The Evolution of Organ Music in the 17th Century: A Study of European Styles

Organ (music)

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Older writers were generally content to rely on mythology or legends. In the 19th century, partly as a result of theories of evolution put forward by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer , new chronologies based on anthropological evidence were advanced. The British writer John Frederick Rowbotham argued that there was originally a drum stage, followed by a pipe stage, and finally a lyre stage.

The Austrian writer Richard Wallaschek, on the other hand, maintained that, although rhythm was the primal element, the pipe came first, followed by song , and the drum last. Sachs based his chronology on archaeological excavation and the geographic distribution of the instruments found in them. Following this method, he established three main strata. The first stratum, which is found all over the world, consists of simple idiophones and aerophones; the second stratum, less widely distributed, adds drums and simple stringed instruments; the third, occurring only in certain areas, adds xylophones , drumsticks, and more complex flutes.

In the 21st century, ethnomusicologists have questioned assumptions about the evolution of instruments from simple to complex; see above Technological developments. The development of musical instruments among ancient high civilizations in Asia, North Africa , and the Mediterranean appears to have emphasized stringed instruments. In Central and South America, wind and struck instruments seem to have been most important.

It is not always easy to say whether instruments are indigenous to a particular area, however, since their cultivation may well have spread from one country to another through trade or migration. Nevertheless, it is known that the harp was used from early times in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India and was imported into China after the end of the 4th century ad.

In Greece it was regarded as a foreign instrument: Apart from the trumpet, the only wind instrument in normal use in Greece was the aulos , a double-reed instrument akin to the modern oboe. The Egyptians used wind instruments not only with double reeds but also with single reeds and thus may be said to have anticipated the clarinet. Peculiar to China was the sheng , or mouth organ; the Chinese also used as an artistic instrument the panpipes xiao , which in Greece had a recreational function. In medieval Europe, many instruments came from Asia, having been transmitted through Byzantium , Spain , or eastern Europe.

Perhaps the most notable development in western Europe was the practice, originating apparently in the 15th century, of building instruments in families, from the smallest to the largest size.

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A typical family was that of the shawms , which were powerful double-reed instruments. A distinction was made between haut loud and bas soft instruments, the former being suitable for performance out-of-doors and the latter for more intimate occasions. Hence, the shawm came to be known as the hautbois loud wood , and this name was transferred to its more delicately toned descendant, the 17th-century oboe. Drum ensembles have achieved extraordinary sophistication in Africa, and the small hand-beaten drum is of great musical significance in western Asia and India. The native cultures of the Americas have always made extensive use of drums, as well as other struck and shaken instruments.

In Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, xylophones and, since the introduction of metals, their cousins the metallophones play significant roles. Europe, however, has not placed great emphasis on drums and other percussion instruments. See also percussion instrument. Many varieties of plucked instruments were found in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; but bowed instruments eventually came to characterize the area, and they played an important role in the rest of Eurasia and in North Africa as well. The idea of playing a stringed instrument with a bow may have originated with the horse cultures of Central Asia , perhaps in the 9th century ad.

The technique then spread rapidly over most of the European landmass. The European fiddle existed in various forms: The viol has a flat back, sloping shoulders, and six or seven strings; the violin has a rounded back, rounded shoulders, and four strings. The viol, unlike the violin, has frets—pieces of gut wound at intervals around the fingerboard—which make every stopped note i. The violin, being the smallest member of the family, came to be known by the diminutive violino: See also stringed instrument.

Only in Europe did the keyboard develop—for reasons that are not clear. The principle of the keyboard has been used successfully to control bells the carillon , plucked and struck stringed instruments the piano and harpsichord , and wind instruments the organ , the accordion , and the harmonium. Of all instruments, the organ showed the most remarkable development from the early Middle Ages to the 17th century. Originally, sound was admitted to the pipes by withdrawing sliders or depressing levers.

Both of these methods were clumsy: A further development was to separate the various rows of pipes, so that each row could be brought into action or suppressed by means of a draw stop. Once a manageable keyboard had been produced, it could be applied to the portable organ, carried by the player, which was already in use by the 12th century.

