There was, instead, a cessation of sound, the end of a noise which Susan realized she’d been hearing all along. All the time. All her life. A kind of sound you never notice until it stops . . .
The strings were still.
There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.
Death played the empty chord.
The beat slowed. And began to weaken. The universe spun on, every atom of it. But soon the whirling would end and the dancers would look around and wonder what to do next.
Silence can be part of a piece of music (and that’s been obvious since long before Cage; that’s not the point he was making) but that doesn’t mean silence is a musical chord.
Similarly, atheism is an opinion on a question relevant to religion but it isn’t a religion.
A musical chord is defined as three or more notes played at the same time. I could see complaining about the definition being wrong if it was one or more notes, or even two or more notes, but when it’s three or more notes I think it’s clear that it means something more specific than a set of notes.
I see that’s the definition in Wikipedia. It has two citations. One is to a source that says “three or more”. The other is to a different source that says “two or more”. Hmm.
The OED says “three or more … rarely of two notes only”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music says any number “but usually of not fewer than 3″. The Chambers Dictionary of Music says three or more. I have a bunch of elementary music theory books but curiously none of them sees fit to define the word “chord” so far as I can tell. Everything else I can find basically assumes the reader knows well enough what a chord is.
My guess is that most practicing musicians, if asked “does something need three notes to be a chord?”, would say something like “meh, who cares?”.
Tell that to John Cage
Better, to Death:
--Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
Silence can be part of a piece of music (and that’s been obvious since long before Cage; that’s not the point he was making) but that doesn’t mean silence is a musical chord.
Similarly, atheism is an opinion on a question relevant to religion but it isn’t a religion.
A musical chord is defined as three or more notes played at the same time. I could see complaining about the definition being wrong if it was one or more notes, or even two or more notes, but when it’s three or more notes I think it’s clear that it means something more specific than a set of notes.
I see that’s the definition in Wikipedia. It has two citations. One is to a source that says “three or more”. The other is to a different source that says “two or more”. Hmm.
The OED says “three or more … rarely of two notes only”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music says any number “but usually of not fewer than 3″. The Chambers Dictionary of Music says three or more. I have a bunch of elementary music theory books but curiously none of them sees fit to define the word “chord” so far as I can tell. Everything else I can find basically assumes the reader knows well enough what a chord is.
My guess is that most practicing musicians, if asked “does something need three notes to be a chord?”, would say something like “meh, who cares?”.