Definition of music
Cairo Museum. Photo © Otto Kohler, reproduced with permission.
"Socrates, why do you play the lyre before dying?" - "To play the lyre before dying. "(Anonymous)
We can attempt to define music by speculation about its origin. The first sounds they have been issued for convenience of communication or self-enchanted? To imitate the song of birds or beasts growl? To soothe a feverish child sleep or pain? Orpheus , the mythical inventor of the lyre, charmed animals, plants and even stones. The first dance she is born of the pulse produced by the first pace ? Or the cadences of the dancer they have triggered the desire to accompany them by clapping of hands or whistle voice? Whatever the position taken, it can only be a conjecture among others. Here is one of Alain: "When hunting, it is necessary that hunters warned one another from afar, they probably started screaming by rounding their hands around their mouths and then they made a megaphone and bark metal, and they roared in there by keeping the voice of ordinary treble and bass, joined a rhythm. Then the physical set as filtered and then cries, for a pipe does not also strengthens all sounds, but only those who are called harmonics , and as those get along better than others was called good criers and masters in the art of screaming people who pushed these sounds then it is thus that the voice became gradually trumpet, horn, trumpet, along with the art became the art of screaming sing all our music is based on notes given by a bugle or hunting horn. It's in our surroundings, in nature it must seek the origin of institutions, not in old papers ".
"Life without music is a mistake, a grueling task, an exile. "
Friedrich Nietzsche, letter to Peter Gast, 15 January 1888.
"The time" is "music, and it gives us when we run or we hear, is the only free time that we be given before death. "
Issues
Music or the omnipresence omnipresence of music?
Victor Hugo said: "Music is noise that thinks." He joined the inexhaustible and definition of Leibniz : "Music is a mathematics of the soul that account without knowing she has. This definition of Leibniz is it worth our time? Let us begin with a phenomenon so encysted in our time that we do not perceive it as something recent: it is the invasion, the infiltration of all our social and personal life through music, in the influence of technological discoveries allowing the recording and dissemination of sound permanent. An American philosopher, Allan Bloom , describes this phenomenon convincingly: "We are, he writes, in an era of music and moods that accompany it. To find the equivalent of this explosion of musical enthusiasm, we must go back at least a century back and discuss Germany and the atmosphere surrounding the operas of Wagner . The Wagnerian Wagner lived. Today also, we can say that a huge part of our young people between ten and twenty live for music, it is their passion, nothing else like it and the enthusiasm they can take anything seriously that is alien to the music. "
We are in an era of music. We do indeed live in an era where it invades and permeates everything. Anthropologists will argue that it also permeated the entire life of our ancestors. Indeed, in Civilization Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman times - has been the cradle of western music - various musical forms presided at great rites of daily life. In a way that anthropologists have grouped these musical events around religion, war and great moments of life in society. Among the Egyptians and Romans in particular, there was music in the temples, during banquets and celebrations and military parades. What the current phenomenon is new? With that in an ever more important in our lives, we pick our most sounds, they are imposed on us, whereas before the advent of industrialization in the sound, the use made music was limited and ritualized.
First, it required a long apprenticeship was necessary because, for lack of proper musical notation, to memorize to pass it, and secondly, he had to hear it or understanding it - which n does not preclude, on the contrary, the ability to improvise - or they could buy music, or move to places ad-hoc. Allan Bloom has shown that music has the ability to give "a rationale and an undeniable pleasure in rewarding activities that accompanies it: the soldier who hears a military band chanting and marching, is captivated reassured the prayer of the believer is exalted by the sound of the organ in the church, and the lover is transported and feels soothed his conscience by the romantic guitar "(2).
But how to justify the chant ininterrompable uninterrupted broadcast in all public places, where all styles of music succeed in anarchy? Their repetition inevitably leads to the differentiation
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Music. Conference Dandrel Louis (University of All Knowledge, December 22, 2000), "Making a state of music today requires an inventory abundant and diverse. We can try to see or hear more clear by observing the changes of listening situations, techniques for processing and dissemination of sound, or the evolution of architecture. The extreme diversity of the music seems to coincide with the splitting and mixing areas where it taking shape and spreading. Some anthropologists and historians have highlighted the relationship between developments of traditional music and learned their acoustic environment. The production and consumption of music seems to date doubly linked to their environment they help shape but they are closely dependent. " You can listen to this lecture in Real Audio (Telerama.fr).
