Saturday 22 December 2018

The Fundaments of Music

I was sent towards this by a friend’s quiz asking us to name some young rich musicians, which took us via a fairly long route to musical styles, which led Z to nominate ‘techno’ as one style she couldn’t deal with, which pointed me towards Underworld and then, back from there, to Terry Riley and ‘In C’, five of its intriguing 35 minutes’ worth we listened to….  And now, here I am, wondering what makes some sound into music.

I used to think there were three fundaments, but I’ve just expanded that to five.  Here they are:

1.      Rhythm
2.      Melody
3.      Harmony

and the two new ones:

4.      Structure
5.      Texture

It’s not impossible that I might expound on each of these in the future.  After all, what are blogs for if not to burble away to oneself?

Clue: ‘In C’ exploits 1 and 5 at the expense of the others.

1 comment:

  1. Pretty well the one style - but I did appreciate Terry's piece. It wasn't quite the horrid stuff I had in mind, though.

    I really should get you talking to Fran at the high school at some time. The two of you would get each other.

    ReplyDelete