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"But that music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by the few, and that it alone among all language unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable—these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge."
Some institutions that train individuals for careers in music offer training in a wide range of professions, as is the case with many of the top U.S. universities, which offer degrees in music performance (including singing and playing instruments), music history, music theory, music composition, music education (for individuals aiming to ...
An often-cited definition of music is that it is "organized sound", a term originally coined by modernist composer Edgard Varèse [15] in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's concept of music as "organized sound" fits into his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded". [16]
Like the origin of language, the origin of music has been a topic for speculation and debate for centuries. [3] Leading theories include Darwin's theory of partner choice (women choose male partners based on musical displays), the idea that human musical behaviors are primarily based on behaviors of other animals (see zoomusicology), the idea that music emerged because it promotes social ...
A distinct use of the term sound from its use in physics is that in physiology and psychology, where the term refers to the subject of perception by the brain. The field of psychoacoustics is dedicated to such studies. Webster's dictionary defined sound as: "1. The sensation of hearing, that which is heard; specif.: a. Psychophysics.
Interest in the word – named the Word of the Twentieth Century by the American Dialect Society – has resulted in considerable research and the linguistic history is well documented. "Jazz" originated in slang around 1912 on the West Coast. The meaning varied, but the word did not initially refer to music.
However, this range is an average and will slightly change from individual to individual. Sound waves that have frequencies below 16 Hz are called infrasoniciis and those above 20 kHz are called ultrasonic. Sound is a mechanical wave and as such consists physically in oscillatory elastic compression and in oscillatory displacement of a fluid.
The Online Etymology Dictionary or Etymonline, sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the origins of English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper. [1]