Scientific experiments with the monochord , a stretched string that could be divided into various lengths by means of a metal tangent, were followed by the construction of an instrument with a whole range of strings and a keyboard similar to that of the organ—the clavichord. A similar adaptation of the plucking of stringed instruments led to the harpsichord , the ingenious mechanism of which had been perfected by the 16th century. It is curious that a similar method was not applied to the dulcimer , which was struck with hammers, until the early 18th century, when the Italian maker Bartolomeo Cristofori constructed the first pianoforte , so-called because, unlike the harpsichord, it could vary the tone from soft piano to loud forte.

See also keyboard instrument. In Europe the practice of constructing instruments in families continued from the 17th century onward. It established itself only gradually in the orchestra in the course of the 18th century. Trumpets and horns were used in most areas of Eurasia for ceremonial and military purposes. They remained relatively unchanged until the early 19th century, when valves were added to European instruments. This modification also led to the creation of new types.

A pioneer in the field was the Belgian instrument maker Antoine-Joseph Sax , who in built a family of valved instruments called saxhorns , using the bugle as the basis for his invention. Similar instruments were widely adopted in military and brass bands, but only the bass, under the name bass tuba, became a normal member of the orchestra. Sax also invented the saxophone , a single-reed instrument like the clarinet but with a conical tube. This, too, was made in various sizes, which came to be used both in military bands and in jazz ensembles.

The saxophone never became a normal member of the symphony orchestra , but the alto and the tenor have been used by art-music composers, largely as solo instruments, and occasionally a complete quartet of four different sizes has appeared in an orchestral work. See also wind instrument. The variety of musical ensembles used throughout the world is vast and beyond description, but the following principles apply nearly everywhere.

Outdoor music, which is often ceremonial, most frequently involves the use of loud wind instruments and drums. Indoor music, which is more often intended for passive listening, emphasizes such quieter instruments as bowed and plucked strings and flutes. The establishment of orchestras , as opposed to chamber groups, in the early 17th century led to a slight revision of these principles in Europe.

As concert halls increased in size and popularity, so too did the sound-volume requirements of so-called indoor instruments. One result was that the violin family was favoured at the expense of the quieter viols. The latter, along with other instruments whose tone was too weak for orchestral music, gradually dropped out of use until the 20th century, when earlier styles of music and their associated instruments experienced a revival in popularity.

Water power, clockwork, steam, and electricity have all been used at various times to power musical instruments, enabling them to produce sound automatically. Examples include church bells, automatic organs, musical clocks, automatic pianos and harpsichords, music boxes, calliopes, and even automatic orchestras.

Most of the impetus behind this phenomenon ceased with the development of the phonograph and other recording devices of the 20th century.

The development of electricity led not only to its use for mechanical purposes—for example, to control the key action and wind flow in the organ—but also as a means of amplification e. With advances in electronics technology, players can now also make use of computers to generate and store tones and musical patterns. The growth of companies manufacturing electronic and digital instruments has been rapid, and the use of electronic equipment, such as sound synthesizers and recorders using analog or digital media, to produce and combine sound unrelated to the musical scale has become common.

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Melodies also often contain notes from the chords used in the song. The melodies in simple folk songs and traditional songs may use only the notes of a single scale, the scale associated with the tonic note or key of a given song. For example, a folk song in the key of C also referred to as C major may have a melody that uses only the notes of the C major scale the individual notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C; these are the " white notes " on a piano keyboard. On the other hand, Bebop -era jazz from the s and contemporary music from the 20th and 21st centuries may use melodies with many chromatic notes i.

A low, deep musical line played by bass instruments such as double bass, electric bass or tuba is called a bassline. Harmony refers to the "vertical" sounds of pitches in music, which means pitches that are played or sung together at the same time to create a chord. Usually this means the notes are played at the same time, although harmony may also be implied by a melody that outlines a harmonic structure i.

In music written using the system of major-minor tonality "keys" , which includes most classical music written from to and most Western pop, rock and traditional music, the key of a piece determines the scale used, which centres around the "home note" or tonic of the key.

Simple classical pieces and many pop and traditional music songs are written so that all the music is in a single key. More complex Classical, pop and traditional music songs and pieces may have two keys and in some cases three or more keys. Classical music from the Romantic era written from about — often contains multiple keys, as does jazz , especially Bebop jazz from the s, in which the key or "home note" of a song may change every four bars or even every two bars.

Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds and silences in time. Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings, called measures or bars , which in Western classical, popular and traditional music often group notes in sets of two e. Meters are made easier to hear because songs and pieces often but not always place an emphasis on the first beat of each grouping. In pop and rock, the rhythm parts of a song are played by the rhythm section , which includes chord-playing instruments e.

Musical texture is the overall sound of a piece of music or song. The texture of a piece or sing is determined by how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall nature of the sound in a piece. Texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices see common types below. For example, a thick texture contains many 'layers' of instruments.

One of these layers could be a string section, or another brass. The thickness also is affected by the amount and the richness of the instruments.

Texture is commonly described according to the number of and relationship between parts or lines of music:. Music that contains a large number of independent parts e. Timbre, sometimes called "color" or "tone color" is the quality or sound of a voice or instrument. Even if different players of the same instrument play the same note, their notes might sound different due to differences in instrumental technique e.

Even two instrumentalists playing the same note on the same instrument one after the other may sound different due to different ways of playing the instrument e. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include the spectrum , envelope and overtones of a note or musical sound. For electric instruments developed in the 20th century, such as electric guitar, electric bass and electric piano , the performer can also change the tone by adjusting equalizer controls , tone controls on the instrument, and by using electronic effects units such as distortion pedals.

The tone of the electric Hammond organ is controlled by adjusting drawbars. Expressive qualities are those elements in music that create change in music without changing the main pitches or substantially changing the rhythms of the melody and its accompaniment. Performers, including singers and instrumentalists, can add musical expression to a song or piece by adding phrasing , by adding effects such as vibrato with voice and some instruments, such as guitar, violin, brass instruments and woodwinds , dynamics the loudness or softness of piece or a section of it , tempo fluctuations e.

Expression is achieved through the manipulation of pitch such as inflection, vibrato, slides etc. Expression therefore can be seen as a manipulation of all elements in order to convey "an indication of mood, spirit, character etc. In music, form describes how the overall structure or plan of a song or piece of music, [22] and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections. From the s onward, Western pop and rock songs are often in verse-chorus form , which is based around a sequence of verse and chorus "refrain" sections, with new lyrics for most verses and repeating lyrics for the choruses.

Popular music often makes use of strophic form , sometimes in conjunction with the twelve bar blues. In the tenth edition of The Oxford Companion to Music , Percy Scholes defines musical form as "a series of strategies designed to find a successful mean between the opposite extremes of unrelieved repetition and unrelieved alteration. Scholes states that European classical music had only six stand-alone forms: Where a piece cannot readily be broken down into sectional units though it might borrow some form from a poem, story or programme , it is said to be through-composed.

Such is often the case with a fantasia , prelude , rhapsody , etude or study , symphonic poem , Bagatelle , impromptu , etc. This form is built from a sequence of clear-cut units [27] that may be referred to by letters but also often have generic names such as introduction and coda , exposition, development and recapitulation , verse, chorus or refrain , and bridge. Introductions and codas, when they are no more than that, are frequently excluded from formal analysis.

All such units may typically be eight measures long. Medley , potpourri is the extreme opposite, that of "unrelieved variation": Examples include orchestral overtures , which are sometimes no more than a string of the best tunes of the musical theatre show or opera to come. This form uses two sections AB In 18th-century Western classical music, "simple binary" form was often used for dances and carried with it the convention that the two sections should be in different musical keys but same rhythm, duration and tone.

The alternation of two tunes gives enough variety to permit a dance to be extended for as long as desired. This form has three parts. In Western classical music a simple ternary form has a third section that is a recapitulation of the first ABA. Often, the first section is repeated AABA.

This approach was popular in the 18th-century operatic aria , [ citation needed ] and was called da capo i. Later, it gave rise to the bar song , with the B section then often referred to as the "middle eight". A song has more need than a dance of a self-contained form with a beginning and an end of course. This form has a recurring theme alternating with different usually contrasting sections called "episodes".

A recurring section, especially the main theme, is sometimes more thoroughly varied, or else one episode may be a "development" of it. A similar arrangement is the ritornello form of the Baroque concerto grosso. It is normally used in a round. An important variant of this, much used in 17th-century British music and in the Passacaglia and Chaconne , was that of the ground bass — a repeating bass theme or basso ostinato over and around which the rest of the structure unfolds, often, but not always, spinning polyphonic or contrapuntal threads, or improvising divisions and descants.

