People just can't imagine life without music. It is present everywhere. Music helps us relax. Music helps us to reach our feelings, it can change our mood, it can make us feel good. When we are sad, it can make us happy. It can reduce stress in our daily lives. When we are happy, it can extend and enhance our sense of happiness. The same goes for sadness. It can also cause some memories of the past to emerge, whether pleasant or unpleasant.
From the earliest past, people have found in their daily lives that certain sounds are pleasant or unpleasant to them, and quite by accident. Trying to create sounds, in various ways, they created the first primitive musical instruments. Since then the development of music and instruments has begun.
In the past, in certain cultures, music was also the medium through which stories were told of future generations. It is known that long ago, our oldest ancestors had vocal anatomy, but it is not known whether they sang. Perhaps they used their hands to clap and create some rhythmic music.
Today we have certain definitions of music. Music is defined as part of the whole art or form of art, that is, the expression of emotions through harmonic frequencies. The music includes singing and playing various instruments such as violin, guitar, flute, piano, drums, and so on.
The word music comes from the Greek word "mousike", which means "(art) from the Muses".
When describing music we use different words: melody, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, pitch, etc. It all relates to music and is a part of it. These are actually the elements of music. Among the most significant are:
| Rhythm | a pattern of regular or irregular pulsations caused by strong and weak melodic and harmonic strokes in the music |
| Tempo | the speed with which the composition is performed |
| Melody | series of tones of varying height and tone interrelated to one whole |
| Dynamics | variation in the volume between tone, notes or phrases |
| Pitch | the degree of highness or lowness of a tone |
| Duration | the length of time a note lasts for |
| Timbre | the characteristic quality of a sound |
| Texture | how the melody, rhythm, and harmony are combined to create the overall quality of a piece of music |
| Structure | the form and arrangement of a piece of music |
The music we listen to can be vocal and instrumental.
Vocal music refers to the songs we usually listen to, that have lyrics, and are performed by:
Vocal music can be both, accompanied by instruments or not accompanied by instruments.
This is simply called - singing.
Instrumental music, on the other hand, refers to verse-free compositions that are mainly performed only by devices created or adapted to make musical sounds, called musical instruments.
Depending on the taste and desires, people want to listen to a certain type of music or a different genre of music. The music genre is a type of music category that encompasses multiple music sounds of the same type, which may be clearly different from any other type of music. The species differ from each other and are classified in different ways, but one simple classification would be as follows:
A musical composition can refer to an original musical work, a structure of a musical work or the process of creating new musical work.
People who make music are called composers.
The most famous composers of all times in the world, who are actually composers of classical music, are:
