twelve-tone music: see serial music.

swing music: see jazz.

serial music, the body of compositions whose fundamental syntactical reference is a particular ordering (called series or row) of the twelve pitch classes—C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B—that constitute the equal-tempered scale. In contrast to tonal music, whose unity is perceived in the primacy of a single construct, the triad (the major or minor chord), serial music is not pitch centric, i.e., there is no home key. Instead, the presence of harmonic successions resulting from controlled juxtaposition of various row forms gives serial pieces their coherence. These forms are the prime, retrograde (pitch order reversed), inversion (interval direction reversed), and retrograde inversion, and the twelve transpositional degrees of the foregoing. Thus, the row functions as an ordering of intervals and not of absolute pitches. In practice, the row can be presented linearly or chordally. The twelve-tone system evolved in the 1920s in the works of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton von Webern, and Alban Berg as the result of efforts to establish a unifying principle for nontonal music. Classic serial pieces include Schoenberg's Piano Suite, Op. 25 (1924) and von Webern's String Quartet, Op. 28 (1938). Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt have led efforts toward "total serialization," the application of serial technique to rhythm, dynamics, and timbre, in addition to pitch. Important composers of serial music include Igor Stravinsky, Ernst Křenek, Egon Wellesz, and Walter Piston. For further information see separate articles on all composers mentioned in this article.

rock music, type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world.

Origins of Rock

Essentially hybrid in origin, rock music includes elements of several black and white American music styles: black guitar-accompanied blues; black rhythm and blues, noted for saxophone solos; black and white gospel music; white country and western music; and the songs of white popular crooners and harmony groups. Emerging in 1954-55, rock music was initially referred to as "rock 'n' roll." After 1964 it was simply called "rock music." The change in terminology indicates both a continuity with and a break from the earlier period; rock music was no longer just for dancing. After 1964 the music was influenced by British groups such as the Beatles.

The 1950s—Bill Haley and Rock 'n' Roll

The first rock 'n' roll record to achieve national popularity was "Rock Around the Clock" made by Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955. Haley succeeded in creating a music that appealed to youth because of its exciting back beat, its urgent call to dance, and the action of its lyrics. The melody was clearly laid down by electric guitar; the lyrics were earthy and simple. Haley abruptly ended the ascendancy of the bland and sentimental ballads popular in the 1940s and early 50s. He also succeeded in translating black rhythm and blues into a form that adolescent white audiences could understand.

Blues, and rhythm and blues, were too adult, sexual, angry, and solely identified with black culture to be acceptable either emotionally or commercially without adaptation. Major record companies had for years been producing records for black audiences called "race records." The emergence of rock 'n' roll signified a slight weakening in resistance to black culture. The unadulterated black rock 'n' roll that Haley transformed can be heard in the sexually adult work of such artists as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ("Work with Me, Annie") or "Big" Joe Turner ("Shake, Rattle, and Roll"), the latter song adapted by Haley for white audiences and the former transformed into "Dance with Me, Henry."

Rock 'n' roll was for and about adolescents. Its lyrics articulated teenage problems: school, cars, summer vacation, parents, and, most important, young love. The primary instruments of early rock 'n' roll were guitar, bass, piano, drums, and saxophone. All aspects of the music—its heavy beat, loudness, self-absorbed lyrics, and raving delivery—indicated a teenage defiance of adult values and authority. Influential performers of the 1950s include Chuck Berry ("Johnny B. Goode"), Little Richard ("Good Golly Miss Molly"), Sam Cooke ("You Send Me"), Buddy Holly ("Peggy Sue"), Jerry Lee Lewis ("Great Balls of Fire"), and Carl Perkins ("Blue Suede Shoes").

The Late 1950s and Early 60s—Elvis, Motown, and the British Invasion

The greatest exponent of rock 'n' roll from 1956 to 1963 was Elvis Presley, a truck driver and aspiring singer from Tupelo, Miss., whose plaintive, wailing, dynamic delivery and uninhibited sexuality appealed directly to young audiences while horrifying older people. As rock 'n' roll became a financial success, record companies that had considered it a fad began to search for new singers; they generally succeeded in commercializing the music, robbing it of much of its gutsy, rebellious quality. In the late 1950s, for example, there was a fad for sentimentally morbid songs such as "Laura" and "Teen Angel."

At the turn of the decade Detroit became an important center for black singers, and a certain type of sound known as "Motown" [motor town], named for Motown Records, developed. The style is characterized by a lead singer singing an almost impressionistic melody story line to the accompaniment of elegant, tight, articulate harmonies of a backup group. Popular exponents of this style are the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Rock music again surged to popularity in 1962 with the emergence of the Beatles, a group of four long-haired lads from Liverpool, England. They were initially acclaimed for their energy and appealing individual personalities rather than for any innovations in their music, which was derived from Berry and Presley. Their popularity inevitably produced other groups with unusual names. One of the most important of these was the Rolling Stones, whose music derived from the black blues tradition. These British bands instigated a return to the blues orientation of rock 'n' roll, albeit in ever louder and more electric reincarnations.

The Late 1960s and Early 70s—Rock's Golden Age

Folk Rock

An important transformation of rock occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan, noted as a composer and writer of poetic folk songs and songs of social protest like "Blowin' in the Wind," appeared, playing electric guitar and backed by an electrified rock band. A synthesis of the folk revival and rock subsequently took place, with folk groups using rock arrangements and rock singers composing poetic lyrics for their songs (e.g., the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," "Eleanor Rigby"). The Byrds' arrangement of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a folk-rock classic. Performers like the Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Donovan; and the Lovin Spoonful sang a kind of music designated "folk rock."

Protest Songs and the Drug Culture

In the 1960s music mirrored the tensions of the Vietnam War era and played an important role in American culture. The verbal content of rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and, increasingly, drugs. Many groups, among them Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, tried to approximate in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, producing long, repetitive, occasionally exquisite songs with surreal lyrics (known as "acid rock" or "hard rock").

In 1967 the Beatles again made history with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, in addition to including drug-oriented songs, presented a body of interrelated pieces that constituted an organic whole. This is considered the first "concept album." Subsequent products of this trend were rock musicals such as Hair (1968) and rock operas like Tommy, composed and sung by the Who.

Rock Comes of Age

By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz, while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll.

From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969. Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder. By 1970 several of rock's top performers—Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix—were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music.

The Late 1970s to the Present—Punk Rock, the Music Video, and Middle-aged Rockers

A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the form of punk rock, which was a response to the stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. The music was filled with contempt for previous styles; its fast-tempoed songs, usually propelled by electric guitar, featured irreverant lyrics often obscured by the clangerous music. Evident in Great Britain, performed by such bands as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk also quickly became popular in the United States, played by the Ramones and other American groups. By the early 1980s, it had changed rock music considerably as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and other groups adopted political protest themes as the core of their music.

During the 1980s music videos became a popular form of promotion and entertainment. In the late 1980s, however, several bands, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam, continued to follow the path of early punk rock by focusing on political themes and celebrating their own lack of technical virtuosity. Punk persisted into the 1990s with such bands as Green Day and the Offspring. Also in the 90s the continuing popularity of older bands, such as the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, bore witness to the enduring appeal of this form among both the young and the increasingly middle-aged. The appeal of older and past rock bands was also evident in the fanfare surrounding the opening (1995) of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Meanwhile, a young audience made rap music, with its pounding rhythms and strong, sometimes shocking spoken lyrics, a popular phenomenon, and other young rockers, largely club-goers, made the dance-based, electronically sophisticated techno another, though less pervasive, popular form.

rap music or hip-hop, genre originating in the mid-1970s among black and Hispanic performers in New York City, at first associated with an athletic style of dancing, known as breakdancing. The word rap, derived from a 1960s slang word for conversation, generally consists of chanted, often improvised, street poetry accompanied by a montage of well-known recordings, usually disco or funk. Detractors have criticized most rap music as a boastful promotion of violence and misogyny; others have admired it as an inventive manipulation of cultural idioms and credit many rappers with an acute social and political awareness. Early rap groups included Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and the Beastie Boys. Rap has influenced many forms of popular culture, particularly film, and has been increasingly incorporated into pop music. Some influential rap performers include Public Enemy, NWA, Run-DMC, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot, and Queen Latifah.

