Music History
Written by D. Mark Agostinelli - the Drum Teacher Guy
Music History by D. Mark Agostinelli
Music is the organized movement of sounds
through a continuum of time. Music
plays a role in all societies, and it exists in a large number of
styles, each characteristic of a geographical region or a historical
era.
II
Cultural Definitions
All known societies have music, but only a few
languages have a specific word for it. In
Western culture, dictionaries usually define music as an art that is
concerned with combining sounds, particularly pitches, to produce an
artifact that has beauty or attractiveness, that expresses something,
that follows some kind of internal logic and exhibits intelligible
structure, and that requires special skill on the part of its creator.
Clearly, music is not easy to
define, and yet most people recognize the concept of music and generally
agree on whether or not a given sound is musical.
Indefinite border areas exist, however,
between music and other sound phenomena such as speech, and the cultures
of the world differ in their opinion of the musicality of various
sounds. Thus, simple tribal
chants, a half-spoken style of singing, or a composition created by a
computer program may or may not be accepted as music by members of a
given society or subgroup. Muslims,
for example, do not consider the chanting of the Koran to be a kind of
music, although the structure of the chant is similar to that of secular
singing. So someone that comes
from New York City that is distant from the Muslim religion of Africa,
may see the religious chant a being musical, rather than religious.
Yet someone from New York City, may hear this form of chanting,
and find it to be extensively distant to comprehend, and to interpret
into anything at all; is nearly impossible to the listener and bears no
meaning at all. The
social context of sounds may determine whether or not they are regarded
as music. Industrial noises, for instance, are not music except when
presented as part of a concert of experimental music in an auditorium,
with a listed composer.
Opinions also differ as to the origins and
spiritual value of music. In some African cultures music is seen as
something uniquely human; among some Native Americans it is thought to
have originated as a way for spirits to communicate.
In Western culture music is
regarded as inherently good, and sounds that are welcome are said to be
"music to the ears." In some other cultures; for example; Islamic
culture, it is of low value, associated with sin and evil, and attempts
have been made to outlaw its practice.
III
MUSIC AS A CULTURAL
SYSTEM
Music has many uses, and in all societies
certain events are inconceivable without it.
A proper consideration of music
should involve the musical sound itself; but it should also deal with
the concepts leading to its existence, with its particular forms and
functions in each culture, and with the human behavior that produces the
sound.
Somewhat comparable to having a language, each society may be said to
have "a music," that is, a self-contained system within which musical
communication takes place and that, like a language, must be learned to
be understood. Members of some
societies participate in several musics; therefore, modern Native
Americans take part in both traditional Native American music and
mainstream American music.
Within each music, various strata may exist, distinguished by degree of
learning (professional versus untrained musicians), level of society
(the music of the elite versus that of the masses), patronage (court or
church or public commercial establishments), and manner of dissemination
(oral, notated, or through mass media).
In the West and in the high cultures of Asia, it is possible to
distinguish three basic strata; first, "art" or "classical" music,
composed and performed by trained professionals originally under the
patronage of courts and religious establishments; second, folk music,
shared by the population at large, particularly its rural component, and
transmitted orally; and, third, popular music, performed by
professionals, disseminated through radio, television, records, film,
and print, and consumed by the urban mass public.
IV
Explain the sounds in
Music
In the simplest terms music can be described
as the combination of two elements that involve pitch and duration and
that are usually called melody and rhythm.
The minimal unit of musical
organization is the tone, that is, a sound with specific pitch and
duration. Music therefore
consists of combinations of individual tones that appear successively
(melody) or simultaneously (harmony) or, as in most Western music, both.
A
Melody
- -
explain more
In any musical system, the creation of melody involves selecting tones
from a prescribed set called a scale, which is actually a group of
pitches separated by specific intervals (the distances in pitch between
tones). Thus, the scale of 18th- and 19th-century Western music is the
chromatic scale, represented by the piano keyboard with its 12
equidistant tones per octave; composers selected from these tones to
produce all their music. A
lot of Western music is also based on diatonic scales, which have seven
tones per octave, which are the white keys on the piano keyboard.
In the diatonic scales and in the
pentatonic scales, those with five tones per octave, which are the black
keys on the piano, are common in folk music, the tones are not
equidistant.
Intervals can be measured in units called cents, 1200 per octave. The
typical intervals of Western music are multiples of 100 cents, but in
other musical cultures intervals of about 50, 150, and 240 cents, for
example, are also found. The
human ear can distinguish intervals as small as 14 cents, but no
interval that small seems to play a significant role in any musical
system.
There more scales that I can talk about here.
Research Pentatonic scales
Hexatonic Scales
Amhemitonic scales
Equiheptitonic scales
Algerian Scales
Bantu Polyphony
B
Explain
Rhythm
The handling of time in music is expressed
through concepts such as the lengths of notes and the interrelationships
among them; relative degrees of emphasis on different tones; and, in
particular, meter.
Most Western music is built on a structure of regularly recurring beats,
that is, a metrical structure. This
structure may be explicit (as in the beating of the bass drum in popular
music and marching bands), or it may be implied (often in symphonic or
piano music). The three most common meters in Western music are units of
four beats (with main stress on the first beat, secondary stress on the
third beat); of three beats (stress on the first); and of six beats
(primary stress on the first, secondary on the fourth).
There are also other structures
that exists that are extremely complicated.
There are examples that have 5, 7, 8 counts and over 12 counts in
a meter. There are also
genres from around the world that do not seem to have any structure at
all and don’t follow a structured meter.
Such as, Indian classical music, and West African drum ensembles.
Some styles are so distant from a
standard meter that it sounds incredibly sloppy, such as some genres in
India and the Middle East, and Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist liturgical
chant.
C
Other Elements
The organization given to simultaneously produced pitches is also of
great importance. Two or more voices or instruments performing together
may be perceived as producing independent although related melodies.
This is what we call counterpoint.
Timbre, or sound quality, is the musical element that accounts for the
differences in the characteristic sounds of musical instruments.
Singers have a variety of timbres as well, each affected by such
features as vocal tension, rasp, nasality, amount of accentuation, and
slurring of pitch from one tone to the next.
One major characteristic of music everywhere is its transposability.
A tune can be performed at
various pitch levels and will be recognized as long as the interval
relationships among the tones remain constant.
These elements of music are used to organize
pieces extending from simple melodies using a scale of three tones and
lasting only ten seconds (as in the simplest tribal musics) to highly
complex works such as operas and symphonies.
The organization of music
normally involves the presentation of basic material that may then be
repeated precisely or with changes also known as variations, may
alternate with other materials, or may proceed continually to present
new material. Composers in all societies, often unconsciously, strike a
balance between unity and variety, and all pieces of music contain a
certain amount of repetition, whether of individual tones, short groups
of tones which are called motives, or longer units such as melodies or
chord sequences which are often called themes.
D
Instruments
Through my time of studying music and
listening to styles from all over the world.
I have noticed that all societies have vocal music; and with few
exceptions. Also, they all
have instruments. Among the
simplest of instruments are sticks that are struck together; notched
sticks that are scraped, rattles, and body parts; such as femurs and
bones, or hands slapping a thigh or clapping to produce sound.
Some of the simplest Instruments can make the greatest sounds and
create some the greatest music. Such
simple instruments are found in many tribal cultures. Also these simple
tribal instruments are used all over the world as baby toys or in
archaic rituals. Certain highly
complex instruments exhibit flexibility not only in pitch but also in
timbre. The piano produces the
chromatic scale from the lowest to the highest pitch used in the Western
system and responds, in quality of sound, to wide variation in touch.
On the organ, each keyboard can
be connected at will to a large number and combination of pipes, thereby
making available a variety of tone colors.
On the Indian sitar, one plucked
string is used for melody, other plucked strings serve as drones, while
still others produce fainter sounds through sympathetic vibration.
Modern technology has utilized
electronic principles to create a number of instruments that have almost
infinite flexibility.
There are many different types of Instruments
that exist in the world.
Classification systems had to be developed.
There are countless
classification categories to explain the different types of instruments
that exist. However here is
a small list of examples.
Examples of such classifications are:
1. Idiophones, in which the main vibrating
units are the resonant bodies of the instruments themselves (for
example, rattles and xylophones);
2. Membranophone, which have vibrating skins
(drums);
3. Chordophones, which have vibrating strings
(violins, guitars, pianos);
4. Aerophones, which produce vibrating bodies
of air (clarinets, reed and pipe organs, harmonicas); and
5. Electrophones,
in which electronic circuits produce sound (electronic organs, sound
synthesizers).
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V
THE CREATION OF MUSIC
Music is created by individuals, using a
traditional vocabulary of musical elements. In composition (the
principal creative act in music) something that is considered new is
produced by combining the musical elements that a given society
recognizes as a system. Innovation
as a criterion of good composing is important in Western culture, less
so in certain other societies. In Western music, composition is normally
carried out with the help of notation; but in much popular music, and
particularly in folk, tribal, and most non-Western cultures, composition
is done in the mind of the composer, who may sing or use an instrument
as an aid. Creative acts in music also include improvisation, or the
creation of new music in the course of performance. Improvisation
usually takes place on the basis of some previously determined
structure, such as a tone or a group of chords; or it occurs within a
set of traditional rules, as in the
ragas of India or the
maqams of the Middle East.
Performance, which involves a musician's personal interpretation of a
previously composed piece, has smaller scope for innovation. It may,
however, be viewed as part of a continuum with composing and
improvising.
The normal method of retaining music and
transmitting it is oral or, more properly, aural— most of the world's
music is learned by hearing. The complex system of musical notation used
in Western music is in effect a graph, indicating principally movement
in pitch and time, with only limited capability to regulate more subtle
elements such as timbre. Both Western and Asian cultures possess other
notation systems, giving letter names of notes, indicating hand
positions, or charting the approximate contour of melodic movement.
VI
THE SOCIAL ROLE OF
MUSIC
Music everywhere is used to accompany other
activities. It is, for example, universally associated with dance.
Although words are not found in singing everywhere, the association of
music and poetry is so close that language and music are widely believed
to have had a common origin in early human history.
A Function of Music
Music is a major component in religious
services, secular rituals, theater, and entertainment of all sorts. In
many societies it is also an activity carried on for its own sake. In
American society in the late 20th century, for example, one main use of
music involves listening at concerts or to radio or records (music for
its own sake); another involves the provision of music as a suitable
background for unrelated activities such as study or shopping (music as
an adjunct to something else). In many societies music serves as the
chief entertainment at royal courts. Everywhere, musicians sometimes
perform for their own diversion; in some societies, however, this
private use of music has been formalized—in southern Africa, for
example, special genres and styles are reserved for musicians'
performances for their personal entertainment.