This is said by Scholes to be the form par excellence of unaccompanied or accompanied solo instrumental music. Developmental forms are built directly from smaller units, such as motifs. A well-known Classical piece with a motif is Beethoven's fifth symphony , which starts with three short repeated notes and then a long note. In Classical pieces that are based on motifs, the motif is usually combined, varied and worked out in different ways, perhaps having a symmetrical or arch-like underpinning and a progressive development from beginning to end.

By far the most important developmental form in Western classical music is Sonata form. This form, also known as sonata form, first movement form, compound binary, ternary and a variety of other names, [ example needed ] developed from the binary-formed dance movement described above but is almost always cast in a greater ternary form having the nominal subdivisions of Exposition, Development and Recapitulation. Usually, but not always, the "A" parts Exposition and Recapitulation , respectively may be subdivided into two or three themes or theme groups which are taken asunder and recombined to form the "B" part the development — thus e.

This developmental form is generally confined to certain sections of the piece, as to the middle section of the first movement of a sonata, though 19th-century composers such as Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner made valiant efforts to derive large-scale works purely or mainly from the motif. Prehistoric music can only be theorized based on findings from paleolithic archaeology sites.

Flutes are often discovered, carved from bones in which lateral holes have been pierced; these are thought to have been blown at one end like the Japanese shakuhachi. The Divje Babe flute , carved from a cave bear femur , is thought to be at least 40, years old. Instruments such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments , such as the Ravanahatha , have been recovered from the Indus Valley Civilization archaeological sites.

The ancient Egyptians credited one of their gods, Thoth , with the invention of music, with Osiris in turn used as part of his effort to civilize the world. The earliest material and representational evidence of Egyptian musical instruments dates to the Predynastic period , but the evidence is more securely attested in the Old Kingdom when harps , flutes and double clarinets were played. Cymbals [35] frequently accompanied music and dance, much as they still do in Egypt today.

Egyptian folk music , including the traditional Sufi dhikr rituals, are the closest contemporary music genre to ancient Egyptian music, having preserved many of its features, rhythms and instruments. Indian classical music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. Various types of stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from Harappa and Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Silappadhikaram by Ilango Adigal provides information about how new scales can be formed by modal shifting of the tonic from an existing scale. Carnatic music, popular in the southern states, is largely devotional; the majority of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. There are also many songs emphasising love and other social issues. Chinese classical music , the traditional art or court music of China, has a history stretching over around three thousand years. It has its own unique systems of musical notation, as well as musical tuning and pitch, musical instruments and styles or musical genres.

Persian music is the music of Persia and Persian language countries: Music and theatre scholars studying the history and anthropology of Semitic and early Judeo-Christian culture have discovered common links in theatrical and musical activity between the classical cultures of the Hebrews and those of later Greeks and Romans. The common area of performance is found in a "social phenomenon called litany ," a form of prayer consisting of a series of invocations or supplications.

The Journal of Religion and Theatre notes that among the earliest forms of litany, "Hebrew litany was accompanied by a rich musical tradition: Music was an important part of social and cultural life in ancient Greece. Musicians and singers played a prominent role in Greek theater. Music was an important part of education, and boys were taught music starting at age six.

Greek musical literacy created a flowering of music development. Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes , that eventually became the basis for Western religious and classical music. The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The medieval era to , which took place during the Middle Ages , started with the introduction of monophonic single melodic line chanting into Roman Catholic Church services.

Musical notation was used since Ancient times in Greek culture , but in the Middle Ages, notation was first introduced by the Catholic church so that the chant melodies could be written down, to facilitate the use of the same melodies for religious music across the entire Catholic empire. The only European Medieval repertory that has been found in written form from before is the monophonic liturgical plainsong chant of the Roman Catholic Church, the central tradition of which was called Gregorian chant.

Organ, Sacred Music, and Historical Keyboards

Alongside these traditions of sacred and church music there existed a vibrant tradition of secular song non-religious songs. Around , the printing press was invented, which made printed sheet music much less expensive and easier to mass-produce prior to the invention of the printing press, all notated music was hand-copied. The increased availability of sheet music helped to spread musical styles more quickly and across a larger area.

