The Music

  Music

         is an art form whose medium is sound. Its common elements are pitch which governs melody and harmony, rhythm and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation, dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek  of the Muse. In its most general form the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music, the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic dissemination of music.

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions, through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to personal interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art. It may also be divided among art music and folk music. There is also a strong connection between music and mathematics. Music may be played and heard live, may be part of a dramatic work or film, or may be recorded.

Concepts of music

Because of differing fundamental concepts of music, the languages of many cultures do not contain a word that can be accurately translated as music, as that word is generally understood by Western cultures (Nettl 2005). Inuit and most North American Indian languages do not have a general term for music. Among the Aztecs, the ancient Mexican theory of rhetorics, poetry, dance, and instrumental music used the Nahuatl term to refer to a complex mix of music and other poetic verbal and 

non-verbal elements, and reserve the word or cuicacayotl only for the sung expressions Leon-Portilla 2007, 11. In Africa there is no term for music in Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Birom, Hausa, Idoma, Eggon or Jarawa. 


Some languages in West Africa have no term for music but the speakers do have the conceptNettl 1989.musiqui is the Persian word for the science and art of music, being the sound and performance of music Sakata 1983,, though some things European influenced listeners would include, such as Quran chanting, are excluded.

Definition of music

An accurate and concise definition of music is fundamental to being able to discuss, categorize, and otherwise consider the phenomenon of what we understand as being music. Many have been suggested, but defining music turns out to be more difficult than might first be imagined. As this article will demonstrate, there is ongoing controversy about how to define music.

A famous example of the dilemma in defining music is John Cage’s composition titled 4'33''. The written score has three movements and directs the performer(s) to appear on stage, indicate by gesture or other means when the piece begins, then make no sound and only mark sections and the end by gesture . Others argue it is music because the conventional definitions of musical sounds are unnecessarily and arbitrarily limited, and control over the organization of the sounds is achieved by the composer and performer(s) through their division of what is heard into specific sections (Gann 2010).
Problems of defining music also arise from differences in the conception of music in different cultures.