Muzak, the foreman Music
The distribution of sound in public places falls within the most important companies named Muzak, based in New York in 1934. The company in its advertising is as a technique for contemporary administrative "and therefore not as a form of art or entertainment." This music is essentially intended to increase the production of workers in offices, public places, and as such, uses the known methods of packaging. "The product is intended for offices and factories of this sequence of songs in fifteen minutes ... each sequence moving from a slow to a fast pace. The intensity and tempo of the sequences themselves as up and down depending upon the course of a day of work, corresponding to the ups and downs of the mood of employees, or other psychological or environmental factors predetermined by the department human genius in the offices of Muzak New York (1). The results are they at the height of human genius? Surveys have shown that the use of Muzak increases productivity "especially among those whose educational level is low."
Muzak is not content to play this role in the psychosocial world of work, it is also found in the medical world where he is "used as an aid to anesthesia in the operating rooms in some hospitals. The sounds of what made the music they wake up?
This music is distinguished by its sanitized orchestration fixed and flat. It serves, among others, 22 of the 25 largest U.S. industries, and the music she makes is carefully developed and distributed in 18 countries in over 500 cities worldwide.
"The Canadian composer and writer R.Murray Schafer questioned the validity of the claim of Muzak to "mask" sounds less attractive as those of machinery factories or the hum of supermarkets. He considers the growing ubiquity of the music he ironically calls "Moo-zak" as an invasion of privacy and denial of freedom of choice. He also sees the germ of Muzak in a general atrophy of aesthetic sensibility by the inevitable exposure to some semblance of music that could make the unsuspecting subjects less receptive to listening experiences conscious not only of the true and the music that entertains, but also the natural environment.
Nietzsche's critique of modernity in music
"In music, we lack an aesthetic that would refer to impose rules on them and musicians create a consciousness we lack, and this is a consequence of a genuine struggle for the" principle "- because , as musicians, we mock the whims qu'Herbart has arisen on this area, as well as those of Schopenhauer . In fact, it follows that a major difficulty: we are no longer able to motivate the notions of "model", "MA", "perfection" - we grope blindly, with the instinct of an old love and a old admiration in the field of values, we are almost inclined to believe that "what we like is" ... This arouses my suspicion everywhere designate to hear Beethoven , innocently, as a " classic "I argue with rigor as in other arts, is meant by classical type opposite to that which is Beethoven. But when I see this decomposition in Wagner style that stands out, what is called his dramatic style, displayed and revered as a "model", a "master" "progress", my impatience at its peak. The dramatic style in music, as understood by Wagner, is the renunciation of any kind of style, on the pretext that there is something that is a hundred times more important than music, that is say the drama. Wagner knows how to paint, he uses music, not for making music, it reinforces attitudes, he is a poet, and finally he called the "beautiful feelings", the "lofty ideas", like all artists theater. - With all this he has won the women in his favor, and those who want to cultivate their minds, but these people, what have they to do with music? All this has no consciousness for art, all of which do not suffer when all the virtues of essential commodities and art are trampled and narguées for secondary intentions (as ancilla drarnaturgica). Never mind all the enlargements of the means of expression, though, that should express the art itself has lost the rule to guide him. The pictorial splendor and power of sound, the symbolism of the resonance, rhythm, color in the harmony and dissonance, meaning evocative music, the sensuality in the music that Wagner has brought victory - all Wagner recognized in the music, he sought there, the shot has to expand. Victor Hugo has done something similar to the language already but now we wonder in France, though in the case of Victor Hugo, that was not at the expense of language ... where, through the strengthening of sensuality in language, reason, intellect, deep compliance with the laws of language have not been lowered? In France, the poets have become fine artists, musicians in Germany comedians and scribblers are not this evidence of decadence? "
THE MUSIC IN THE ANCIENT.
If far back in civilization, it is impossible to pinpoint a time when the music began. Undoubtedly, it has always been about music around the world.
Philosophers and writers to music
Historically, there have been philosophers and writers interested in music. Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Quintilian, With My T'sien in the past, and closer to us Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many others, regarded the music as one of the most profound speculations of the human mind. The poets have always sung Euterpe, and Paul Valery, nowadays, is not averse to flirting with the lady. But poets exalt and magnify all things, while philosophers and writers have sometimes hard hand. We know how fruitful were the ideas of Schopenhauer on music and everything that Wagner is the philosopher of the will. We also know that Nietzsche did not broach the music without passion, as revealed books as Human, All Too Human and The Gay Science, and others like Nietzsche against Wagner and The Wagner Case, destroying a god worshiped terribly. With Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, it is the presence of very sophisticated philosophers things music. The author of Zarathustra is Nietzsche wrote many works for piano and melodies that are being published. Despite the success of his comic opera Le Devin du village, we do not consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a musician by profession. However, items that Jean-Jacques has written for the Encyclopedia of Diderot are among the most important work of musicology of (...)
