Music has been defined in hundreds of ways, including:

“An art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.”

“The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.”

“Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.”

These are all accurate definitions. But where did music come from? When and where did it begin?

If you think of music as communication, perhaps it started with all creatures, including humans, communicating. To this day, we hear birds communicating with distinct melodies and tones and consider it music. Even today we refer to music as the “universal language.”

In ancient Israel a thousand years before Christ, King David composed and sang hundreds of songs called psalms. A few of them are cataloged in the old testament in the book of Psalms.

But music as we know it now, as having structure and form, may have begun in the 10th century with the Gregorian chants. These chants were organized and detailed with soloists and small groups singing distinctive parts. This lead to the need to notate and write down particular tones and passages.

Common rhythm notation began around the year 1200 and soon after, troubadours singing “folk” music starting to appear in parts of Europe. In the 14th century, sacred music (church music and hymns) was quite common (but secular music had begun to take hold as well). During the renaissance (around the year 1500) one of the most significant events occurred—the birth of the composer. The appearance of composers, of course, spawned instrumental music and the creation of the instruments such as the piano and lute.

1750 to 1820 is considered the Classical period with the piano being a composer’s instrument of choice. During this time, Mozart wrote his first symphony, Bach performed in London, and Beethoven was born. Many of the symphonies we enjoy today were written during this time.

By 1900, Scott Joplin had composed and published the “Maple Leaf Rag,” an event many see as the beginnings of the music we know today as popular music. Strauss and Stravinsky were active during the early 1900s, but with regard to popular music, a ground breaking performance occurred in New York in 1924, George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” This was hailed by many as the first truly American composition (most compositions at that time were still derived from European forms). Not only was Gershwin a fine composer, but he and his brother, Ira, helped usher in the Broadway musical with “Porgy and Bess” being their most well-known.

Soon after, new musical forms were taking hold. Jazz in the 1930s (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday), big band music in the 1940s (Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington), and rock-and-roll (Elvis Presley, Chuck Barry) in the 1950s. Other countries (most notably France and Spain) were creating their own popular music during this time (although their music were not as vibrant and as influential as the music happening in the United States).

In order for a piece to be played accurately and with expression and dynamics, written music includes a number of signs and symbols to guide the musician. Some of these include words that tell the musician how loudly or softly to play a note or passage. The following is a list of dynamics often used:

Pianissimo: very soft.
Piano: soft.
Mezzo piano: half as soft as piano.
Mezzo forte: half as loud as forte.
Forte: loud.
Fortissimo: very loud.
Sforzando: forced, abrupt, fierce
Crescendo: a gradual increase in volume.
Diminuendo (or decrescendo) a gradual decrease in volume.

One piece of music can contain many symbols for dynamics, everything from very soft passages (pianissimo) to loud passages (forte) to passages that increase or decrease in volume (crescendo or decrescendo). In some cases, the conductor (or leader) of a group will request changes in dynamics that do not appear in the music (leaving to their discretion the interpretation of the music).

Tempo is measured in beats per minute (bpm). A tempo of 60 bpm would match the ticking of a clock with a beat every second. Quite often, you’ll see the tempo (in bpm) displayed at the beginning of the piece. For a piano or other music student, a metronome is sometimes used as a training device. The metronome can be set for a wide variety of beats per minute and helps the student develop consistency of tempo in their playing. When you see a drummer in a rock band click his drum sticks four times, or call out the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4!, he is setting the tempo for the rest of the band. Tempo has a great effect on the feel and effectiveness of the music played and it’s critical when musicians are playing for dancers. Dances such as the waltz and two-step require a particular tempo.

Bar lines (vertical lines on the staff) are used to separate a song into measures. Measures divide the music into regular groupings of beats be it three, four, or six beats per measure. Except in rare cases, each measure contains the same number of beats throughout a song. Measures are often numbered so that there is a “road map” for the musician when playing as part of a group. For example, a conductor may ask the orchestra to “begin with measure 31.”

A repeat (sign) is used quite often in music. If a particular music passage is to be repeated, a double bar line, preceded by two dots is used. This tells the musician to return to the beginning of the passage and play it again. Other markings such as the coda, and da capo (dc) are used to guide the musician to the proper place in the music such as playing the passage again from the beginning (passages are repeated quite often) or jumping ahead to a particular measure or point in the music.

A fermata (sometimes called a “bird’s eye” because of its appearance) tells the musician that a particular note is to played longer than its normal duration. How long the note is to be held is usually up to the musician or conductor. A fermata is usually displayed above the note it affects.

Some music contains breath marks that show the musician when to take a breath (if singing or playing a wind instrument) or when to lift the bow for string players.

What is an octave? The word “octave” is related to “octopus”, “octagon”, etc — in other words, eight. In music, an octave is 8 diatonic scale notes  higher or lower than  the note of the same name.

For example, the “A” note is always 8 notes higher or lower than the previous “A”. The “A” above middle C vibrates 440 times per second, so the “A” an octave above it would vibrate 880 times per second, while the “A” below middle C would vibrate 220 times per second, and so on. 

The human ear identifies these octave notes as being “the same” — only higher or lower, so if a soprano sang A440 and a bass sang A110, the human ear would hear it as the same note — just separated by pitch. That’s why there are only 7 distinct diatonic pitches and only 12 distinct chromatic pitches, despite the fact that the piano keyboard has 88 keys. Each note is repeated over and over again, but at a higher or lower octave.