program music Instrumental music of the 19th and 20th cent. that endeavors to arouse mental pictures or ideas in the thoughts of the listener—to tell a story, depict a scene, or impel a mood. Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, intended by the composer as program music, might be contrasted with a symphony of Brahms, which is considered as absolute music. It is so called because it relies on a "program" (an expanatory text or narrative) to explain its extra-musical associations. Examples are the symphonic poems of Liszt, and Sorceror's Apprentice by Dukas.

popular music: see country and western music; folk song; gospel music; jazz; rap music; rock music.

passion music, choral music whose text depicts events immediately surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest passions, composed from the 9th to the 14th cent., were monophonic and employed the actual biblical text of one of the four Evangelists. Polyphonic passions originated in England in the 15th cent. After the Reformation, free poetry was added to passion texts. Orchestral accompaniment was used during the baroque period. The genre reached its peak in the baroque period with such works as Schütz's three Dresden passions (1665-66) and J. S. Bach's St. John Passion (1723) and St. Matthew Passion (1729). Not well represented in the 19th and early 20th cent., the genre underwent a revival in the late 20th cent., notably with K. Penderecki's Passio et mors domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lucam [Passion according to St. Luke] (1965) and Arvo Pärt's Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem [Passion according to St. John] (1982).

music video, videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dance or a fragmentary story and sometimes employing concert footage. Typically three to five minutes long, music videos frequently include quick cuts, stylizations, fanciful and often erotic imagery, and computer graphics. Originally vehicles for promoting singles, most music videos are in the rock idiom. Although many examples of the genre feature the macho rock stars and scantily clad dancers that have become cultural clichés, certain music videos are notable for their cutting-edge techniques and artistic innovations, and some of their directors have achieved auteur status.

The music video form was popularized by the MTV cable network (est. 1981) and began to have wide popularity and influence in the early 1980s. By the 1990s many hundreds of videos, representing a cross-section of musical forms—from traditional to experimental rock, heavy metal to hip hop—were being produced yearly. Although music videos have usually been aimed at a teenage audience, many videos of ballads or "soft rock" songs are now directed at an older group of viewers. Since shortly after their inception, the style and content of music videos have strongly influenced advertising, television, film, and popular culture as a whole.

music hall. In England, the Licensing Act of 1737 confined the production of legitimate plays to the two royal theaters—Drury Lane and Covent Garden; the demands for entertainment of the rising lower and middle classes were answered by song, dance, and acrobatics, and later by pantomime and comic skits and sketches provided by keepers of inns and taverns. The atmosphere, amidst eating and drinking, was boisterous and gay. Following the abolition (c.1843) of the royal-theater patents, the rise of the music hall as a separate place of variety entertainment was rapid. Personalities, such as the English Joseph Grimaldi, Dan Leno, Beatrice Lillie, and Gracie Fields and the French Yvette Guilbert, Maurice Chevalier, and Edith Piaf became stars, beloved by their audiences. Like American vaudeville, the music hall went into a decline with the coming of radio and motion pictures.

music festivals, series of performances separate from the normal concert season and often, but not always, organized around an idea or theme. Music festivals usually are held annually in the summer, sometimes in the open air. The concept has been traced as far back as the sixth-century B.C. Pythian Games at Delphi, which included musical competitions. In the Middle Ages competitive festivals were sponsored by guilds. The eisteddfod in Wales is a direct descendant of medieval competitive festivals. Among the best-known music festivals with a specific theme held today are the Bayreuth Festival, which features the operas of Wagner; the Munich and Glyndebourne Festivals, which feature opera; the Darmstadt modern music festival; the Warsaw Autumn Days; England's Aldeburgh Festival, which was instituted by Benjamin Britten and concentrates on modern music; the Mostly Mozart festival in New York City; and the Newport Jazz Festival (now held in New York City and Newport). The Salzburg Festival began (musically) as a Mozart festival; today, however, other composers are also featured; it is perhaps the outstanding example of a general classical music festival. Similar events are held in New York City (notably Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival), Aspen, Colo. (see Aspen Music Festival), Edinburgh, Spoleto (see Spoleto Festival), and Bergen (Norway). The Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood, near Lenox, Mass., features the Boston Symphony. The festival idea has spread all over the world; Osaka began a festival of music and drama in 1958. Festivals of rock music have frequently been held on a one-time basis. Two of the most famous were the Monterey Pop Festival (1967) and Woodstock (1969).

music. For information on types of music see such articles as absolute music; aleatory music; chamber music; church music; computer music; electronic music; jazz; program music; rock music; serial music; and spiritual. In addition, see entries on the music of various nations and peoples, including African music; Arabian music; Balinese music; Chinese music; Greek music; Hindu music; Japanese music; Javanese music; and Jewish liturgical music. The technical aspects of music, such as theory, notation, and tone, are treated in such general articles as theory and musical notation, and in more specific entries, including counterpoint; harmonic; harmony; key; measure; mode; musicology; note; pitch; polyphony; rhythm; scale; syncopation; tablature; temperament; tonality; tone; transposing instrument; and tuning systems. There are numerous articles on various musical forms, including cantata; concerto; march; nocturne; opera; oratorio; polonaise; sonata; song; and symphony. In addition to such survey articles as concert; conducting; musical instruments; music festivals; orchestra and orchestration, there are separate articles on musical instruments, treated singly, e.g., clarinet; harp; trumpet, or in groups, e.g., reed instrument; stringed instrument. In addition to the entry on voice, there are separate articles on alto; baritone; countertenor; soprano; and tenor. Information on individual composers and performers can be found in biographical entries on composers, e.g. Monteverdi, Claudio; Puccini, Giacomo; and Schubert, Franz Peter; musicians, e.g., Beiderbecke, Bix; Gieseking, Walter; Richter, Sviatoslav; and singers, e.g., Deller, Alfred; Merrill, Robert; Sembrich, Marcella; and Sinatra, Frank.

gospel music, American religious musical form that owes much of its origin to the Christian conversion of West Africans enslaved in the American South. Gospel music partly evolved from the songs slaves sang on plantations, notably work songs, and from the Protestant hymns they sang in church. However, gospel music did not derive as much from Protestant hymns as did spirituals. Gospel music, more emotional and jubilant, also stemmed from the call-and-response singing between preacher and congregation, which became common in black churches. Gospel lyrics often call for obedience to God and avoidance of sin in order to obtain the reward of heaven's kingdom; they also celebrate God's love. Gospel style makes use of choral singing in unison or harmony, often, but not always, led by a lead singer or singers. The songs are performed with fervent enthusiasm, vigor, and spiritual inspiration, with much ornamentation in the solo vocal lines.

In the black culture of the first half of the 20th cent., gospel music was considered antithetical to blues and jazz, despite their similarity of origins, and gospel performers rarely sang in nonreligious settings. Later, as all three forms became popular outside the black community, they were less mutually exclusive. A strong gospel element underlies the "soul" jazz and rock music of the 1950s and 60s. Composer and pianist Thomas A. Dorsey, often referred to as "the father of the gospel song," played a major role in the development of gospel music. Important gospel performers have included Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Alex Bradford, James Cleveland, The Swan Silver Tones, The Mighty Clouds of Joy, The Dixie Hummingbirds, and The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. Pop singers who have been heavily influenced by gospel include Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. While the greatest era in gospel is widely considered to be c.1945-1965, the tradition and the music remain vital in contemporary culture. The Gospel Music Association rewards achievements in the genre with the annual Dove Awards.

folk music: see folk song.

electronic music or electro-acoustic music, term for compositions that utilize the capacities of electronic media for creating and altering sounds.

Initially, a distinction must be made between the technological development of electronic instruments and the music conceived to utilize the inherent advantages of these instruments. Experiments in electronic tone production began soon after the invention of the vacuum tube (see electron tube). The first important instrument, the theremin, invented by the Russian Leon Theremin in 1920, used interference beats of two oscillators to produce sine-wave tones. The Ondes Martinot, invented in 1928, and the Trautonium, invented in 1930, were of similar design.