Glossary
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom (Indianapolis September 14, 1930 - Chicago October 7, 1992).
American philosopher. A student of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago.
Known primarily for having been propelled into the media by his international bestselling pamphlet, 1987 The Closing of the American Mind (translated into French by L'Âme désarmée), in which Bloom attacks the model of liberal education after the Second World War, and the overall influence of mass culture on their minds.
Bloom is known for his teaching and his translations of Platon and Rousseau.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer, born 16 or 17 December 1770 in Bonn (at the time of the Holy Roman Empire and died March 26, 1827 in Vienna (Austria).
The cadences
The term comes from Italian cadenza - fall - itself derived from the verb cadere - to fall.
In classical music, a cadence is originally a form of melodic and harmonic whose function is to enter a piece, or at least, a musical phrase.
There are mainly six types of cadences. The perfect cadence, which is most used, must be considered the archetype of the pace : others indeed are but avatars, in other words, cadences perfect with something less. We distinguish :
- the perfect cadence is a cadence consisting of a sequence of steps V and I, both in their ground state (that is to say that the basic agreement is the bottom in both cases) and the highlights.
- the Italian cadence - or cadence completed - is a cadence consisting of a sequence of steps IV, V and I.
- the imperfect cadence is a cadence consisting of a sequence of steps V and I, one of the two agreements at least, is to overthrow the state - most often, the degree that I was a sixth chord.
- the deceptive cadence - or cadence avoided, or even deceptive cadence - a cadence is a sequence consisting of between the fifth degree and a degree other than the first, which is expected - a reference to the perfect cadence or cadence imperfect .
- the half-cadence - or cadence to the dominant - is a cadence consisting of a sequence producing the fifth degree - to the ground state, most often.
- the cadence plagal is a cadence, usually consisting of a sequence of steps IV and I.
The chant
Classical period
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 at Röcken, Saxony - August 25, 1900 in Weimar, Germany) is a German philosopher and philologist.
Nietzsche's work relates primarily to the metaphysical. His writings include criticism of religion, morality, contemporary culture, art and philosophy. His distinctive style has its roots in the aphorisms and poetry. Nietzsche's influence is substantial in philosophy and beyond, notably in existentialism and postmodernism.
Harmonics of a sound
The harmony
Harmony is the deliberate use of frequencies simultaneously, with a view to provide relief and depth to the song or instrumental performance : she represents the aspect vertical music, while the melody is the aspect horizontal.
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (Leipzig, July 1, 1646 - Hanover, 14 November 1716) was a philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian and German lawyer who wrote in Latin, French and German.
The musicology
Orpheus
Orpheus is a legendary hero of Greek mythology, son of the king of Thrace Œagre and the muse Calliope.
He knew from the tones of his lyre, charmed wild animals and managed to move inanimate objects. It was filled with many gifts by Apollo, and it is said that he added two strings to the traditional seven-stringed lyre given him by the god, in tribute to the nine Muses, patrons of the arts and letters, which his mother belonged.
The rythm
The rhythm is in music, which determines the duration of notes to each other. The rhythm, melody, tempo and nuance are the four main facts to characterize a given musical phrase.
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher, born February 22, 1788 in Danzig in Prussia, died September 21, 1860 in Frankfurt / Main.
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813, Leipzig - 13 February 1883, Venice) was a German composer.
Engineering a rare outsized universality Wagner owes its importance in the history of Western music in his operas, particularly Der Ring des Nibelungen, a festival stage in a prologue and three days of which he himself wrote the poems and the design deliberately bumped habits of the time to go, in his own words, to a 'total art' show full continuous melody and use of leitmotif.
The western music
Western music is music, popular or learned, practiced in European countries and American or European influence, and / or North American, and / or South American, from Charlemagne to today. Its main features are:
- its age (about a thousand years),
- sa dimension polyphonique , dimension polyphonic
- its rating system and the importance accorded to it as opposed to the oral music,
- Finally, the prominence that Western music has come to occupy in the global scale, often to the detriment of other musical genres.