Music

Music

from Greek mousik (tekhn ), (art) of the Muses

According to the American Heritage Dictionary Music is the sound that a voice or other instrument makes that is pleasing through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre, or the art of arranging, producing, or composing the sounds into a unified arrangement. The word music in Middle English, Old French, Latin, and Greek means Muse, the art of the Muse. Since muses are describe as being the givers of inspiration it stands to reason that the core Middle English meaning of Music would be Muse or the art of the Muse. Tracing music back even further to it root. The Indo-European root for music is men-.

The root men- means to think and from this root different words were derived depending on what part of Old Europe one looks at. From Old English, Latin, and Germanic area the words mind, mental, ament, and dement. Each word dealing with different states of the mind, mental intellectual, mental power; to ament meaning severely deficient intellectual capacity; dement, to make insane, loose intellectual ability. From the base root of men- the word evolves with suffixes and prefixes to change the meaning or manipulate the root into a different form, Middle Dutch and Old High German add ti to the root creating men-ti meaning love. The Latin language further modifies the root to bring into existence words such as monster, monitor, admonish, and demonstrate.

The Latin mentio created the word mention, but by adding a prefix instead of a suffix the Latin also derived the words contrive, reminiscent, and remember. Greek {i{mantis and Sanskrit mantrah bring the evolution of the root in a different direction by adding suffixes that change the root into words meaning seer, counselor, prayer, hymn.

With the word hymn comes the first emergence dealing with music, as the modern world would recognize music. The Greek added suffixes to create the words Muse and music, then extended the form to create the words remember and mindful. The Greek language brings us full circle with the root men- meaning to think, use the mind, and then to music and remember. Could this be why music is so close to our memories?