Chapter 4: A Necessary and Invigorating Excursion into the Worlds of Music Theory and Terminology.

Within the Fourth Chapter of How to Listen to Great Music, Greenburg explores the evolution of tuning during the Renaissance. Greenburg begins by informing the reader “there were profound regional differences in tuning and variations in the kind of pitches and pitch relationships that could be heard across Western Europe.” (30) Adding on to the readers understanding of the time aspect of music he presents us with rhythm specifying that when we talk about the “time” one is really referring to some aspects of rhythm. In this chapter Greenburg explains how certain types of sound called pitches are arrayed into melody. First Greenburg explains that a “pitch” is a discrete sound” a sound we can sing and its discrete with two properties. A single fundamental frequency, which allows us to sing that pitch, and the property of timbre, which allows us identify what instrument is playing or singing that pitch. Concluding the explanation Greenburg informs us that notes are the building block of melody. Harmony in Music refers to the simultaneous sounding of two or more different Pitches. The tonal system itself is a system of chords, of harmonies, that lies at the sonar plexus of the music of the common practice as Greenburg explains. Pythagoras played a key role in discovering the mathematical ration between two vibrating bodies, the more blended the more consonant- the relationship between the sounds they produce. Eventually a harmonic system based on the triad was developed and Greenburg believes the importance and impact that this had on western music cannot be overstated. Concluding chapter four Greenburg defines Texture, Monophony, polyphony, Imitative polyphony, nonimitative polyphony and homophony. Texture refers to the number of