Music

C

Time

Musical rhythm is defined broadly as everything having to do with the way music uses time. More specifically, this includes characteristics such as durations of tones and silences, and patterns of durations, both of which can focus attention on certain tones making them more prominent than others. These more-prominent or accented tones often mark regular patterns that enable listeners to perceive tones as members of larger groups. We can illustrate this sort of perceptual grouping with a simple visual example. Look at the string of numbers in the first line and the string of letters in the second line for a minute, and see if you can see any patterns:

The numbers form a simple sequence that repeats itself every three numbers. Rather than saying this is a string of 12 integers, we can recognize that this is a group of three elements each repeated four times. Since the numeral 1 is the first member of each new group, we may pay a little more attention to it. The recurring pattern that enables us to think of these numbers in groups is similar to musical meter (the grouping of beats). In this case, the three-element repetitions are analogous to a common pattern in Western music, triple meter, represented by the metric signature µ. See Musical Rhythm.

The string of letters is also fairly simple, because the pattern repeats every four letters. This repeating pattern of four is analogous to quadruple meter, represented by the metric signature ¹. As with the repetition of sets of numbers, the first element in each new pattern claims attention and is more accented and emphatic. But in this sequence a second pattern of emphasis is added by the capital letters. This pattern draws attention away from the expected pattern of accents by shifting the stress to a normally weak beat. This device, known as syncopation, is found in music of many cultures.

D

Harmony

In most music, and especially in Western music, important and style-defining patterns are formed by pitches that overlap with one another in time, producing a chord, or harmony. Two or more tones that occur at the same time form a harmonic relationship called a block chord. These tones are called broken chords or arpeggios when heard separately but in sufficiently rapid succession that the listener perceives them as part of the same harmony.

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Composer Scott Joplin used block and arpeggiated chords in his ragtime style. The higher-pitched notes in the ragtime piece “The Cascades,” for example, are played by the pianist’s right hand. These pitches form the same harmonies as do the lower-pitched notes played by the left hand. But the higher chords played by the right hand sound more melodic because they are broken or arpeggiated, while the block chords played by the left hand form the accompaniment.

Two or more tones heard simultaneously may belong to separate melodies that fit well together, but which occupy different octave registers, have distinct rhythmic patterns, or otherwise have different shapes or contours. Music composed of multiple independent but related parts is referred to as polyphony or, when the parts are distinct melodies, counterpoint. Two very different forms of polyphonic music with contrapuntal melodies may be heard in the early 20th-century jazz piece “Dippermouth Blues” and in the 16th-century Missa De Beata Virgine by Palestrina.

VII

The Development of Western Music

When most people speak or write of Western music, they are referring to Western tonal music, composed mostly in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and based largely on European folk tunes. Western music is actually much broader than this, spanning many centuries and encompassing many other ways of constructing music.

Music, like language, continually evolves within its culture. Western music, for example, was predominantly vocal monophonic music (music with a single melodic line), and was based upon a scale or scalelike formula until well into the Middle Ages. Around the 9th century ad, the first forms of polyphony were written down and discussed, and vocal polyphony predominated in music through the beginning of the 17th century. During the 17th century, both instrumental music and homophonic music—music in which voice and chordal accompaniment produce a single melody—became increasingly common. The well-documented stylistic eras of classical music (about 1750 through 1820) and romantic music (about 1820 through 1900) represent the height of major-minor tonal music that emphasized clarity of form. This preference was in turn followed by increasing individuality of expression, accompanied by an even greater exploration of the limits of both tonality and formal design.

The pace of musical evolution has accelerated in the 20th century. New compositional styles include chance, the random use of noise and electronically produced sounds in compositions, and serialism, the repetition of sequences of established rhythms, levels of loudness, and pitches. Along with these developments in compositional styles, the 20th century has seen an immense exchange of music that has led to new developments in many music cultures. Both the rapid pace of change and the multicultural cross-pollination of music can be traced directly to improved global communications and the explosion of technologies such as sound recording, radio and television, and computers. See Western Music.

VIII

The World’s Musical Cultures

Music scholars identify Western music as one of several major musical cultures of the world. Other musical cultures include, but are by no means limited to, East Asia (China, Korea, Japan); Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the South Pacific); Southeast Asia; Central Asia; South Asia (India and Pakistan); the Middle East and North Africa; sub-Saharan Africa; and Native American. Some of these musical cultures, such as the Middle East, are quite unified, while others, most notably sub-Saharan Africa, are incredibly diverse. Even within relatively unified cultures, such as the Middle East, there are complex subcultures. For example, since its establishment as a state in 1948, Israel has been populated to a great extent by Europeans, Middle Easterners, and North Africans, and as a result its musical culture comprises a mixture of many imported music cultures. Musical subcultures or communities are often readily identifiable, by distinctions in performance and the education, age, or ethnicity of the audience.

Some musical cultures have been passed down through the generations orally (by singing for example) and aurally (by listening). The lack of a musical notation system or other historical records in these cultures makes discussion of historical traditions guesswork. Other musical cultures have a long and rich written history. Chinese music, for example, has been written about for many centuries, although relatively little of the music itself was notated for posterity. Historical documents indicate that Japanese music has undergone many changes over the centuries, as a result of political and military interactions with both China and Korea. Especially since Japan opened its society to Western influences in the late 19th century, concert and popular musical activities there have become truly multicultural.

IX

The 20th-Century Global Music Culture

During the 20th century, most music has become accessible worldwide through a technological revolution that has produced high-quality sound and video recording, radio and television, and computers. It is difficult to overstate the importance of these innovations on musical cultures around the world. It has become possible to record music of the many musical cultures in the world, including music that has traditionally been learned and passed on orally or aurally. On the other hand, the boundary lines among many cultures, and between subcultures, have shifted dramatically and in some cases have disappeared. There has always been some cross-fertilization among musical cultures, and this is often a sign of healthy cultural and artistic growth. One well-known example is the musical mixture of Hispanic and Germanic cultures in the American Southwest during the 19th century, which produced the conjunto or Tex-Mex style still popular in the region today. Traditional conjunto bands perform at social dances and consist of a virtuoso accordionist, a bajo sexto (12-string bass-rhythm guitar), bass, and drums.

It has been almost impossible for at least the past few decades to find a folk-level musical culture within which listeners are exposed to only the music of their own culture and no other. In the early 1980s, an Australian music scholar traveled through the Australian outback for two days looking for a remote Aboriginal village where he could study non-Western music listening habits, only to find that most of the villagers regularly listened to Western popular music on their portable tape cassette players. Our global culture is producing a musical multiculturalism that takes a number of forms. Hybrid musical forms cross the boundaries between classical and folk or pop subcultures within the various cultures they bridge. For example, South Indian cine, or motion-picture music, combines Indian and Western musical instruments and mixes classical Indian melodies with Western rock- and jazz-influenced accompaniments. Popular benga music of Kenya and juju music of Nigeria illustrate how Western instruments such as the electric guitar and electric bass have been employed in place of traditional instruments of the region.

With all of the cross-fertilization among musical cultures, some people worry that music will eventually drift toward a single, global music that is bland and unvaried. Others argue that there is a growing countermovement to preserve the diversity of cultural heritages, including traditional musical genres.

See also African Music; African American Music; Arab Music; Chinese Music; Greek Music; Indian Music; Japanese Music; Jewish Music; Latin American Music; Cajun Music; Popular Music; Folk Music.

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