In my last post I said that the fact the music is notated has had a defining impact on the music that we traditionally call 'classical.' (For some of the reasons why this is an inadequate and inappropriate name, see the last post). If we think about it as 'notational music' we are close to putting our finger on something essential about it; the fact it is written down has both formed and informed the music itself.
For example...
One of the unique things about music in general is how fleeting and intangible it is. It isn't like the visual arts, which produces art you can take in at a glance; there's nothing material about the sound itself that you can perceive or interact with. Music unfolds within time, structuring time even as it flows through it, all by means of distinct sound events linked by time, if nothing else.
Notation is a very powerful tool that allows you to visualize-conceptualize these 'sound events' (I'll oversimplify and call them 'notes' from now on) by mapping them onto a grid, reducing their placement in time to something you can see right in front of you. This makes it easy to see how each individual note interacts and relates to every other note that is occurring both simultaneously and sequentially (i.e. all the other notes happening at the same time, as well as before and after).
This visual representation allowed European musicians to conceive of the notion of harmony in the first place: first as several simultaneous melodies (polyphony - think of a fugue by Bach), then as chords progressing to some tonal goal, supporting a main melody (homophony - think of a Mozart sonata, where, for example a violin plays over piano chords). Without the device of notation, it would be near-impossible for one person to hold all the information in their head that makes up the harmony of even a relatively simple 'classical' piece. People that do memorize the full harmony of a simple piece (for example, a solo piano piece) can generally only do so because they have become so fluent with the notation that they have internalized it. They have basically memorized and internalized a series of rules and conventions of harmony that could not have developed independent of a means to write them down.
(A rough analogy: it's not that hard to imagine memorizing a play -- say a monologue -- but it's hard to imagine someone writing a whole play in their head. Or better yet, someone could, but it would probably be in verse, with a lot of repetition, rhyming, parallelism, and other mnemonic devices, like in the epic poems that bards from various cultures recite. It's impossible to imagine a whole genre of long prose plays developing without the medium of writing.)
So there we have it: notation made possible what is often called the distinctive development of Western music -- harmony. On the other hand, it also helps explain the traditional rhythmic deficiency of this notational music -- rhythms are easier to feel than they are to write. So while Europeans developed the art of combining simultaneous tones to high level through notation, cultures like those of India and Africa developed rhythm to great heights of complexity and dynamism through aural and oral means.
One of the unique things about music in general is how fleeting and intangible it is. It isn't like the visual arts, which produces art you can take in at a glance; there's nothing material about the sound itself that you can perceive or interact with. Music unfolds within time, structuring time even as it flows through it, all by means of distinct sound events linked by time, if nothing else.
Notation is a very powerful tool that allows you to visualize-conceptualize these 'sound events' (I'll oversimplify and call them 'notes' from now on) by mapping them onto a grid, reducing their placement in time to something you can see right in front of you. This makes it easy to see how each individual note interacts and relates to every other note that is occurring both simultaneously and sequentially (i.e. all the other notes happening at the same time, as well as before and after).
This visual representation allowed European musicians to conceive of the notion of harmony in the first place: first as several simultaneous melodies (polyphony - think of a fugue by Bach), then as chords progressing to some tonal goal, supporting a main melody (homophony - think of a Mozart sonata, where, for example a violin plays over piano chords). Without the device of notation, it would be near-impossible for one person to hold all the information in their head that makes up the harmony of even a relatively simple 'classical' piece. People that do memorize the full harmony of a simple piece (for example, a solo piano piece) can generally only do so because they have become so fluent with the notation that they have internalized it. They have basically memorized and internalized a series of rules and conventions of harmony that could not have developed independent of a means to write them down.
(A rough analogy: it's not that hard to imagine memorizing a play -- say a monologue -- but it's hard to imagine someone writing a whole play in their head. Or better yet, someone could, but it would probably be in verse, with a lot of repetition, rhyming, parallelism, and other mnemonic devices, like in the epic poems that bards from various cultures recite. It's impossible to imagine a whole genre of long prose plays developing without the medium of writing.)
So there we have it: notation made possible what is often called the distinctive development of Western music -- harmony. On the other hand, it also helps explain the traditional rhythmic deficiency of this notational music -- rhythms are easier to feel than they are to write. So while Europeans developed the art of combining simultaneous tones to high level through notation, cultures like those of India and Africa developed rhythm to great heights of complexity and dynamism through aural and oral means.
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