the formal qualities of art...

So tonight in my docent class our teacher wanted us to practice having to talk about formal elements of art without much time to prepare to show us that it can save you if you're not as familiar with the subject matter of a particular exhibit. You can still create interesting discussion based on basic elements such as line, color, shape, space, and texture. Well one girl chose to speak about space in a few pieces and to open she used this question: "In art there are five formal elements: line, color, shape, space,and texture. Now which one of these is expressed in all art forms across the board: music, visual art, dance/theatre etc.?"
There was a pause and then after a few people offered their opinions she said: "space."

le sigh....ok, not that I'm being critical of her opinion cause she only had ten mintues and I don't expect the average person to have an in depth knowledge of music but.....come on! Not that I'm saying space is the wrong answer-sure it's right....of course she tied it to music by saying, "there is space between the notes on a page of music" tho i'm not sure if she was referring to the physical space left to right between notes in a melody line or if she was trying to reference what is called: intervals-distance between two pitches (up and down), but whatever. It works. It's just....

I don't know I was distracted the rest of her presentation cause I was just thinking about HOW incomplete her statement was. To be honest ALL of the formal elements in art run across the board in all artistic mediums-all of them not just one, though, again, I understand that this only matters to music geeks like myself but here we go incase anyone poses this philosophical question to you:
so...

-Line. I'm thinking I don't have to explain any of these elements' connections to art because it's frankly obvious in visual art. Music: ever heard of a melodic line or harmonic line before? whether it's stagnant or flowing due to rhythm/rests/pitches etc. and the chords themselves having certain structures that lead to the next chord and the next until a cadance (resolution) etc. totally applies to music. Dance/theatre- with choreography and physical placement of things this could also totally apply.

-Color. Again, art-duh. Music: there is such a thing as color in music but in music we refer to it as timbre (pronounced "tamber") which basically refers to the type of sound emitted by a voice/instrument-just think of how different a tuba sounds from an oboe-they have different timbres. A lot of times people will say how strings have a warm timbre and the winds have a colder/more sharp timbre-shrug i've heard some warm winds and some cold strings before-whatever, personal taste. but there ya go.
color in theatre/dance etc-duh.

-Shape. Music: there is shape in music...it's called dynamics and tempo as well as playing with personal feeling/playing musically-it's much more than notes on a page but the personal expression you give to it etc. Dance and Theatre-totally applies

-Texture. Now this is a tricky one for those who don't study music cause as opposed to the art world-music seems much more abstract or at least non-physical/hard to touch it etc. but texture is there too. texture in music refers to the simplicity or the complexity of the music. If there is just a simple monophonic line-one melody it's a light texture as opposed to a melody with a harmonized accompaniment-homophonic or fifteen different instruments playing all at once and all different melodies at once-polyphony. Either way, texture is a real part of music. Though I'm not an expert on theatre/dance-texture at least has reference to costumes and could, I think, be argued to be seen in how many people are on stage-one vs. a whole company or one person talking as opposed to a whole crowd shouting different things at once etc...

-Space. ok, space in music is relevent as far as intervals go (again ammount of whole and half steps between two pitches) as well as range or register-like flutes are obviously a high register while tubas are at a low register. space. But referring to physical notes on a page as music technically isn't right...cause that's not music is it? That's notation-a physical representation of music, but not what we hear which is what music actually is-finicky I know, but that's the nature of the beast-you got to be exact with it cause it's so abstract. and then theatre/dance-duh.

so you see? all apply across the board. That's why I love the humanities because we not only specialize in one thing but enable ourselves to see connections across the board that lead us to broader truths and realizations about a society,race,movements of thought/philosphies and humans in general etc. This semester I'm taking an art history class and music history class and they overlap in everything-sure there's different vocab words to describe the techniques but the background philosophies/mental movements/government influences/societal changes are all the same and their effects can be seen in music and art. It's cool.

and basically i'm so glad that I chose to specialize in music cause out of all the rest-no offense I think it's the hardest to grasp. I mean people hear it on the radio, they like it but that's pretty much where it stops for them. How often do people who like a song go buy a score to check out to really learn about it? But art you just look at what's infront of you and that's all you can do-look and think.

Dont get me wrong, the other fields in the arts are deep with rich histories etc. but they're just more tangible and therefore seem to be more accessible if one wants to learn more in depth about it where music is well...a little more abstract/mathematical/etc. you need to be able to do more than just see. You need to see, hear, feel/touch-if playing an instrument while doing critical thinking in your head etc. I dunno....

ok, geek session over now that I got that out of my system.