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History   Components of Music

During mankind's long history, music has been sung and played in countless ways. From preliterate peoples to more civilized societies, each culture developed its own style of singing and its own instruments. All music contains certain basic elements. These are rhythm, melody, harmony, and form.

HISTORY

The Origins of Music
In its most primitive form, music may evoke the sound of the elemnts - earth, air, fire, water.  Since humans have always been imitative animals, it seems natural that nature itself should have provided the scope for the earliest music and the materials for the earliest musical instruments.  Where these materials -- sticks, stones, bones, bells, reed pipes or whatever -- were not available, the human voice was a more than adequate substitute, relieving loneliness, making contact with other people, reflecting the rhythms of manual labor or simply of walking, celebrating victories, or paying tribute to primitive deities -- often in combination with dancing.

The sophisticated evolution of music -- even the notes of a simple scale of chord -- took place over a period of centuries.  There was a certainly a rich musical tradition in the years before Christ -- for example in India, China, Egypt and Greece, much of it tantalizing because it was passed on orally, not writtendown.  Even today, in Asia particulary, this tradition persists, because music is regarded  as improvisatory and contemplative, ceaselessly changing, rather than something perfected and fixed on paper.

In Europe, much of what we today call music emerged through the spread of Christianity and of Judaism, particularly through medieval plainsong chants, which were single lines of notated vocal melody in free rhythm (i.e. not divided into bar lengths) sung in churches, and through Gregorian chant, named after Pope Gregory I, in whose time (around AD 600) it was systematized.  This still forms part of Roman Catholic musical ritual. However, its modes (or 'scales') gradually gave way to the modern scale.

Rhythm involves time the duration, or length, of musical sounds. Tempo, the speed at which a piece is played, is sometimes associated with rhythm.

Essential to rhythm are pulsation, or steady beat, meter, and accent. When beats are combined in groups of two, three, or more to a measure, the result is called meter. Patterns of stress strong and weak accents are repeated over and over, as in the waltz rhythm ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three.

COMPONENTS OF MUSIC 

Harmony concerns the building of chords tones played together derived from the scale on which the music is based. It also involves the order in which successions of chords accompany a melody.

An example of the effective use of harmony is the second movement of Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony'. The initial melody is a monotone tune, or one with almost no variation, but the shifting harmony adds color, tension, and release to the composition.

Melody probably derives from the inflections of the human voice. It involves pitch, or the relative highness or lowness of tone. When pitches are musically organized, they are referred to as scales.

Some types of music consist mostly of melody. Other types may be based on a motif, or recurring succession of notes for example, the four notes at the beginning of Beethoven's 'Fifth Symphony'. When the melody in a longer composition is repeated in various forms, this basic tune is said to constitute its theme, or subject.

Form results from the way in which rhythm, melody, and harmony are put together. Good music has unity to satisfy a listener's ear and variety to maintain interest.

One of the simplest forms is produced by varying and repeating the melody. For example, 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' states a tune, varies it, then restates it. This formula, often referred to as A-B-A, is the simple ternary, or three-section, form sometimes called song form. A simple binary form would be A-B. A more extended form might be A-B-A-C-A the second rondo form. A current dance tune is frequently A-A-B-A, and a blues song is A-A-B.

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