Music is an art form that covers an expansive spectrum of genres, styles, and techniques. The central components of music include melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre as well as scale tuning and temperament – the latter three being used to describe instruments or performances such as live shows or recordings involving musical pieces. Music has long been recognized as an expression of human creativity and emotion that deserves more recognition and consideration by society at large.
Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, advocated that music played a crucial role in human intellect and virtue development. According to him, its individual tones should be organized specifically so as to elicit certain emotions such as fear or anger. Plato’s student Aristoxenus developed these ideas further and asserted that humans should remain the primary focus of music experiences while it should only be experienced moderately.
As modernity dawned, composers encountered new opportunities and challenges. Composing for cinema, radio, and other new mediums provided composers an avenue to reach wider audiences while increasing income generation. Furthermore, electronic devices like synthesizers and computer programs afforded musicians more creative freedom with their art.
Music has long been used as an expression of culture and identity, as well as a means of connecting with other people. Studies have revealed how certain genres can alter our moods, increasing or decreasing empathy levels; for example, one study conducted in 2018 demonstrated that when an adult sang and danced along to a song with their one-year-old child in tow, that child was more likely to help when that adult dropped something!
As such, scholars have explored the relationship between music and our emotions and its various uses to convey them. Meanwhile, others have sought to gain a better understanding of what defines music itself – its unique quality known as “the musical dimension”, thought unreachable through language but nonetheless existing through actions and experiences; for this reason musicians are sometimes described as mystics.