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THEORETICAL FUNDAMENTALS

UNIVERSAL
MUSIC THEORY 1

XI.
THE SCIENCE OF MUSIC

The Scope of the
Science of Music

The Inner Breath of Music

The Function of the
Inner Breath in Music

The Scientific Aspect
in Music

The Perfect Musical
Description

The Twofold System
of Music Analysis
of the Composer

The Aspect of
Humanities in Music

The True Field of
Science in Music

The Sociology of Music

The Ecology of Music

The Physics of Music

The Physiology of Music

The Economy of Music

Music Critique

Dance in Music

 

Peter Hübner
Founder of the
Micro Music Laboratories

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Theoretical Fundamentals
  PART   XI            
  THE SCIENCE OF MUSIC            
         
 
The Sociology of Music


   
 
The so­ci­ol­ogy of mu­sic is con­cerned with the con­ge­nial re­la­tions of the over­tones of a tone, as well as with the re­la­tions of the mo­tifs among each other, the melo­dies among each other, and the se­quences among each other.
But it is also con­cerned with the con­ge­nial re­la­tions be­tween the over­tones, the mo­tifs, and the se­quences.

 
The Realistic, Sociological Field of Describing Music
 
 
In this con­text, the so­ci­ol­ogy of mu­sic not only cor­re­sponds to the sys­tem of the in­ner-hu­man, but also to the outer hu­man so­cial re­la­tions, which it de­scribes re­al­is­ti­cally by means of the men­tioned pa­rame­ters.

   
 
How far such a de­scrip­tion of the so­ci­ol­ogy of mu­sic can go on the sur­face is dem­on­strated by the hi­er­ar­chic struc­ture of clas­si­cal mu­sic, and on to the dic­ta­tor­ship of the masses in twelve-tone mu­sic, where all the tones of the scale and their pa­rame­ters (pitch, du­ra­tion, am­pli­tude, etc.) have the same value, and in the tech­nique of serial com­pos­ing – the per­fec­tioned twelve-tone mu­sic – in which all these pa­rame­ters are ap­plied like pat­terns ma­nipu­lated by arith­me­tic op­era­tions.

 
The Original Sociology of Music
 
 
Based in the field of in­ner hear­ing, but also in the physi­ol­ogy of the outer mu­si­cal in­stru­ments there exist fixed na­ture-given or­ders of sound-spaces, which – when sys­tem­ati­cally ex­plored – let con­clude a na­ture-given so­ci­ol­ogy of mu­sic, as they ex­press them­selves in fixed re­la­tions of the tones among them­selves, but also of sound-spaces among them­selves.

   
 
These natu­ral, so­cio­logi­cal or­ders of the over­tone-spec­trum are ap­plied by the great mu­si­cal art­ists in the mac­ro­cosm of their mu­sic – in the outer struc­ture of their com­po­si­tions – where they can eas­ily be traced and iden­ti­fied by way of analy­sis.

 
Applied Sociological Orders in the Musical Microcosm
 
 
In this con­text it should be noted that an outer de­via­tion from the na­ture-given in­ner or­der of mu­sic cre­ates the im­pres­sion of dis­so­nance within the lis­tener; a phe­nome­non that in­di­cates a rift be­tween the mac­ro­cosm and the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic, and which ap­pears each time the logic of the mac­ro­cosm has de­vi­ated from the logic of the mi­cro­cosm.

 
The Phenomenon of Dissonance
 
 
The fact that we rec­og­nize a dis­so­nance so di­rectly con­firms that in our men­tal fac­ulty of per­cep­tion there al­ready exists an aware­ness of har­mony be­ing the or­ga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple in mu­sic, and that we have at our dis­posal a built-in, mu­si­cal men­tal-spiri­tual ca­pa­bil­ity for per­ceiv­ing so­cio­logi­cal or­der.

 
The Natural Ability to Recognize Music-Sociological Orders
 
     
     
                                 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                     
                                     
  With kind permission of AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL
© 1998 –  MICRO MUSIC LABORATORIES



           
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