The most ubiquitous use of music, however, is
as a part of religious ritual. In some tribal societies, music appears
to serve as a special form of communication with supernatural beings,
and its prominent use in modern Christian and Jewish services may be a
remnant of just such an original purpose. Another, less obvious,
function of music is social integration. For most social groups, music
can serve as a powerful symbol. Members of most societies share keen
feelings as to what kind of music "belongs." Indeed, some minorities
(including, in the U.S., black Americans and Euro-American ethnic
groups) use music as a major symbol of group identity.
Music may serve as a symbol in other ways, as
well. It can represent nonmusical ideas or events (as in the symphonic
poems of the German composer Richard Strauss), and it can underscore
ideas that are verbally presented in operas (notably those of the German
composer Richard Wagner), in film and television drama, and often in
songs. It also symbolizes military, patriotic, and funerary moods and
events. In a more general sense, music may express the central social
values of a society. Thus, the hierarchical caste system of India is
symbolized in the hierarchy of performers in an ensemble. The avoidance
of voice blending in a Plains peoples singing group reflects the value
placed on individualism. In Western music the interrelationship of
conductor and orchestra symbolizes the need, in a modern industrial
society, for strongly coordinated cooperation among various kinds of
specialists.
B
The Musician In
most of the world's societies, musicianship requires talent, special
knowledge or training, and effort, and the view is widespread that a
successful musical work or performance is difficult to achieve. There is
no evidence that superior musical abilities arise in one society or race
as opposed to another; rather, variations in achievement are the result
of differences in technology, in the degree of specialization of
musicians, and in the value placed on music. Individual talent, however,
is recognized among most peoples, and the musical specialist exists
everywhere: as a true professional in the West, India, the Far East, and
Africa; as an informal leader and singer in folk cultures; and as
someone who also has supernatural power in tribal societies. But if
music is regarded as indispensable everywhere, the musician has rarely
enjoyed great prestige. In certain early societies in Europe and
America, for example, musicians were regarded as undesirable social
deviants; this remains the case in the present-day Middle East. In many
societies music is relegated to outsiders—foreigners or members of
religious and ethnic minorities. Many modern social systems, including
those in the West, inordinately reward the outstanding "star" performer
but pay little attention to the average musician. Nevertheless,
musicianship in most parts of the world requires long periods of
concentrated study, extending in the case of European and Indian
virtuosos to some 20 years.
VII
MUSICAL REGIONS
Each culture has its own music, and the
classical, folk, and popular traditions of a region are usually closely
related and easily recognized as part of one system. The peoples of the
world can be grouped musically into several large areas, each with its
characteristic musical dialect. These areas include Europe and the West;
the Middle East with North Africa; Central Asia and the Indian
subcontinent; Southeast Asia and Indonesia; Oceania; China, Korea, and
Japan; and the Americas (Native American cultures). All coincide roughly
with areas determined by cultural and historical relationship, but,
surprisingly, they do not correspond well with areas determined by
language relationships.
The history of Western music—the one most
easily documented because of Western musical notation—is conveniently
divided into eras of relative stability separated by short periods of
more dramatic change. The periods conventionally accepted are the middle
Ages (to c. 1450), the Renaissance (1450-1600), the baroque era
(1600-1750), the classical era (1750-1820), the romantic era
(1820-1920), and the modern period. Other cultures, less well
documented, likewise have experienced change and development (not
necessarily always in the direction of greater complexity), so that the
simplest tribal musics also have their histories. In the 20th century,
however, rapid travel and mass communication have led to a great
decrease in the musical diversity of the world.[1]
Musical Form,
the orderly arrangement of musical elements in time. Because music takes
place in time, its form unfolds in time. Repetition and contrast are the
two fundamental characteristics of musical form, even in simple pieces
such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (the two halves of which begin
identically but end differently).
In music, repetition arouses in the listener
both a remembrance of what was heard and an anticipation of what is to
come. This is true both of recognizable details and also of subtler
patterns that are only subliminally recognized. Also, every musical
system has conventions that are explicitly or implicitly understood by
listeners, and these conventions have an effect on the interpretation of
what is heard, remembered, and anticipated.
II
COMMON FORMAL PATTERNS
Musical form can be analyzed from several
levels of detail. Overall formal patterns are often described in terms
of the major sections within a piece. For example, the melody of
"America" has two contrasting sections (one beginning "My country, 'tis
of thee ..." and the other beginning "Land of the pilgrims' pride ...");
this form can be represented by the letters AB. Another song, "Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star," has three sections; the first and last ("Twinkle,
twinkle ...," at the beginning and end) are the same, but they contrast
with the middle section ("Up above the world so high ..."). This form
can be represented as ABA.
A
Sectional Patterns
Sections of a composition can be related to
one another in four ways, the first three of which utilize the principle
of repetition: (1) exact repetition; (2) variation (repetition with some
aspect changed—elaborations added to the melody or alterations of the
harmony or rhythm); (3) development (components of the original section,
such as a melodic fragment or a rhythm, are taken apart and recombined
in new ways to create a new section); and (4) contrast (the new section
is markedly different from the preceding one). These relationships
provide the basis for musical forms that are found either universally or
within particular cultures and historical periods.
A1
Repetition and Variation
Simplest among formal patterns are the
repetitive formulas of the psalm tones of Gregorian chant and of various
tribal chants. In strophic form, the music is repeated for each stanza
of a song; in strophic variation, the music is varied with each stanza.
In instrumental music this latter approach produces the variation form,
as in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
Variations on a Nursery Tune, K. 265 (the tune is that of "Twinkle,
Twinkle, and Little Star"). Variations need not be based on an entire
melody, however; often a series of chords or a short motive or phrase
provides the unifying element. Most jazz improvisations, for instance,
are variations created to fit the harmonies of a given melody. In
non-Western melody types, such as the
raga of Indian music and the
maqam of Arab music,
variations take the form of improvisations on the motives and patterns
associated with the particular
raga or maqam.
A2
Sectional Contrast
Many musical forms are based on contrast as
well as repetition of sections. Binary form consists of two contrasting
sections that function as statement and counterstatement. The pattern
may be a simple AB, as in "America," or it may be complicated by
repetition, as in the medieval ballade (AAB), or by variation, as in the
tune "Greensleeves" (AA’BB’, with A’ meaning "variation of A"). In the
binary form found in much music of the baroque era (circa 1600-c. 1750)
the pattern involves change of key: Section A begins in one key and ends
in another; section B begins in the new key and ends in the original
key; each section is repeated, giving the pattern AA BB.
Songs frequently take the form ABA (ternary
or three-part form, often called song form). In the da capo aria of
17th- and 18th-century opera, the pattern was ABA’, the singer being
expected to improvise variations when the A section was repeated. In the
late 18th and 19th centuries, the minuet or scherzo movement of a
sonata, symphony, or other multimovement work constituted an ABA form:
an initial minuet or scherzo, followed by a contrasting one (called the
trio), followed by repetition of the initial one. (Such a pattern also
provides an example of hierarchical levels of form, for within the ABA
format, each minuet or scherzo is itself built on a two-part scheme.)
One variant of ternary form is the AABA form
common in 20th-century popular songs such as "Over the Rainbow" (the B
section is called the bridge). The song "I Want to Hold Your Hand," by
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with its form AA BA BA’, illustrates how
composers expand such basic patterns.
The alteration of contrasting sections is
expanded in forms such as the rondo and in the ritornello form developed
in the concerto. In the latter, the ritornello section recurs
periodically. Rondos, common in 18th- and 19th-century music, are cast
in various patterns such as ABACA, ABACADA, and ABACABA.
A3
Development and Sonata Form
the form that dominated music of the classical
period (circa 1750-c. 1820) was the sonata-allegro or sonata form, so
called because of its use in instrumental sonatas. Based on the
principle of contrast of key, the sonata form developed out of the
baroque binary form that involved change of key (some theorists,
however, view sonata form as a complex ABA pattern). The pattern of
sonata form is exposition (material beginning in an initial key and
moving into a new key), followed by development (fragmented exposition
material passed through many keys) that leads into recapitulation
(restatement of the exposition material, but usually all in the initial
key). The sonata principle of fragmentation and development in many keys
permeated other formal patterns of the same era.
B
Other Organizational Approaches
The term
through-composed has been
applied to pieces having no clear pattern of repeated sections (such as
the 16th-century fantasia, which has sections of contrasting texture but
rarely any obvious repetitions). Perhaps the simplest examples are folk
songs such as "Barbara Allan," in which the four phrases have the
pattern ABCD. (In such songs, the four phrases are often unified by
rhythmic motives, a relationship among final notes, and other devices.)
In its narrowest sense, the term
through-composed refers to
19th-century song settings in which each stanza of text is given its own
new music; an example is "Erlkönig" (Erl King) by the Austrian composer
Franz Schubert. Much instrumental music, however, is also
through-composed; examples from the 19th century include many nocturnes,
romances, and other character pieces. In a through-composed piece, the
structure arises from such elements as the composer's use of subtle
relationships among motives, similarities and contrasts of texture, and
relationships of key and harmony.
Between about 1200 and about 1750,
counterpoint (the interweaving of melodies), especially in the form of
melodic imitation, was a prominent technique for creating musical form.
(The simplest example of melodic imitation is the round.) Imitation was
the means for creating unity in forms such as the motet and fugue as
well as in masses. Other sources of musical coherence were mode (a scale
with certain notes serving as focal points); the composer's use of
harmony; and the use of a cantus firmus (a recurring plainchant or
secular melody, nearly always disguised by elongating its notes and
usually buried in the contrapuntal texture.
In the 19th century a nonmusical program (a
sketchy or detailed outline of the events or emotions that the music is
intended to portray) was a frequent source of structure; the details of
the program guided the composer's manipulation of purely musical
elements.
C
Multimovement Forms
Instrumental and vocal music is often composed in forms consisting of
several movements (independent or almost independent sections, each with
its own form such as sonata form or rondo or variations). Instrumental
examples include the baroque suite and the classical symphony, sonata,
and string quartet. Composers unify such works by relating their keys
and sometimes their melodic material; a work with systematic melodic
relationships between movements (such as a cantus firmus mass, or
Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasy," op. 15) is said to be cyclic. Variety is
usually provided by changes in tempo from one movement to another; a
common pattern is slow-fast-slow-fast. In masses, song cycles, operas,
cantatas, oratorios, and similar vocal works, the text provides an
additional unifying element.
