Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods. In a grand sense, music theory distils and analyzes the fundamental parameters or elements of music—rhythm, harmony (harmonic function), melody, structure, form, texture, etc. Broadly, music theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music. A person who studies these properties is known as a music theorist. Some have applied acoustics, human physiology, and psychology to the explanation of how and why music is perceived.
Read more about Music Theory: Fundamentals of Music
Famous quotes containing the words music and/or theory:
“As if, as if, as if the disparate halves
Of things were waiting in a betrothal known
To none, awaiting espousal to the sound
Of right joining, a music of ideas, the burning
And breeding and bearing birth of harmony,
The final relation, the marriage of the rest.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any- price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)