This article is about Music appreciation as an educational subject. For more information on teaching practices, see Music education.
The culminating point in some music appreciation classes is going out to hear a live performance.
Music appreciation is a division of musicology that is designed to teach students how to understand and describe the contexts and creative processes involved in music composition.
The concept of music appreciation is often taught as a subset of music theory in higher education and focuses predominantly on Western art music, commonly called "Classical music". This study of music is classified in a number of ways, including (but not limited to) examining music literacy and core musical elements such as pitch, duration, structure, texture and expressive techniques. It explores the aesthetic theories associated with the listening experience in addition to an explorative history of music.[1]
Music appreciation classes also typically include information about the composers, the instruments and ensembles, and the different styles of music from an era. Courses revolving around this material are often designed for non-music tertiary students. Students learn how to listen and respond to recordings or live performances of musical pieces or excerpts from pieces such as symphonies, opera arias and concertos.
"Appreciation," in this context, means the understanding of the value and merit of different styles of music. The term “appreciation” has roots in philosophy, where it is described in a musical sense as a “kind of formal analogue of emotional experience”.[2] It can be associated with musical criticism, and is used to describe the positive and negative responses of a given musical work from a scholarly perspective.[3]
Music Literacy
Coffee and synths. KayoDot album "Hubardo" recording, 2013-06-13
Music Literacy analyses the defining concepts of a given musical work. Students learn to critically analyse and articulate a series of music systems and their rudimentary elements, as well as to better understand musical notation and the tuning systems followed by composers in order to create music.
Fundamentals of Music
The Fundamentals of Music are used as a scope term to describe a number of phenomena applied to the study of music theory, including divisions of melody and harmony, form and tonal structure, rhythm and orchestration, and performative techniques. Students should be able to assess a given work of music and make a critical report on the fundamentals of music involved.
Pitch
Indicated melodies, modes, harmonies, chords, register and range.
Pitch governs melody and harmony, and is established by observing the order of notes in a work relative to a given musical scale. Students learn how to distinguish and notate relevant keys, scales, chord, register, and relevant modes.
Duration
Rhythm, pulse, tempo, metre and note values and rests.
Duration, also referred to as rhythm, assesses the meter (or time signature), and the values of notes and rests and their accents or stresses.
Dynamics & Expressive Techniques
Loud/soft, mood of music, directorial details to enhance or add variety.
Dynamics refers to the louds and softs of a sound, often described in Italian abbreviations. This category also analyses means of articulation or prescribed musical expression to guide a performer in replicating the composer's musical intent. Some instruments, predominantly strings, have unique or non-traditional methods of producing these differing sounds, (also referred to as expressive or extended techniques).[4]
Structure
Designated form or order of a musical work. Part organization.
Structure, also called musical form, distinguishes the shape of a piece of music in regard to its length, sections, and any similarities or identified repetition. There are a number of labelling procedures and identifies for musical genres with fixed ordinances and rules.
Texture
How “thin” or “thick” the individual layers of tempo, melody, and harmony are in an overall piece of music, e.g. homophony versus polyphony.
Texture refers to the overall layering (or separation) of multiple sounds and the resulting quality of sound. It is most commonly referred to as being “thick” or “thin” based on the density and range of pitches and diversity of instruments present in a work. Common textural types include monophonic and homophonic.[5]
Timbre
Identifying instrumentation, using adjectives to describe the nature of an instrument or its sound production.
Timbre, also referred to as tone colour, defines the use of adjectives to describe distinctive sounds or voicing of various musical instruments or voices based on the way they are played or the sound of their material. It is important to observe changes in sounding technique and analyse emotions and moods incited by a given musical work.[6]
Whilst not all students undertaking a course in Music Appreciation will be fluent in reading music, there is a basic understanding of musical notation required in order to correctly analyse a given musical work.
Music Appreciation in Media
Music appreciation can be applied to all kinds of musical performance, including live musical theatre.
Music can be appreciated in diverse mediums such as cinematography, theatre, and dance. For the post-millennial generation, music is now a commonplace integration with our lifestyles, and students studying music appreciation should seek to establish the underlying messages of artistic intent within their indirect consumption of musicology.[7]
Music is wholistically variable and evolves to accommodate its medium. By introducing the medium of film, students learn to understand how the concept of music accompanying visual media can be applied to skills of composition and develop a more wholistic understanding of the influences of musical techniques by analysing film music.[8] In associating different genres of film media to musical media, we can ascertain similarities in musical conventions and various influences of more classical music at a narrative level.[9]
For those undertaking further education in the music theory field, exposure to live performances and musical media is beneficial in providing a real-world understanding of the applications of music appreciation. Students should consider what makes music memorable, and establish links between compositional techniques in a film score and the intended accompanying narrative. They delve into the compositional process by observing musical relevance within the context of a larger work and learn to examine how musicians develop unique style or meaning. Students learn to consider the significance and interpretation of lyrics or musical similarities as a greater whole and discuss meaning for the intended audience.[10]
↑ Yong, Zhou (2017). "Research on the Function of Film and Television Music in Music Appreciation Class". Proceedings of the 2017 7th International Conference on Social Network, Communication and Education (SNCE 2017). Paris, France: Atlantis Press. doi:10.2991/snce-17.2017.154. ISBN978-94-6252-386-9.
