The material essence of music lies with its melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics. Melody gives music soul, while rhythm blends the expression of harmony and dynamics with the tempo of the passage. All are necessary to create a recognizable pattern known as a “song.”
A working definition of music for our purposes might be as follows: music is an organized art form whose medium is sound and silence, with core elements of pitch, dynamics, and the qualities of timbre and texture.
