What produces tension and repose in music? Visual & Performing Arts

What Produces Tension and Repose in Music?
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What Produces Tension and Repose in Music?
Music is famous across the world for its ability to stimulate memory, feelings, and emotions. Whether one likes to listen to classical, jazz, rap, rock, pop, or country music, they experience these great feelings. According to Funes (1992), musical preferences are shaped in an individual by both current and past experiences, sex, mood, and influences. He also states that how feelings, memory, or emotions are stimulated in music is similar in all kinds of music as they are controlled by the repose and tension features (Funes, 1992). He describes tension as a gradual or abrupt shift or a state toward the unknown, and repose as a gradual or abrupt shift or a state towards the known. Donald indicates that several music elements play a significant role in producing tension and repose.
The first element is the rhythm. Funes gives the rhythm a traditional definition, which states that it is everything that considers the organization of musical elements in time. The rhythm elements include meter, tempo, patterns, and pace. In a rhythmic pattern, repose is produced when some components in a piece of music supply unity by remaining unaffected while the other components undergo substantial adjustment (Funes, 1992). On the other hand, tension is produced when a rhythmic pattern is subjected to variations. This means that the rhythmic pattern keeps changing during the play of the music, making it unpredictable for the listener to determine the next pattern creating tension. Donald also indicates that meter plays a significant role in producing a repose or tension in the music. Meter marks the musical time with pulse units, which can either be two or three. Just as a basic pulse rate sets the tempo element meter, a harpsichord playing softly in the background is strengthened by bass (Funes, 1992). In such a scenario, the pulse is easily identifiable, as one counts the three base notes of the bass and continues to count in the other sections through the harpsichord notes. The figure below illustrates how one can count the bass and harpsichord notes.
Figure 1: illustrating how to count notes in bass and harpsichord
In this figure, the S and W initials stand for strong and weak pulses, respectively, in a song. Based on the figure, it is clear that the bass starts with a strong pulse followed by a weak one, then followed by a strong note, which is carried to the harpsichord's first note. If this section of a song is played, twice the listener will start to develop a sense of repose since he would predict what will be following (Funes, 1992). However, if the pulse is changed to move to the third section, it would lead to tension since it would create an unknown experience. Moreover, considering the tempo and pace elements, we realize that they take a great role in producing tension and repose. To demonstrate this issue effectively will use a song known as Brandenburg Concerto no 4 by Johann Sebastian. At the start of the song, the listeners identify that the recorder is playing the song at a faster pace than the pace used in playing violin and harpsichord (Funes, 1992). Donald stat...