The Structure of Music: Diversification versus Constraint

Abstract

Which are determinants of immense structural diversification of music, revealed through an ever growing amount of research? The most pertinent answer to this question seems to be: enormous variety of known societies, causing an equally wide scope of socio-cultural contexts in which music is being created. This diversification is amplified through process of diachronically changing conditions involving such phenomena as interpenetration of rural and urban musics or development of new styles such as jazz, due to an intercultural amalgamation of distinct musical idioms. Synchronically, an essential intracultural diversification is brought about by more or less extensive functional distinctions in use of music. Such factors have been generally recognized and emphasized by today's ethnomusicologists, particularly since Merriam's imaginative definition of ethnomusicology as the study of music in culture. Another significant source of musical diversification is individual inventiveness. While this faculty is, of course, deeply affected by socio-cultural context, there is ample room for intrinsic diversification. To mention only two contrasting instances: in Asia, intricate metro-rhythmic interaction developing between a vina or sitar player and his resourceful accompanying drummer; in West, a work such as Chopin's twenty-four preludes, encompassing a remarkable diversity of musical structures.