and Europe, such as the
Indonesian Institute of the Arts in
Yogyakarta
Yogyakarta is the capital city of the Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by Hamengkubuwono, a monarchy, Yogyakarta is regarded as an importan ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
, or the classical music programs that are available in Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China. At the same time, Western universities and colleges are widening their curriculum to include music of non-Western cultures, such as the
music of Africa or Bali (e.g.
Gamelan
Gamelan (; ; , ; ) is the traditional musical ensemble, ensemble music of the Javanese people, Javanese, Sundanese people, Sundanese, and Balinese people, Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussion instrument, per ...
music).
Institutional

People aiming to become professional musicians, singers, composers, songwriters, music teachers and practitioners of other music-related professions such as
music history professors,
sound engineer
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a sound recording, recording or a Concert, live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization (audio), equalization, Dynamic range ...
s, and so on study in specialized post-secondary programs offered by colleges, universities and
music conservatories. Some institutions that train individuals for careers in music offer training in a wide range of professions, as is the case with many of the top U.S. universities, which offer degrees in music performance (including singing and playing instruments), music history, music theory, music composition,
music education (for individuals aiming to become elementary or high school music teachers) and, in some cases, conducting. On the other hand, some small colleges may only offer training in a single profession (e.g.,
sound recording).
While most university and conservatory music programs focus on training students in classical music, there are universities and colleges that train musicians for careers as jazz or
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
musicians and composers, with notable U.S. examples including the
Manhattan School of Music and the
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music () is a Private university, private music college in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern Music of the United ...
. Two schools in Canada which offer professional jazz training are
McGill University and
Humber College. Individuals aiming at careers in some types of music, such as
heavy metal music
Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a Music genre, genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal band ...
,
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
or
blues are unlikely to become professionals by completing degrees or diplomas. Instead, they typically learn about their style of music by singing or playing in bands (often beginning in amateur bands,
cover bands and
tribute band
A tribute act, tribute band, tribute group or tribute artist is a Musical ensemble, music group, Singing, singer, or musician who specifically plays the music of a well-known music act. Tribute acts include individual performers who mimic the so ...
s), studying recordings on DVD and the Internet, and working with already-established professionals in their style of music, either through informal
mentoring
Mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the perso ...
or regular
music lessons. Since the 2000s, the increasing popularity and availability of Internet forums and YouTube "how-to" videos have enabled singers and musicians from metal, blues and similar genres to improve their skills. Many pop, rock and country singers train informally with
vocal coaches and
voice teachers.
Academic study
Musicology
Musicology, the academic study of music, is studied in universities and music conservatories. The earliest definitions from the 19th century defined three sub-disciplines of musicology:
systematic musicology, historical musicology, and comparative musicology or
ethnomusicology. In 2010-era scholarship, one is more likely to encounter a division into
music theory
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...
,
music history, and ethnomusicology. Research in musicology has often been enriched by cross-disciplinary work, for example in the field of
psychoacoustics. The study of music of non-Western cultures, and cultural study of music, is called ethnomusicology. Students can pursue study of musicology, ethnomusicology, music history, and music theory through different types of degrees, including bachelor's, master's and PhD.
Music theory
Music theory is the study of music, generally in a highly technical manner outside of other disciplines. More broadly it refers to any study of music, usually related in some form with compositional concerns, and may include mathematics,
physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
, and
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
. What is most commonly taught in beginning music theory classes are guidelines to write in the style of the
common practice period, or
tonal music. Theory, even of music of the common practice period, may take other forms.
Musical set theory
Musical set theory provides concepts for categorizing musical objects and describing their relationships. Howard Hanson first elaborated many of the concepts for analyzing tonality, tonal music. Other theorists, such as Allen Forte, further devel ...
is the application of mathematical
set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies Set (mathematics), sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory – as a branch of mathema ...
to music, first applied to
atonal music. ''Speculative music theory'', contrasted with ''analytic music theory'', is devoted to the analysis and synthesis of music materials, for example
tuning systems, generally as preparation for composition.
Zoomusicology
Zoomusicology is the study of the music of non-human animals, or the musical aspects of sounds produced by non-human animals. As George Herzog (1941) asked, "do animals have music?"
François-Bernard Mâche's ''Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion'' (1983), a study of "ornitho-musicology" using a technique of
Nicolas Ruwet's ''Language, musique, poésie'' (1972)
paradigmatic segmentation analysis, shows that
bird songs are organised according to a repetition-transformation principle. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990), argues that "in the last analysis, it is a human being who decides what is and is not musical, even when the sound is not of human origin. If we acknowledge that sound is not organised and conceptualised (that is, made to form music) merely by its producer, but by the mind that perceives it, then music is uniquely human."
Ethnomusicology

