Music is a form of art; an expression of emotions through harmonic frequencies.

Music is also a form of entertainment that puts sounds together in a way that
people like, find interesting or dance to. Most music includes people singing with
their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, drums or
violin.

The word music comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means "(art) of the
Muses". In Ancient Greece the Muses included the goddesses of music, poetry, art,
and dance. Someone who makes music is known as a musician.

Contents
1 Definition of music
1.1 Definitions
2 History
2.1 The first flutes
2.2 Ancient times
2.3 Middle Ages
2.4 Renaissance
2.5 Baroque
2.6 Classical period
2.7 Romantic period
2.8 Modern times
2.8.1 Electronic music
2.8.2 Jazz
2.8.3 Pop music
3 Musical notation
3.1 Solf�ge
3.2 Written music
4 How to enjoy music
4.1 By listening
4.2 By playing or singing
4.3 By composing
5 Related pages
6 References
6.1 Books
7 Other websites
Definition of music
Music is sound that has been organized by using rhythm, melody or harmony. If
someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person bangs saucepans
or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music.

There are four things which music has most of the time:

Music often has pitch. This means high and low notes. Tunes are made of notes that
go up or down or stay on the same pitch.
Music often has rhythm. Rhythm is the way the musical sounds and silences are put
together in a sequence. Every tune has a rhythm that can be tapped. Music usually
has a regular beat.
Music often has dynamics. This means whether it is quiet or loud or somewhere in
between.
Music often has timbre. This is a French word (pronounced the French way: "TAM-
br"). The "timbre" of a sound is the way that a sound is interesting. The sort of
sound might be harsh, gentle, dry, warm, or something else. Timbre is what makes a
clarinet sound different from an oboe, and what makes one person's voice sound
different from another person.
Definitions
There is no simple definition of music which covers all cases. It is an art form,
and opinions come into play. Music is whatever people think is music. A different
approach is to list the qualities music must have, such as, sound which has rhythm,
melody, pitch, timbre, etc.

These and other attempts, do not capture all aspects of music, or leave out
examples which definitely are music. According to Thomas Clifton, music is "a
certain reciprocal relation established between a person, his behavior, and a
sounding object".[1]p10 Musical experience and the music, together, are called
phenomena, and the activity of describing phenomena is called phenomenology.

History

Musicians of Amun, Tomb of Nakht, 18th Dynasty, Western Thebes

Even in the stone age people made music. The first music was probably made trying
to imitate sounds and rhythms that occurred naturally. Human music may echo these
phenomena using patterns, repetition and tonality. This kind of music is still here
today. Shamans sometimes imitate sounds that are heard in nature.[2][3] It may also
serve as entertainment (games),[4][5] or have practical uses, like attracting
animals when hunting.[4]

Some animals also can use music. Songbirds use song to protect their territory, or
to attract a mate. Monkeys have been seen beating hollow logs. This may, of course,
also serve to defend the territory.

The first musical instrument used by humans was probably the voice. The human voice
can make many different kinds of sounds. The larynx (voice box) is like a wind
instrument.

The oldest known Neanderthal hyoid bone with the modern human form was found in
1983,[6] indicating that the Neanderthals had language, because the hyoid supports
the voice box in the human throat.[7]

Most likely the first rhythm instruments or percussion instruments involved the
clapping of hands, stones hit together, or other things that are useful to keep a
beat. There are finds of this type that date back to the paleolithic. Some of these
are ambiguous, as they can be used either as a tool or a musical instrument.[8]

The first flutes

The Divje Babe flute

The oldest flute ever discovered may be the so-called Divje Babe flute, found in
the Slovenian cave Divje Babe I in 1995. It is not certain that the object is
really a flute.[9] The item in question is a fragment of the femur of a young cave
bear, and has been dated to about 43,000 years ago.[10][11] However, whether it is
truly a musical instrument or simply a carnivore-chewed bone is a matter of ongoing
debate.[9]

In 2008, archaeologists discovered a bone flute in the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm,
Germany.[12][13] The five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a
vulture wing bone. The researchers involved in the discovery officially published
their findings in the journal Nature, in June 2009. The discovery is also the
oldest confirmed find of any musical instrument in history.[14] Other flutes were
also found in the cave. This flute was found next to the Venus of Hohle Fels and a
short distance from the oldest known human carving.[15] When they announced their
discovery, the scientists suggested that the "finds demonstrate the presence of a
well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized
Europe".[16]

The oldest known wooden pipes were discovered near Greystones, Ireland, in 2004. A
wood-lined pit contained a group of six flutes made from yew wood, between 30 and
50 cm long, tapered at one end, but without any finger holes. They may once have
been strapped together.[17]

In 1986 several bone flutes were found in Jiahu in Henan Province, China. They date
to about 6,000 BC. They have between 5 and 8 holes each and were made from the
hollow bones of a bird, the Red-crowned Crane. At the time of the discovery, one
was found to be still playable. The bone flute plays both the five- or seven-note
scale of Xia Zhi and six-note scale of Qing Shang of the ancient Chinese musical
system.

Periods in music history Dates

Prehistoric music
Ancient music
Medieval music
Renaissance music
Baroque music
Classical period (music)
Romantic music
Modern period

(before writing)
(before 350)
About 350-1400
1400-1600
1600-1750
1740-1820
1820-1900
1900-today

Ancient times
It is not known what the earliest music of the cave people was like. Some
architecture, even some paintings, are thousands of years old, but old music could
not survive until people learned to write it down. The only way we can guess about
early music is by looking at very old paintings that show people playing musical
instruments, or by finding them in archaeological digs (digging underground to find
old things). The earliest piece of music that was ever written down and that has
not been lost was discovered on a tablet written in Hurrian, a language spoken in
and around northern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today), from about 1500 BC. The
Oxfords Companion to Music, ed. Percy Scholes, London 1970

Middle Ages
Another early piece of written music that has survived was a round called Sumer Is
Icumen In. It was written down by a monk around the year 1250. Much of the music in
the Middle Ages (roughly 450-1420) was folk music played by working people who
wanted to sing or dance. When people played instruments, they were usually playing
for dancers. However, most of the music that was written down was for the Catholic
church. This music was written for monks to sing in church. It is called Chant (or
Gregorian chant).

Renaissance
In the Renaissance (roughly 1400-1550) there was a lot of music, and many composers
wrote music that has survived so that it can be performed, played or sung today.
The name for this period (Renaissance) is a French word which means "rebirth". This
period was called the "rebirth" because many new types of art and music were reborn
during this time.

Some very beautiful music was written for use in church services (sacred music) by
the Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594). In Palestrina's music,
many singers sing together (this is called a choir). There was also plenty of music
not written for the church, such as happy dance music and romantic love songs.
Popular instruments during the Renaissance included the viols (a string instrument
played with a bow), lutes (a plucked stringed instrument that is a little like a
guitar), and the virginal, a small, quiet keyboard instrument.

Baroque
In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural era, which began near the turn of
the 17th century in Rome. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in sculpture,
painting, literature, dance, and music.[18] In music, the term 'Baroque' applies to
the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and
instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo,
and even reversing thematic material.

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman
Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts
should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The upper
class also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of
impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces
are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of
sequentially increasing opulence. In similar profusions of detail, art, music,
architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement
as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns. Some
traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others
are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces
of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque
art.

The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco"[19]
which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence,
in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate",
with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.