The earliest pieces of electronic music used recorded sounds that were then electronically altered to create sonic collages. This style, called musique concrete, was developed in Paris in 1948 by Pierre Schaeffer. The invention of the tape recorder in the late 1940s gave composers new means for modifying recorded sounds, including splicing (cutting the tape to create new juxtapositions of sound), speed variation (which changes the pitch of the recorded sound), and mixing (which allowed two or more different recordings to be played back at the same time). In popular music, Les Paul was one of the pioneers of electronic music, inventing the first solid-body electric guitar in 1946 and recording music in the 1950s in an eight-track recording studio of his own design.

Controlling aspects of the musical sound by means of voltage regulation eventually led to the invention of synthesizers, devices that could produce and modify sound for musical applications. Among the earliest of these was the RCA synthesizer developed in the late 1950s and used extensively by composer Milton Babbitt in many of his electronic works. In the 1950s various studios that specialized in the production of electro-acoustic music were developed, including the West German Radio Studio in Cologne, associated with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Italian Radio Studio in Milan, associated with Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, associated with Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Mario Davidovsky, and Babbitt.

During the 1960s synthesizers were made widely available by companies such as Moog and Buchla and found widespread usage in rock music. Popular groups such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys began experiments in multitrack recording, years after the innovations of Paul, that enabled several different recordings to be synchronized on the same tape. Eventually synthesizers switched from voltage control to digital control.

In 1983 the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard was agreed on by synthesizer manufacturers (see computer music). This digital code enables different electronic devices to communicate a variety of information to each other and allows computer control of synthesizer output. MIDI can also be used to control a wide range of equipment in addition to synthesizers; these include mixers, lights, and signal processors (devices that modify sounds by adding reverberation, by modifying pitch, and by other means).

Today MIDI is widely used in both academic and popular musical production. In MIDI production, computers are often used as sequencers (devices that control the output of musical instruments and signal processors). Throughout the last three decades of the 20th cent. electronic music increasingly became a part of pop music compositions, eventually allowing a solo artist to compose, produce, and perform music that employs a full complement of instrumental sounds. In the 1980s MIDI was also used in the creation of the radio baton, a new instrument that allows players to control the nuances of the music played.

electro-acoustic music: see electronic music.

country and western music, American popular music form originating in the Southeast (country music) and the Southwest and West (western music). The two regional styles coalesced in the 1920s when recorded material became available in rural areas, and they were further consolidated after musicians from various sections met and mixed during service in World War II. The primary traditional difference between the two styles is that country music is simpler and uses fewer instruments, relying on guitar, fiddle, banjo, and harmonica, whereas the music of the Southwest tends toward steel guitars and big bands whose style verges on swing (e.g., The Light Crust Doughboys). Bluegrass, exemplified by Bill Monroe, is a style of country and western music distinguished by a driving, syncopated rhythm, high-pitched vocals, and an emphasis on the banjo, mandolin, and fiddle.

Country and western music is directly descended from the folk songs, ballads, and popular songs of the English, Scottish, and Irish settlers of the U.S. southeastern seaboard. Its modern lyrics depict the emotions and experience of rural and (currently) urban poor whites; they often tell frankly of illicit love, crime, and prison life. Over the last 50 years country and western music has gained a nationwide audience. Since 1925 the "Grand Ole Opry," a Saturday night performance featuring country and western singers, has been broadcast weekly from Nashville, Tenn.

Many of the musicians have been influenced by African-American blues (see jazz) and gospel music, but the performers and audience are almost all white. Leading performers include Jimmy Rodgers, the Carter Family, Hank Williams and his son, Tex Ritter, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, June Carter-Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride, Charlie Rich, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson. In the 1960s and 70s, country and western music significantly influenced the development of rock music. Since then, it has undergone a national revival with performers such as Ricky Scaggs, Garth Brooks, the Judds, Tanya Tucker, and Reba McEntire achieving great popularity.

concrete music: see electronic music.

computer music, term used to describe music composed or performed with the aid of a computer. The first substantial piece of music composed on a computer was the Illiac Suite (1956) by the avant-garde composer Lejaren Hiller (1925-94). Computer music can be divided into two distinct production techniques: MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface—see electronic music) and software synthesis. In MIDI production a computer is used to control the outputs of synthesizers and signal-processing devices. Software synthesis, however, involves the use of a computer to mathematically represent and manipulate sounds. This technique was created in the late 1950s by a team headed by Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. The techniques were further advanced by Godfrey Winham and Hubert Howe at Princeton Univ. Today major centers of software synthesis include the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music (IRCAM) in Paris, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford Univ., the Computer Audio Research Laboratory (CARL) at the Univ. of California at San Diego, and the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Software synthesis frequently involves the use of sampling, a technique that represents a sound as a series of discrete measurements of amplitude (loudness). This digital representation of a sound can then be manipulated by various techniques, including filtering, which reduces the loudness of a specific part of the frequency spectrum; time delay, which can be used to simulate various types of echo or reverberation; and frequency shifting, which is used to alter the pitch of a sound.

Sounds can also be directly created by the computer, allowing it to act as a synthesizer. Some recent research into sound production by computers utilizes a technique called physical modeling, which attempts to model the physics of natural instruments or sounds. Computers can also be used to compose music by a process known as algorithmic composition. In this technique various details of a composition are determined by the computer according to a specific program written by the composer. Another area of computer music involves the interaction of humans and machines in live performance. Various techniques have been developed to enable a performer to actively control the output of a computer while a performance is under way.

church music. 1 Music intended for performance as part of services of worship. With few exceptions, music is essential to the ritual of every religion; the singing of prayers and portions of Scripture is part of Judaeo-Christian tradition, and a large number of melodies for specific parts of the liturgy were embodied in the medieval collection of church music called Gregorian chant. Additional musical settings of liturgy from later times to the present have added to the liturgical repertory. Such customary interpolations in the service as the motet, chorale, and hymn have achieved an integral place in many church services. This is also true of the Anglican anthem and was at one time true of the Lutheran cantata. See anthem; antiphon; cantata; chant; chorale; hymn; Mass; motet; plainsong. 2 Music intended for performance in a church outside the regular worship service. This may include works taken from the repertory above as well as music of religious content, e.g., oratorios or sacred cantatas and instrumental music that is not specifically secular in nature. See cantata; carol; oratorio.

chamber music, ensemble music for small groups of instruments, with only one player to each part. Its essence is individual treatment of parts and the exclusion of virtuosic elements. Originally played by amateurs in courts and aristocratic circles, it began to be performed by professionals only in the 19th cent. with the rise of the concert hall. In the broadest sense it existed as early as the Middle Ages. The ricercare and the concerted canzone of the 16th cent. are properly chamber music, although unlike later forms they were not for specific instruments but were usually performed by voices and whatever instruments were at hand. During the baroque period the chief type was the trio sonata. About 1750 the string quartet with its related types—trio, quintet, sextet, septet, and octet—arose. As developed by Haydn and Mozart the quartet became the principal chamber-music form. It was used by Beethoven and Schubert, whose quartets are the last of the classical period, and by the chief composers of the romantic period—Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, Franck, d'Indy, and Reger. In the early 20th cent. the coloristic possibilities of the quartet were exploited by Debussy and Ravel. More recently the different forms of chamber music have been used extensively for experiments in atonality, percussive rhythms, and serial techniques by such composers as Schoenberg, Bartók, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Sessions, and Piston.

bluegrass music: see country and western music.

aleatory music [Lat. alea=dice game], music in which elements traditionally determined by the composer are determined either by a process of random selection chosen by the composer or by the exercise of choice by the performer(s). At the compositional stage, pitches, durations, dynamics, and so forth are made functions of playing card drawings, dice throwings, or mathematical laws of chance, the latter with the possible aid of a computer. Those elements usually left to the performers' discretion include the order of execution of sections of a work, the possible exclusion of such sections, and subjective interpretation of temporal and spatial pitch relations. Also called "chance music," aleatory music has been produced in abundance since 1945 by several composers, the most notable being John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis.

absolute music, term used for music dependent on its structure alone for comprehension. It is the antithesis of program music. It is not associated with extramusical ideas or with a pictorial or narrative scheme of emotions, nor does it attempt to reproduce sounds in nature. Hence it is always instrumental, although not all instrumental music is absolute. Bach's Art of Fugue is an example of absolute music.

North American Indian music: see Native American music.

New England Conservatory of Music, at Boston, Mass.; coeducational; est. 1867, chartered and opened 1870. It is closely associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. Jordan Hall, its main auditorium, is noted for recitals and performances by outstanding artists.

