Music is the art of sound in time, and rhythm is the term that sums up this aspect.
Rhythm is the main driving force in music.
"A rhythm" refers to the arrangement of durations (long and short notes) in a musical passage.
Beats provide the basic unit of measurement for time in music.
Accents enable us to beat time by emphasizing certain beats.
To beat time is to measure time according to a regular pulse and organize it into patterns.
Meter
Meter is any recurring pattern of strong and weak beats (e.g., ONE two, ONE two three).
Each occurrence of a repeated pattern is called a measure or bar.
Western music has two basic kinds of meter: duple and triple.
duple meter: ONE two, ONE two three four. Examples: Yankee Doodle, "America the Beautiful", “God Bless America.”
triple meter: ONE two three.
Dividing main beats in threes creates compound meters.
Meters with five or seven beats are less common in Western music but found in other cultures. Tchaikovsky featured quintuple meter in his Sixth Symphony.
*Rhythm in the most general sense refers to the entire time aspect of music
the particular arrangements of long and short notes in a musical passage serve as a specific rhythm
Musical rhythms need not always coincide with the regular beats of the meter.
Variety, tension, and excitement can result as rhythm coincides with, cuts across, and contradicts the meter.
Musical notation indicates relative durations of notes.
Nonmetrical Music
Nonmetrical music lacks a pattern of strong and weak beats.
Gregorian chant's meandering rhythms contribute to its spiritual quality.
Syncopation
Syncopation involves moving accents away from their normal position on the beats of the background meter.
Accents can be displaced (one TWO instead of ONE two) or placed between beats.
Syncopation is a hallmark of African American–derived popular music.
Tempo
Tempo is the speed of music.
In metrical music, tempo is the rate at which basic beats follow one another.
Tempo can be measured by a metronome.
Composers often use approximate Italian terms for tempo:
adagio: slow
andante: on the slow side, but not too slow
moderato: moderate
allegretto: on the fast side, but not too fast
allegro: fast
presto: very fast
Less common tempo indications include largo, lento, grave, larghetto, andantino, vivace, vivo, molto allegro, and prestissimo.
Tempo indications are often used as headings for movements in long works.
Pitch, Dynamics, and Tone Color
Sound is produced by vibrations.
Musical sounds are produced by taut strings, membranes, and air columns.
Musical sounds can be high or low (pitch), loud or soft (dynamics), and have different qualities (tone color).
Pitch
Frequency is the scientific term for the rate of sound vibration.
Pitch is the musical term for the quality of sound based on frequency.
Low pitches result from long vibrating elements; high pitches from short ones.
Sounds without pitch are considered noise.
Musicians select a limited number of fixed pitches, calibrated scientifically and collected in scales.
Dynamics
Amplitude is the level of strength of sound vibrations.
Dynamics is the musical term for the level of sound.
Conventional terms for dynamics are in Italian:
forte: loud
piano: soft
mezzo: medium
Changes in dynamics can be sudden (subito) or gradual (crescendo, decrescendo/diminuendo).
Tone Color
Tone color and timbre are the terms for the general quality of musical sounds.
Tone color is produced by the amount and mixture of overtones.
Musicians use imprecise adjectives to describe tone colors.
The singing voice has the most distinctive tone color.
Musical Instruments
Musical instruments are categorized into stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass, and percussion.
Stringed instruments make sound by vibrating taut strings attached to a sound box.
Woodwind instruments create sound by setting up vibrations in the air column in a tube.
Brass instruments produce sound by the player's lips vibrating against a mouthpiece.
Percussion instruments produce sound by being struck or rattled.
Keyboard instruments, such as the piano, harpsichord and organ, can play more than one note at a time.
Scales and Melody
Music generally uses a limited number of fixed pitches assembled in a scale.
A scale is the pool of pitches available for making music.
Scales
Musicians build melodies and musical structures from different scales.
The Octave
The distance between two different pitches is an interval.
The octave is a special interval where a pitch seems to duplicate an earlier pitch at a higher level. Pitches that are an octave apart have frequencies related in a 2:1 ratio.
The Diatonic Scale
The diatonic scale is a set of seven pitches within the octave, still in use today.
The Chromatic Scale
The chromatic scale adds five more pitches between certain pitches of the diatonic scale, making a total of twelve.
Symbols like ♭ (flat) and ♯ (sharp) indicate these extra pitches.
Half Steps and Whole Steps
The half step is the smallest interval in regular use.
The whole step is twice as big as a half step.
The diatonic scale includes both half steps and whole steps, while the chromatic scale consists exclusively of half steps.
Melody
A melody is an organized series of pitches.
A melody's shape is called its contour or "melodic line."
Melody evokes human sentiment and feeling.
Tunes
A tune is a simple, easily singable, catchy melody.
Motives and Themes
A motive is a distinctive fragment of melody.
A theme is the basic subject matter of longer pieces of music.
Characteristics of Tunes
Tunes are divided into smaller sections called phrases.
