Most abstract of arts, of which the codes and the uses differ according to civilizations, is also one of oldest, as the drawings testify some to the old caves of more than thirty millenia: probably former to the human languages, the melody accompanied ceremonies, work and dances.

Being detached their initial functions, the musical genres diversified according to the ages and of the places, opening the way with a sometimes free art of any word, sometimes supported on the voice and the gestural human ones. In the new oral culture that modernity works out, the music plays, in particular near youth, a central role.

Defined in the XVIII ^E century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau like “art to assemble the sounds in a pleasant way to the ear”, the music saw its field extending to the XX ^E century in the direction of sound activities more diversified much (“art of the noises” futuristic, “concrete music” of Pierre Schaeffer, rock'n'roll, rap, etc).

This design is however more restricted than that of mousikê, which indicated in Greek Antiquity the whole of arts which chaired the nine Muses, girls of Zeus and Mnémosyne; at that time, the music, integrating poetry and the dance, as well understood the harmony of the spheres and the hearts that of the resonant bodies, and, to the VI ^E century apr. J. - C., Boèce - propagator of the old theories - proposed some the following definition: “Whoever goes down in itself knows very well what it is.”

If it came from there more generally to indicate the only sound units, the music remains all at the same time science of the number and the abstract art - related to the material representations and most capable to express the human emotions.

In addition to the popular music (related to the folklore), the varieties (“light music” or “music of kind”) and the erudite music (known as also “serious”, “traditional” or “classical music”), musicology (science of the music) also gathers many specialized fields: history of the music, ethnomusicology (relating to the ethnic musics), acoustics (examination of the physical properties of the sound), psychoacoustics (concerning the reception of the sound by the human auditive system), theory, analyzes (bearing on the parameters of a work), esthetics, musicotherapy (treating curative properties of the sound), organology (study of the musical instruments), musical sociology.