D
Form and Content
Conventional musical forms such as the rondo, fugue, and sonata are
defined by the particular patterns that are imposed on melody, harmony,
and other musical elements.
The explicit codification of musical forms
arose in large part during the 19th century, an era in Western music
history in which themes (melodies) and their transformations dominated
musical thought. As a result, many forms were viewed as molds into which
the themes of an individual composition were poured. From this
perspective, pieces that differed from the "textbook" form in various
details were viewed as creative license. In the 20th century this
viewpoint was challenged by many critics, beginning perhaps with the
English critic Donald Francis Tovey, who pointed out that few
compositions by the great masters adhere strictly to a stereotyped form.
Today, form in the sense of overall pattern is usually viewed as
inseparable from content—the details of rhythm, themes, and textures and
all other aspects of a composition. Specific forms (such as a sonata or
fugue) are now understood as processes or principles according to which
individual pieces will vary, depending on their content. Thus, a fugue
is viewed as a type of composition using melodic imitation, whereas
earlier analysts saw it as a regular sequence in which one kind of
imitation followed another predictably. Similarly, a sonata-form
movement is heard as a certain kind of structure created by the contrast
of keys and the manipulation of themes and motives, whereas earlier
theorists usually described it as a conventional sequence of themes,
transitions, and developments. This conception of form as unified with
content is also useful in understanding non-Western musical forms.
III
PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS
In the most fundamental sense, musical form
goes beyond sectional patterns and is created by the composer's
organization of melody, rhythm, harmony, and other elements. Such
organization can exist on several levels, from small details within
individual phrases to large-scale plans of organization—basic formal
patterns that have unity, variety, and symmetry.
A
Melody
The repetition and recombination of
fleetingly recognizable melodic motives and fragments, as well as the
clear restatement of longer patterns, help create unity and coherence
while also ensuring variety. Two or more melodies in a piece may be
related because they share certain motives; the sharing of motives may
or may not be obvious. Sections of melody may differ in contour—the
pitch changing in stepwise versus leaping motion, rising versus falling
direction. Such variety provides small-scale contrast and may also
highlight larger divisions within a composition.
B
Time and Rhythm
Another element that influences musical form
is the relation of units of time to one another, whether the relation of
long and short notes in a rhythmic motive, or the relative lengths of
movements in a symphony. Large underlying patterns may also provide
structure. Medieval European composers sometimes repeated complex,
overlapping melodic and rhythmic patterns throughout a piece; this
procedure, called isorhythm, provides coherence even though the patterns
may not be readily apparent to the listener. At a more detailed level,
short rhythmic motives may recur in different melodic and harmonic
contexts, thus contributing to the unity of a work. In some Eastern
music, long, conventional rhythmic cycles such as the
iqa of Arab music and the
tala of Indian music also
provide structure and are recognized with delight by knowledgeable
listeners.
C
Harmony
Another resource for form is harmony.
Consonant harmonies are those that sound stable; dissonant harmonies
sound unstable or seem to clash, and they tend to be resolved into
consonant harmonies. Composers exploit the tension between consonance
and dissonance to establish a sense of beginning and end, of movement
and repose. Between about 1650 and about 1900 the classical Western
system of tonality regulated harmonies according to a complex set of
conventions. Tonality provided a strong means of organization, because
all notes and chords were related in a specified way (whether strongly
or weakly) to the tonic—the focal note (keynote), chord, and key. In the
20th century composers such as the German Paul Hindemith and the
Hungarian Béla Bartók developed nontraditional methods of creating music
centered around a tonic note. These included repetition of critical
notes, symmetrical movement above and below the tonic, and new
approaches to dissonance.
D
Serialism
Other composers followed the twelve-tone
system of the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Usually abandoning
tonality altogether, they derived their harmonies and melodies from an
arbitrary series of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale (the notes
of the black and white keys of the piano). Called serialism, such
organization according to an underlying series has been extended to
rhythms, timbres (tone colors), dynamics (loud and soft), and other
musical elements.
E
Other Resources
Other aspects of music that can be manipulated
to create musical organization are texture (dense or sparse, chordal or
contrapuntal) and register (high or low pitch areas). In different ways,
for example, the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky and the
French-American composer Edgard Varèse created musical structures by
manipulating textures and blocks of sound. Complex mathematical
relationships have been used by the Greek composer Yannis Xenakis and
others as a basis for musical form.
Musical Instruments
INTRODUCTION
Musical
Instruments, tools used to expand
the limited scope of musical sounds—such as clapping, stamping,
whistling, humming, and singing—that can be produced by a person's
unaided body. Throughout the world, instruments vary greatly in purpose
and design, from natural, uncrafted objects to complicated products of
industrial technology. Although sirens, automobile parts, and radios
have been employed in avant-garde compositions, this article mainly
concerns those specialized implements intended for performing the
world's conventional folk, popular, and classical music.
II
THE PRODUCTION OF SOUND
Sound arises from vibration transmitted by
waves to the ear. Incoherent, violent vibration is normally interpreted
as noise, whereas regular, moderate motion produces tones that can be
pleasing. The faster the vibration, the higher the pitch that is
perceived. Some pipe organs encompass the full audible range of pitch,
approximately 16 Hz (hertz, or cycles per second) to 20,000 Hz, or more
than ten octaves, but most instruments have a much more limited compass;
indeed, many play only a single note or have no identifiable pitch at
all.
The greater the amplitude or power of audio
waves, the louder their sound, which in some electronically amplified
music can reach a painful, ear-damaging intensity. The timbre, or tone
color, of the sound is influenced by the presence and relative strength
of overtones, or harmonics, in the sound wave. The perception of timbre,
however, is also affected by the duration and location of the sound, and
by its envelope, or its characteristics of attack (onset) and decay
(which may, for example, be abrupt or gradual, or—especially in
attack—may involve transient harmonics). The sounds of musical
instruments are caused and modified by three components: (1) the
essential vibrating substance (such as a violin string), set into motion
by bowing, blowing, striking, or some other method; (2) the connected
reflector, amplifier, or resonator (soundboard, tube, box, or vessel);
and (3) associated sound-altering devices, among them keys, valves,
frets, and mutes.
III
SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION
Instruments can be classified in different
ways—for example, by their primary materials (metal, wood, earthenware,
skin, and so forth, an arrangement followed in East Asia); their social
status and appropriate setting (church, military, parlor); or their
musical role (rhythmic, melodic, chordal, drone). Since the 2nd century
BC, Western audiences have
conventionally distinguished among winds, strings, and percussion. This
exclusive division, however, does not accommodate instruments such as
the piano, which employs both strings and a percussion mechanism; or the
aeolian harp, a zither the strings of which are vibrated by the wind.
Nor is the familiar distinction of brasses from woodwinds quite logical:
Saxophones and orchestral flutes are metal woodwinds, whereas early
"brasses" were often made of animal horn (the shofar), wood (the
serpent, a bass instrument), or even ivory (the cornetto, a small
Renaissance horn).
A comprehensive classification based on
acoustical principles was devised in the 19th century. Instrument
families are defined in terms of what vibrates to produce the sound.
These families are the idiophones—solid, intrinsically sonorous objects;
membranophones—taut membranes; aerophones—enclosed or free masses of
air; and chordophones—stretched strings. A fifth family,
electrophones—oscillating electronic circuits—originated recently.
IV
IDIOPHONES
The largest, most varied and widespread, and
probably the oldest instrument family consists of idiophones. Known at
least since the Stone Age, idiophones range in complexity from hollowed
logs (slit-drums) of indefinite or tuned pitch that are used
rhythmically, often to send signals, to precisely tuned cast-bronze
bells that, combined in a carillon, form the most massive and expensive
of instruments. Bells vibrate at their rim, whereas gongs—perhaps
invented in Southeast Asia by Bronze Age metal smiths—vibrate at their
center. The so-called steel drum or piano pan is a modern Trinidadian
gong that produces more than one pitch from its segmented surface.
These examples are known as percussion
idiophones because they are all struck with beaters. Such instruments
are often played in sets. The xylophone is a set of tuned hardwood bars.
In Indonesian music, the saron
is a metallophone, made up of bronze bars; the
bonang, a set of small tuned
gongs. The celesta is a metallophone with a piano like keyboard. A piano
hammer action also strikes the glass bars of the glasschord, a
19th-century English crystallophone. The oldest existing sets of
tuned-bar idiophones, excavated in East Asia, are lithophones, made of
stone; lithophones were also made in 19th-century England.
Concussion idiophones are struck together,
usually in pairs. Turkish-style brass cymbals and Spanish wooden
castanets are the most familiar types, but ivory and bone clappers were
common in ancient Egypt. Egyptian worshipers also used the sistrum, a
rattle with metal rings fitted loosely on rods. Rattles are normally
shaken rather than struck. They include vessel types, with loose
rattling objects enclosed in a container; strung rattles, with small,
hard objects tied together or to a handle; and frame rattles, such as
the sistrum and the Javanese angklung (tuned bamboo tubes sliding within a framework). The
jingle, or pellet, bell is a metal vessel rattle, not a true bell.
Other idiophones may be scraped, as is the
washboard played in old-time jug bands; or they can be rubbed with a bow
(as in a nail violin) or with the fingers. Moistened fingers rub the
rims of musical glasses, tuned by partial filling with water.
Plucked idiophones include the
rotating ratchet used as a holiday noisemaker; the African
mbira or thumb piano, the many metal or cane tongues which can be
individually tuned; and the music box, with its "comb" of flexible steel
teeth that are plucked by pins which are on a rotating cylinder.
V
MEMBRANOPHONES
All true drums belong to the membranophone. A
drum has one or two heads of skin or plastic stretched over a resonator
or over a narrow frame. Kettledrums, having a single head over a
bowl-shaped resonator, are produced in all sizes. Orchestral kettledrums
are tuned by means of hand screws or pedals, whereas some non-Western
types are tuned with paste or heat applied to the head, or by
manipulating the lacing which attaches to the head or heads. Hard and
soft beaters offer tonal variety. In India the technique of playing
small kettledrums (the baya in
the pair called tabla) with
the hands is a subtle art.
