The development of the art of music and the variety of its genres gave birth to many phenomena which are called “music.” These days, when we hear the word “music,” we have to ask, “What sort?” It is said that any sort can be called music, provided it is good. Whether it is good also depends very much on its performance—on its revelation in sound. It is said that poor performance can diminish the best music and vice versa. So the issue of the quality of expression is very relevant for the being of music. Music is the art of intonation, in which the sound material is organised according to the relationships between the parameters of pitch, time, timbre, intensity and articulation.

The etymology of the word “music” is derived from the Muses, the Greek goddesses who were guardians of the arts and sciences. According to Isidore of Seville (c.559–636 CE),

[M]usic is knowledge of the harmony which is present in sound and melody, and the name “music” originates from the Muses. The Muses were named after the word mṓsthai which means to seek, because ancient people believed that the influence of songs and the harmony of sound was sought through them. Their sound—due to the fact that this is a matter of the senses—escapes with the flow of time and remains in the memory. Based on this, poets made up the story that the Muses are daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. After all, if the sounds are not retained in a person’s memory, they perish.Footnote 1

The Greek word mousikḗ meant not only music but also poetry, fine arts and a general spiritual culture. Music was understood as the perfect reflection of the harmony of the world, which was especially important for the formation of a human’s personality. In the educational system of Plato’s (c. 427–347 BCE) ideal state, two main subjects predominated: music and gymnastics. He called music “the gymnastics of the soul.” This is reflected in the saying of the Romans, Mens sana in corpore sano (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”).

In most ancient languages the concept of music is understood in different ways. In Sumerian cuneiform, singing and sacred ritual are marked by the same hieroglyph. In the Chinese language, music and joy are pronounced and written identically.

All modulations of sound take their rise from the mind […]; and music is the intercommunication of them in their relations and differences. Hence, even beasts know sound, but not its modulations; and the masses of the common people know the modulations, but they do not know music. It is only the superior man who can (really) know music. On this account we must discriminate sounds in order to know the airs; the airs in order to know the music; and the music in order to know (the character of) the government. Having attained to this, we are fully provided with the methods of good order.Footnote 2

In the Czech language, music is hudba (hud meaning “sound”), and in Croatian glazba (glas meaning “voice”). These languages are the exception in the way they name the phenomenon. In any event, the term “music,” introduced from Greek into Latin, has now taken root in Europe. In ancient Greek culture, music was considered not only an art but also a science. Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE) compared music with medicine and the art of prophecy as a means of education and healing. Pythagoras’ theory of numbers was intended to form the basis of the world order, and the audible embodiment of this numerically based perfection was music, as practical art: the tuning of the strings (tónos equals tension, from which comes the concept of intonation), the calculation of intervals, and as (theoretical) science, the calculation of the pitch and rhythmic proportions of sounds. Music was also later associated with numbers. As Leibniz puts it,Footnote 3

Music charms us, even though its beauty consists only in the harmonies of numbers and in a calculation that we are not aware of, but which the soul nevertheless carries out, […] concerning the beats or vibrations of sounding bodies, which are encountered at certain intervals.Footnote 4

It is “the secret exercise of arithmetic of a soul which does not know it is counting.”Footnote 5 In Schopenhauer’s view, Leibniz, when speaking in this way about music, was right

in so far as he considered only its immediate and outward significance, its exterior. […] From our standpoint, where the aesthetic effect is the thing we have in mind, we must attribute to music a far more serious and profound significance that refers to the innermost being of the world and of our own self. In this regard the numerical ratios into which it can be resolved are related not as the thing signified, but only as the sign (my emphasis – J.R.).Footnote 6

Plato explains [music] as the movement of the melody which it imitates, when the soul is stirred by passions; and Aristotle also says: how is it that rhythms and melodies, although only sound, resemble states of the soul?Footnote 7

In his work De musica Augustine of Hippo analyses Greek musical practice and theory in relation to the concepts of beauty and goodness (kalokagathia). His definition of music as the ability to modulate well (scientia bene modulandi) is profound and pertinent.Footnote 8 Modulation was at that time understood in a broader sense than now. In rhetoric (whose connection with music is undeniable), modulation is the ability to be flexible with speech, the art of the pitch of sounds and the harmony of their interrelation.

Man is completely contained […] in what he reveals in sound and tone. […] In the course of humanity’s historical evolution, speech has emerged from a primeval song element. […] In very ancient times of man’s earthly evolution, his sound and tone expressions were not differentiated into song and speech; instead, they were one. Man’s primeval speech may be described as a primeval song.Footnote 9

This confirms the importance of intonation for the formation of language, while emotional impulses remained in the expression of sound without its verbal form. Language in its poetic form became the music of words. Lithuanians have long said: “The words are so fine, put them into a song.” Russians are the opposite: “You can’t have a song without the words.” Russian songs mostly have an epic character. But Lithuanian songs are primarily lyrical: “There are no songs that have a permanent, stable text of the lyrics among [Lithuanian] songs that are still sung today.”Footnote 10 This is illustrated by the following recordings of Lithuanian folk songs—in these two traditional harvest songs, the melody takes precedence over the text, of which there are many variations which can be applied to the same melody:

Bėk, barali (“Run, little row of rye”) [link] [1:15]

Vai tu, rugeli (“O, you little rye”) [link] [0:47]

