The History of Western Music - Notes On Lecture 1. Musical Horizons

Summary

In our first lecture, we are introduced to the fundamentals of music as a profound and integral part of human culture. Samuel Andreyev emphasises the importance of Active Listening and encourages expanding one's musical horizons to unlock the transformative potential of this art form. By exploring the distinctions between Western classical music and various musical traditions from around the world, the lecture highlights the diverse ways in which different cultures develop and foreground specific musical parameters such as Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, and Timbre.

Goal Of This Lecture

Encourage you to go farther, to dig into music as a phenomenon, to understand its origins, and to understand how music works.

Notes

Intro To Music

Music takes us away from the logic of the real world and frees us from our physical limitations. It also connects people in many ways, like strengthening bonds around a campfire, belonging to a shared culture, hyping you up before battle. Music can be thought of as a highly abstract form of movement. It takes you from one place to another. With rises and falls, movement is built into it. It's so abstract but so linked to the physical world.

Ultimately, music stems from a religious impulse. It transcends experience, just like God.

“Music rots when it gets too far from the dance.”
— Ezra Pound

Music is transcendental but it also comes from the body. I believe the above quote is referencing how music originally stems from the body. From foot steps, to heart pumping, to the rhythm of your breath.

Music is essentially made of air. As Sam Whiting always says, you’re just making wobbly air. What's crazy is that our brains like this wobbly air and use it for all the reasons I gave above.

Pop and Classical Music

Pop Music is actually just an outbranch and evolution of Classical Music. The main distinction is classical music is fundamentally a written tradition. This reliance on Music Notation compared to recorded music, provides key advantages. It lets you:

Western Music tends to focus on harmony.

What Music Is Made Of

Music is a multi parametric art form. This means it involves multiple parameters like rhythm, melody, harmony and timbre.

Humans are better at perceiving changes in pitch rather than duration. Just like we are better at seeing the change of a car’s lights rather than the imperceptible change in distance as the car in front brakes. So we're wired to hear and possibly enjoy melody. If the pitch change is too drastic, we find it jarring.

Timbre Described

Timbre can be described as a particular spectrum of Overtones. Take the example of hitting a key on the piano. If you press it softly, you get a warm timbre. But if you hit it with force, it's still the same note, but the overtones give it a new timbre. It will be more harsh and sharp. Again, physical properties to describe a sound.

Music Around The World

Different climates give us historically different musical cultures. If the climate in the country is wet and dark, a lot of the music will be made indoors. This changes the type of music that's created, the instruments that are used, and the size of the average group of performers.

We listened to a piece of Indian Music. It was made up of:

We listened to an Indonesian Music track next, with a Gamelan Orchestra. It sounded shrill and messy to me. At a first listen. Interesting melodies came about later before being covered by chaotic metal percussion again.

Sub-Saharan Africa is highly focused on rhythm. A soloist based in the middle, surrounded by an Orchestra of other percussionists.

For Western music to evolve into a focus on Polyphony and harmony, we had to simplify aspects of the music. We couldn't have all the complex rhythms at the same time as a microtonal melody. Our senses would be overloaded if all parts were complex all the time.