Cylindrical drums, usually unpitched, vary in
size from huge basses drawn on wagons in parades, to shallow,
waist-slung drums equipped with snares that intensify the sound. In
parts of Africa and the Pacific Islands sacred drums are taboo to the
uninitiated; their wood bodies are elaborately carved and decorated, and
revered drums occupy huts to which votive offerings are brought.
Slender, elongated drums with reptile-skin heads glued on with human
blood accompany male ritual dances in New Guinea.
Some Native Americans accompany tribal dances
and chants on broad, shallow drums beaten by several players at once. A
light hand-held frame drum is played by Eskimo shamans; it resembles
Asian shamans' drums. The tambourine is a frame drum that usually has
rattles attached to the frame; it is both struck and shaken and is
sometimes rubbed.
The
rommelpot is a Flemish friction drum played as a toy; rubbing a
stick or string protruding through its head causes the head to vibrate.
A more important membranophone is the mirliton. Not actually an
instrument in its own right, but rather a tone modifier, the mirliton is
a thin membrane attached over a hole in a resonator, adding a buzzing
quality to the sound. One popular mirliton, the kazoo, disguises the
voice. Other mirlitons enrich the tone of instruments as diverse as
African xylophones, drums, and Chinese flutes.
VI
AEROPHONES
Among aerophones, several different methods
are used to set the air in vibration.
A
Flutes
In flutes a wind stream impinges on an edge,
setting up eddies in an enclosed body of air. The wind may come from the
player's lungs, a bellows or squeezed windbag, or a mechanical fan. If
the resonator enclosing the air is a tube, its length determines the
pitch; usually, tone holes in the tube wall are opened or closed to
change the sounding length and, hence, the pitch.
In the orchestral flute the lips direct breath
against the edge of a mouth hole in the tube wall; such flutes are
called transverse, or side blown. The Japanese
shakuhachi is blown against
the sharpened rim of one end. A panpipe is also end blown; each of its
pipes gives a different note, according to its length. Some end-blown
flutes are blown through one nostril; such "nose flutes" are often
considered magical.
In whistles and recorders an internal duct
aims the breath against the edge of a hole in the wall; the flue pipes
on an organ thus operate like one-note whistles. Some Native American
flutes have a duct on the outside of the tube, a system unknown
otherwise. The ocarina, a popular ducted flute invented in Italy (about
1860), has a globular resonator rather than a tubular one, giving it a
hollow, dark tone. In general, the shape of an aerophone's resonator has
a more critical effect on timbre than does its material, because the
resonator walls vibrate little, compared to the air within.
B
Single and Double Reeds
Among reed-vibrated aerophones, the clarinet,
saxophone, and their relatives employ a single broad reed of springy
cane fastened at one end over a hole in a mouthpiece. The reed responds
to breath pressure by beating against the hole many times per second,
allowing puffs of wind into the tube to vibrate the enclosed air. The
brass-reed pipes of an organ are of this type.
The oboe, bassoon, shawm, and other
double-reed instruments produce sound when two slender blades of cane
pinch together rapidly, thus interrupting the wind stream passing
between them into the resonator. Whereas clarinets have a more-or-less
cylindrical tube, oboes have a conical pipe; the different internal
shapes foster distinctive patterns of harmonics that give these
instruments their characteristic timbres.
C
Free Reeds and Other Instruments
In free-reed aerophones such as the mouth
organ, or harmonica, the accordion, and reed organs (harmonium,
melodeon), many brass reeds of graduated size produce the sounds. Under
wind pressure each reed vibrates back and forth through a close-fitting
aperture. Because the length and shape of each free reed determines its
pitch and timbre, no resonator is required; the reed vibrates air in the
atmosphere. All Western free-reed instruments evolved from the Oriental
mouth organ with multiple pipes (such as the Chinese
sheng and the Japanese
sho), introduced into Europe
in the 18th century.
The bull-roarer, a tapered wood blade whirled
around on a string, also vibrates the atmosphere directly without
benefit of a resonator. Its unpitched rumble sounds powerful and
mysterious. The Jew’s harp has a twangy tone that arises when the stiff
metal or cane reed is plucked in front of the mouth and vibrates the air
within.
D
Lip-Vibrated Instruments
In the orchestral brasses and other
lip-vibrated aerophones, the player's lips buzz against a cup- or
funnel-shaped mouthpiece inserted in a conical or cylindrical tube.
Broadly speaking, conical, wide-bore tubes characterize horns, whereas
relatively cylindrical, narrow-bore tubes define trumpets. The sounding
length of the tube can be altered by means of fingered or keyed tone
holes; by valves that open and close sections of tubing; or by a sliding
telescopic section of tubing, as on the trombone. The cornetto and
serpent, for example, have finger holes much like those of a recorder.
The keyed trumpet and keyed bugle became obsolete only when valves were
widely adopted for brasses in the 19th century.
In many aerophones, overblowing (drastically
increasing the wind pressure) forces higher harmonics to supersede the
fundamental pitch. A bugler, whose instrument is a tube of constant
length, can thus play tunes by overblowing to produce various harmonics.
Brasses of unvariable sounding length are called natural; they are
limited to the notes of the harmonic series. As composers since the
1500s gradually made greater demands on trumpets and horns (which were
originally outdoor signal instruments), instrument makers invented the
key and valve mechanisms that enable the instruments to produce fully
chromatic scales. Woodwinds, similarly, were fitted with complex key
mechanisms. Such structural changes, however, necessarily affected the
timbre; modern brasses, as well as keyed woodwinds, sound noticeably
different from those of the early 19th century and before.
VII
CHORDOPHONES
Being of more recent origin than idiophones,
drums, and winds, the chordophones are not universally distributed; they
were virtually unknown in pre-Columbian America (before the 16th
century). Chordophones differ widely in structure, but are all thought
to have evolved from the archaic musical bow, which resembles a hunting
bow and is played like a jew's harp. Because the sound of a vibrating
string alone is extremely quiet, strings are almost always coupled to a
resonator.
A
Zithers
In the zither group, the strings stretch side
by side over a soundboard or sound box, and, with the exception of the
Chinese qin (ch'in),
communicate their vibrations to either by means of one or more bridges.
The Japanese koto has movable
bridges, one for each string. This revered zither, like the bridgeless
qin, has an extensive classical repertoire. The Appalachian dulcimer
(not the same as the hammered dulcimer) evolved in the late 19th century
from northern European fretted zithers brought to America by immigrants.
These folk zithers have melody strings passing over a fretted
fingerboard, in addition to unfretted accompaniment strings.
B
Keyboard Chordophones
Two zither-family instruments, the hammered
dulcimer and the medieval psaltery, are ancestors of keyboard
chordophones such as the piano, clavichord, and harpsichord. The last
two instruments were invented in the late middle Ages (the late 14th and
early 15th centuries) in conjunction with the emergence of multipart
music. The piano, with its wider dynamic range, appeared about 1700. It
largely replaced the hammered dulcimer in urban domestic use, and by
1800 it had superseded the quieter clavichord and harpsichord. The
hurdy-gurdy, which is a fiddle with a keyboard of limited compass, has
both melody and drone strings, sounded by a rotating circular "bow" of
wood. It resembles the Swedish nyckelharpa, a keyed fiddle played with a conventional bow.
C
Harps and Lyres
Unlike zithers, which may be plucked, bowed,
struck, or wind-sounded (the aeolian harp), true harps are almost
exclusively plucked. Their many strings fasten directly into the
resonator; no bridge is necessary. The frame of European harps consists
of a sound box, a neck (called the harmonic curve), and a forepillar,
roughly forming a triangle. Ancestral, non-Western harps such as the
Myanmar saung lack the
reinforcing forepillar; their angled or arched necks, therefore, cannot
withstand extreme string tension. The African
pluriarc has a separate neck for each string.
A modern concert harp has a pedal mechanism
that alters the pitch of each string by one or two semitones, thereby
producing a full chromatic compass although having only seven strings
per octave. Simpler pedal and manual devices offered chromatic notes in
18th-century harps, but earlier chromatic harps (notably the Welsh
telyn) had two or three rows
of strings, each chromatic note having its own string. Although most
European harps are strung with gut or synthetic cords, the massive Irish
harp traditionally is wire strung. Once favored to accompany bards, the
Irish harp became a patriotic symbol when its use was outlawed by
English authorities.
On lyres, the strings are anchored to a
crossbar supported by two arms that extend from a box- or bowl-shaped
resonator; they are coupled to the resonator by a bridge. Lyres are rare
today outside Ethiopia; however, the Greek ancestor of the Ethiopian
lyre was a popular instrument. The
kithara was a large, wood-bodied concert lyre of ancient Greece;
derivatives of its name were given to unrelated instruments such as the
cittern and guitar.
D
Plucked and Bowed Lutes
The European lute is the namesake of a group
of bowed and plucked instruments. Their strings pass along a neck that
extends from the resonator, and a bridge couples the strings to the
resonator. The neck may be a short elongation of the body, as in the
Chinese pipa; or it may be a separate element fastened to or piercing the
body. Frequently, the neck incorporates a fingerboard (which may be
fretted), against which the strings can be pressed to alter their
sounding length.
Plucked lutes include the banjo and guitar as
well as the pear-shaped Arabic 'ud,
from which the name of the European lute is derived. The technique of
bowing is not as old as that of plucking, and fiddles, or bowed lutes
(such as the violin and viol) arrived in Europe from Asia only in the
middle Ages. Early European bowed lutes are hardly distinguishable from
plucked ones. Evidence of medieval types is limited to fragmentary
remains, literary descriptions, and pictures—practically no complete
examples survive, due to the instruments' fragility. Comparison with
similar-looking modern folk instruments suggests that the latter have
changed little since the Middle Ages.
The viola, which evolved from unstandardized
medieval fiddles, is first depicted in early 16th-century pictures. Like
most other instruments of the Renaissance, it was built in a range of
sizes that, together, made up a consort. Small violas (violins), large
ones held between the knees (violoncellos; Cello), and even larger ones
played standing up (violones) were the specialty of Italian artisans
such as the Amati family and Antonio Stradivari. The pochette or kit, a
miniature violin-type instrument played by dancing masters, often had a
one-piece body and neck carved from a block of wood; it thus resembled
the medieval rebec, the name and shape of which were in turn derived
from the Middle Eastern rabab.
