Introduction to Music

It would be almost impossible to imagine a world without music, or someone completely unaware of the idea of ​​music. It is so linked to our lives, individual and social, that many of us have the soundtrack or musical background of our “memories”. Melodies that transport us to happy, dramatic or tragic moments, capable of making us feel every emotion and physical impact again. And despite all this, it is very difficult to clearly define what music is.

We could start with a casual definition, among friends; they are pleasant sounds that together express an emotion. A definition that we have left very incomplete and open to be able to start developing much more complex branches.

Moving in order within our definition, we come across the word sounds. This represents the main part of the definition since we have placed it at the beginning, and even so, it is completely inaccurate. Music does contain sounds, but a huge part of it is silence. Silences are a fundamental part of music and without them it would be impossible to conceive it.

Taking another step forward in our definition we find the word “pleasant”. Again, an inexact term and, in this case, it can even be contradictory. The value of what is pleasant is subjective, linked to culture, personal experience, transient mood, etc. What seems pleasant today, in a few minutes can be the worst experience of our lives. Being provocative, we could allude to pleasure for pain; what is pleasant to one masochist is likely to be painful to others, and in our case unpleasant. Furthermore, in all artistic expressions, the creator does not always have the intention of being pleasant; If we think of the music of a horror film, where the horrendous being “from beyond” is about to find us hidden in the closet, the last thing that comes to mind is pleasant music.

At the same time, it is almost impossible to have a definition without using an adjective, so we will try to change the pleasant word with a more suitable one. In the case of art, we could use the word “dramatic”, since drama, strictly speaking, comes from two Greek words, drao, which means “I do” and ma, which is the result of said action, and which was used by the same Greeks to refer to any type of performance, that is, a representation “manufactured” by the person. Obviously, this word was changing, becoming an event or situation that amazes us, to come to be understood as a difficult situation that is presented to us and how we will face it. But alluding to its original meaning, music is the result of the human interpretation of something, which we could limit to the intention of the musical creator.

Updating our definition a bit, music is a drama, or creative result, of sounds and silences that together express an emotion. We can be proud of our new definition! At least until we come up with another new problem. Not all music causes us emotion. Again, emotion comes from Latin and means (roughly) “something that moves us.”

Within the best-known music in the West, emotion usually plays a very important role. Almost all musical pieces take us on an imaginary journey that evolves, fights, transforms, and rests. But when we dig a little deeper into the traditional music of the West itself, the music of other cultures from certain places in Asia, Africa and pre-Columbian America, we find many examples of music whose function is not to transform or take us for a ride through our emotions. Some are even the result of the search for what never changes, for the perpetual, in which its capacity to make us enter a “trance” is estimated.

This would lead us to present two contradictory options; music is a drama of sounds and silences that together may or may not express an emotion.

Going into the detail of the words, we could ask ourselves if the term express is the most correct. Expression, of Latin origin, refers to squeezing what we carry inside, taking out what we carry inside. In the case of music, this is the expression of the artist, so it cannot contain an expression in itself. So the music is contained in the act of expressing and not the other way around. So our definition would have to change a bit to be something along the lines of “Music is the expression of the drama of sounds and silences, which may or may not provoke an emotion.”

Trying to clean up the definition a bit to make it as simple as possible, we can put together “drama of sounds and silences” within “auditory drama” since we usually perceive sounds and silences with our sense of hearing. And we can get rid of “causing or not, an emotion” since by proposing both options, we encompass the whole.

Our definition has become “music is the expression of auditory drama”. And as you can imagine, this still has serious definition problems. In the case presented by our definition, a speech made by a great orator could be defined as music, since it is the expression (of the speaker) of the auditory drama (the result of the auditory artificer of his oratory).

In music we have several elements that are usually present; the melody or horizontal relationship of the sounds, the harmony or vertical relationship of the sounds, the color or timbre (how one or more instruments sounds), the rhythm, the harmonic function, the structure, etc. The problem is that all these elements are temporary, variable, not universal, so the absence or use of each of these is not subject to an absolute. But it is usual that some of these are present in the process of musical artistic creation, so their importance is undeniable.

In the case of speech in oratory, semantics is one of the most important factors, but in music it may or may not be, but auditory speech is expected to function above semantics itself. In short, sounds and silences are more important than the words that are said for their meaning.

Now we will make an effort to include our most recent reflection in the definition: Music is the expression of auditory drama, which through the elements that form it, overcome the limits of semantics.

We have reached a definition, which although it is not perfect, gives us enough bases to be able to develop future topics about music. We hope that this definition will continue to transform, at least on an individual level, as we delve further into this wonderful world made up of sounds and silences.