Native American music. The music of Native North Americans is primarily a vocal art, usually choral, although some nations favor solo singing. Native American music is entirely melodic; there is no harmony or polyphony, although there is occasional antiphonal singing between soloist and chorus. The melody is, in general, characterized by a descending melodic figure; its rhythm is irregular. There is no conception of absolute pitch and intonation can appear uncertain, the result of the distinctive method of voice production, involving muscular tension in the vocal apparatus and making possible frequent strong accents and glissandos. Singing is nearly always accompanied, at least by drums. Various types of drums and rattles are the chief percussion instruments. Wind instruments are mainly flutes and whistles.

For the Native American, song is traditionally the chief means of communicating with the supernatural powers, and music is seldom performed for its own sake; definite results, such as the bringing of rain, success in battle, or the curing of the sick, are expected from music. There are three classes of songs—traditional songs, handed down from generation to generation; ceremonial and medicine songs, supposed to be received in dreams; and modern songs, showing the influence of European culture. Songs of heroes are often old, adapted to the occasion by the insertion of the new hero's name. Love songs often are influenced by the music of whites and are regarded as degenerate by many Native Americans.

See also North American Native art; Native American languages.

Jewish liturgical music, the music used in the religious services of the Jews.

The Bible and the Talmud record that spontaneous music making was common among the ancient Jews on all important occasions, religious and secular. Hebrew music was both instrumental and vocal. Singing was marked by responsorial, antiphonal, and refrain forms, and singing and dancing were accompanied by instruments. The first instruments mentioned in the Bible are the kinnor, evidently a lyre similar to the kithara, and the ugab, possibly a vertical flute. Other instruments, more of ceremonial than of musical value, included the hasosra, a trumpet, and the shofar, a ram's or goat's horn, the least musical of all and the only one still in use.

When the kingdom of Israel was established, music was developed systematically. The part played by music in the Temple was essential and highly developed. New instruments were the nevel, a harp; the halil, possibly a double oboe; the asor, a 10-stringed instrument probably like a psaltery; and the magrepha, an instrument of powerful sound, used to signal the beginning of the service. Various types of cymbals originally used in the Temple were prohibited after its restoration. Ritual music was at first only cantillation, i.e., recitative chanting, of the prose books of the Bible. Later the prayers and biblical poetry were chanted, presumably in a modal system similar to the ragas of Hindu music or the maqamat of Arab music, i.e., melodies with improvisations.

After the destruction of Jerusalem under Roman rule in A.D. 70, much of the chant was preserved among congregations of Middle Eastern Jews and arguably remains intact today, but the instrumental music was lost when the dispersed peoples, as an act of mourning, ceased playing instruments. A system of mnemonic hand signs for traditional chant had been developed in the Temple, and after the Dispersion this became the basis for the development of a system of notation. In the 9th cent., Aaron ben Asher of Tiberias perfected the te'amim, or neginoth, a system of accent signs. His notation superseded all other systems and influenced the development of the earliest Christian neumes, which became a precise system, while the te'amim retained their vague character (see musical notation).

With the growth in importance of the synagogue came the rise of the chazan, or cantor. Among the Sephardic Jews in Arab-dominated Spain Arab music had great influence and was introduced into the synagogue. Later the Ashkenazim (Jewish communities that had their original European base in Germany) accepted some of the melodic forms of German folk song and Italian court song; this adaptation was more or less successfully opposed by traditionalists who reintroduced elements from the song of the Middle Eastern Jews. The post-Renaissance cantors developed a distinct type of coloratura, which was popular in 17th-century Europe.

In the early 19th cent., instruments were introduced into some German synagogues, and other changes resulted from adaptations of Christian music. In the reform movement of the 19th cent., the cantor was eliminated, the organ was employed, and Jewish hymns were written in the vernacular and often set to tunes of Protestant hymns. Reaction against this movement brought a more moderate reform in which the Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer (1804-90) was an outstanding figure. Sulzer aimed to restore the traditional cantillation, but without improvisation, and to make use of new music composed for the synagogue. He used the organ and included hymns in the vernacular. Sulzer's compositions, together with those of Louis Lewandowski (1821-94), another great reformer and the leading cantor of his day in Berlin, form the basis of much modern synagogue music.

In Eastern Europe, Hasidic influence was beginning in the late 18th cent. Two major Eastern European composers of traditional music were the Russian cantors Eliezer Gerowitch (1844-1914) and David Nowakowsky (1849-1921). In the United States, the reform synagogues make extensive use of hymns, mixed choirs and soloists, and organ compositions. There is a cantor in modern orthodox and conservative services but the organ is used only in some conservative services. Several 20th-century musicians, notably Ernest Bloch and Gershon Ephros, have composed new works for the reformed and traditional services, respectively.

Javanese music, one of the richest and most distinctive of Asian musical cultures. It was and is of enormous importance in religious, political, and entertainment functions. It possesses two separate tonal systems—pélog and sléndro or salendro. Pélog contains seven tones, only five of which are used in a given composition. The intervals of pélog are unequal, and the smaller ones approximate the semitone of Western music. Sléndro is a division of the octave into five roughly equal intervals. It was believed by the Javanese to be the older system, but contemporary musicologists find evidence that sléndro was derived from pélog. Sléndro is associated with that which is masculine, and pélog with that which is feminine. The Javanese gamelan, an orchestra of tuned percussion instruments, primarily of bronze, usually accompanies a performance, particularly the Wayang Kulit (shadow puppet plays). It flourishes today in Bali, where it was introduced in the 15th cent. by Hindus escaping from the Muslim invasion of Java. Balinese gamelan is distinct from Javanese in that it is played much faster and is brighter tonally. The term gamelan includes percussion orchestras of varying function, style, size, and composition. The set of instruments known collectively as gamelan increases in value with age and with the concomitant stabilization of its individual sound. Gamelan instruments include gongs, drums, xylophones (gambang kayu), bamboo flutes (suling), and string instruments (rebab). A complete double set, or sapangkon, half tuned to pélog and half to sléndro, may number as many as 80 separate instruments. They are played two ways: according to a subtle, flowing, quiet manner associated with singing and gentle dancing, and according to a powerful, louder manner associated with heroic dance. A fixed melody is the basis for complex vocal and instrumental improvisation. The archaic gamelan, no longer heard widely in Java, is best studied in Balinese music.

Japanese music, the highly eclectic musical culture of the Japanese islands. Over the years, Japan has borrowed musical instruments, scales, and styles from many neighboring areas.

The indigenous music present before A.D. 453 consisted of chanted poems (reyei and imayo), traditional war and social songs (kume-uta and saibara), and the kagura, solemn Shinto temple music. All were recitations on a few notes. The importation of foreign music, particularly from China, began in the 5th cent. and continued into the 12th cent. The ancient ceremonial music imported from China, which the Japanese called gagaku, no longer exists in China but has been preserved almost intact since the 5th cent. by a continuing tradition of performance in the imperial court of Japan. It is orchestral music using the sho (a mouth organ, the Chinese sheng), the shakuhachi (a long flute), and the hichiriki (a small oboe).

The cantillations of the Buddhist religion came to Japan by way of Korea in the 6th cent. and were followed in the 7th cent. by the bugaku, a ceremonial dance with music that is of Indian origin. In the 9th and 10th cent. many instruments, including the biwa (a four-stringed bass lute used for accompaniment) and the koto (a long zither with 13 silk strings, used both as a solo instrument and in ensemble), were introduced from China.

Midway between sacred and secular is the music of the No drama, dating from the 14th cent. (see Asian drama). It is restrained vocal recitative, utai, using very small intervals, Asian ornamentation (e.g., sliding, tremolo, vibrato), and accompaniment by flute and drums. Popular secular music in Japan began in the 16th cent. with the introduction from China of the samisen, a three-stringed, plucked instrument resembling a guitar, used for accompanying songs. Later, secular music also included operalike creations and many varieties of kumi (chamber music for ensemble, voice, and koto) and koto solo (often sets of melodic variations on a short theme, or damono). Hogaku is the name for folk and popular music heard at open-air festivals.