The violin and its relatives—at first
associated with country dance music and considered inferior to the
quieter, more sedate viola da gamba (viol)—became supreme during the
18th century (and earlier in Italy) because viols were less well suited
to the highly dramatic style of late baroque and classical music. When
the intimate idiom of the classical era gave way to the 19th-century
romantic style, violins and most other orchestral instruments were
modified to increase their compass and dynamic range. Loudness and
brilliance became necessary because of the introduction of large concert
halls and the virtuosic demands of romantic composers and performers.
Among the interesting hybrid chordophones are
the baryton, a viol equipped with additional thumb-plucked wire strings;
and the arpeggione, a cello-sized bowed guitar briefly popular in the
1830s. The viola d'amore, still called for by a few 20th-century
composers, has unfingered strings that vibrate sympathetically beneath
the bowed ones, giving an especially warm tone. Sympathetic strings are
found also in many Asian chordophones, particularly in India, where the
gourd-bodied sitar is a favorite vehicle for classical improvisation.
West African plucked instruments such as the
kora (harp-lute) and the
muet (harp-zither) combine
features of harps, lutes, and zithers.
VIII
ELECTROPHONES
Just as mechanical invention served European
music when the fully developed keyboard (a device uniquely associated
with Western technology) arose in the late middle Ages, so electrical
engineers have offered 20th-century musicians an innovative means of
producing and controlling sounds. The telharmonium, an electrophone
created by the American inventor Thaddeus Cahill at the turn of the
century, produced novel tones with a collection of equipment that
included rotary generators and telephone receivers. The theremin, a
compact apparatus invented by the Russian physicist Leon Theremin, was
fashionable in the late 1920s and 1930s, although it could play only a
single melodic line. Electronic organs have mainly influenced popular
music, but since the mid-1950s synthesizers have become important tools
of composers in many idioms.
Since the 1930s electronic amplification has tremendously increased the
impact and altered the technique of popular singers and
instrumentalists. In the electric guitar such amplification replaced the
sound box and stimulated new musical effects. Except in the distortions
and manipulations of sound used in rock music, however, amplification,
like broadcasting and recording, serves chiefly to disseminate music
rather than to create it. The long-term implications of electronic sound
production cannot yet be predicted.
Musical Notation,
system of written symbols that represent musical sounds. The primary
requirement of any notation is that it be suited to the music it
represents.
II
WESTERN STAFF NOTATION
The standard notation of Western music is a
staff notation. Its basis is a staff (or stave) of five lines. Each line
and the space between lines represents a different pitch. A tone of a
given pitch is represented by a sign called a note, placed on a line or
in a space. A clef, positioned at the beginning of every staff,
indicates the pitch assigned to one of the lines, from which the others
are reckoned. Since the octave contains 12 pitches a semitone (that is,
a half-step) apart, and since the staff, for historical reasons, has
lines and spaces only for seven pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G (five of
which are a whole step from the following tone), three additional
symbols are used. Placed next to a note, they alter its meaning,
permitting the notation of the remaining pitches. They are the flat (♭), which lowers the pitch of a note by a
semitone; the sharp (♯), which raises it by a semitone; and the natural (♮), which cancels a previous flat or sharp. If
certain flats or sharps appear regularly throughout a piece, their signs
are placed next to the clef, in a key signature.
The durations of notes are indicated by their
specific shapes; the durations of silences are set forth by signs called
rests. The terminology of notes and rests indicates their durational
relationships: whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second,
sixty-fourth, each being double or half the value of its neighbor in the
series. Meter, the grouping of musical beats into basic recurrent units,
is also indicated. A time signature, which shows how the beats are to be
grouped, is placed on the initial staff next to the key signature; and
vertical lines (bar lines) mark off the metrical units, or measures. The
time signature also indicates a system of stresses: The first beat of a
metrical grouping is usually the strongest. Additional symbols indicate
other aspects of the music.
III
HISTORY
Today's system developed over many centuries.
The note shapes are derived from neumes, handwritten signs that were
placed over the words of medieval chant. At first neumes gave only a
vague indication of melodic directions and patterns. Gradually the
shapes became more precise and, about
AD1000, staff lines were
added: first one, then two, then four and five. By about 1200, the
notation was reasonably exact as to pitch, but quite vague regarding
duration.
About that time the earliest durational
notation appeared. Called modal notation, it specified a constantly
repeated rhythmic mode, or pattern. About 1250 four durational note and
rest shapes were established, as well as a set of rules for determining
whether a given note should subdivide into two or three shorter notes.
Additional symbols for smaller durations were soon added. Although this
system measured duration, somewhat variably, it did not include metrical
stress. Time signatures that regulated duration first appeared in
14th-century France. Each signature represented three levels of
subdivision. Eventually one level was discarded. Most modern time
signatures represent a basic unit plus one level of subdivision. With
the introduction in the mid-15th century of white note heads (that is,
unfilled outlines) in addition to the solid-color note heads already in
use, the system was very close to modern notation.
During the 17th and 18th centuries the final
changes to modern key and metrical time signatures occurred. By the
mid-18th century, subsidiary instructions as to tempo, articulation,
performing techniques, and expressiveness were commonly added. The use
of such symbols greatly accelerated in the 19th century.
In the mid-20th century, critics pointed out
that contemporary music was not well served by a system that was based
on the seven unevenly spaced pitches of medieval music. The same
criticism applied to rhythm subdivisions that were mostly duple and that
treated tempo, dynamics, and articulation only vaguely.
IV
OTHER NOTATIONAL SYSTEMS
Alphabetical notations were used in ancient
Greece and elsewhere. Jazz charts may indicate only the harmonic
structure, leaving all the rest to the performer. In addition to their
western uses, neumes have also been employed in China, Japan, and the
Near East as well as for Tibetan chant.
Tablatures are compact notations that use
signs, numbers, or letters, usually to notate fingerings rather than
pitches. Modern popular guitar tablature is a small grid in which
vertical lines represent the strings and horizontal lines represent the
frets; black dots indicate where to put the fingers.
Writers discussing music sometimes use the
following system to specify pitches: CC-BB = third C through third B
below middle C; C-B = second C through second B below middle C (that is,
C = C below the bass staff); c-b = C through B below middle C; c1-b1 =
middle C through the B above it; c2-b2 =
C above middle C through the B above that; c3-b3 =
second C above middle C through the B above that (that is, c3 =
C above the treble staff).
In the 20th century, composers of
"indeterminate" compositions leave many elements deliberately vague and
to chance; this is also true of their unconventional notation.
Musical Rhythm,
all aspects of music concerned with its motion through time and, thus,
with its time structure. In addition to this overall meaning, the term
rhythm is occasionally used to
refer to specific time events, such as the patterns of lengths in a
certain group of notes.
II
PULSE AND METER
Like the rhythms in nature, such as the motion
of the planets, the succession of seasons, and the beating of the heart,
musical rhythm usually is organized in regularly recurring patterns.
Such patterns regulate the motion of the music and aid the human ear in
grasping its structure. The most basic rhythmic unit is the beat or
pulse—a recurring time pattern that resembles the ticking of a clock. In
most popular and dance music, the pulse is explicitly stated, often by
drumbeats or by a regular accompaniment pattern. In more complex music,
the beat is often only implicit—a kind of common denominator for the
actual lengths of the notes, which may be longer or shorter than the
pulse itself. (When the listener taps a foot to such music, however, the
pulse again becomes explicit.) For the pulse to be heard as a common
denominator, the lengths of the individual notes must be its exact
multiples or subdivisions (such as two short notes, each half as long as
the pulse, or a note twice the length of the pulse). The tempo of the
music determines the speed of the beat. In a fast tempo, the beat has a
relatively short time value; in a slow tempo, the value of the beat is
longer.
Just as the beats regulate the durations of
such short musical events as a note or a pair of notes, the beats
themselves are regulated by larger recurring units called measures.
Measures are formed by stressing the first in a series of two or more
beats, so that the beats group themselves into a pattern, for example;
ONE two,
ONE two, or
ONE two three, ONE two
three. (The first beat is called the downbeat of the measure; the last
beat is called the upbeat.) The term
meter can refer, first, to
this general process of regular accentuation, and second, to the
particular metrical grouping used in a given piece. In musical notation,
meter is indicated by the time signature. In the time signature , for
example, the lower number, 4, indicates that the basic pulse is written
as a quarter-note; the upper number, 2, indicates that each measure has
two quarter notes. Similarly, in meter (or time) each measure has
six eighth-notes. In meters such as , which are considered more complex
and are known as compound meters, each measure has, in addition to the
principal accent on the first beat, one or more subsidiary accents. Thus
a measure has a primary accent on the first beat and a secondary
accent on the fourth beat: ONE two three, Four five
six.
Metrically organized music is highly
structured and tends to be regular. Once the meter is established,
however, it need not be rigidly adhered to at all times; the listener's
mind will retain the pattern even if the music temporarily contradicts
it. Thus, a normally weak beat can be stressed, producing a syncopation
(an accent that works against the prevailing meter). Conversely, a
strong beat may occasionally be suppressed completely. Indeed, in
complex metrical music a degree of tension always exists between, on the
one hand, the meter as an abstract system of regulation and, on the
other hand, the rhythmic flow of the actual note lengths—a flow that at
times supports the meter and at times does not. Furthermore, the pulse
need not necessarily be maintained with absolute rigidity; it may be
played rubato, that is, with variations so slight that they do not
destroy the basic value.
III
LARGER TIME UNITS
Just as beats are grouped into measures,
measures are themselves grouped into larger units. Such groupings
produce the more extended segments of time that determine the form of
the music. A motive (the shortest melodic idea that forms a relatively
complete musical unit) may consist of more than one measure. One or more
motives may be repeated and varied to form a phrase (a yet larger unit
with a still more definite sense of ending, corresponding roughly to a
sentence in language). Phrases are combined to produce sections, and
sections are combined to produce entire compositions. Musical form is
shaped by the relationships among these various time units and also by
the relationship of these units to the whole; form in music is thus
basically rhythmic in nature.
IV
WESTERN USE OF RHYTHM
From the middle Ages to the present, Western
music has consisted primarily of multipart music, in which two or more
melodies are performed simultaneously, or else a melody is combined with
accompaniment. This means that more than one note sounds at once.
Moreover, the relationship of the simultaneous notes must conform to the
requirements of Western music's highly developed system of harmony.
These facts made necessary the development of a system of rhythm that
could precisely regulate the various parts, allowing them to move
independently, yet in strictly controlled coordination. The previously
described metrical system, with its common underlying time-length
framework, provided an ideal means for such coordination. Western music
also required a notational system in which large numbers of mutually
related time values could be indicated exactly; this is called Musical
Notation. The Western system of rhythm has thus been to some extent a
matter of rational control and measurement. It has also made possible
the creation of extended multipart compositions of great technical and
dramatic complexity.