(recorded in 2019 in the studio of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, sung by Juozas Rimas).Footnote 11

The primacy of music in vocal works is also recognised much later, for example, in the title of one of Antonio Salieri’s operas—Prima la musica e poi le parole (“First the music and then the words”). Both language and music are connected with movement—with passing from somewhere to somewhere, subject to certain requirements of moderation. Augustine claimed that it was only possible to speak about moderation (modus) by relating it to movement. Movement is also the basis of rhythm. To the Greeks rhythm was a broad concept. So it is with the rhythm of the parts of a sculpture or architecture, and with the relationship between feet in poetry—everything is connected with moderation. The sensing of moderation depends on a certain mental and emotional literacy. Rhytmos comes from the word rhéō (to flow). Hence the saying of Heraclitus pánta rheĩ (everything is in flux)—everything is in constant movement. Augustine also defined music as “the science of moving well” (scientia bene movendi)Footnote 12; he asserted that all types of movement, including musical sounds, were a measure of time and intervals (from the Latin intervallum meaning “the space between”; and thus the relationship between the pitch of two musical sounds). This shows that the fundamental parameters of the relationship between the movement of time and intervals have been understood since ancient times. Although the concept of “rhythm,” like many others, was construed more narrowly over time, it was still perceived to be the heart of the whole musical process. The musical theory of the ancient Greeks was also the theory of harmony and rhythm. Harmony was understood as concord or, in a broader sense, connection or relation. Each harmony (in Greek practice) was connected with a corresponding state of the spirit (éthos), but not with affects or with individual feelings, passions and experiences (páthos). Any harmony could be considered as having two sides. The first was a certain construction of intervals—the relation between the pitches of the musical sounds, which acquired from the interval connections a particular shade or hue. The second was the system of main and secondary tones, where the former pull the secondary tones to form as a group around them.

Although in antiquity this principle of tonal leading was as yet little developed, it became very important as the major-minor system took hold. A crucial role here was played by the process of creating and unwinding tension. Asaf’ev connects this with the action of intonation.

The independence of music as an art is inconceivable without the organization of the elements of music in a form, as a process of the formation of intonations, i.e., a process of constructive principle; the temporal nature of music – its unfolding in time – demands this.Footnote 13

The main foundational elements of music and the approaches towards them have not fundamentally changed; they have only expanded and gained in depth. “Some people think music a primitive art because it has only a few notes and rhythms. But it is only simple on the surface; its substance, on the other hand, which makes it possible to interpret this manifest content, has all the infinite complexity that’s suggested in the external forms of other arts and which music conceals. There is a sense in which it is the most sophisticated art of all.”Footnote 14

The Russian philosopher and phenomenologist Aleksei Losev, who devoted much attention to explaining the being of music and its philosophy, wrote:

With music, everything is in some form of time, everything is striving. There is no static or stable music. Dynamism and volatility, and continuous change, is the main characteristic of this complete, restless unity-plurality. A piece of music is a continuous present without diversion to the past, since each detail audible within it is not endowed for itself, but has grown organically together with all the other details of the piece, penetrating each other within. The general, broad characteristic of the pure being of music is coincidentia oppositorum – a fusion of opposites, presented as a continually changing, continuing present.Footnote 15

Another definition of the essence of music as a phenomenon is especially important: “Music is an art of motion detected in intonations. It is mainly a motor art; consequently, it is realized in time”Footnote 16 (this was emphasised already by Augustine). The action of intonation combines everything which takes place in the process of actualisation of the music: both the piece of music itself (which, after all, is the potential repository of intonations) and the elements of the expression of intonation. Every musical phenomenon follows the rule that the whole is not the sum of its constituent parts, but their transformation into a special structure. Thus, one needs to understand each detail only in the context of the whole, and to see its reflection, its place in that whole, and to determine in what way the whole influences the details (what expression it requires) and what allows it in certain cases to acquire a different meaning. In other words, a part is always only a function of the whole. However, the details are also necessary for an understanding of the whole.

This requires structural analysis. Analysis is the means, while understanding the structural complex is the goal. Because structural understanding is the path towards the emergence of meanings, the ascertainment of the characteristics of the parts of the whole. When the details are stripped off, separated from the whole, when the separate passages are “technically processed,” they are abstracted (detached) from the whole, removed from their place and alienated to it. No matter how much the details are examined separately, they must remain a structural element of the whole.

In the practice of performers, particularly at the lower level, the smallest structural units—the notation marks—are treated as separate objects in space, and there is no pursuit of their relative connection. The note visible on the page is played and perceived without connecting it to the previous one and without shaping the sound process which follows. But this runs contrary to the principles of conscious activity. “Reading is not just scrutinizing or taking one word after another, but above all involves performing a constant hermeneutic movement guided by the anticipation of the whole, and finally fulfilled by the individual in the realisation of the total sense. We have only to think what it is like when someone reads aloud a text that he has not understood. No one else can really understand what is being read either.”Footnote 17

Understanding in musical expression is a transition from a given to meaning (from “what” to how to express that “what”). Based on the fact of the phenomenon—the given sign—we have to use our powers of understanding to penetrate the strong bulwarks of the fact—the sign—to reach the essence of the interpreted work, so that through the expression of sound we give it life. Without expression, without an act, a piece of music remains only a fact—a question in suspense awaiting an answer—awaiting an action which is adequate to the idea of the work being interpreted.