Dr. Greenberg defines music as “sound in time” or “time ordered by sound” — basing this on an earlier definition that included the word “purposeful”. Interesting that Greenberg took “purposeful” out.

The first unit of the course will be about the timbre of different instruments.

He begins by talking about the major classifications of instruments. The first instrument, he said, is the human voice; he won’t go on to discuss it, except to say that other instruments aspire to have its flexibility and expressiveness.

As a potential composer, that made me think about how the timbre of different instruments might remind the listener of different kinds of human voices. Childlike, wheezy-old, raging, crooning, howling at the moon. What kind of person is speaking in this composition? Do they have “friends” with them? Or an argumentative crowd?

“Anthromorphizing” the instrumentation.

Also in this lecture he talks about the bassoon and the contrabassoon; he asks “was there ever an instrument simply called the ‘oon’ ?” Unfortunately no, although at one time there was a tenoroon.