A definition of music endeavors to give an accurate and concise explanation of music's basic attributes or essential nature and it involves a process of defining what is meant by the term music. Many authorities have suggested definitions, but defining music turns out to be more difficult than might first be imagined, and there is ongoing debate. A number of explanations start with the notion of music as organized sound, but they also highlight that this is perhaps too broad a definition and cite examples of organized sound that are not defined as music, such as human speech and sounds found in both natural and industrial environments. The problem of defining music is further complicated by the influence of culture in music cognition.
Inuit throat singing, or katajjaq, is a distinct type of throat singing uniquely found among the Inuit. It is a form of musical performance, traditionally consisting of two women who sing duets in a close face-to-face formation with no instrumental accompaniment, in an entertaining contest to see who can outlast the other; however, one of the genre's most famous practitioners, Tanya Tagaq, performs as a solo artist. Several groups, including Tudjaat, The Jerry Cans, Quantum Tangle and Silla + Rise, also now blend traditional throat singing with mainstream musical genres such as pop, folk, rock and dance music.
Musical analysis is the study of musical structure in either compositions or performances. According to music theorist Ian Bent, music analysis "is the means of answering directly the question 'How does it work?'". The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Bent, "its emergence as an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s. However it existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards."
The Canada Council for the Arts, commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.
The emancipation of the dissonance was a concept or goal put forth by composer Arnold Schoenberg and others, including his pupil Anton Webern, who styled it The Path to the New Music. The phrase first appears in Schoenberg's 1926 essay "Opinion or Insight?". It may be described as a metanarrative to justify atonality. The musicologist Jim Samson describes:
As the ear becomes acclimatized to a sonority within a particular context, the sonority will gradually become 'emancipated' from that context and seek a new one. The emancipation of the dominant-quality dissonances has followed this pattern, with the dominant seventh developing in status from a contrapuntal note in the sixteenth century to a quasi-consonant harmonic note in the early nineteenth. By the later nineteenth century the higher numbered dominant-quality dissonances had also achieved harmonic status, with resolution delayed or omitted completely. The greater autonomy of the dominant-quality dissonance contributed significantly to the weakening of traditional tonal function within a purely diatonic context.
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition. The motif is the smallest structural unit possessing thematic identity.
The Thomas Henry Pentland Molson Prize for the Arts is awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Two prizes are awarded annually to distinguished individuals. One prize is awarded in the arts, one in the social sciences and humanities. The prizes are $50,000 each, and intended to encourage continuing contribution to the cultural and intellectual heritage of Canada.
Music can be analysed by considering a variety of its elements, or parts, individually or together. A commonly used list of the main elements includes pitch, timbre, texture, volume, duration, and form. The elements of music may be compared to the elements of art or design.
Esthesic and poietic are terms used in semiotics, the study of signs, to describe perceptive and productive levels, processes, and analyses of symbolic forms. The corresponding terms for the processes are esthesis and poiesis.
In semiotics the neutral level of a sign is the "trace" left behind; the physical or material creation or remains of esthesic and poietic processes, levels, and analyses of symbolic forms. A part of all signs according to a tri-partitional definition, it corresponds to Saussure's "sound-image".
The 1957 Encyclopédie Larousse defines a cell in music as a "small rhythmic and melodic design that can be isolated, or can make up one part of a thematic context". The cell may be distinguished from the figure or motif: the 1958 Encyclopédie Fasquelle defines a cell as "the smallest indivisible unit", unlike the motif, which may be divisible into more than one cell. "A cell can be developed, independent of its context, as a melodic fragment, it can be used as a developmental motif. It can be the source for the whole structure of the work; in that case it is called a generative cell."
Satz is any single member of a musical piece, which in and of itself displays a complete sense, such as a sentence, phrase, or movement.
Music semiology (semiotics) is the study of signs as they pertain to music on a variety of levels.
Jean Le Moyne, was a Canadian theologian, journalist, social theorist, and screenwriter. He was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1982.
The term seriation [mise en série] was proposed for use in semiotics by Jean Molino and derived from classical philology. Seriation "invokes the idea that any investigator, in order to assign some plausible meaning to a given phenomenon, must interpret it within a series of comparable phenomena." One cannot interpret what philology calls a hapax; that is, an isolated phenomenon. Art historian Erwin Panofsky has explained the situation in very clear terms:
Ashok K. Vijh, is an Indian born Canadian chemist. He was born in Punjab but moved to Canada in 1962.
Édouard Lock is a Canadian dance choreographer and the founder of the Canadian dance group, La La La Human Steps.
Donald Joseph Savoie is a Canadian public administration and regional economic development scholar. He serves as a professor at l'Université de Moncton. In 2015, he was awarded the Killam Prize for his contribution to the field of social sciences.
Pierre Anctil is a Canadian historian. He is specialist of the Jewish community of Montreal, of Yiddish literature and of the poetic work of Jacob-Isaac Segal. He also published on the history of immigration to Canada. He translated a dozen Yiddish books into French.
Benoît Lacroix was a Quebec theologian, philosopher, Dominican priest, professor in medieval studies and historian of the Medieval period, and author of almost 50 works and a great number of articles.
