Music

Article Outline

Introduction; When Music Began; Musical Cultures; Voice and Musical Instruments; Form ; The Elements of Music; The Development of Western Music; The World’s Musical Cultures; The 20th-Century Global Music Culture

Classical Form in Western Music

There are several possible reasons why composers of Western art music, which is also called classical music, have tended to pay so much attention to musical form and to build relatively complicated formal structures. One reason is that the widespread use of Western musical notation came to influence the composition of the music itself. The basis of this notation is a staff of five parallel lines. Each line and space between lines represents a different pitch, so the arrangement of notes on the staff allows musicians to take in the entire piece and to compare different sections of the music at a glance. This kind of formal art music has tended to serve as the focus of an event, as in a concert hall or salon, or as a means of directing focus, as in a royal court or church. Given its importance in these settings, the music must hold the audience’s attention. Imbuing music with the repetitions and variations of a story is a standard way of doing this.

Audiences familiar with traditional Western tonal music will resist music that is too repetitive or too complex. A balance in between keeps the listener absorbed in fresh material, at the same time reassuring the listener of the coherence of the piece through the repetition of earlier parts. Variety may be introduced by contrasts in musical elements such as melody, the prominent musical sequences within a piece; rhythm, the durations of patterns and notes that create forward movement; harmony, the combination of notes sounded at the same time; and key, in Western music, the tonality produced by seven tones in a recognizable relationship to a central tone. Repetition of these elements may make the music more unified or coherent, as with the return of a melodic or rhythmic pattern heard earlier in the piece.

Beethoven’s Sonata in C major op. 53 (1803-1804) is a clear example of the simultaneous use of old, new, and modified material in music. Throughout the piece there is a repetitive pattern of longer and shorter notes: long-short-short-long-long. The first 19 notes fall into a pattern of 5+5+5+4, based on this long-short pattern.

The first five notes of this melody descend, establishing the melodic pattern, or motif (also called motive). The next five notes are similar to the first in rhythm, but different melodic direction: something old, something new. The third set of five notes is identical to the first set except that it is heard in a lower octave, or register, tilting the balance more toward repetition. The final four notes are similar, but not identical, to the second set, creating again a counterbalance of old and new. The same melody can be heard again in the first and second halves of the piece, in a lower register than the ornamental tones that first and with greater embellishment accompany it. At first hearing the melody may not be recognizable, but it is definitely there beneath the surface, helping to unify the music.

Beyond Western Classical Form

The formal processes described above are found to some extent in music worldwide, but they are not universal. One reason for this is that not all music is intended for the concert stage. For example, music has been used throughout the ages for important rituals, and some cultures carry on these traditional rituals today. In many rituals the music acts as a powerful lens, focusing and uniting the emotional and spiritual energies of the assembled people. Rather than having sections of contrasting or varying ideas, music with this communal function is often purposefully repetitive so that the group members’ voices and movements can join together in an intense, and sometimes even trancelike, union.

Much ritual music contains subtle repeated and varied melodic ideas, but the most obvious and powerful characteristic tends to be a strong, repetitive rhythm. For example, in one instance of healing music of Malawi, the first thing heard is an exciting, driving beat produced by wooden sticks being struck together, represented in the figure below as red squares. This beat is joined by a drum playing at triple the rate of the struck sticks; this triplet is represented in the figure by the small gold diamonds.

The Malawi example contains a formal element similar to one in the Beethoven sonata discussed earlier, but it is quite subtle. In the vocal part of this ritual music a slightly varied version of the melody returns. The percussive rhythmic foreground of the music, however, is definitely prominent.

The Elements of Music

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At its simplest, music consists of a short, unaccompanied melody, known as monophony. But even the simplest melody consists of many important components. Some of the most obvious of these are the varying heights or pitches of the tones, their durations, their loudnesses, their tone colors or timbres, and their articulations.

Pitch

Although most musical cultures share the concept of highness and lowness of pitch, awareness of this concept is not inborn. Psychological studies have demonstrated that few five-year-olds understand the concept of high and low pitch, whereas most nine-year-olds do. Pitch depends on the rate of vibration, or frequency, of sound waves that produce a particular tone. Higher pitches have a higher frequency (greater rapidity of vibrations) than lower pitches. Most musical cultures recognize the octave, a unique relationship of two pitches. Two pitches are an octave apart when their rates of vibration form an exact 1:2 ratio. Tones an octave apart blend together so smoothly that listeners often confuse the two tones or think they are hearing a single tone. Pitch-naming systems reflect this similarity by giving notes an octave apart the same name (A, B, C, for example, in Western music). Most musical cultures recognize the concepts of pitch and octave, but not all. For example, there is no Japanese word for octave although what Westerners call octave is found in traditional Japanese music.

Each musical culture has one or more sets of tunings that define the gaps or intervals between pitches in that group’s music. By the 18th century, most Western music was based on 12 equivalent intervals per octave. This system is represented by the chromatic scale. Its 12 equally spaced tones per octave, called half-steps or semitones, can be heard by playing the tones that correspond to 12 adjacent frets on a guitar fretboard, or to 12 adjacent keys on any modern Western keyboard instrument. The semitone is the smallest gap in traditional Western music, but smaller intervals (collectively referred to as microtones) are used in some modern Western music, as well as in some other musical cultures.

Again, learning plays an important role in what pitch relations are considered pleasing. In a psychological study early in the 20th century, participants spent several months becoming familiar with the sound of a scale based on such small intervals that all 12 scale members fit within a standard half-step. By the end of the learning period, many participants stated that this microtonal scale sounded very natural, and they could recognize melodies composed with this scale. Some participants even stated that the top note of the scale seemed twice as high as the lowest note—the description Western musicians typically give to the octave. See Scale (music).

For the past several centuries, the preferred underlying pitch structure in Western art music has been the diatonic scale. This scale consists of seven tones related by a total of five whole-steps and two half-steps, arranged in the sequence from C to C of the white keys of a modern piano or organ. Depending on the pitch relationships among whole-steps and half-steps, scale systems are referred to as either major or minor, or as a specific kind of ecclesiastical or church mode. See Mode (music).

Scale

A great deal of Western folk music, along with much folk music and art music around the world, conforms to a five-tone, or pentatonic, scale. The best-known form of the pentatonic scale contains no half steps. Instead, it is made up of three whole-steps and two step-and-a-half intervals. The black keys on a modern piano or organ keyboard produce a pentatonic scale.

There are many scale systems in the world, and not all are based on dividing the octave into 12 equal parts. For example, the Javanese Sléndro scale contains five tones, but tunings of these five tones do not correspond to twelve steps in an octave scale as with other pentatonic scales. Scholars have measured several different tuning versions of the Sléndro scale, including some that approximate dividing the octave into five equal intervals. When comparing the sounds of Javanese and Balinese gamelan performances, listen carefully to the tunings of the gongs (see Indonesian music).

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Classical Form in Western Music

Beyond Western Classical Form

The Elements of Music

Pitch

Scale