Music is contextual

I was teaching one of my students about move-able ‘do’ solfege and we were talking about the tendency tones. Specifically “ti” to “do” and “fa” to “mi”. He then asked, “Aren’t those the same interval? Can’t they be the same thing kind of?”

If you’re unfamiliar with solfege check out this video I made on solfege. Solfege is an italian naming system for the scale degrees within a major scale. It relates to the scale degrees of a major scale without referencing specific notes on the keyboard.

So I told him that solfege was contextual. The specific notes change depending on the context within solfege. An F# can be do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, or ti depending on context. It can be any of those. What changes is the key center.

Music is the same.

The music created by one specific composer can sound different depending on the context within which the music was created.

The music created by somebody today is being created in a completely different context than music being created 300 years ago.

Remember that context when analyzing music.

ISJ