Musical value is a difficult thing to establish. Value is often ascribed to a piece based on the appearance of beautiful melodies, pleasing harmonies, dynamic or textural contrasts, or other unusual effects. While all of these elements are important, they make up an incomplete pictureof a piece in terms of its value. A more comprehensive assessment of value must consider the interplay of expectation and inevitability of musical elements, accomplished through the buildup and release of musical tension. The effectiveness of this interplay, it seems, determines interest, and interest dictates quality or value. Expectation and inevitability relate directly to structuraldelineations within the music, which in turn determines its architecture. Effective, successful musical architecture results when, over the course of a particular piece, or movement, sufficient musical tension is created to produce in the listener an expectation of resolution, and thatnecessary and appropriate, inevitable but not predictable, resolution occurs. The most importantelements affecting musical tension are melody, rhythm, harmony, and phrasing. “Phrasing” in this context refers to the placement and buildup of cadences within large and small sections of a piece or movement. Harmony is, of course, intertwined with phrasing, and the types of cadences along with the buildup of certain harmonies determine the amount of tension produced.
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