ABSTRACT
MARTIN EBELING Institute of Music and Musicology, TU Dortmund, Germany
2.1 Introduction
In Ancient Greek, the Muses were the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science and arts, and were considered the source of knowledge. The Latin word musica and eventually the word music derive from the Greek mousike, which means the art of the Muses. Although music is ubiquitous in all cultures, a commonly accepted definition of music has not yet been given. Instead, through the centuries a variety of definitions and classifications of music from different perspectives have been proposed [25]. All definitions of music agree about its medium: Music constitutes communication by artificially organized sound. For the purpose of communication, the structures of music must be comprehensible in connection with auditory perception and cognition.
