Musical Involvement Summary

The main idea of Donald J. Funes' book Musical Involvement: A guide to perceptive Listening is understanding how different aspects of music can give the listener a sense of tension and repose. Throughout he discusses how elements such as: rhythm, structure and growth, tonality, pitch scales and systems, chord successions, foreground and background elements and how a listeners perceived notion on a piece of music will affect their attitude toward it. Thus, increasing how the listener responds to the music. Throughout this paper we will look at all the aspects mentioned by Funes that are the sources of tension and repose of composition.

"Cycles of tension and repose determines the shape of a composition" (Funes, 1992. pp.203), and because of

Rhythm can be broken down into different elements. Specifically pace, tempo, pulse and meters. This elements organize the time in the music, and time has an enormous affect on tension and repose. Pace is considered the "rate of activity for any musical element, perceived in relation to some norm" (Funes, 1992. pp. 67). So an increase or decrease in the pace can either increase or decrease the tension. For example to increase the tension the components involved with pace would be to: speed up the pulse, increase the amount of sound, or change the quality of the sound. Tempo is another aspect that changes tension. Tempo refers to the speed of the pulses or beats (Funes, 1992). When the changes in tempo deny our expectations on how the beats should be tension is then increased (Funes, 1992). With meters there are specific patterns that occur. Meters are grouping of pulses specifically in units of two and/or three (Funes, 1992). These clusters create different patterns and when these patterns are changed unexpectedly the tension is raised. Within meters there is three divisions: suppressed meter, superimposed subdivision and syncopation. Suppressed meter is when the music alternates from two pulse units to three pulse units. With this change the listener builds tension because they are waiting for some sort of unity that never comes. Superimposed subdivision is "a well established meter level" (Funes, 1992. pp. 87), that "always creates metrical conflict: (Funes, 1992. pp. 87). This conflict is created by the increased amount of musical events presented in music that the listener must simultaneously listen to. To top it off it adds an element of surprise which instantly increases the tension. Syncopation is "the shifting of accent from a predictable beat" (Funes, 1992. pp. 222). The syncopated beats raise tension because they are either absent or conflicting with the anticipated beats. Last but not least,