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Music

Music is an integral component of culture and often incorporates multiple musical instruments, being employed across settings ranging from religious services to rock concerts.

Music derives its name from the Greek term musike, which refers to nine muses: Calliope (poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (harmony and instrumental music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance) and Urania (astronomy). These muses were responsible for musical innovations.

Origins

Music derives its name from an ancient Greek word called musike, which refers to nine muses who inspired Ancient Greece: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (double-pipes and music), Hermes (messenger), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (poetic love poems), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).

Assumptions about early music creation suggest vocalized imitations of noises made by other humans or animals. From this time forward, most historians assume the voice to be the primary source of musical creation for much of history; however instruments appeared concurrently and eventually caused an explosion of different music types known as genres to emerge; this diversity makes music attractive to so many today; be it simple folk songs or complex electronic compositions they both are still music!

Functions

Studies on music’s potential functions abound. Some make explicit evolutionary claims while others employ other theories or approaches; yet their results often vary widely depending on who conducts them and the survey/interview techniques employed; statistical methods like factor analysis or cluster analyses usually find consensus on specific dimensions.

Some researchers propose a hierarchy of musical functions, separating them into social and emotional, cognitive or self-related, physiological arousal-related categories; additionally some research shows how musical usage might change depending on cultural context.

Schafer and Sedlmeier (2000) synthesized 17 functions from the literature into three distinct functions for music listening: increasing self-awareness, social connectedness, managing arousal levels and mood management.

Aesthetics

Philosophers who research music aesthetics are concerned with its nature and impact. Musical experiences may influence our emotions or involve imitation.

Some aesthetic issues are shared across art forms, while others are specific to music. It can be challenging to compare the experience of listening to classical music with that of hearing popular tunes.

Reverberation and decay are unique musical concerns; similarly, issues related to improvisation often go ignored in other artistic endeavors. A number of contemporary philosophers are exploring how cultural assumptions influence our aesthetic appreciation of different genres of music.

History

Music’s history is inextricably tied to human intelligence and culture. While its source remains elusive, many scholars consider music an outgrowth of language as its origin.

In that way, it resembles animal mating calls in that they represent preverbal communication between species. Anthropologists believe such signals may even have existed prior to human language as a means of social bonding and bonding among communities.

Music comes from Latin term’musica’, which derives from Greek term’msike’, or the art of the muses, representing poetry, history, science and music: Calliope (poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (instrumental music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (dance), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy). Printing presses enabled rapid spread of political, economic and religious treatises but took much longer for musical works to appear as printed works were. Urania was named Urania by Urania; in turn she represented all nine arts: poetry, history, science & astronomy!). Print presses enabled rapid spread of political, economic & religious treatises but more time was required before musical works could appear printed.

Influence

People often make the claim that one can tell a lot about someone based on their musical taste, because music can have such an effect on one’s emotions and mood, as well as providing an avenue for connecting with others.

Music has long been used as part of ritual and ceremony throughout history, and is widely believed to have the ability to alter human emotion. Many contemporary forms of music deviate from tradition – for example improvisational jazz and rock from the 1920s, late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores or new forms such as electronica or noise music are all forms that push musical boundaries forward.

Studies suggest that music can have a direct influence on our sense of belonging and social affiliation, altering both our attitudes toward members of our ingroup as well as biases against outgroup members.