The Japanese use two basic types of scale, both pentatonic. The first, used in sacred music and common to all of East Asia, has two modes—ryo, the male mode, and ritsu, the female mode. The more frequently used scale, found also in Indonesia and S India, emphasizes semitones and exists in three modes, all used freely within the same composition—hirajoshi, the most important, roughly represented on the piano by the series ABCEFA; kumoijoshi, second in importance, approximated by EFABCE; and iwato, approximated by BCEFAB.

Japanese music is of uneven phrase length, and the fourth is a particularly important interval. Ornamentation depends on the type and purpose of the piece. The rhythm is almost invariably in duple meter, with ternary or irregular passages occurring rarely. However, the independent drum rhythms, when these are present, tend to obscure the basic beat to Western ears. The music is primarily monophonic, although heterophony occurs in orchestral music and in pieces for voice and koto.

The Meiji restoration saw the importation of Western music to Japan, beginning with the brass band. In the 1880s, Western music was introduced into the schools, and in 1887 the Academy of Music was established in Tokyo. Later, symphony orchestras were formed, and Western music became an integral part of the cultural life of Japan. Notable contemporary Japanese composers include Yasushi Akutagawa, Kan Ishii, and Akira Miyoshi. Seiji Ozawa, a conductor of international reputation, was born in Japan.

Indian music, of India: see Hindu music.

Hindu music. The music of India is entirely monodic. To Westerners it is the most accessible of all Asian musical cultures. Its tonal system divides the octave into 22 segments called srutis, not all equal but each roughly equal to one quarter of a whole tone of Western music. The basic scales are sa-grāma and ma-grāma. The more important of these, the sa-grāma, closely approximates the C Major scale. Ma-grāma, which differs from the sa-grāma in only one interval, is said to have disappeared from use about the 16th cent. Other scales are derived from these by the sharping or flatting of some of the intervals or by leaving out some of the tones. Melody is based on the system of rāgas, which are melody types used as the basis for improvisation. There are innumerable rāgas, and with each there is an accompanying set of rules for improvisation in that rāga. To each is ascribed certain ethical and emotional properties, and each is associated with a certain season and a certain time of day. For a single rāga, however, these connotations vary in different parts of India. The rāgas were the inspiration for much Rajput miniature painting, the iconography of which varied according to its period, place of production, and creator. Legend celebrates the powers of the rāgas; e.g., a rāga associated with darkness could, if sung in the middle of the day by a singer whose skill was great enough, bring darkness upon the earth. In the performance of the rāgas, great importance is attached to the gamakas, the ornaments, or graces, that are characteristic of this music. Accompanied song is considered the highest type of music. In the accompaniment, rhythm is very complex and is based on certain rhythmic patterns, called talas, which are often combined in the most intricate ways. The oldest instrument is the drum, of which there are several types, an example of which is the tablā; it can be tuned by means of special kinds of coating given the skin. The most important instrument is the vina. In antiquity the name was given to a harp, but the modern vina is a zither with gourd resonators. A similar instrument is the sitar, the most popular instrument in N India. It has movable frets, is played with a plectrum, and has greater volume than the vina. In addition, various types of bagpipe, lute, fiddle, oboe, trumpet, flute, cymbal, and gong have been known in India. Many of the instruments are of Islamic origin. Hindu music has, through its influence on the Beatles in the 1960s, enjoyed considerable popularity in the West. Ravi Shankar is known internationally for his sitar playing.

Hebrew music: see Jewish liturgical music.

Greek music, the music of the ancient and modern inhabitants of Greece.

Ancient Greek Music

The music of ancient Greece was inseparable from poetry and dancing. It was entirely monodic, there being no harmony as the term is commonly understood. The earliest music is virtually unknown, but in the Homeric era a national musical culture existed that was looked upon by later generations as a "golden age." The chief instrument was the phorminx, a lyre used to accompany poet-singers who composed melodies from nomoi, short traditional phrases that were repeated. The earliest known musician was Terpander of Lesbos (7th cent. B.C.). The lyric art of Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon was also musical in nature.

In the 6th cent. B.C., choral music was used in the drama, for which Pindar developed the classical ode. The main instruments at this time were the aulos, a type of oboe associated with the cult of Dionysus, and the kithara, a type of lyre associated with Apollo and restricted to religious and hymnic use. This classical style of composition decayed in the last quarter of the 5th cent. B.C.

After the fall of Athens in 404 B.C., an anti-intellectual reaction took place against the classical art, and by about 320 B.C. it was almost forgotten. The new style, which resulted in the rise of professional musicians, was marked by subjective expression, free forms, more elaborate melody and rhythms, and chromaticism. The chief musical figures were Phrynis of Mitylene (c.450 B.C.), his pupil Timotheus of Miletus, and the dramatist Euripides. Finally, ancient Greek music lost its vitality and dwindled to insignificance under the Roman domination.

There were two systems of musical notation, a vocal and an instrumental, both of which are, though still problematic. They are decipherable largely because of the Introduction to Music written by Alypius (c.A.D. 360). In spite of the prominent position of music in the cultural life of ancient Greece, only 15 musical fragments are extant, all which date from the postclassical period. Early in its history, Greek music benefited from the discovery, usually attributed to Pythagoras of Samos, of the numerical relations of tones to divisions of a stretched string. The temperament, or Pythagorean tuning, derived from this series of ratios has been important throughout subsequent music history.

Modern Greek Music

Dormant for nearly two thousand years, Greek music underwent a musical rebirth in the 19th cent. with the works of the opera composers Nikolaos Mantzaros (1795-1872), Spyridion Xyndas (1812-96), and Spyros Samaras (1861-1917). Elements of nationalism are prevalent in the folklike songs of George Lembalet (1875-1945) and Manos Hadjidakis (1925-94). Introduced in Greece by Nikos Skalkottas (1904-49), serial music has been composed by Yorgos Sicilianos and by Iannis Xenakis, who also writes electronic music. During the late 20th cent. Greece's most popular composer was probably Mikis Theodorakis (1925-), whose opposition to military rule during the 1960s and 70s cost him several years of imprisonment and precipitated the banning of his operas, symphonic works, film scores (most notably for Zorba the Greek), and hundreds of songs.

Eastman School of Music: see Rochester, Univ. of.

Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia; coeducational; founded 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok (later married to Efrem Zimbalist) and named for her father, Cyrus Curtis. The institute operates entirely on a scholarship basis, with a faculty made up principally of concert artists. The library includes the Burrell collection of Wagnerian materials.

Chinese music, the classical music forms of China.

Origins and Characteristics

Chinese music can be traced back as far as the third millennium B.C. Manuscripts and instruments from the early periods of its history are not extant, however, because in 212 B.C., Shih Huang-ti of the Ch'in dynasty caused all the books and instruments to be destroyed and the practice of music to be stopped. Certain outlines of ancient Chinese music have nevertheless been ascertained. Of primary significance is the fact that the music and philosophy of China have always been inseparably bound; musical theory and form have been invariably symbolic in nature and remarkably stable through the ages. Ancient Chinese hymns were slow and solemn and were accompanied by very large orchestras. Chamber music was also highly developed. Chinese opera originated in the 14th cent. as a serious and refined art.

Tone and the Instruments

In Chinese music, the single tone is of greater significance than melody; the tone is an important attribute of the substance that produces it. Hence musical instruments are separated into eight classes according to the materials from which they are made—gourd (sheng); bamboo (panpipes); wood (chu, a trough-shaped percussion instrument); silk (various types of zither, with silk strings); clay (globular flute); metal (bell); stone (sonorous stone); and skin (drum). Music was believed to have cosmological and ethical connotations comparable to those of Greek music. The failure of a dynasty was ascribed to its inability to find the proper huang chung, or tone of absolute pitch.

The huang chung was produced by a bamboo pipe that roughly approximated the normal pitch of a man's voice. Other pipes were cut, their length bearing a definite mathematical ratio to it. Their tones were divided into two groups—six male tones and six female. These were the lüs, and their relationship approximated the Pythagorean cycle of fifths. Legend ascribes their origin to birdsong, six from that of the male bird and six from that of the female, and the tones of the two sets were always kept separate.

The lüs did not constitute a scale, however. The scale of Chinese music is pentatonic, roughly represented by the black keys on a piano. From it, by starting on different notes, several modes may be derived. The melody of vocal music is limited by the fact that melodic inflection influences the meaning of a word. Likewise, quantitative rhythms are not easily adaptable to the Chinese language.

