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What is Music?

ound track. How many times has the suspenseful rhythm of background music in horror films kept us on the edge of our seats in anticipation of the moment the murderer strikes. How many of us have had our spirits elevated into a distant realm of beauty, when listening to the wistful strains of Celtic music? How can we explain the vitality and exuberance surging through our body when we hear the beating African drums thumping in a park?

Music also has a different role to play in our technologically advanced society. We are exposed to a staggering variety of music. And, this sort of music is not for entertainment purposes. Psychologists who specialize in the subject have created a means to overcome factory noise, or to change the moods of office workers during the day. It plays an integral role in affecting our moods and even defining our overall perception of the world and our identity. Why have companies hired ômoodö specialists and researchers to create some sort of music ambience? It is for a somewhat profitable reason: music has an extraordinary potential for manipulating the moods of employees in order to improve their productivity. Musicologists now ôprogramö music in offices and factories- changing the actual tempo and mood for the music from morning to early afternoon, and again for the end of the day.

If music can do something about workers' moods, it can also affect an entire generation. The Nineteen Twenties in America were the so=-called Jazz Age. World War II had stirring martial music, and tender love songs to sentimentally unite women left at home with the men on the front. Watching old film footage of the mass rallies held by Hitler, there was music there, too. Music that spawned violence and race hatred, and hundreds of thousand arms raised in that Nazi salute.

There is the musical sound of the Jewish shofar, the ram's horn, initiating the Day of Atonement. And, there is the call of the Muezzin ...

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What is Music?. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:08, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1709378.html