Page 69 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo, letnik 20, zvezek 40 ◆ The Journal of Music Education of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, volume 20, issue 40

and clarifying the historical backgrounds and ideas of parameter analysis (e.g.
Bergstrøm-Nielsen, 2006; Bauer, 2001; Hopkins, 1990; Meyer, 1989), in the
perception of music (e.g. Mihelač et al., 2021; Snyder, 2000; Tan et al., 2010)
and so on. Intriguingly, these studies do not appear to have reached an overall
agreement on how to make a clear distinction between primary and seconda-
ry musical elements, and the age-old question still remains: which of these mu-
sical elements are regarded as primary or secondary, and how do they interact?
Bergstrøm-Nielsen (2006, p. 7) outlines that ‘[i]n music history, first pi-
tch, then duration, then dynamics, later timbre (color) became dimensions
which were elaborated compositionally in detail – at least when judging from
Western written sources during the last thousand years.’ A traditional appro-
ach to the question what exactly is (or should be) considered a primary/secon-
dary musical element, is presented in the following very humoristic quotation
by De la Motte, obtained during a discussion between German musicologists
(Stephan, 1969, p. 70): Lorena Mihelač ◆ FROM THE CONCEPTUALIZATION TO THE FORMALIZATION OF MUSICAL ELEMENTS
I just got appetite and so something occurred to me around the theme of ea-
ting ... In art, there are basic articles of food comparable to potatoes, vegeta-
bles, rice or noodles. Then there exists also embellishments, stimulation foods:
curry, paprika, sambal-oelek and other sambals...Timbre corresponds to sam-
bal or to spice, pitch and rhythm to rice or potatoes. I can imagine no work las-
ting two or three hours, for instance an opera, which has been composed with
sambal. I can stand that for ten minutes, and then I have to eat a decent ‘potato’.
A little more seriously formulated the question would sound: is timbre really a
parameter equal to pitch and time duration? I believe not.
According to Meyer (1989), primary parameters are considered to be pi-
tch and duration. Colour, loudness, tempo, and articulation are regarded as
secondary musical parameters, as presented in his influential book Style and
Music: Theory, History, and Ideology. Meyer describes primary musical para-
meters as those that can be segmented into ‘discrete, non-uniform relationship
so that similarities and differences between them are definable, constant, and
proportional’, and secondary parameters as parameters that create ‘statistical’
and ‘processive’ relationships and are defined and dependent on primary para-
meters (Meyer, 1989, p. 14). Meyer argues that pitch and duration are the only
trans-cultural parameters that are capable of performing a structural function
in music. This is supported by the fact that pitch and duration have long held a
dominant position in the Western classical tradition.
Morgan (1984) agrees with Meyer’s concept of primary and secondary pa-
rameters and their interaction. Both the laws of perception and cognition, and
the rules of historically contingent convention, apply equally to primary para-
meters and the syntactical rules they establish. In Meyer’s theory, the divisi-
on between primary parameters (the ‘background structure’) and secondary
parameters (the ‘foreground structure’) is governed by probable strategies and

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