scholarly journals Analysis of Ligeti’s Atmosphères by Means of Computational and Symbolic Resources

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 369-394
Author(s):  
Ivan Simurra ◽  
Rodrigo Borges

We report a music analysis study of Atmosphères (1961) from György Ligeti, combining symbolic information retrieved from the musical score and audio descriptors extracted from the audio recording. The piece was elected according to the following criteria: (a) it is a music composition based on sound transformations associated to motions on the global timbre; (b) its conceptual creative intercourse makes direct references to electronic music and sound/timbre techniques from the ancient Renaissance Music; and (c) its sonorities are explored by means of variations on the timbre contrast. From the symbolic analysis perspective, Atmosphères’ timbre content can be discussed considering the entanglement of individual characteristics of musical instruments. The computational method approaches the musical structure from an empirical perspective and is based on clustering techniques. We depart from previous studies, and this time we focus on the novelty curve calculated from the spectral content extracted from the piece recording. Our findings indicate that novelty curve can be associate with five specific clusters, and regarding the symbolic music analysis, three leading music features can be argued: (a) instrumentation changes; (b) distinct pitch chromatic set locations and (c) intensity dynamic fluctuations.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Laczika ◽  
Oliver P. Graber ◽  
Gerhard Tucek ◽  
Alfred Lohninger ◽  
Nikolaus Fliri ◽  
...  

Background: Synchronisation/coupling between respiratory patterns and musical structure. Methods: Healthy professional musicians and members of the audience were studied during a performance of W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto KV 449. Electrocardiogram (ECG)/Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data recording (Schiller: MedilogWAR12, ECG-channels: 3, sampling rate: 4096 Hz, 16 Bit) was carried out and a simultaneous synchronized high definition video/audio recording was made. The breathing-specific data were subsequently extracted using Electrocardiogram-derived respiration (EDR; Software: Schiller medilogWDARWIN) from the HRV data and overlaid at the same time onto the musical score using FINALE 2011 notation software and the GIMP 2.0 graphics programme. The musical score was graphically modified graphically so that the time code of the breathing signals coincided exactly with the notated musical elements. Thus a direct relationship could be produced between the musicians’ breathing activity and the musical texture. In parallel with the medical/technical analysis, a music analysis of the score was conducted with regard to the style and formal shaping of the composition. Results: It was found that there are two archetypes of ideally typical breathing behaviour in professional musicians that either drive the musical creation, performance and experience or are driven by the musical structure itself. These archetypes also give rise to various states of synchronisation and regulation between performers, audience and the musical structure. Conclusions: There are two archetypes of musically-induced breathing which not only represent the identity of music and human physiology but also offer new approaches for multidisciplinary respiratory medicine.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Martens

The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Collins

A corpus of historical electronic art music is available online from the UbuWeb art resource site. Though the corpus has some flaws in its historical and cultural coverage (not least of which is an over-abundance of male composers), it provides an interesting test ground for automated electronic music analysis, and one which is available to other researchers for reproducible work. We deploy open source tools for music information retrieval; the code from this project is made freely available under the GNU GPL 3 for others to explore. Key findings include the contrasting performance of single summary statistics for works versus time series models, visualisations of trends over chronological time in audio features, the difficulty of predicting which year a given piece is from, and further illumination of the possibilities and challenges of automated music analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
Nora Engebretsen

In the past decade, a growing music-analytic practice has emerged around timbre, a parameter long considered either irrelevant to musical structure or too unwieldy to tackle. This new practice centers on an understanding of timbre as a perceptual rather than physical (acoustical) attribute and privileges timbre as a bearer of musical meaning. Through a focused survey of scholarship on timbre from the 1980s to present, this article considers theoretical commitments and challenges that have attended the shift toward this subjective, “perceptualized” conception of timbre, particularly in light of music theory's objectivist and structuralist disciplinary leanings.


