Idris Sardi’s Influence on Musical Development and Education in Indonesia

Idris Sardi is known as a music maestro in Indonesia. This study aims to reveal the influence of Idris Sardi on the development of music and its implications in music education. This study uses a qualitative method with a narrative approach. The data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation. The research informants were carefully selected from the family, violin students, and colleagues of Idris Sardi in Jakarta and Bogor, West Java. The data were analyzed by organizing data and creating codes, describing codes in chronological categories and themes, developing interpretations, and visualizing data. The results showed that Idris Sardi was influential in developing (1) keroncong music by varying the tempo and expanding the repertoire; (2) the violin playing techniques included unique characters such as vibrato, glissando, and octave variations; (3) ethnic and popular music were made through orchestrations and collaboration with orchestral music. The implications in music vocational education were (1) problem-based learning by creating a new keroncong style to be accepted by society; (2) the improvement capability by exploring skills to play the violin; (3) life-based-learning by raising local and popular music to be qualified while enhancing the level of society’s music appreciation. In conclusion, Idris Sardi provided a strong influence on the music development in Indonesia, and the implication could be a new strategy to improve the quality of music education.

The Art of Musical Pedagogy (A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing by Leopold Mozart and the Origins of Violin Teaching Methodology in Bulgaria)

Learning and improvement are impossible without teaching. Pedagogy exists to impart knowledge and skills as directly and rigorously as possible, but it is rather an art than a science, since art creates rules, while science obeys them. The only rule of art is that there are no rules, no absolute truth. Pedagogy works with personalities and individuals, which science cannot do although scientific rules are vital to the teaching process: know the rules, when to obey them, and when to break them. Thus, all teaching is connected across all cultures and traditions. Violin pedagogy is no exception. The earliest documentation of violin teaching in Bulgaria is found in the curricula of general educational institutions. This study traces the complex interconnections of common teaching principles between national and European violin pedagogy, specifically Leopold Mozart’s A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing (Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, 1756), and late 19th- to early 20th-century Bulgarian teaching in the methods of Karel Machán, Dimitar Hadzhigeorgiev and Kamen Popdimitrov.

The Appearance of the “Ideal” and Other Topoi in Bartók’s Two Sonatas for Violin and Piano nos. 1–2

The early Violin Concerto (1907–1908) dedicated to the young violinist, Stefi Geyer, is regarded as one of the most personal compositions by Béla Bartók. The transparent structure, and the ethereal, unearthly tone of the first movement, probably inspired by Stefi Geyer’s playing, belongs to the warmest and most intimate tone used by the composer. Presumably, its re-emergence in certain passages of the two Violin-Piano Sonatas (1921 and 1922) was not by chance. It might have been the composer’s reaction to Jelly d’Arányi’s violin playing that evoked the memory of the early concerto and its source of inspiration. However, despite their similarities the “ideal” tone of the Sonatas is not the same as that in the Violin Concerto. It is still recognisable, but it has a different, perhaps more mature character and, furthermore, within the material surrounding it, we can detect the kernel of those Bartókian types which gain their definite form only in his 1926 emblematic piano pieces, for instance some elements of his “night music” type, his mourning song type, and some characteristic traits of his “chase” music. In the present article, besides following the process of transformation of the “ideal,” I make an attempt to identify the newly developed musical types, and to find an explanation of all these changes.

Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe

<p>Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarship, but the focus on singers and keyboard players – whose musical activities are understood to have “affirmed” their femininity – has had the effect of obscuring players of less typical instruments. Violin-playing, frequently cast as a man’s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in point. Yet despite the connotations of the instrument, a small but significant group of women did play the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central focus. Looking first at the complex reasons behind objections to women’s violin performance, a number of factors that restricted women’s access to the violin – including the influence of the male gaze and limits placed on women’s physical movement – are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to play the violin, namely the personal, educational, and economic support available from diverse sources such as family members, patrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian ospedali. In addition to placing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis of a violin concerto by one of the most well-known female violinists of the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis of Strinasacchi’s Violin Concerto in B flat major is strongly performance based and focuses on the issue of gender and physical movement (performance gesture), topics which were of much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists performing. As such the analysis engages with concepts from “embodied” musicology. In exploring Strinasacchi’s concerto we see that female violinists could experiment with a variety of gendered roles through violin performance, embodying both masculinity and femininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women’s violin performance and experiences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as peripheral to the workings of the wider musical community as is sometimes implied. Furthermore, it aims to put women violinists more firmly at the centre of their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat female violinists as novel anomalies.</p>

Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe

<p>Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarship, but the focus on singers and keyboard players – whose musical activities are understood to have “affirmed” their femininity – has had the effect of obscuring players of less typical instruments. Violin-playing, frequently cast as a man’s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in point. Yet despite the connotations of the instrument, a small but significant group of women did play the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central focus. Looking first at the complex reasons behind objections to women’s violin performance, a number of factors that restricted women’s access to the violin – including the influence of the male gaze and limits placed on women’s physical movement – are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to play the violin, namely the personal, educational, and economic support available from diverse sources such as family members, patrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian ospedali. In addition to placing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis of a violin concerto by one of the most well-known female violinists of the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis of Strinasacchi’s Violin Concerto in B flat major is strongly performance based and focuses on the issue of gender and physical movement (performance gesture), topics which were of much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists performing. As such the analysis engages with concepts from “embodied” musicology. In exploring Strinasacchi’s concerto we see that female violinists could experiment with a variety of gendered roles through violin performance, embodying both masculinity and femininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women’s violin performance and experiences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as peripheral to the workings of the wider musical community as is sometimes implied. Furthermore, it aims to put women violinists more firmly at the centre of their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat female violinists as novel anomalies.</p>

Biomechanical analysis of the right elevated glenohumeral joint in violinists during legato-playing

BACKGROUND: Many statistics reveal that violin players suffer most often from musculoskeletal disorders compared to musicians of other instrument groups. A common phenomenon, especially observed in violin beginners, is the tendency to elevate the right shoulder during playing the violin. This can probably lead to serious disorders in long-term practice with repetitive movements. OBJECTIVE: For this reason, this study investigated the relationship between the right shoulder elevation and the force in the right glenohumeral joint during violin playing. It was hypothesized that the forces in the right glenohumeral joint are higher during playing with the right shoulder raised compared to playing in normal posture. METHODS: Motion capture data from four experienced violinists was recorded and processed by means of musculoskeletal simulation to get the force and elevation angle while playing with raised shoulder and in normal position. RESULTS: The results indicate that the absolute values of the resulting force, as well as the forces in the mediolateral, inferosuperior, and anteroposterior directions, are higher in playing the violin with the shoulder raised than in a normal posture. CONCLUSIONS: Elevating the right shoulder while playing the violin may pose a potential problem.

Music as Formal and Signifying Feature in García Márquez’s Mature Fiction

Music has played a varying role in García Márquez’s work since the passing reference to traveling troubadour “Francisco el Hombre” in One Hundred Years of Solitude and the novel’s concealed presence of Colombian vallenato song. In The Autumn of the Patriarch music becomes more prominent, with such musical traits as romantic bolero formulas, quotations from folk tunes, children’s jingles, and allusions to Caribbean pop rhythms. These musical insertions help provide markers to the relentless verbal flow of the work. In addition, the larger form of the novel is, by admission of the author, modeled after the string quartets of Bela Bartok. Classical music, moreover, contributes some black humor, as in the refined, cultured thug José Ignacio Sáenz de la Barra’s attachment to Mozart and Bruckner. A vallenato serves as the epigraph to Love in the Time of Cholera and also foreshadows crucial events. Musical references, moreover, furnish chronological and character markers in that novel, with Florentino and Juvenal employing music to captivate Fermina, the first communicating directly with his self-trained violin playing and the other hiring a professional to perform on a grand piano under her balcony. During their one encounter, the two men turn from the economic issue at hand to a discussion of music. García Márquez’s last novel fuses Florentino and Juvenal into a modernist musical voice in his narration of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Punctuating his recollections with “high art” musical allusions, he also communicates directly by singing a medieval Spanish ballad to his sleeping beauty.

Muscle Activation and Subjectively Perceived Effort in Typical Violin Positions

Violinists display a high incidence of task-specific musculoskeletal problems. Sources pertaining to violin playing and teaching traditions as well as musicians’ medicine research offer only imprecise and contradictory recommendations regarding suitable instrument positions. The aim of this study was to add to a growing scientific base for teaching and medical counseling regarding violin positioning. The study evaluated muscle activation (EMG) and subjectively perceived effort (Borg scale) in four standardized typical violin positions, as well as the violinists’ normally used one. The hypothesis, the smaller the angle between the instrument’s longitudinal axis (LoAx) and the player’s central sagittal plane (CSP) and the angle between its lateral axis (LatAx) and the player’s horizontal plane (HP), the more muscle activation and perceived effort in the violinist’s left arm, was confirmed: Decreasing the LoAx-CSP angle from 50° to 20° and the LatAx-HP angle from 50° to 20° resulted in a highly significant and independent increase of EMG and Borg scale self-ratings mean values. Results may allow for a first step in decision-making on violin positioning for ergonomic adaptations in teaching as well as prevention and therapy of playing-related health problems at all levels of proficiency.