Barrett, Margaret S., "Music Appreciation: Exploring Similarity and Difference", International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, ISBN978-1-4020-2998-1
Percy A. Scholes, Music Appreciation: Its History and Technics (2005). ISBN1-4179-9595-5
In the most general of terms, music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Definitions of music vary depending on culture, though it is an aspect of all human societies and a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, psychology, and therapeutic contexts. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice, and thus is often credited for its extreme versatility and opportunity for creativity.
Music lessons are a type of formal instruction in playing a musical instrument or singing. Typically, a student taking music lessons meets a music teacher for one-to-one training sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour in length over a period of weeks or years. Depending on lessons to be taught, students learn different skills relevant to the instruments used. Music teachers also assign technical exercises, musical pieces, and other activities to help the students improve their musical skills. While most music lessons are one-on-one (private), some teachers also teach groups of two to four students, and, for very basic instruction, some instruments are taught in large group lessons, such as piano and acoustic guitar. Since the widespread availability of high speed. low latency Internet, private lessons can also take place through live video chat using webcams, microphones and videotelephony online.
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, formal sciences and computer science.
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section ; and to provide all or part of the harmony, i.e. the chords from a song's chord progression, where a chord is a group of notes played together. Therefore, the basic technique of rhythm guitar is to hold down a series of chords with the fretting hand while strumming or fingerpicking rhythmically with the other hand. More developed rhythm techniques include arpeggios, damping, riffs, chord solos, and complex strums.
A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections.
In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds together in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harmonic objects such as chords, textures and tonalities are identified, defined, and categorized in the development of these theories. Harmony is broadly understood to involve both a "vertical" dimension (frequency-space) and a "horizontal" dimension (time-space), and often overlaps with related musical concepts such as melody, timbre, and form.
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score", which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation ; the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built."
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Music information retrieval (MIR) is the interdisciplinary science of retrieving information from music. Those involved in MIR may have a background in academic musicology, psychoacoustics, psychology, signal processing, informatics, machine learning, optical music recognition, computational intelligence or some combination of these.
In music, ear training is a study in which musicians learn various aural skills to detect and identify pitches, intervals, melody, chords, rhythms, solfeges, and other basic elements of music, solely by hearing. Someone who can identify pitch accurately without context is said to have "perfect pitch". The application of this skill is somewhat analogous to taking dictation in written/spoken language. As a process, ear training is in essence the inverse of sight-reading, the latter being analogous to reading a written text aloud without prior opportunity to review the material. Ear training is typically a component of formal musical training and is a fundamental, essential skill required in music schools.
The Orff Schulwerk, or simply the Orff Approach, is a developmental approach used in music education. It combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to a child's world of play. It was developed by the German composer Carl Orff (1895–1982) and colleague Gunild Keetman during the 1920s. Orff worked until the end of his life to continue the development and spread of his teaching method.
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do original research on ways of teaching and learning music. Music education scholars publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, and teach undergraduate and graduate education students at university education or music schools, who are training to become music teachers.
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss composer, musician, and music educator who developed Dalcroze eurhythmics, an approach to learning and experiencing music through movement. Dalcroze eurhythmics influenced Carl Orff's pedagogy, used in music education throughout the United States.
Musical technique is the ability of instrumental and vocal musicians to exert optimal control of their instruments or vocal cords in order to produce the precise musical effects they desire. Improving one's technique generally entails practicing exercises that improve one's muscular sensitivity and agility. Technique is independent of musicality. Compositional technique is the ability and knowledge composers use to create music, and may be distinguished from instrumental or performance technique, which in classical music is used to realize compositions, but may also be used in musical improvisation. Extended techniques are distinguished from more simple and more common techniques. Musical technique may also be distinguished from music theory, in that performance is a practical matter, but study of music theory is often used to understand better and to improve techniques. Techniques such as intonation or timbre, articulation, and musical phrasing are nearly universal to all instruments.
Dance education is a practice whereby students are taught a broad understanding of dance as an art form or trained professionally in specific dance genres. Dance education also encompasses a research area in which scholars conduct original research on ways of teaching and learning dance. Currently, dance itself is considered an allied form of art and music, thus dance in formal education is closely knit with these disciplines.
Katherine Hoover was an American composer of Contemporary classical music and Chamber music, flutist, teacher of Musical composition and Music theory, poet, and later a conductor of her music. Her career as a composer began when few women composers earned recognition in Classical music in the 1970s. As shown in her list of known works, she has composed pieces for solo flute, mixed ensembles, chamber orchestra, choir, full orchestra, and many other combinations of instruments and voice. Some of her flute pieces incorporated Native American themes.
Arabic musical instruments can be broadly classified into three categories: string instruments (chordophones), wind instruments (aerophones), and percussion instruments. They evolved from ancient civilizations in the region.
Musical literacy is the reading, writing, and playing of music, as well an understanding of cultural practice and historical and social contexts.
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