Music genre
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. Genre is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Music can be divided into genres in numerous ways, sometimes broadly and with polarity, e.g., popular music as opposed to art music or folk music, or, as another example, religious music and secular music. Often, however, classification draws on the proliferation of derivative subgenres, fusion genres, and microgenres that has started to accrue, e.g., screamo, country pop, and mumble rap, respectively. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often subjective and controversial, and some may overlap. As genres evolve, novel music is sometimes lumped into existing categories.
Definitions
Douglass M. Green distinguishes between genre and form in his book Form in Tonal Music. He lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. To further clarify the meaning of genre, Green writes about "Beethoven's Op. 61" and "Mendelssohn's Op. 64 ". He explains that both are identical in genre and are violin concertos that have different forms. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, and the Agnus Dei from his Mass, K. 317, are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form."In 1982, Franco Fabbri proposed a definition of the musical genre that is now considered to be normative: "musical genre is a set of musical events whose course is governed by a definite set of socially accepted rules", where a musical event can be defined as "any type of activity performed around any type of event involving sound".
A music genre or subgenre may be defined by the musical techniques, the cultural context, and the content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres. Timothy Laurie argues that, since the early 1980s, "genre has graduated from being a subset of popular music studies to being an almost ubiquitous framework for constituting and evaluating musical research objects".
The term genre is generally defined similarly by many authors and musicologists, while the related term style has different interpretations and definitions. Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms genre and style as the same, saying that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language". Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that genre and style are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres.
Subtypes
A subgenre is a subordinate within a genre. In music terms, it is a subcategory of a musical genre that adopts its basic characteristics, but also has its own set of characteristics that clearly distinguish and set it apart within the genre. A subgenre is also sometimes referred to as a style within the genre. The proliferation of popular music in the 20th century has led to over 1,200 definable subgenres of music.A musical composition may be situated in the intersection of two or more genres, sharing characteristics of each parent genre, and therefore belong to each of them at the same time. Such subgenres are known as fusion genres. Examples of fusion genres include jazz fusion, which is a fusion of jazz and rock music, and country rock which is a fusion of country music and rock music.
A microgenre is a niche genre, as well as a subcategory within major genres or their subgenres.
Categorization and emergence of new genres
The genealogy of musical genres expresses, often in the form of a written chart. New genres of music can arise through the development of new styles of music; in addition to simply creating a new categorization. Although it is conceivable to create a musical style with no relation to existing genres, new styles usually appear under the influence of pre-existing genres.Musicologists have sometimes classified music according to a trichotomous distinction such as Philip Tagg's "axiomatic triangle consisting of 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' musics". He explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria. Tagg maintains that popular music differs from art music through its mass distribution strategy as well as its non-written distribution modes which produces distinct production and consumption patterns between these musical categories.
Automatic recognition of genres
Automatic methods of musical similarity detection, based on data mining and co-occurrence analysis, have been developed to classify music titles for electronic music distribution.Glenn McDonald, the employee of The Echo Nest, music intelligence and data platform, owned by Spotify, has created a categorical perception spectrum of genres and subgenres based on "an algorithmically generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 5,315 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify" called ''Every Noise at Once.''
Alternative approaches
Alternatively, music can be assessed on the three dimensions of "arousal", "valence", and "depth". Arousal reflects physiological processes such as stimulation and relaxation, valence reflects emotion and mood processes, and depth reflects cognitive processes. These help explain why many people like similar songs from different traditionally segregated genres.Starting from the end of the 20th century, Vincenzo Caporaletti has proposed a more comprehensive distinction of music genres based on the "formative medium" with which a music is created, that is the creative interface written music, like the so-called classical music, that is created using the visual matrix; 2) oral music Audiotactile music, which are process of production and transmission is pivoted around sound recording technologies. These last two branches are created by means of the above-mentioned audiotactile matrix in which the formative medium is the Audiotactile Principle.
Major music genres
Art music (Classical Music)
Art music primarily includes classical traditions, including both contemporary and historical classical music forms. Art music exists in many parts of the world. It emphasizes formal styles that invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In Western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation rather than being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings, as popular and traditional music usually are. Historically, most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe, beginning well before the Renaissance and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period.The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is usually defined by the notated version rather than by a particular performance and is primarily associated with the composer rather than the performer. This is so particularly in the case of western classical music. Art music may include certain forms of jazz, though some feel that jazz is primarily a form of popular music. The 1960s saw a wave of avant-garde experimentation in free jazz, represented by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry. Additionally, avant-garde rock artists such as Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Residents released art music albums.
Popular music
Popular music is any musical style accessible to the general public and disseminated by the mass media. Musicologist and popular music specialist Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of sociocultural and economical aspects:The distinction between classical and popular music has sometimes been blurred in marginal areas such as minimalist music and light classics. Background music for films/movies often draws on both traditions. In this respect, music is like fiction, which likewise draws a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction that is not always precise.