V
20TH-CENTURY TRENDS
In the 20th century various composers tried to
break away from what they considered the overly regular quality of
metered music. One way was to alter the lengths of measures, creating a
kind of variable meter. Thus, a series of four measures might have time
signatures of , , , and . The only common denominator is the
eighth-note of the pulse itself, which is added to produce a series of
irregular larger groupings: 3 + 4 + 2 + 5. Another technique is
polymeter, the simultaneous use of different meters in different parts.
A more extreme approach, found in some music after about 1950, avoids
meter entirely. Performers are allowed to fit a certain number of notes
within a given time span (such as 10 seconds) at will, without following
rules for exact coordination or measurement of the durations.
VI
NON-WESTERN SYSTEMS
In a sense, recent Western music seems to be
coming closer to non-Western music, much of which is to some degree
nonmetric, and in which improvisation is often important. Some musical
cultures limit music to a single line of melody, with a small number of
note lengths (in some cases, only two, one twice as long as the other).
The note lengths, however, can be combined in various ways to create
flexible, irregular larger patterns that are somewhat reminiscent of
those found in Gregorian chant in early Western music.
In India and Japan, in different ways, rhythm
is highly systematized yet still preserves a degree of flexibility that
transcends that of most Western music. In Indian music, for example, the
durations are organized within a recurring time cycle known as a
tala. Although tala has
something in common with the Western measure, its patterns are usually
considerably longer. Moreover, its subdivisions consist of units of
unequal length that combine to form a freely flowing musical continuum
within the tala.
Other cultures have developed highly complex
multipart music. African music, for instance, is largely improvised, the
various parts being held together by a constant basic unit beaten out on
a drum or by handclaps. The other parts are structured with great
freedom relative to this unit, producing their own metrical patterns
that only occasionally coincide with one another and with the basic
pulse. Although this system makes it impossible to produce the elaborate
harmonic effects characteristic of metrical multipart music, it results
in a rhythmic structure that is considerably more complex and varied.
Western Music
Western
music is from Europe and other areas of the
world settled by Europeans. Western music is one of several separate,
highly developed musical cultures, each of which has its own specific
theoretical base that encompasses, among other things, its own system of
tunings and scales.
Although an isolated cuneiform example
of Hurrian (Hittite) music of the 2nd millennium
BC has been tentatively
deciphered, the earliest European music known is that of the ancient
Greeks and Romans, dating from about 500
BC to AD300. Fewer
than a dozen examples of Greek music survive, written in an alphabetical
notation that cannot be deciphered with certainty. Greek and Roman
theories of the nature and function of music, however, are discussed at
length in the writings of such philosophers as Aristotle, Boethius,
Plato, and Pythagoras. These writers believed that music originated with
the god Apollo, the mythological musician Orpheus, and other divinities,
and that music reflected in microcosm the laws of harmony that rule the
universe. They believed, furthermore, that music influences human
thoughts and actions. Greek music was primarily monophonic (limited to
one melody at a time sung or played without harmony). Occasionally,
however, one or more musicians in an ensemble might play a variant of
the melody while other musicians were playing its original version. This
produced a somewhat more complex musical texture called heterophony.
The rhythm of Greek music was closely
associated with language. In a song, the music duplicated the rhythms of
the text. In an instrumental piece it followed the rhythmic patterns of
the various poetic feet. The internal structure of Greek music was based
on a system of modes that combined a scale with special melodic contours
and rhythmic patterns. A similar organization exists today in Arab music
and Indian music. Because each Greek mode incorporated rhythmic and
melodic characteristics, listeners could distinguish between them. Greek
philosophers wrote that each mode possessed an emotional quality and
that listeners would experience this quality on hearing a composition in
that mode. Today, without further knowledge of the music itself, no one
can say whether this idea was true in human experience or was only a
theory.
The most common Greek instruments were the
kithara, a form of lyre associated with Apollo, and the aulos, an
oboelike instrument associated with the god Dionysus. The kithara was
said to have had a calming or uplifting effect on listeners, and the
aulos was said to have communicated excitement. These instruments were
used in religious ceremonies as well as in the theater, where they
accompanied the performance of Greek dramas. Instrumental playing
reached its apex around 300BC,
when many musicians participated in contests.
The Romans seem to have carried on the Greek
musical traditions and to have contributed little of their own. They did
develop some brass instruments, however, which they used in battle and
in military processions. They also invented the hydraulis, an organ with
a hydraulic air-pressure stabilizer.
III
EARLY MEDIEVAL PERIOD
In the Middle Ages most professional musicians
were employed by the Christian church. Because the church was opposed to
the paganism associated with ancient Greece and Rome, it did not
encourage performances of Greek and Roman music. Consequently, this
music died out.
Little is known of the unaccompanied chant
that was used in services of the early Christian church. Christian chant
appears, however, to have been drawn from the ritual music of the Jewish
synagogue and from secular tunes of the time. The chant melodies that
developed in Rome were inventoried and assigned specific places in
church ceremonies during the period from the 5th to the 7th century.
A famous and well known chant is the
Gregorian Chant, It was originally known as the Roman chant until Pope
Gregory I, (known as “The Great”) who may have composed some of the
melodies and who actively encouraged an orderly, ritualized use of music
by the church. Because Gregory
and later popes preferred Gregorian chant to the varieties that had
developed elsewhere in Europe, Gregorian chant eventually superseded
most of the others. Gregorian and other chant styles are preserved in
many manuscripts. The musical signs used in these manuscripts, called
neumes,
are the earliest roots of modern musical notation.
By as early as the 9th century, many musicians
began to feel the need for a more elaborate music than unaccompanied
melody. They began to add an extra voice part to be sung simultaneously
with sections of the chant. The musical style that resulted is called
organum. In early organum the added voice part simply paralleled the
chant melody but was sung a fourth or fifth above it. Later the extra
part became an independent countermelody. Organum was important in the
history of music, because it was the first step toward the development
of the musical texture known as polyphony (multipart music), the
extensive use of which is the most distinctive feature of Western music.
Around the end of the 12th century, organum
was being written in three and four voice parts, forming long works that
could fill the vast spaces of Gothic cathedrals with large quantities of
sound. The principal centers in the development of organum were in
France, at the Abbey of Saint Martial in Limoges and at the Cathedral of
Notre Dame in Paris. An English version of organum, called gymel, had
also developed by this period.
In order for musicians to be able to read and
perform several different voice parts simultaneously, a precise system
of musical notation had to be developed. The notation of pitch had been
solved by the use of a musical staff of four, five, or more lines, with
each line or space representing a specific pitch, as in present-day
notation. The perfection of this system is attributed to the
11th-century Italian Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo. Time values proved
to be more difficult to notate. The solution that evolved in the 11th
and 12th centuries was based on a group of short rhythmic patterns
called rhythmic modes. The same pattern, or mode, was repeated over and
over until the composer indicated by a sign in the notation that another
rhythmic mode was to supersede it. In music using this "modal notation,"
a variety of rhythmic movement was achieved by employing different modes
simultaneously in different voice parts and by changing modes during the
course of a composition. By the late 13th century modal notation had
been abandoned, and the beginnings of the modern system of long and
short note values had come into use.
Organum was a sophisticated musical
development that was encouraged and appreciated primarily by the
educated clerics in the Christian church. A secular musical tradition,
simpler in makeup, existed outside the church. This was the monophonic
music of itinerant musicians, the jongleurs and their successors, the
troubadours and trouvères of France and the minnesingers of Germany.
Both sacred and secular music used a wide
variety of instruments, including such string devices as the lyre and
psaltery and the medieval fiddle, or viele. Keyboard instruments
included the organ. Percussion instruments included small drums and
small bells.
IV
LATE MEDIEVAL MUSIC
A major stylistic change occurred in music
during the early 14th century. The new style was called
ars nova (Latin, "new art") by one of its leading composers, the
French prelate Philippe de Vitry. The resulting music was more complex
than any previously written, reflecting a new spirit in Europe that
emphasized human resourcefulness and ingenuity. De Vitry also invented a
system that included time signatures. This allowed musicians of the 14th
century to achieve a new rhythmic freedom in their compositions.
The new complexities took several forms.
Expanding on the principle of short rhythmic modes, composers of ars
nova used rhythmic patterns of a dozen or more notes, which they
repeated over and over in one or more voice parts of a composition. The
new principle is called isorhythm (Greek
iso,"same"). Composers used an
isorhythmically organized voice part as the foundation for large works
and wove other melodies over it to produce intricate polyphonic designs.
The foundation voice was usually taken over from a portion of Gregorian
chant. This borrowed melody was known as the
cantus firmus (Latin, "fixed
melody"). The musical genre in which composers used the isorhythmic
principle to the greatest extent was the motet. Some motets, in addition
to complexities of structure, contained several texts sung
simultaneously.
A second complexity of ars nova concerned the
overall structure of music written for the mass. Before 1300, polyphonic
settings had sometimes been written for separate sections of the mass.
In the 14th century, for the first time, all five sections that make up
the Ordinary of the mass were treated as an integrated whole. The first
person to do this was the French cleric, poet, and composer Guillaume de
Machaut. His example, however, was not followed until the next century.
A distinctive feature of the ars nova was the
increased attention given to secular music. For the first time the major
composers of the period wrote secular as well as sacred music. The
unharmonized melodies that had been sung in the 13th century by the
troubadours and trouvères were expanded by 14th-century composers into
two- and three-voice pieces called
chansons (French, "songs"). The patterns of line repetition in the
texts for these chansons determined the overall form of the music. The
most commonly used schemes in France were the rondeau, the virelai, and
the ballade. In Italy the madrigal, the caccia, and the ballata were the
preferred types. The foremost Italian composer of the period was
Francesco Landini.
V
THE RENAISSANCE
Reacting against the complexities of the ars
nova, most early 15th-century composers preferred a simpler style of
music with smoothly flowing melodies, smoother-sounding harmonies, and
less emphasis on counterpoint. The first major impetus toward a simpler
style came from the English composer John Dunstable. The graceful
aspects of his style were soon adopted by composers on the continent of
Europe, especially those employed by the dukes of Bourgogne in
northeastern France. These Bourguignon composers were noted for their
chansons, in which one voice part acted as a principal melody and one or
two other parts served as an accompaniment. The Bourguignons also
developed the practice, begun by Machaut, of composing unified settings
of the Ordinary of the mass. As a result of their activities, the mass
became a monumental genre comparable in scope to the symphonies of the
19th century. Masses that used a cantus firmus were often based on
chansons or other secular melodies rather than on Gregorian chant. This
fact reflected the increasing influence of secular interests during the
Renaissance.
