On music

pp. 129-162

in: Robert Wood, Nature, artforms, and the world around us, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

The history of music, as we see in this chapter, is determined to a large extent by the development of techniques: of instrumental construction, of composition, and of performance, but also of musical notation which allowed more complex compositions. It depends upon the original extraction of the harmonic series from the sounds in the environment. It has a dialectical relation to speech and involves disagreement over their right relation. Tones combine into melody and harmony and beats into rhythm which are combined in various dynamic relations of volume and pacing. With its roots in improvization, musical performance has various loci in the development of musical tradition. There is the question of musical meaning and different relations to feeling. The conclusion discusses Rachmaninov's musical meditation on Arnold Böcklin's painting, Isle of the Dead.