Musical Notation

Several types of notation were used. Singers used the syllabic symbols for the five notes of the pentatonic scale, as did players of pipes. Players of the stone and bell chimes, which were tuned to the lüs, used symbols that represented the pitch names of the lüs. Players of flutes and zithers used a kind of tablature. None of this notation indicated rhythm.

Modern History

Throughout the political and social turmoil following World War I, Western (classical and popular) and Japanese sources dominated Chinese music. At present, Western concepts of harmony are in active use but are generally applied to vocal genres, such as cantatas and music dramas, which have educational as well as musical value. The Beijing Opera has produced numerous new works since 1949, most of them concerning political topics. It is one of the few forums of traditional performance style, although there is an ongoing effort directed by the Beijing Institute of National Music to preserve the few remainders of ancient musical practice.

Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music.

Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine music is now regarded as an independent musical culture, with elements derived from Syrian and Hebrew as well as Greek sources. Its beginnings are dated by some scholars to the 4th cent., after the founding of the Eastern Empire by Constantine I.

Although two Greek instruments, the kithara and the aulos, were used, the principal instrument of Byzantium was the organ. No purely instrumental music is extant, however, and the exact nature of the instrumental accompaniment of vocal music is not certain. The eight Byzantine echoi (singular echos) correspond roughly to the eight modes of plainsong, but they were groups of melodies made of certain definite formulas. The Byzantine music that survives is all sacred, with the exception of some acclamations for the emperor. Byzantine chant was monodic, in free rhythm, and often attempted to depict melodically the meaning of the words. The language was Greek.

The Byzantine hymn, of which there were three types, was the greatest contribution of this culture. The troparion, a hymn, was inserted between the verses of the Psalms, and eventually the troparia overshadowed the Psalms. The origin of the kontakion, a hymn important in the 6th and 9th cent., is ascribed to Romanus, active during the reign of Anastasius I; it consisted of 18 or 24 strophes all in similar meter, with a contrasting introductory strophe. The subject matter was usually biblical. Often an acrostic is formed by the first letter of each stanza.

The time of Romanus and of Sergius (fl. early 7th cent.) is called the golden age of Byzantine music. In the 8th cent. the outstanding hymn writers were St. John of Damascus and Cosmas of Jerusalem. The chief type of hymn was the kanon, a series of odes, theoretically nine but often only eight in number, referring to the nine canticles of the Old and New Testaments. Until the 9th cent., poet and composer were always one; later, hymns were set to already existing melodies. With the codification of the Greek liturgy in the 11th cent. came a general decline in hymnody. Musical activity ceased with the fall of Constantinople (1453). Russian chant, the chant of the modern Greek Orthodox Church, and to a small extent Gregorian chant all owe something to Byzantine chant.

Byzantine notation was originally only a system of ekphonetic symbols serving to remind a singer of a melody he already knew. Neumes derived from the ekphonetic notation were in use from c.950 until 1200. From 1110 to 1450 a staffless notation was in use that indicated the echos, starting note, and subsequent intervals of a melody. It is largely decipherable today. Signs were added to it in the centuries that followed. The notation used in the Greek Church today was devised in the 19th cent. by Chrysanthus, a Greek archimandrite, because of the confusion in deciphering the manuscripts of early Byzantine music.

Brooklyn Academy of Music, performing arts center located in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. and popularly known as BAM. Founded in 1859 and opened in 1861, it is the oldest such institution still in operation in the United States. It moved to its neo-Italianate building in downtown Brooklyn in 1907. The Academy presently has four major performance areas-the Opera House, the Playhouse, the Leperq space, and the BAM Rose Cinemas. The Academy has long presented concerts, plays, ballet, and lectures, and it is now home to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Since 1967 it has expanded into a center for experimental theater, new opera, contemporary and ethnic music and dance, independent films, and multimedia productions. An avant-garde showplace, it is also the venue for the artistically adventurous Next Wave Festival, an annual 10-week series of events that originated in 1981.

Balinese music represents, to a large extent, a survival of the pre-Islamic music of Java. It was taken to Bali by Hindu Javanese in the 15th cent. and uses the tonal systems of Javanese music, of which pelog is by far the more important in Bali. Balinese music sounds impetuous and noisy, in contrast to the soft, tranquil music heard currently in Java. Few gamelans, the orchestras of tuned percussion instruments, play in Java today but they flourish, their archaic forms preserved, in modern Bali. The gamelans of the princes are no longer important in Bali, but have left their influence on the village societies for music making. There are also the ceremonial gamelans of the temples.

The most important gamelan instruments are xylophones, which may be made of bronze or bamboo. Bronze xylophones are of two basic types—gangsa, whose keys are supported over a wooden resonance box, and g'ndér, whose keys have individual bamboo resonators. These instruments sometimes play the melody and sometimes they provide a brilliant figuration. Gongs, suspended singly, are used for metrical accentuation; there are also gong chimes, which are of two types. The trompong, a set of 10, is a solo instrument, and the réyong, a set of 12, is played by four men, supplying figuration. Flutes, in two sizes, are made of bamboo and are used in theatrical music. Although the name of the rebab, a two-string spike fiddle, is Persian-Arabic, the instrument probably originated in S China and is used in the music of the gambuh play. Cymbals, bell rattles, and drums supply the all-important elaborate rhythmic background. The anklung is an archaic, tuned bamboo rattle. It is not known in all parts of Bali, but gives its name to the anklung gamelan, a ceremonial gamelan which may at one time have always included anklungs.

The instrumentation and the repertory of a particular gamelan depend on its function. Each of the various forms of dance and drama has a gamelan which specializes in its music. The most recent musical development is kebyar, a restless, explosive music which discards the highly developed, balanced forms of the older music. Kebyar clubs compose their own music, often taking themes from older music. The wealthier clubs include a dancer—a young man who performs seated on the ground, dancing from the waist up. Balinese notation was invented by the Javanese who brought the music to Bali. It gives no indication of the rhythm and is little used. Music is learned by rote; it is not improvisation, however, but a sophisticated, composed art form. Balinese music has had some popularity in the West, mainly sponsored by the composer Lou Harrison, founder of the modern American gamelan movement.

Aspen Music Festival, annual summer event, held in Aspen, Colo. A former silver-mining boomtown, Aspen fell into decline and was culturally revived by Walter Paepcke, who formed the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The Aspen Music Festival and Music School were founded under the auspices of the Institute in 1949. Artists from all over the world come to teach and to perform in recitals, concerts, and operas.

Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa.

Characteristics, Forms, and Instruments

The chief characteristics of Arabian music are modal homophony, florid ornamentation, and modal rhythm. The melodic modal system of Ibn Misjah (d. c.715) contained, in its final form, eight modes. This system lasted until the 11th cent., when the modes were increased to 12; by the 13th cent. these had come to be called maqamat. Until this time the Arabian gamut had consisted of 12 tones roughly equal to the chromatic scale of Western music.

In the 13th cent. five more tones were added, each a quarter tone below the diatonic whole tone, i.e., below d, e, g, a, b. A new tuning of the gamut was adopted in the 16th cent., and not only the tones but also the nature of the maqamat were changed. Instead of scales within which melodies were composed, they became melodic formulas to be used in composition, a system much like the ragas of Hindu music.

Ornamentation in Arabian music consisted of shakes and trills, grace notes, appoggiaturas, and the tarkib, which was the simultaneous striking of certain notes with their fourth, fifth, or octave. Until the development of instrumental music in the 10th cent., the rhythmic modes were primarily the vocal meters of poetry. In vocal music often a short melody is repeated for each stanza or verse, each repetition being elaborately ornamented.

The principal form of Arabian music is the nauba, a "suite" of vocal pieces with instrumental preludes, that probably originated at the Abbasid court. The principal Arabian instruments, other than those borrowed from older Semitic cultures, were the short-necked lute called the ud, from which the European lute derived its form and name, and the long-necked lute called tanbur. The introduction of the lute into Europe by the Moors in Spain is a certainty; the extent to which Arabian music has exerted greater influence on the West is still a matter of controversy.