Author(s):  
Stefania Zielonka

The paper is an attempt to synthesize the most important aspects of a model of popular and film music analysis proposed by British musicologist Philip Tagg. Tagg, using the category of musemes – universal meaning units, isolated from the musical structure of the composition on the basis of criteria established for every given case – examines selected pieces using multi-level semiotic analysis. In his model Tagg takes into account both the importance of the broadly understood cultural context and the intertextuality of the piece. He also emphasizes the role of affect in musical communication, which is necessary to fully understand the meaning of a musical work.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 551-566
Author(s):  
Lorena Mihelač ◽  
Jelena Panić Grazio ◽  
Leon Stefanija

The article presents the results of the analysis of the use of basic Slovenian music terms used in writing about musical structure. Since this terminology includes a large number of terms, we have decided to limit the analysis of basic terms to the following ones: tone, note, motif, figure, melody and musical form. For the purposes of research, we have created a one-language corpus on www.sketchengine.co.uk, which contains graduate, masters‘ and doctoral theses dealing with music analysis and several textbooks dealing with musical forms. Such a modern corpus approach makes it easier to search terms and their meanings, which ultimately leads to interesting results on how to use certain terms.


2019 ◽  
pp. 139-146
Author(s):  
Patrik N. Juslin

This chapter considers ways to establish links between musical features and specific emotions. The first step is usually to conduct an experiment, in which listeners rate the emotional expression of different excerpts of music — either music from commercial recordings or pieces created specifically for the study. The next step is to extract musical features associated with emotion categories. This can be done in four ways: analyzing the musical score of the pieces; relying on experts, such as music theorists and musicians, asking them to rate various aspects of the musical structure; measuring acoustic parameters of the music (e.g. sound level, timing, frequency spectrum of the timbre), using dedicated computer software; and manipulating specific musical features in synthesized (computerized) performances, to evaluate how they influence a listener's judgments of emotional expression.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-178
Author(s):  
İpek Görgün

This article aims to elaborate Horacio Vaggione’s theoretical approach towards electronic music composition and his understanding of the musical structure, and to discuss how some of his key concepts come into presence during the compositional experience of temporality. Following the introduction of object-oriented composition and musical networks, I will discuss the concept of morphology alongside an investigation of how these ideas relate to temporality. In addition to this inquiry, I will briefly explore the possibilities of an ontological discussion on Vaggione’s compositional mindset and how his temporal perspective differs from some of his colleagues.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-445
Author(s):  
Krasimira Georgieva Fileva – Ruseva

Observability is the ability to mark, remember and reproduce as much detail as possible from the perceived object. It is generally believed that better or weaker observability is related only to visual information, but a great deal of detail that can be discerned or left unnoticed also provides the hearing. For example, in a sounded musical work one listener can mark specifics of harmony, of the texture, of the structure, expressive moves in the inner voices, different techniques used by the performer. In the same musical work, another listener can only discern the soprano melody and, in some cases, even not remembering it. This comparison gives us an opportunity to make conclusion about the usefulness of observability in terms of the richness and completeness of perception. The usefulness of observability, however, is not limited to the fullness of the aesthetic pleasure of perceiving a work of art. It is related to the success of each task, as it provides the one who solves the task with more voluminous, more accurate and more detailed information. Some people have a wide range of observability, others are not particularly good. In all cases, however, this valuable human ability is subject to development and improvement. Naturally, the great benefit of having good observability and the fact that it can be improved shows that care should be taken to develop observability at school. Conditions for the development of observability should be created in the textbooks, providing a sufficient number of tasks useful in this respect. In the electronic textbook on music for the 4th grade of the general education school in Bulgaria, which I will analyze in this report, there are several groups of tasks, which, besides their focus on mastering the learning information, have a direct relation to the development of observability. In one of these groups of tasks must be corrected errors in written text. Observability, in this case manifested as the ability to quickly and accurately detect where, what and how many mistakes are made, without any other tooltips, along with the well-learned knowledge is essential to solving these tasks. Other electronic resources are tasks for arranging in groups terms, musical instruments, signs used in the musical score. Observability here is needed to identify timely the elements belonging to a particular group or those, that do not belong to any of available groups. The arrangement of elements in a table - another group of electronic resources in the textbook - is related to quick orientation in the table compilation logic, the comparison of the items whose places are to be searched, by two types of attributes and finding the exact location of each element according to the specific for it ratio of these two types of attributes. In the interest of better development of observability and assimilation of knowledge by pupils in some of the tables in individual cells must be placed two or more elements, and other cells to remain blank. A specific group is formed by the tasks of selecting more than one correct answer. There are assertions listed in these tasks, among which the students must choose the correct ones. Unlike tasks with a single exact answer, the number of correct answers here is not known in advance. It is not known whether or not there is a precise answer, and also whether all the answers will prove to be correct. In these cases, observability, the ability to assess after extracting the largest possible number of characteristics, is definitely important for a successful decision.


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