In writing contrapuntal music, Renaissance
composers relied heavily on imitation, the successive, closely spaced
restatement in one or more voice parts of the same melodic idea. The
technique of imitation had been in use since the late 14th century, but
during the Renaissance it became a principal structural element in
music. If one voice part imitated another consistently for a relatively
long span of time, the two voices formed a canon. Pairs of voices in
Renaissance music sometimes moved in canon throughout an entire piece or
section while shorter imitations were occurring among the other voice
parts.
The most versatile early Renaissance composer
was Guillaume Dufay. He wrote motets that approached the complexity of
the style of ars nova as well as chansons in the newer, lighter manner.
The outstanding composer of chansons was Gilles Binchois.
The influence of Bourguignon composers
declined by the mid-15th century. From about 1450 until about 1550 most
of the important musical posts in Europe were held by composers born in
present-day Holland, Belgium, and the adjoining French territories.
These composers are often called Netherlanders after the name of their
native region.
In general, the Netherlanders preferred a
homogeneous sound, for example, that made by an unaccompanied chorus.
The predominant texture of their music was contrapuntal, with all voice
parts equal in importance. These musical features contrasted with the
typical Bourguignon sound, in which each voice part had its own color
(for instance, a solo voice accompanied by two different solo
instruments), and in which one voice dominated the others.
The Netherlanders continued the Bourguignon
tradition of composing chansons, motets, and masses. Although many
excellent masses were composed in the late 15th and 16th centuries, the
mass was not as exciting a challenge then as it had been to the
Bourguignons. The basic techniques for unifying an entire mass had
become the common property of all composers, and mass texts, which
always remain the same, suggested fewer new kinds of musical setting.
Largely for these reasons, the motet became the vehicle for
experimentation. The texts, drawn from all parts of the Bible as well as
from other sources, evoked many illustrative musical ideas from
composers. Chansons of the 16th century moved away from the simple charm
of the Bourguignon love songs. They tended either to be elaborately
contrapuntal or else filled with witty musical allusions to birdcalls,
the cries of street vendors, and so forth. The chansons of the Parisian
composers Claudin de Sermisy and Clément Janequin exemplify the latter
style.
The leading Netherlanders were Johannes
Ockeghem, Jakob Obrecht, Josquin Desprez, and Orlando di Lasso. Among
the most prominent Italian musicians of the late Renaissance was
Giovanni da Palestrina. His music typifies the even flow of choral
polyphony that was the chief ideal of the Renaissance musical style.
Other noted musicians of the time included the English organist and
composer William Byrd and the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria.
Important to the growth of music was the development of techniques for
printing musical compositions. First devised about 1500 by the Venetian
printer Ottaviano dei Petrucci, such techniques were soon in use in
Antwerp, Nürnberg, Paris, and Rome.
VI
THE BAROQUE ERA
In the late 16th century, when Renaissance
polyphony was prevalent, new developments in Italy were beginning to
change the sound and structure of music.
Many Italian musicians disliked the polyphonic style of the
Netherlanders. Wishing to emulate their image of classical Greek music,
they favored less intricate compositions marked by frequent emotional
contrasts, a readily understandable text, and an interplay of various
voices and instruments. Such elements became especially prominent in
opera, a genre first performed in Florence at the end of the 16th
century and greatly developed in the 17th century by the Italian
composer Claudio Monteverdi. Other
new genres of vocal music included the cantata and the oratorio.
Instrumental music also became increasingly
prominent during the 17th century, often in the form of a continuous
contrapuntal work with no clear-cut divisions into sections or
movements; it bore such names as ricercare, fantasia, and fancy. A
second type of composition was made up of contrasting sections, usually
in both homophonic and contrapuntal textures; this type was known as the
canzona or sonata. Many instrumental pieces were based on an already
existing melody or bass line; they included the theme and variations,
passacaglia, chaconne, and chorale prelude. Pieces in dance rhythms were
often grouped together into suites. Finally, composers developed pieces
in improvisatory styles for keyboard instruments; these pieces were
called preludes, toccatas, and fantasias.
With the rise of new genres in the 17th
century, some of the basic concepts of musical structure were
transformed, especially in Italy. Instead of writing pieces in which all
voices from soprano to bass participated equally in the musical
activity, composers concentrated on the soprano and bass parts and
merely filled in the remaining musical space with chords. The exact
spacing of the chords was unimportant, and composers often allowed a
keyboard player to improvise them. The terms
basso continuo, thoroughbass, and
figured bass refer to the bass line and the chordal filling, which
formed a texture used in all types of music, particularly in solo songs.
Another important 17th-century innovation
changed the fluid style of much late Renaissance music into one marked
by numerous contrasting elements; it was known variously as concertato,
concertate, and concerto, from
concertare (Latin, "to struggle side by side"). The contrasts
occurred on many musical levels, such as contrasting instruments or
contrasting densities of sound, with, for example, a single instrument
opposed by a group of instruments; contrasting rates of speed; and
contrasting degrees of loudness. These contrasting features were made to
compete or alternate with one another in order to produce an aggressive,
excited musical style, which was applied to music for all instruments as
well as for the voice and was used in all forms and genres.
Outstanding composers of the 17th and early
18th centuries included the following: the Italians Arcangelo Corelli,
Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, and Antonio Vivaldi; the
Germans Dietrich Buxtehude and Heinrich Schütz; the Englishman Henry
Purcell; the Italian-Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lully; and the Frenchman
Jean Philippe Rameau.
Toward the end of the 17th century, the system
of harmonic relationships called tonality began to dominate music. This
development gave music an undercurrent of long-range relationships that
helped to smooth out some of the abruptness of contrasts in the earlier
baroque style. By the early 18th century composers had gained a firm
control over the complex forces of tonality. By this time, too, they had
largely abandoned the idea of frequent shifts in mood and had begun to
favor a more moderate and unified approach. Often an entire piece or
movement was an elaboration of one emotional quality, called an affect.
The control over tonality and the emphasis on single moods were largely
responsible for the feeling of security and inevitability in the music
of this time, including the music of the two greatest late baroque
German composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.
VII
PRECLASSICAL AND CLASSICAL PERIODS
Beginning around 1720 new developments once
again began to undermine the prevailing musical style. Younger musicians
found baroque counterpoint too rigid and intellectual; they preferred a
more spontaneous musical expression. In addition, the late baroque ideal
of establishing a single emotional quality and maintaining it throughout
a composition seemed constricting to these younger composers.
The reaction against baroque style took
different forms in France, Germany, and Italy. In France the new
current, often called rococo or
style galant (French, "courtly style"), was represented by the
French composer François Couperin. This style emphasized homophonic
texture, that is, melody with chordal accompaniment. The melody was
ornamented with embellishments such as short trills. Instead of an
uninterrupted stream of music, as in a baroque fugue, French composers
wrote pieces consisting of combinations of separate phrases, as in music
for dance. The typical composition was short and programmatic, that is,
it portrayed nonmusical images such as birds or windmills. The
harpsichord was the most popular instrument, and many suites were
written for it.
In northern Germany the preclassical style was
called empfindsamer Stil
(German, "sensitive style"). It encompassed a wider range of contrasting
emotions than the style galant, which tended to be merely elegant or
pleasant. German composers usually wrote longer compositions than the
French and used a variety of purely musical techniques to unify their
pieces. They did not rely on nonmusical images, as did the French. The
Germans thus played a significant role in the development of abstract
forms, such as sonata form, and in the development of large instrumental
genres, such as concerto, sonata, and symphony.
In Italy the preclassical style did not have a
special name, perhaps because it did not break sharply with music of the
immediate past. Italian composers, however, contributed a great deal to
the development of new genres, especially to the symphony. The Italian
opera overture, often called a sinfonia, usually had no musical or
dramatic connection with the opera it introduced. Italian musicians
sometimes played opera overtures in concerts, and composers eventually
began to write independent instrumental pieces following the format of
the overture. This format consisted of three movements, the first and
last in fast tempos, and the middle one in a slow tempo. Within each
movement the progression of musical ideas usually followed a pattern
that eventually evolved into sonata form.
Once Italian composers had established the
idea of writing an independent instrumental sinfonia, the Germans took
over the idea and applied much intellectual ingenuity to it. The
principal German centers of activity were at Berlin, Mannheim, and
Vienna. Largely as a result of German activities, differentiated musical
forms, genres, and media arose. A distinction was made between the
medium of chamber music, in which one instrument plays each part, and
the medium of symphonic music, in which several instruments play each
part. Within the category of chamber music, composers began to
distinguish among several media, such as the string quartet, the string
trio, and the keyboard sonata with violin obbligato. For the orchestral
medium, composers wrote not only symphonies but also concertos for solo
instrument and orchestra.
The symphony, sonata, concerto, and string
quartet all followed similar formal outlines. They were in three or four
movements, one or more of which was in sonata form. Made possible by the
sophisticated use of tonality that had developed by the end of the
baroque era, sonata form arose in the mid-18th century and exploited the
complex web of harmonic relationships among separate tones and chords
within a key, and among different keys. Sonata form was based on a
movement away from and back to a principal key. To this was added the
statement of opposing themes at the outset of a movement and the
elaboration or separate development of one or all later on.
The climax of 18th-century musical
development came at the end of the century in the music of a group of
composers known as the Viennese classical school. The most important of
these composers were Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig
van Beethoven.
Opera in the 18th century also underwent many
changes. In Italy, where it was born, opera had lost much of its
original character as a drama with music. Instead it had become a series
of arias designed to display the talents of singers. Several European
composers reintroduced instrumental interludes and accompaniments as an
important element. They made greater use of choral singing and
introduced greater variety into the forms and styles of the arias. They
also tried to combine groups of recitatives, arias, duets, choruses, and
instrumental sections into unified scenes. The most important reformer
was the Bavarian-born Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose most influential
operas were written in Vienna and Paris from 1764 to 1779. Opera in the
classical period climaxed in the stage works of Mozart, in which every
aspect of the vocal and instrumental lines contribute to the plot
development and characterization.