History

Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (A.D. 622), but afterward under the Umayyad caliphs (661-750) a consolidation of Persian and Syrian elements with the native musical style took place in Arabia. Ibn Misjah devised a system of modal theory that lasted throughout the golden age under the first Abbasid caliphs (750-847). In the 9th cent. at Baghdad many treatises on music theory and history were written by such men as the philosopher Al-Kindi (9th cent.) and the illustrious Al-Farabi (c.870-c.950), who wrote the most important treatise on music up to his time.

In the 11th cent. under the last Abbasid caliphs a strong Turkistan influence was brought into Arabian music by the Seljuk Turks, and a gradual decay began in the traditional art. With the destruction of Baghdad in 1258 came the end of specifically Arabian musical culture, and only a few late examples of this music are extant. The style was preserved in Egypt and Syria because the Arabic language was spoken there, but it had lost its vitality; even this vestige died when the Ottoman Turks overran Egypt in 1517.

African music, the music of the indigenous peoples of Africa. Sub-Saharan African music has as its distinguishing feature a rhythmic complexity common to no other region. Polyrhythmic counterpoint, wherein two or more locally independent attack patterns are superimposed, is realized by handclaps, xylophones, rattles, and a variety of tuned and nontuned drums. The remarkable aspect of African polyrhythm is the discernible coherence of the resultant rhythmic pattern. Pitch polyphony exists in the form of parallel intervals (generally thirds, fourths, and fifths), overlapping choral antiphony and solo-choral response, and occasional simultaneous independent melodies. In addition to voice, many wind and string instruments perform melodic functions. Common are bamboo flutes, ivory trumpets, and the one-string ground bow, which uses a hole in the ground as a resonator. During colonial times, European instruments such as saxophones, trumpets, and guitars were adopted by many African musicians; their sounds were integrated into the traditional patterns. Scale systems vary between regions but are generally diatonic. Music is highly functional in ethnic life, accompanying birth, marriage, hunting, and even political activities. Much music exists solely for entertainment, ranging from narrative songs to highly stylized musical theater. Similarities with other cultures, particularly Indian and Middle Eastern, can be ascribed primarily to the Islamic invasion (7th-11th cent.). See gospel music; jazz; spiritual.

Musical genre incorporating diverse styles from Africa, eastern Europe, Asia, South and Central America, the Caribbean, and nonmainstream Western folk sources. The term was first coined largely in response to the sudden increase of recordings in non-English languages that were released in Great Britain and the United States in the 1980s, but by the early 1990s world music had become a bona fide musical genre and counterpoint to the increasingly synthetic sounds of Western pop music. Initially, African popular music and world music were virtually synonymous, and the genre's biggest stars included the Nigerians King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuti and the Senegalese Youssou N'Dour. Moreover, one of its earliest advocates was the Cameroonian-born Frenchman Francis Bebey. By the 21st century world music encompassed everything from Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the pop-flamenco of the French group the Gipsy Kings to “ambient-global” projects that merged so-called ethnic voice samples with state-of-the-art rhythm programming.

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Style of U.S. popular music sung and performed primarily by African American musicians, having its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues. The term was first used in the 1960s to describe music that combined rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, and rock music and that was characterized by intensity of feeling and earthiness. In its earliest stages, soul music was found most commonly in the South, but many of the young singers who were to popularize it migrated to cities in the North. The founding of Motown in Detroit, Mich., and Stax-Volt in Memphis, Tenn., did much to encourage the style. Its most popular performers include James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Aretha Franklin.

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or rock and roll

Musical style that arose in the U.S. in the mid-1950s and became the dominant form of popular music in the world. Though rock has used a wide variety of instruments, its basic elements are one or several vocalists, heavily amplified electric guitars (including bass, rhythm, and lead), and drums. It began as a simple style, relying on heavy, dance-oriented rhythms, uncomplicated melodies and harmonies, and lyrics sympathetic to its teenage audience's concerns—young love, the stresses of adolescence, and automobiles. Its roots lay principally in rhythm and blues (R&B) and country music. Both R&B and country existed outside the mainstream of popular music in the early 1950s, when the Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed (1921–65) and others began programming R&B, which until then had been played only to black audiences. Freed's success gave currency to the term rock and roll. The highly rhythmic, sensual music of Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, and particularly Elvis Presley in 1955–56 struck a responsive chord in the newly affluent postwar teenagers. In the 1960s several influences combined to lift rock out of what had already declined into a bland and mechanical format. In England, where rock's development had been slow, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were found to have retained the freshness of its very early years and achieved enormous success in the U.S., where a new generation had grown up unaware of the musical influences of the new stars. At the same time, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, and others were blending the traditional ballads and verse forms of folk music with rock, and musicians began to explore social and political themes. Performers such as the Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention combined imaginative lyrics with instrumental virtuosity, typically featuring lengthy solo improvisation. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix won large followings with their exotic elaborations on R&B. The 1970s saw the rise of singer-songwriters such as Paul Simon, Neil Young, Elton John, David Bowie, and Bruce Springsteen, and rock assimilated other forms to produce jazz-rock, heavy metal, and punk rock. In the 1980s the disco-influenced rock of Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince was balanced by the post-punk “new wave” music of performers such as Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads (led by David Byrne), and the Eurythmics—all of whom illustrated their songs with music videos. By the 1990s rock music had incorporated grunge, rap, techno, and other forms.

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Written, printed, or other visual representation of music. There are two basic approaches to notating music. Tablature (such as guitar chord diagrams) depicts the actions a performer is to take (in particular, showing where to put the fingers to produce a given sound). Symbolic notation describes the sounds themselves and includes methods that vary from assigning pitches different letters of the alphabet to representing a given combination of notes by a graphic sign. The Western notation system combines rhythmic notation (the appearance of a note indicates its duration) with pitch notation (the line or space on a staff where a note is placed indicates its pitch). Thus, a single symbol shows both pitch and duration, and a string of these symbols notates both melody and rhythm.

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Popular entertainment that featured successive acts by singers, comedians, dancers, and actors. The form derived from the taproom concerts given in city taverns in England in the 18th–19th centuries. To meet the demand for entertainment for the working class, tavern owners often annexed nearby buildings as music halls, where drinking and smoking were permitted. The originator of the English music hall as such was Charles Morton, who built Morton's Canterbury Hall (1852) and Oxford Hall (1861) in London. Leading performers included Lillie Langtry, Harry Lauder (1870–1950), and Gracie Fields. Music halls evolved into larger, more respectable variety theatres, such as London's Hippodrome and the Coliseum. Variety acts combined music, comedy acts, and one-act plays and featured celebrities such as Sarah Bernhardt and Herbert Tree. Seealso vaudeville.

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In music, institution for education in musical performance and composition. The term and institution derives from the Italian conservatorio, which in the Renaissance period and earlier denoted an orphanage often attached to a hospital. The children there were given musical training; the term gradually came to apply to music schools. The first secular school of music for students at large was established in Paris in 1784. Throughout the 19th century the French model was copied, with modifications, in Europe and in the U.S., later in Canada and Australia. Conservatories typically offer instruction to people of all ages, but the primary focus is on students age 10–25. Important U.S. conservatories include the Curtis Institute of Music, the Eastman School, and the Juilliard School.

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Mechanical musical instrument in which projecting pins on a revolving brass cylinder or disk, encoding a piece of music, pluck tuned steel tongues. It was probably invented circa 1780 in Switzerland. With its modular cylinders or disks, it was a popular domestic instrument until displaced by the player piano and phonograph.

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In chemistry and physics, a theoretical model describing the states of electrons in solid materials, which can have energy values only within certain specific ranges, called bands. Ranges of energy between two allowed bands are called forbidden bands. As electrons in an atom move from one energy level to another, so can electrons in a solid move from an energy level in one band to another in the same band or in another band. The band theory accounts for many of the electrical and thermal properties of solids and forms the basis of the technology of devices such as semiconductors, heating elements, and capacitors (see capacitance).

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Musical ensemble that generally excludes stringed instruments. Ensembles of woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments originated in 15th-century Germany, taking on a particularly military role; these spread to France, Britain, and eventually the New World. In the 15th–18th centuries, many European towns had town musicians, or waits, who performed especially for ceremonial occasions in wind bands often consisting primarily of shawms and sackbuts (trombones). In the 18th–19th centuries, the English amateur brass band, largely consisting of the many newly developed brass instruments, took on the important nonmilitary function of representing organizations of all kinds. In the U.S., Patrick Gilmore's virtuoso band became famous in the mid-19th century; his greatest successor, John Philip Sousa, bequeathed a repertory of marches that has remained very popular. The “big band,” under leaders such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie, was central to American popular music in the 1930s and '40s. In the rock band, unlike most other bands, stringed instruments (electric guitars and electric bass) are paramount.