Musicians and singers often worked for the church, courts and towns. Church choirs grew in size, and the church remained an important patron of music. By the middle of the 15th century, composers wrote richly polyphonic sacred music, in which different melody lines were interwoven simultaneously. As musical activity shifted from the church to the aristocratic courts, kings, queens and princes competed for the finest composers. Many leading important composers came from the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France.

They are called the Franco-Flemish composers. They held important positions throughout Europe, especially in Italy. Other countries with vibrant musical activity included Germany, England, and Spain. The Baroque era of music took place from to , as the Baroque artistic style flourished across Europe; and during this time, music expanded in its range and complexity. Baroque music began when the first operas dramatic solo vocal music accompanied by orchestra were written. During the Baroque era, polyphonic contrapuntal music, in which multiple, simultaneous independent melody lines were used, remained important counterpoint was important in the vocal music of the Medieval era.

German Baroque composers wrote for small ensembles including strings , brass , and woodwinds , as well as for choirs and keyboard instruments such as pipe organ , harpsichord , and clavichord. During this period several major music forms were defined that lasted into later periods when they were expanded and evolved further, including the fugue , the invention , the sonata , and the concerto.

The music of the Classical period to aimed to imitate what were seen as the key elements of the art and philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome: Music from the Classical period has a lighter, clearer and considerably simpler texture than the Baroque music which preceded it. The main style was homophony , [49] where a prominent melody and a subordinate chordal accompaniment part are clearly distinct. Classical instrumental melodies tended to be almost voicelike and singable. New genres were developed, and the fortepiano , the forerunner to the modern piano, replaced the Baroque era harpsichord and pipe organ as the main keyboard instrument.

Importance was given to instrumental music. It was dominated by further development of musical forms initially defined in the Baroque period: Others main kinds were the trio , string quartet , serenade and divertimento. The sonata was the most important and developed form. Although Baroque composers also wrote sonatas, the Classical style of sonata is completely distinct.

Technological developments

All of the main instrumental forms of the Classical era, from string quartets to symphonies and concertos, were based on the structure of the sonata. The instruments used chamber music and orchestra became more standardized. In place of the basso continuo group of the Baroque era, which consisted of harpsichord, organ or lute along with a number of bass instruments selected at the discretion of the group leader e.

The Baroque era improvised chord-playing of the continuo keyboardist or lute player was gradually phased out between and One of the most important changes made in the Classical period was the development of public concerts. The aristocracy still played a significant role in the sponsorship of concerts and compositions, but it was now possible for composers to survive without being permanent employees of queens or princes.

The increasing popularity of classical music led to a growth in the number and types of orchestras. The expansion of orchestral concerts necessitated the building of large public performance spaces. Beethoven and Schubert are also considered to be composers in the later part of the Classical era, as it began to move towards Romanticism. Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature.

Romantic music expanded beyond the rigid styles and forms of the Classical era into more passionate, dramatic expressive pieces and songs. Romantic composers such as Wagner and Brahms attempted to increase emotional expression and power in their music to describe deeper truths or human feelings.

With symphonic tone poems , composers tried to tell stories and evoke images or landscapes using instrumental music. Some composers promoted nationalistic pride with patriotic orchestral music inspired by folk music. The emotional and expressive qualities of music came to take precedence over tradition. Romantic composers grew in idiosyncrasy, and went further in the syncretism of exploring different art-forms in a musical context, such as literature , history historical figures and legends , or nature itself.

Romantic love or longing was a prevalent theme in many works composed during this period. In some cases the formal structures from the classical period continued to be used e. In many cases, new approaches were explored for existing genres, forms, and functions. Also, new forms were created that were deemed better suited to the new subject matter.

Composers continued to develop opera and ballet music, exploring new styles and themes. In the years after , the music developed by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert introduced a more dramatic, expressive style. In Beethoven's case, short motifs , developed organically, came to replace melody as the most significant compositional unit an example is the distinctive four note figure used in his Fifth Symphony.

They generated complex and often much longer musical works. During the late Romantic period, composers explored dramatic chromatic alterations of tonality , such as extended chords and altered chords , which created new sound "colours". The late 19th century saw a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestra, and the industrial revolution helped to create better instruments, creating a more powerful sound. Public concerts became an important part of well-to-do urban society. It also saw a new diversity in theatre music , including operetta , and musical comedy and other forms of musical theatre.

