Music has often been compared with language itself, and the comparison is quite legitimate. While it combines easily with actual language, it also speaks a language of its own, which it has become a platitude to call universal. To understand the significance of the organizing factors of rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color and form, the analogy of a familiar language is helpful. Music has its own alphabet of only seven letters, as compared with the twenty-six of the English alphabet. Each of these letters represents a note, and just as certain letters are complete words in themselves, so certain notes may stand alone, with the force of a whole word. Generally, however, a note of music implies a certain harmony, and in most modern music the notes take the form of actual chords. So it may be said that a chord in music is analogous to a word in language. Several words form a phrase, and several phrases a complete sentence, and the same thing is true in music. Measured music corresponds to poetry, while the old unmeasured plain-song might be compared with prose.
|
Genius might well be defined as the ability to makes a platitude sound as though it were an original remark.
|
Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude.
|
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
|
A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
|
A platitude is simply a truth repeated until people get tired of hearing it.
|
Platitude an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
|
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
|