In the West, much of the history of music that is taught deals with the Western civilization's art music, known as classical music. The history of music in non-Western cultures ("
world music
"World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...
" or the field of "ethnomusicology") is also taught in Western universities. This includes the documented classical traditions of Asian countries outside the influence of Western Europe, as well as the folk or indigenous music of various other cultures. Popular or folk styles of music in non-Western countries varied from culture to culture, and period to period. Different cultures emphasised different
instruments, techniques, singing styles and uses for music. Music has been used for entertainment, ceremonies, rituals, religious purposes and for practical and artistic communication. Non-Western music has also been used for propaganda purposes, as was the case with
Chinese opera
Traditional Chinese opera (), or ''Xiqu'', is a form of musical theatre in China with roots going back to the early periods in China. It is an amalgamation of various art forms that existed in ancient China, and evolved gradually over more tha ...
during the
Cultural Revolution.
There is a host of music classifications for non-Western music, many of which are caught up in the argument over the
definition of music. Among the largest of these is the division between classical music (or "art" music), and popular music (or
commercial music – including non-Western styles of rock,
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, state with limited recognition, constituent country, ...
, and pop music-related styles). Some genres do not fit neatly into one of these "big two" classifications, (such as
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
,
world music
"World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...
, or
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
-related music).
As world cultures have come into
greater global contact, their indigenous musical styles have often merged with other styles, which produces new styles. For example, the United States
bluegrass style contains elements from
Anglo-
Irish,
Scottish, Irish,
German and African instrumental and vocal traditions, which were able to fuse in the United States' multi-ethnic "
melting pot" society. Some types of world music contain a mixture of non-Western indigenous styles with Western pop music elements. Genres of music are determined as much by tradition and presentation as by the actual music. Some works, like
George Gershwin's ''
Rhapsody in Blue'', are claimed by both jazz and classical music, while Gershwin's ''
Porgy and Bess'' and
Leonard Bernstein's ''
West Side Story'' are claimed by both opera and the
Broadway musical tradition. Many music festivals for non-Western music, include bands and singers from a particular musical genre, such as world music.
Indian music, for example, is one of the oldest and longest living types of music, and is still widely heard and performed in South Asia, as well as internationally (especially since the 1960s). Indian music has mainly three forms of classical music,
Hindustani,
Carnatic, and
Dhrupad styles. It has also a large repertoire of styles, which involve only percussion music such as the talavadya performances famous in
South India.
Therapy

Music therapy is an interpersonal process in which a trained therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their health. In some instances, the client's needs are addressed directly through music; in others they are addressed through the relationships that develop between the client and therapist. Music therapy is used with individuals of all ages and with a variety of conditions, including: psychiatric disorders, medical problems, physical disabilities, sensory impairments, developmental disabilities, substance abuse issues, communication disorders, interpersonal problems, and aging. It is also used to improve learning, build self-esteem, reduce stress,
support physical exercise, and facilitate a host of other health-related activities. Music therapists may encourage clients to sing, play instruments, create songs, or do other musical activities.
In the 10th century, the philosopher
Al-Farabi described how vocal music can stimulate the feelings and souls of listeners. Music has long been used to help people deal with their emotions. In the 17th century, the scholar
Robert Burton's ''
The Anatomy of Melancholy'' argued that music and dance were critical in treating
mental illness, especially
melancholia. He noted that music has an "excellent power ...to expel many other diseases" and he called it "a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy." He pointed out that in Antiquity, Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, used music to "make a melancholy man merry, ...a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout." In the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
, mental illnesses were treated with music. In November 2006, Michael J. Crawford and his colleagues also found that music therapy helped
schizophrenic patients.
Michael J. Crawford page
at Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychological Medicine.
See also
* Glossary of music terminology
* Lists of musicians
* List of musicology topics
* Music and emotion
* Music archaeology
* Music history
* Music-specific disorders
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
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Further reading
*
* Small, Christopher (1977). ''Music, Society, Education''. John Calder Publishers, London.
*
External links
Grove Music Online
— online version of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...
''.
All ten volumes
of the '' Garland Encyclopedia of World Music''
Dolmetsch free online music dictionary
complete, with references to a list of specialised music dictionaries (by continent, by instrument, by genre, etc.)
Some books on music
by Carl Van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten (; June 17, 1880December 21, 1964) was an American writer and Fine-art photography, artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary estate, literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame ...
(1880–1964)
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