Phrases tend to coincide with poetic lines in songs.
Balance between phrases is essential in a good tune.
Parallelism and contrast strengthen balance between phrases.
A good tune has a purposeful beginning, action in the middle, and winding down at the end.
Many tunes reach a distinct high point or climax.
Cadence is the term for stopping or pausing places in a tune.
Harmony, Texture, Tonality, and Mode
Melodies are often heard together with other sounds.
Two concepts of basic importance in thinking about the way pitches sound together are harmony and texture.
Harmony
Harmony is the sounding at the same time of different pitches.
Chords are groupings of simultaneous pitches that work well in combination.
Harmony can stimulate emotional responses to music.
Consonance and Dissonance
Consonance refers to chords that sound at rest.
Dissonance refers to chords that sound tense.
A dissonant chord creates a feeling of expectation.
Resolution occurs when a dissonant chord is followed by a consonant chord.
Texture
Texture refers to the way various sounds and melodic lines interact or blend.
Monophony
Monophony is the simplest texture, a single unaccompanied melody.
Homophony and Polyphony
Homophony occurs when one melody of real interest is combined with other, less prominent sounds.
Polyphony occurs when two or more melodies are played or sung simultaneously.
Contrapuntal is a term often used for polyphonic texture.
Imitation
Imitative polyphony results when various lines use the same or similar melodies.
Nonimitative polyphony occurs when melodies are different from one another.
Tonality and Mode
Tonality and mode are aspects of melody and harmony.
Tonality
Melodies nearly always focus around a "home" pitch, called the tonic pitch or simply the tonic.
Tonality is the homing instinct that we sense in melodies.
Major and Minor Modes
Modality is the term for different ways of centering or organizing the diatonic scale.
Music based on the C-to-C pattern is in the major mode.
Music based on the A-to-A pattern is in the minor mode.
Keys
Modes can be constructed starting from any note, called keys.
There are twenty-four different keys (twelve major and twelve minor).
Listening for the Major and Minor Modes
Music in the minor mode tends to sound more subdued and clouded than music in the major mode.
Listening for Keys and Modulation
Changes of key within a piece are called modulations.
Form
Form refers to the shape, arrangement, relationship, or organization of various elements in art.
Form in Music
In music, form is created by repetitions and contrasts among elements like rhythm, dynamics, tone color, melody, harmony, and texture.
Form connects the beginnings, middles, and ends of a musical work.
Form in art also has emotional qualities.
Form and Forms
"Form" in general refers to the organization of elements, while "a form" refers to standardized patterns composers have used.
Musical forms are expressed by letter diagrams (e.g., A B A).
Musical genres are different categories of music.
Musical Style
Style is the combination of qualities that make a work of art distinctive.
Musical style relates to lifestyle and cultural situations. It focuses and sharpens the process of listening to actual music.
Benjamin Britten, The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1946)
The work features one basic theme by Henry Purcell, displayed in a grand setting for full orchestra.
Contains many variations on the theme in melody, rhythm, texture, mode, and tempo.
The work also has an extremely vigorous fugue, based on a version of the Purcell tune including imitative and nonimitative polyphony.
Listening Further
There are some basic features that all type of musics in the world share and those are: musical function in society, of musical technique, and sometimes of both together.
Music and Language
The distinction between music and language is that the words in all languages carry meanings but music does not.
Instrumental music, without voices or words, seems meaningful.
Cognitive scientists have shown that gestures also have deep-seated effects on our brains as we “process” music, and some of these effects seem to be very widespread, even universal to humans.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is European history for nearly a thousand years, extending from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE to the advent of new learning, technology, and political organization in the age of Columbus.
Music and the Church
The early history of Western music was determined by the Christian church.
Singing was important for Christian worship to give emphasis and force to prayers.
Music and Church Services: Liturgy
Church music authorities were decided a large set of services arranged according to the calendar, known as the liturgy.
Plainchant
The official music of the Catholic Church was a great repertory of melodies for the liturgy: the system of plainchant.
Characteristics of Plainchant
Plainchants are typically nonmetrical and not constructed in the major/minor system, but according to one of the medieval modes.
Gregorian Recitation and Gregorian Melody
Recitation was used for routine texts, while elaborate melody was saved for significant occasions.
Music at Court
Kings and barons gained political power at the expense of the church and assumed leadership in artistic matters.
Troubadour and Trouvère Songs
The noble poet-composers of these songs were called troubadours, trouvères, Minnesingers were knights and princes.
The Estampie
A dance was written in triple meter.
How did Early Music Sound?
Because sound recording is only about a hundred years old, the hard truth is that we do not really know how the music of Beethoven sounded in 1800, or the music of Bach in 1700.
The Evolution of Polyphony
Polyphony—the simultaneous combination of two or more melodies—arose in medieval Europe through intertwining melodic lines.
Organum
The earliest type of polyphony is called organum. Early organum consists of a traditional plainchant melody to which a composer/singer/improviser has added another melody.