In the 19th century, one of the key ways that new compositions became known to the public was by the sales of sheet music , which middle class amateur music lovers would perform at home on their piano or other common instruments, such as violin. With 20th-century music , the invention of new electric technologies such as radio broadcasting and the mass market availability of gramophone records meant that sound recordings of songs and pieces heard by listeners either on the radio or on their record player became the main way to learn about new songs and pieces.

There was a vast increase in music listening as the radio gained popularity and phonographs were used to replay and distribute music, because whereas in the 19th century, the focus on sheet music restricted access to new music to the middle class and upper-class people who could read music and who owned pianos and instruments, in the 20th century, anyone with a radio or record player could hear operas, symphonies and big bands right in their own living room.

This allowed lower-income people, who would never be able to afford an opera or symphony concert ticket to hear this music. It also meant that people could hear music from different parts of the country, or even different parts of the world, even if they could not afford to travel to these locations. This helped to spread musical styles. The focus of art music in the 20th century was characterized by exploration of new rhythms, styles, and sounds. The horrors of World War I influenced many of the arts, including music, and some composers began exploring darker, harsher sounds.

Traditional music styles such as jazz and folk music were used by composers as a source of ideas for classical music. Igor Stravinsky , Arnold Schoenberg , and John Cage were all influential composers in 20th-century art music.

The evolution of organ music in the 17th century; a study of European styles.

Sound recording was also a major influence on the development of popular music genres, because it enabled recordings of songs and bands to be widely distributed. The introduction of the multitrack recording system had a major influence on rock music, because it could do much more than record a band's performance.

Using a multitrack system, a band and their music producer could overdub many layers of instrument tracks and vocals, creating new sounds that would not be possible in a live performance. Jazz evolved and became an important genre of music over the course of the 20th century, and during the second half of that century, rock music did the same. Jazz is an American musical artform that originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions.

The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes , improvisation , polyrhythms , syncopation , and the swung note. Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed in the s from s rock and roll , rockabilly , blues , and country music. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form," it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody.

Performance is the physical expression of music, which occurs when a song is sung or when a piano piece, electric guitar melody, symphony, drum beat or other musical part is played by musicians. In classical music, a musical work is written in music notation by a composer and then it is performed once the composer is satisfied with its structure and instrumentation. However, as it gets performed, the interpretation of a song or piece can evolve and change. In classical music, instrumental performers, singers or conductors may gradually make changes to the phrasing or tempo of a piece.

In popular and traditional music, the performers have a lot more freedom to make changes to the form of a song or piece.

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As such, in popular and traditional music styles, even when a band plays a cover song , they can make changes to it such as adding a guitar solo to or inserting an introduction. A performance can either be planned out and rehearsed practiced —which is the norm in classical music, with jazz big bands and many popular music styles—or improvised over a chord progression a sequence of chords , which is the norm in small jazz and blues groups. Rehearsals of orchestras, concert bands and choirs are led by a conductor.

Rock, blues and jazz bands are usually led by the bandleader. Improvisation is the creation of a musical idea—a melody or other musical line—created on the spot, often based on scales or pre-existing melodic riffs. Many cultures have strong traditions of solo performance in which one singer or instrumentalist performs , such as in Indian classical music, and in the Western art-music tradition. Other cultures, such as in Bali , include strong traditions of group performance. All cultures include a mixture of both, and performance may range from improvised solo playing to highly planned and organised performances such as the modern classical concert, religious processions, classical music festivals or music competitions.

Chamber music , which is music for a small ensemble with only a few of each type of instrument, is often seen as more intimate than large symphonic works. Many types of music, such as traditional blues and folk music were not written down in sheet music ; instead, they were originally preserved in the memory of performers, and the songs were handed down orally , from one musician or singer to another, or aurally, in which a performer learns a song " by ear ". When the composer of a song or piece is no longer known, this music is often classified as "traditional" or as a "folk song".

Different musical traditions have different attitudes towards how and where to make changes to the original source material, from quite strict, to those that demand improvisation or modification to the music. A culture's history and stories may also be passed on by ear through song. In music, an "ornament" is a decoration to a melody, bassline or other musical part. The detail included explicitly in the music notation varies between genres and historical periods. In general, art music notation from the 17th through the 19th centuries required performers to have a great deal of contextual knowledge about performing styles.

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