Similarities between the music of popular culture and that associated with refined or cultivated tastes are many, as illustrated throughout these various notes on creative perspectives and the arts.
Even so, these similarities are rarely acknowledged, as if the latter, even given its sophistication and rarefied intellectual attributes, is diminished by the understanding that the nature of both forms reflects the same focus on rhythm, melody, harmony, and other traditional aspects of music, particularly Western music.
Both have similar origins, both order sounds to similar effect, and each generates expectations in its listeners as to what constitutes music in terms of the elements mentioned. Yet neither prepares the listener for forms that are brought into being by artists who compose outside the strictures of the common and traditional.
Nevertheless, it is through the act of listening itself that it becomes possible to hear with the contemplative or inner ear, and thereby interact with sounds designed beyond the "given", to ultimately expand the personal and cultural aesthetic in musical experience.
Even so, these similarities are rarely acknowledged, as if the latter, even given its sophistication and rarefied intellectual attributes, is diminished by the understanding that the nature of both forms reflects the same focus on rhythm, melody, harmony, and other traditional aspects of music, particularly Western music.
Both have similar origins, both order sounds to similar effect, and each generates expectations in its listeners as to what constitutes music in terms of the elements mentioned. Yet neither prepares the listener for forms that are brought into being by artists who compose outside the strictures of the common and traditional.
Nevertheless, it is through the act of listening itself that it becomes possible to hear with the contemplative or inner ear, and thereby interact with sounds designed beyond the "given", to ultimately expand the personal and cultural aesthetic in musical experience.