VIII
THE ROMANTIC ERA
At the beginning of the 19th century, the
Viennese classical style as exemplified in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
prevailed throughout Europe. This style provided so satisfactory a means
for achieving the musical goals of the time that almost every composer
wrote in some variation of it. The style tended to become a mere formula
in the hands of less skilled composers. Partly for this reason,
experimenting musicians between 1810 and 1820 gradually began to reach
out in new directions.
The more adventurous musicians no longer felt
that it was essential to coordinate all elements in their music so as to
maintain clear formal outlines. They began to value other musical goals
more than the goal of formal clarity. Instead of moderation, they began
to value such qualities as impulsiveness and novelty. They might, for
instance, write an unusual progression of chords even though the
progression did not contribute to the overall harmonic direction of a
composition. Similarly, if the sound of a particular instrument seemed
especially attractive during the course of a symphony, they might write
a long solo passage for this instrument, even though the solo distended
the shape of the symphony. In this and other ways 19th-century composers
began to exhibit a romantic, as opposed to a classical, view of their
art. The aesthetic goals of romanticism were especially valued in
Germany and central Europe. The instrumental works of Franz Schubert, an
Austrian, and the piano music and operas of Carl Maria von Weber, a
German, were an early manifestation of this development in music.
The romantic composers were often inspired by
literary, pictorial, and other nonmusical sources. Consequently, program
music, or music that follows a nonmusical plan, was widely cultivated,
leading to the development of the symphonic poem. The French composer
Hector Berlioz and the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt became especially
prominent in this genre. Poetry
of the 18th and 19th centuries formed the basis of art songs in which
the composer portrayed with music the imagery and moods of the texts.
The German art song is known by
its German name, lied. Many
hundreds of lieder were composed in the 19th century, the most
successful being written by Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms,
Hugo Wolf, and, late in the century, Richard Strauss.
The ideal 19th-century genre was opera. Here,
all the arts were joined together to produce grand spectacles, highly
charged emotional situations, and opportunities for spectacular singing.
In France, Gasparo Spontini and Giacomo Meyerbeer established the style
called grand opera. Another Frenchman, Jacques Offenbach, developed a
comic-opera style called opéra
bouffe. Other important French opera composers were Charles Gounod
and Georges Bizet. In Italy, Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and
Vincenzo Bellini continued the 18th-century Italian tradition of
bel canto (Italian, "beautiful
singing"). In Italy during the second half of the century, Giuseppe
Verdi tempered the emphasis on bel canto by stressing the dramatic
values inherent in human relationships. Sentimental love and violent
emotions were stressed by Giacomo Puccini. In Germany, Richard Wagner
created an opera style called music drama, in which all aspects of a
work contributed to the central dramatic or philosophical purpose.
Unlike Verdi, who stressed human values, Wagner was usually more
concerned with legend, mythology, and such concepts as redemption.
Wagner developed the use of short fragments of melody and harmony,
called leitmotifs (German,
"leading motives"), to represent people, objects, concepts, and so on.
These fragments were repeated in the vocal or orchestral parts whenever
the thing they represented recurred in the actions or thoughts of the
characters.
During the 19th century a tradition of
abstract, or nonrepresentational, music was maintained in symphonies and
chamber music. Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, the German composer Felix
Mendelssohn, and the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner were especially
important in this regard. The Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
wrote symphonic and chamber works as well as operas and program music.
Works without programs but with freely devised forms were written for
the piano by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.
In all musical genres, a high value was placed
on uniqueness of expression. This gave rise not only to widely differing
personal styles of composition but to personality cults of virtuoso
performers and conductors. Two of the best known were Liszt and the
Italian violinist Nicolò Paganini. The Austrian conductor and composer
Gustav Mahler wrote symphonies that incorporated references to his
personal life.
By the end of the century the romantic style
had modified the language of music in several ways. The taste for
unusual chord progressions had brought about a disintegration of
tonality. Composers, especially Wagner, made increasing use of
chromaticism, a harmonic style with a high proportion of tones outside
the prevailing key. Folk music idioms became widespread, particularly on
the part of composers from Russia, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and Spain.
Among these composers were the Russians Mikhail Glinka, Modest
Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov; the Czechs Antonin Dvoøák and
Bedøich Smetana; and Edvard Grieg, a Norwegian. Later composers who made
use of folk elements included Louis Moreau Gottschalk, an American; Carl
Nielsen, a Dane; Jean Sibelius, a Finn; and Manuel de Falla, a Spaniard.
These folk idioms, along with others
discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, reintroduced into art
music many older concepts of harmony and rhythm. The same effect
resulted from systematic researches into the history of music, which
were begun in the 19th century. With the disintegration of tonality,
cohesion in a piece of music was less and less dependent on harmonic
movement and more and more dependent on the ebb and flow of intensities
and densities of sound. The use of sound as a structural element in
music was one characteristic of the late romantic French style called
impressionism, which was developed by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
Other French composers worked in a more satirical style; these included
Francis Poulenc and Erik Satie.
IX
THE 20TH CENTURY
The high value placed on individuality and
personal expression in the romantic era has grown even more pronounced
in the 20th century. This is partly the result of several features of
20th-century life. In this era more people from more social and
geographic backgrounds than ever before have been able to study music
and develop their aptitude for composition. An enormous range of tastes
and skills has thus become a feature of modern composition. Radios and
recordings bring music from once-remote countries in South America and
the Far East to the attention of musicians in all parts of the world.
The speed of modern communications makes it possible for listeners to
evaluate innovations more quickly than ever before. The result of these
features is that originality is more highly valued than in any previous
era, and that diversity and rapid change have become the most prominent
general features of 20th-century music.
Several styles that have played a significant
role during the century have names that refer to their harmonic
characteristics. Chromaticism has continued to be a prominent feature of
harmony in the 20th century. In the first decade of the century, largely
as a result of extreme chromaticism, atonality, or the complete absence
of tonality, occurred in the music of a few composers. The most notable
atonal composer of that time was Arnold Schoenberg, an Austrian.
In the early 1920s Schoenberg devised the
twelve-tone method of writing atonal music. In this method, the 12 tones
into which the octave is divided are placed in a row following any order
of the composer's choosing. The composer then adheres to this
succession, or a variation of it. Several successive tones may be
combined into chords to avoid merely repeating the entire row as a
melodic line. Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone method partly to
prevent himself from unconsciously slipping back into tonal patterns of
thought and partly to enable himself to organize large spans of atonal
music in a coherent manner. At first, Schoenberg's pupils, such as the
Austrian composers Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, were the only ones
who adopted his technique. Within 30 to 40 years of its appearance,
however, most major composers of the 20th century had used the method.
The other harmonic styles in 20th-century
music include polytonality, or the simultaneous use of more than one
tonality, and modality, or the use of modes and scales from the
Renaissance and earlier. The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók based much
of his harmonic style on the modes of old Hungarian folk music.
Microtonal music, another 20th-century
innovation, is also based on a harmonic concept. In microtonal music,
however, the octave has been divided into more than the usual 12 tones,
which means that some of the tones, the so-called microtones, sound
slightly sharp or flat when compared with the tones of a normal Western
scale.
Neoclassicism, which developed in the 1920s,
is a comprehensive style involving more than harmonic features. It
marked a return to the classic concept that all elements in a
composition should contribute to the clarity of the overall structure of
form. Neoclassicism included the use of a modified sense of tonality,
usually enlivened with a large amount of chromaticism, and the use of
formal schemes from the baroque and classical eras. The most prominent
representatives of neoclassicism were Igor Stravinsky and the
German-born Paul Hindemith. Others included the Russian Sergey Prokofiev
and Dmitry Shostakovich. Many American composers have embraced the
principles of neoclassicism, largely as a result of their years of study
in Paris with the French composer-teacher Nadia Boulanger. These
Americans included Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, and
Virgil Thomson.
Beginning in 1948, the French engineer and
composer Pierre Schaeffer and a few other composers in Paris began to
record sounds such as street noises and to combine them in various ways.
They called the result musique
concrète (French, "concrete music") because their music consisted of
sounds from everyday life rather than abstract and artificial sounds as
produced by musical instruments.
Musique concrète marked the beginning of electronic music, in which
electronic equipment, including computers, is used to generate sounds,
modify them, and combine them with each other. By the late 1960s many
hundreds of studios in all parts of the world had been equipped with
electronic equipment for composers to use.
Two other innovations in 20th-century music
are serialism and indeterminacy, or chance. Serialism is based on the
principle of the twelve-tone method. An order of succession is
established for rhythmic values for levels of loudness, for example, as
well as for pitches. All of these so-called rows are then repeated
during the course of the work. The technique is sometimes called total
serialism to distinguish it from the limited serialism involved in the
twelve-tone method. The serial composers have included Olivier Messiaen
and his pupil Pierre Boulez, both French; Karlheinz Stockhausen, a
German; Ernst Krenek, an Austrian; and Milton Babbitt, an American.
Music involving indeterminacy leaves some
aspect of the music to chance. The role of chance may take many
different forms. For instance, during the process of composition the
composer might base some choices of sounds on the outcome of a game of
dice or cards; or the composer might write several pages of music and
let the performer choose which pages to play and the order in which to
play them. Or, instead of using traditional musical notation, the
composer might prepare a design of lines and shapes and ask the
performer to devise some combination of sounds that will be equivalent
to the design. The composers who use indeterminate procedures have
included the Americans, John Cage and Earle Brown. Other composers such
as the Argentine Alberto Ginastera and the Greek Yannis Xenakis have
written music with certain indeterminate elements. Most composers in the
late 20th century freely draw on serial, electronic, indeterminate, and
other techniques.
Opera has suffered in the 20th century from
rising labor costs and declining subsidies, which were generously
provided in previous centuries from royal and state treasuries. The
genre nevertheless remains so attractive that only a handful of
important 20th-century composers have not written at least one opera.
Those 20th-century composers whose operas have proven most popular
include the German composers Richard Strauss and Hans Werner Henze and
the British composer Benjamin Britten. Music for the dance, previously
neglected by most major composers except Tchaikovsky, began to receive
the attention of most 20th-century composers, notably Prokofiev, Ravel,
and Stravinsky.
Although music in the 20th century seems to
encompass a bewildering variety of procedures and approaches, one
feature has emerged since 1950 as common to most progressive works. This
is the emphasis on sounds, their qualities, textures, densities, and
durations. For the first time in the history of Western music, this
element has begun to take precedence over all others, including melody,
which may not be present at all, and harmony, which may be treated
merely as one component in a series of sound complexes.