Symbols, Systems

A note is a point, showing rhythm and pitch, a symbol of duration and location.

A staff is five horizontal lines, creating a plane for pitch and rhythm — a symbol of height and time in two dimensions.

The pitch is assigned to an instrument, giving personality and a body to its personhood. Timbre is the voice of the body in the physical realm.

Harmony is pitches together at once — each person contributes to a greater being. And so, a harmony is a being which is the glory of pitch and timbre.

Pitches, aligned in melodies, dance with harmonies in bursts of time we measure in “measures.”

Bar lines between measures help the composer graph this free play. Composers who understand free play themselves take these bars lightly.

When analyzing a score or plotting a new one’s life, a composer might number his measures (1, 2, 3, 4...) and number his harmonies according to their position in a scale (I, II, III, IV, V, VI...).

Arabic numerals dashing forth from the Qalam of the Islamic Golden Age cohabitate with Roman numerals etched in bold cobbled stone.

The Romans and the Arabs gave us these number symbols to build our civilization.

Of course notes are called by letter too — phonetic alphabetics from Phoenicians to Greeks, pictograph marks who sacrificed their intelligibility as animals or trees to become abstractions of human speech, so that we may create our own world apart from them — a world of symbols.

These systems of symbols themselves form a fine plane, a realm of free play that symbolizes our own capacity for creation.

We combine them in intricate weave, like any body — our own body of systems, or a car made of layers of systems.

Thus music written is a body, which hosts its Spirit — which is Music.