The elements of music: What are they, and who cares?

ABSTRACT

If a student were to ask: “What are the elements of Music?” currently the most accurate answer would be: “no one seems to know for sure”. One of the issues music teachers face in their efforts to educate students is the inconsistency of important musical terms. With the advent of a national curriculum, with its mandated curriculum concepts and teacher evaluations based on successful implementation of set curricula, there seems to be a greater sense of urgency that the documents we are directed to teach from are accurate and pedagogically sound. One definition which seems particularly important is the definition of “the elements of music” which, in Australia, are defined as: rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture (ACARA, 2015). These elements however are far from universally accepted and do not match the curriculum documents of either the USA (NAfME, 2015) or UK (Education.gov.uk, 2011). As Music is an art form, this paper proposes that the list of elements of music should reflect this fact. This paper proposes firstly, that sound consists of the same basic elements regardless of its purpose and therefore the elements of sound should be listed separately as: pitch, duration, loudness, timbre, texture and spatial location; and secondly, as music requires more than just sound, that the elements of music be: sound, structure and artistic intent.