The Reception of Glareanus in Italy, between Zarlino and Zacconi. Back to Dissertation Menu Morse, Michael William. If a there is a distinctive discipline of the sociology of music, then its focus and work proceed from conceptions of the relation between music and society. To see music and society in a truly conjunct light is to see the temporal procedures of music as particular instances of broader social process. Historically, sociology has struggled with the relevance of its broad categorical abstractions to the details of experience.
Musicalities represent socially specific developments of the universal fact of rhythm.
Attention to the history of this concept, together with the exemplary case of the musicality called improvised jazz, shows the integrality of music with social life altogether. By way of the presentation of a new musical score titled Symphony in Five Movements, problems related to the transference of traditional forms into a modern-day idiom are analyzed. The use of such forms by living composers is argued to be anachronistic in the face of fundamental changes which have occurred in music over the last century. Some alternative approaches to large-scale form, drawn directly from works of twentieth century masters, are presented. An overview of the Symphony in Five Movements is presented and aspects of its particular forms are discussed.