Music, The Poetry Of The Soul

According to Paul Henry Lang, people normally conceive of "drama" as external action, i.e., events or acts in the context of conflict between individual characters. But a more accurate meaning is the internal drama, i.e., the conflict between clashing motives within the same individual. Dramatic poetry may only communicate the outcome of such a conflict by personifying action. But music can represent the very essence of the conflicting forces and motives. It provides the listeners with a real drama that is free of the material, the visible and the concrete. Music is a means of expressing action that takes place deep within the soul.

What is Music?

Music is the language of melody and tunes. It can be written, read and heard. The system of musical notation is written from left to right on a staff of five horizontal lines and four intermediate spaces with some additional lines above and below the staff.

There are seven musical notes: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti. Notes are written in measures, each of which is bound by bars, i.e., two vertical lines. Measures make up phrases usually consisting of eight measures and their multiplications. Musical phrases make up opuses, compositions and the various forms of vocal or instrumental music.

Music has four elements: rhythm, melody, harmony and tone. Rhythm, according to Plato, can be felt in the flying of birds, the pulse of the human arteries, dancing movements and speech segments. Rhythm in music, Abdul Hamid Tawfiq Zaki says, has to do with the temporal aspects of musical sounds. It is also the flow and undulation of the melody according to a special pattern of strong and weak beats and notes of specific durations.

If rhythm has to do with movement, melody is associated with mental or emotional states. Melody is the linking motif that connects the parts of a musical composition and gives it unity and meaning.

Rhythm and melody have developed from natural sources, but harmony proceeds from the intellect rather than from nature or feelings. Harmony in the technical sense was not properly recognized until the nineteenth century. But the roots of the idea of harmony may be traced as far back as Avicenna (Ibn Sina). The earliest form of harmony was simply two sounds playing or singing simultaneously in such way as to please the ear. Three hundred years later, another concept of harmony developed, namely, free dissonant harmony which is based on mixing simultaneously rising and falling sounds. Tones sounded simultaneously may form chords. Harmony is the study of such combinations and the consequent interrelations that may please the ear. Avicenna discovered harmony at about the same time Guido did the same thing. Al-Farabi refers to the harmony of sounds and the kinds of tones in his masterpiece Music.

Tone in music is like color in painting. It is a rich element, which involves the countless possibilities and effects of human voice and the sounds of string, wood, brass or percussion instruments.

Different audiences appreciate music differently. The most common level of appreciation is purely sensuous, i.e., the sheer pleasure drawn from listening to musical sounds without thinking about it. A more refined level of appreciation is the expressionistic approach, i.e. the audience tries to interpret the music and detect a meaning for it. The highest level, which is not accessible to the average audience, is the abstract appreciation of the structural elements of musical composition.

The American composer and music critic Aaron Copland was once asked whether music has meaning. He said it does, but the meaning is not verbally definable. The way to appreciate music and develop a sense for it is, according to Copland, to listen to it more and more.