Music

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Music

• Introduction to Humanities

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Music chapter 9

• Music is one of the most powerful of the arts
  partly because sounds more than any other
  sensory stimulus create in us involuntary
  reactions, pleasant or unpleasant.
• There is no escaping the effects of music except
  by turning off the source.

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HEARERS AND LISTENERS

• Music can be experienced in two basic ways
  hearing or listening.
• Hearers do not attempt to perceive accurately
  either the structure or the details of the form.
• They hear a familiar melody which may trigger
  associations to this memory.

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Hearers and Listeners contd

• The listeners, conversely, concentrate their
  attention upon the form, details as well as
  structure.
• Listeners focus upon the form that informs, that
  creates content.
• Listeners do not just listen they listen for
  something the content.

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THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

• First important terms and concepts of music
  essential to a clear discussion.
• Tone a sound that has one definite frequency or
  that is dominated by one definite frequency is a
  tone.
• Most music is composed of a succession of tones.

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Contd

• Consonance when two or more tones are sounded
  simultaneously and the result is pleasing to the
  ear, the resultant sound is said to be consonant.
• For example, what sounds dissonant or unpleasant
  often becomes more consonant after repeated
  hearing.
• Also, there is the influence of context a
  combination of notes may seem dissonant in
  isolation or within one set of surrounding notes
  and consonant within another set.

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Contd

• Dissonance This unpleasantness is a result of
  wave interference and a phenomenon called
  beating which accounts for the roughness we
  perceive in dissonance.
• The most powerful dissonance is achieved when
  notes close to one another in pitch are sounded
  simultaneously.

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Terms Contd

• Rhythm is a term referring to the temporal
  relationships of organized sounds. Rhythm marks
  when a given note is to be played, and how long
  it is to be played (its duration).
• Our perception of rhythm in a composition is also
  affected by accent or stress on given notes.

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Terms contd

• Tempo is the speed at which a composition is
  played.
• We perceive tempo in terms of beats, just as we
  perceive the tempo of our heartbeat as
  seventy-two pulses per minute, approximately.
• Many tempos have descriptive names indicating the
  general time value.

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Terms contd

• Melody is usually defined as a group of notes
  played one after another having a perceivable
  shape, or having a perceivable beginning, middle,
  and end.
• Usually a melody is easily recognizable when
  replayed.
• We not only recognize melodies easily but can say
  a great deal about them.

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Terms contd

• Counterpoint by staggering the melodic lines as
  in folk songs such as Row, Row, Row Your Boat,
  this is called counterpoint
• A playing of one or more motives, themes, or
  melodies against each other.
• It implies an independence of simultaneous
  melodic lines, each of which can, at times, be
  most clearly audible.

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Terms contd

• Harmony is the sounding of tones simultaneously.
• It is the vertical dimension, as with a chord
  (fig 9-2) as opposed to the horizontal dimension,
  with a melody.
• A chord is a group of notes sounded together that
  has a specific relationship to a given key the
  chord C-E-G, for example, is a major triad in the
  key of C major.

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Terms contd

• Dynamics one of the most easily perceived
  elements of music is dynamics loudness and
  softness.
• Composers explore dynamics as they explore
  keys, timbres, melodies, rhythms, and harmonic
  to achieve variety, to establish a pattern
  against which they can play, build tension and
  release it, and to provide the surprise which can
  delight an audience.

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THE SUBJECT MATTER OF MUSIC

• Our theory identifies two basic kinds of subject
  matter feeling (emotions, passions, and moods)
  and sound.
• It is difficult for music to refer to specific
  objects and events outside itself.
• Therefore it is difficult to think of music as
  having the same kind of subject matter as a
  representational painting, a figurative
  sculpture, or a realistic novel.

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FEELINGS

• The content of music is the interpretation of
  those feelings.
• Feelings are composed basically of sensations,
  emotions, passions, and moods.
• Any awareness of our sense organs, whether
  internal or external being stimulated is a
  sensation.

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Contd

• Emotions are strong sensations felt as related to
  a specific and apparent stimulus.
• Passions are emotions elevated to great
  intensity.
• Moods, on the other hand, are sensations that
  arise from no specific or apparent stimulus, as
  when one awakens with a feeling or lassitude or
  gloom.

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Brief Summary

• Music with its capacity to evoke feelings, and
  with a complexity of detail and structure that in
  many ways is greater than that of language, may
  be able to reveal or interpret feeling with much
  more precision than language.
• There is mystery about music, unique among the
  arts that is part of its fascination.