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Art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Music most often implies sounds with distinct pitches that are arranged into melodies and organized into patterns of rhythm and metre. The melody will usually be in a certain key or mode, and in Western music it will often suggest harmony that may be made explicit as accompanying chords or counterpoint. Music is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. It is used for such varied social purposes as ritual, worship, coordination of movement, communication, and entertainment.

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klezmer music(Yiddish; “vessel of song”)

Traditional music played by professional musicians (klezmorim) in the Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe, especially for weddings and other ceremonies. The klezmer tradition has its roots in medieval Europe. By the 19th century its style was well-developed, influenced not only by the liturgical music of the synagogue (which allows only unaccompanied singing), but also that of the local non-Jewish cultures. It is primarily lively dance music. Klezmer ensembles have varied considerably; in the U.S., where a klezmer revival began in the 1980s, a typical band consists of four to six musicians playing some combination of violin, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tuba, accordion, double bass, and percussion.

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Music composed to accompany a play. The practice dates back to ritualistic Greek drama, and it is thus connected to the use of music in other kinds of ritual. Sometimes limited to the role of introduction or interlude (setting a mood or a historical period, for example), it may also accompany spoken dialogue (see melodrama). Film and television music is sometimes considered incidental music.

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or country and western

Musical style that originated among whites in rural areas of the southern and western U.S. The term country and western music was adopted by the music industry in 1949 to replace the derogatory hillbilly music. Its roots lie in the music of the European settlers of the Appalachians and other areas. In the early 1920s the genre began to be commercially recorded; Fiddlin' John Carson recorded its first hit. Radio programs such as Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and Chicago's National Barn Dance fueled its growth, and growing numbers of musicians, such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, began performing on radio and in recording studios. With the migration of Southern whites to industrial cities in the 1930s and '40s, country music was exposed to new influences, such as blues and gospel music. Its nostalgic bias, with its lyrics about poverty, heartbreak, and homesickness, held special appeal during a time of great population shifts. In the 1930s “singing cowboy” film stars, such as Gene Autry, altered country lyrics to produce a synthetic “western” music. Other variants include western swing (see Bob Wills) and honky-tonk (see Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams). In the 1940s there was an effort to return to country's root values (see bluegrass), but commercialization proved a stronger influence, and in the 1950s and '60s country music became a huge commercial enterprise. Popular singers often recorded songs in a Nashville style, while many country music recordings employed lush orchestral backgrounds. Country music has become increasingly acceptable to urban audiences, retaining its vitality with diverse performers such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris, and Lyle Lovett. Despite the influence of other styles, it has retained an unmistakable character as one of the few truly indigenous American musical styles.

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Form of black American music derived from Pentecostal church worship services and from spiritual and blues singing. Recordings of Pentecostal preachers' sermons were immensely popular among African Americans in the 1920s. Taking the scriptural direction “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord” (Psalm 150), Pentecostal churches welcomed timbrels, pianos, banjos, guitars, other stringed instruments, and even brass into their services. Choirs often featured the extremes of female vocal range in antiphonal counterpoint with the preacher's sermon. Other forms of gospel music have included the singing and acoustic guitar playing of itinerant street preachers; individual secular performers; and harmonizing male quartets, whose acts included dance routines and stylized costumes. Gospel music's principal composers and practitioners included Thomas A. Dorsey, who coined the term; the Rev. C.A. Tindley (1851–1933); the blind wandering preacher Rev. Gary Davis (1896–1972); Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–73), whose performances took gospel into nightclubs and theatres in the 1930s; and Mahalia Jackson. Gospel music was a significant influence on rhythm and blues and soul music, which have in turn strongly influenced contemporary gospel music.

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Music held to be typical of a nation or ethnic group, known to all segments of its society, and preserved usually by oral tradition. Knowledge of the history and development of folk music is largely conjectural. Musical notation of folk songs and descriptions of folk music culture are occasionally encountered in historical records, but these tend to reflect primarily the literate classes' indifference or even hostility. As Christianity expanded in medieval Europe, attempts were made to suppress folk music because of its association with heathen rites and customs, and uncultivated singing styles were denigrated. During the Renaissance, new humanistic attitudes encouraged acceptance of folk music as a genre of rustic antique song, and composers made extensive use of the music; folk tunes were often used as raw material for motets and masses, and Protestant hymns borrowed from folk music. In the 17th century folk music gradually receded from the consciousness of the literate classes, but in the late 18th century it again became important to art music. In the 19th century, folk songs came to be considered a “national treasure,” on a par with cultivated poetry and song. National and regional collections were published, and the music became a means of promoting nationalistic ideologies. Since the 1890s, folk music has been collected and preserved by mechanical recordings. Publications and recordings have promoted wide interest, making possible the revival of folk music where traditional folk life and folklore are moribund. After World War II, archives of field recordings were developed throughout the world. While research has usually dealt with “authentic” (i.e., older) material not heavily influenced by urban popular music and the mass media, the influence of singer-songwriters such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan expanded the genre to include original music that largely retains the form and simplicity of traditional compositions.

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Any music involving electronic processing (e.g., recording and editing on tape) and whose reproduction involves the use of loudspeakers. In the late 1940s, magnetic tape began to be used, especially in France, to modify natural sounds (playing them backward, at different speeds, etc.), creating the genre known as musique concrète. By the early 1950s, composers in Germany and the U.S. were employing assembled conglomerations of oscillators, filters, and other equipment to produce entirely new sounds. The development of voltage-controlled oscillators and filters led, in the 1950s, to the first synthesizers, which effectively standardized the assemblages and made them more flexible. No longer relying on tape editing, electronic music could now be created in real time. Since their advent in the late 1970s, personal computers have been used to control the synthesizers. Digital sampling—composing with music and sounds electronically extracted from other recordings—has largely replaced the use of oscillators as a sound source.

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(from Latin, alea: “dice game”) Any 20th-century music, particularly that of the 1950s and '60s, the composition or performance of which incorporates elements of chance. In aleatory music aspects such as the ordering of a piece's sections, its rhythms, and even its pitches are decided at the moment of performance. When not purely improvising, players follow lists of arbitrary rules or interpreted “graphic” notation that merely suggest the sounds. Charles Ives and Henry Cowell had used such techniques, but John Cage became the principal figure in aleatory; other aleatory composers include Earle Brown (1926–2002), Morton Feldman (1926–87), and Pierre Boulez.

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Music composed for small instrumental ensembles and performed without a conductor. Traditionally intended for performance in a room or reception hall, often solely for the performers' own pleasure, chamber music is now often heard in concert halls. It began with the 16th-century instrumental consort, and long continued to be associated with aristocratic households. The duo sonata (usually for violin and continuo) and trio sonata appeared in early 17th-century Italy. The string quartet arose in the 1750s and remains the best-known chamber genre and ensemble. The serenade, nocturne, and divertimento were Classical genres for varying instrumental forces, often intended to accompany meals and other activities. Standard ensembles include the string trio (violin, viola, cello), string quintet (two violins, two violas, cello), and piano trio (piano, violin, cello). The chamber orchestra, usually with fewer than 25 musicians, is often used for 18th-century music and usually requires a conductor. Seealso sonata.

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In music, the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element. Probably originally a pejorative term applied to music of extreme chromaticism, it has become the most widely used descriptive term for 20th-century music whose connection with tonality is difficult to hear. Arnold Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern are regarded as the seminal atonal composers; the serialism of their later work is often distinguished from their earlier “free atonality.”

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Conservatory of music in Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. It was founded in 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok (1876–1970), wife of the editor Edward Bok, and named for her father, the inventor Charles Gordon Curtis. Her endowment was adequate to assure scholarships for gifted students throughout the world. Many eminent musicians have served on its faculty, including Wanda Landowska, Bohuslav Martinů, and Rudolf Serkin. Graduates include Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and Gian Carlo Menotti.

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