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Definition: music from Philip's Encyclopedia

Sound arranged for instruments or voices, for many purposes, exhibiting a great variety of forms and styles. It can be split into categories, including rock, jazz, blues, folk music, soul music, rap, house music, and country and western. Within classical music, there are distinct historical periods - medieval music (1100-1400), Renaissance music (1400-1600), Baroque (1600-1750), classical music (1750-c.1800) and Romantic (c.1800-1900) (see romanticism). In the 20th century, various techniques developed, notably serial music, twelve-tone music and impressionism. Composers also experimented with electronic music.


music

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Art of combining sounds into a structured form, usually according to conventional patterns and for an aesthetic (artistic) purpose. Music is generally divided into different genres or styles such as classical music , jazz , pop music , country , and so on. The Greek word mousikē covered all the arts presided over by the Muses . The various civilizations of the ancient and modern world developed their own musical systems. Eastern music recognizes smaller changes of pitch than does mainstream Western music (with the exception of much 20th-century contemporary art music) and also differs from Western music in that the absence, until recently, of written notation ruled out the composition of major developed works, though these are created through improvisation using melodic and rhythmic patterns governed by particular modes and formal devices. Such improvisations (as in the Indian raga ) can last up to 70 minutes, interpreted by virtuosos. Middle Ages The documented history of Western…
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Full text Article Music

From The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion
Music and religion have a long and constitutive history. Music has always provided a means to express, channel, and even manipulate human emotions. It both brings people together and differentiates one group of people from another. It enables participation, in whatever form might be in a given…
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Full text Article MUSIC

From The Reader's Companion to American History
In traditional North American Indian cultures music is a part of everyday life. Chanting and singing accompany religious rites and festivals, and an oral tradition provides a record of history. The concept of music as a performance art is as unusual among Indians as it was among the…
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Full text Article Music

From Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy Through Adolescence
Music in one form or another is an integral part of all human societies and may predate human speech. Music is enjoyable to children, and it is considered fundamental to their development of language and cognition. Although music plays a variety of roles—major or minor—in the lives of adults, it has…
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From Encyclopedia of Adolescence
Music plays an important role in the social and personal lives of people young and old. Adolescents, however, can be considered to be the most fanatic music consumers. This entry first presents some empirical data that support this claim. Next, we will see that the importance of music to adolescents…
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Full text Article MUSIC

From Global Dictionary of Theology
Music is a part of everyday life. From heavy beats pounding in cars, to advertising jingles on radio and TV, the music of film, MP3 files, stadiums full of rock fans, local coffee shops hosting country bards, jazz enthusiasts meeting on the terrace of a local museum at sunset— music dominates the…
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Full text Article MUSIC

From The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment
In the Era of the American Enlightenment, music was credited with the power to evoke sympathy and promote rationality, and ideals of human improvement were embedded in the main currents of American musical life. Sacred and secular music became ever more accessible through increasing education and…
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Full text Article Music

From The Classical Tradition
The powers attributed to music by Greek and Roman poets, playwrights, and philosophers, not to mention the complex systems of music theory developed in the Pythagorean and Aristotelian traditions, intrigued writers of late antiquity and have remained objects of fascination to the present day. …
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From The New Penguin Dictionary of Music
The subject of this book, and of very much more besides. The term derives from the Gk mousik ē, by way of Lat. musica and Fr. musique . Originally it designated everything the muses superintend, but by the time it arrived in Eng. in the 13th century it meant the art of sound and time. The same word…
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From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Music can be situated in anthropological analysis in two distinct ways. First, music can be defined as any communicational practice which organizes sound in terms of pitch, duration, timbre and loudness. A wide range of practices can be included in this definition, extending from the human to the…
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From Encyclopedia of South Africa
While the development of modern urban music in South Africa is usually dated from the 1920s, a rich foundation of traditional styles, performances, ceremonies, and instruments predated the arrival of the first colonizing explorer, Vasco da Gama, in 1497 and still survives in modified forms in the…
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