Music
Music is sound arranged into pleasing or interesting patterns. It forms an important part of many cultural and social activities. People use music to express feelings and ideas. Music also serves to entertain and relax. Like drama and dance, music is a performing art. It differs from such arts as painting and poetry, in which artists create works and then display or publish them. Musical composers need musicians to interpret and perform their works, just as playwrights need actors to perform their plays. Thus, musical performances are partnerships between composers and performers. Music also plays a major role in other arts. Opera combines singing and orchestral music with drama. Ballet and other forms of dancing need music to help the dancers with their steps and evoke an atmosphere. Film and TV dramas use music to help set the mood and emphasize the action. Also, composers have set many poems to music. Music is one of the oldest arts. People probably started to sing as soon as language developed. Hunting tools struck together may have been the first musical instruments. By about 10,000 B.C., people had discovered how to make flutes out of hollow bones. Many ancient peoples, including the Egyptians
For information on Indian music, see the World Book article INDIA, DANCE AND MUSIC OF. For example, music and dancing play an important part in Indian religious ceremonies and such tribal rituals as rain dances and hunting dances. The notes appear on a staff, which consists of five horizontal lines and the four intervening spaces. In various parts of Latin America, the music of the Indians mixed with the folk music of their Spanish conquerors. An interval spanning five degrees, such as A to E or C to G, is a fifth. Certain types of music have a fixed pattern of accent. Classical music, also called art music, is composed according to certain rules and performed by musicians from written music. Popular music includes country music, folk music, jazz, and rock music. Most African music features complex rhythms. Composers use both treble clef and bass clef for piano and harp music. Gamelan music has a kind of harmony because the instruments play different melodies at the same time. There are two chief kinds of Western music, classical and popular. The principal Chinese musical instruments are the jin and the pipa, two plucked stringed instruments.
Common topics in this essay:
Richard Nixon,
Harmony Western,
China Japanese,
Composers Italian,
Muslims Indonesian,
Similarly Western,
Arnold Schoenberg,
Korea Japan--also,
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Indonesia Chinese,
western music,
classical music,
stringed instruments,
popular music,
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folk music,
plucked stringed,
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music folk music,
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