Music’s Textual Dilemma

Music is sound: audible, unique, ephemeral. For music composed before the advent of electronic recording a century and a quarter ago, musical texts — the unique arrangements of musical symbols by which music is represented in visible form — are our principal evidence for how that music sounded when it was created. But the texts in which Western music of the past is preserved are not necessarily accurate representations of the music they record. Although the symbols that make up Western musical notation have remained relatively stable over the centuries, much that they represent has changed. Tunings and temperaments have varied — from repertoire to repertoire and from place to place. So have styles of singing and of playing instruments. So have the instruments themselves. Most important in the present context, the conventions for realizing texts have varied substantially; the idea that performers should follow their texts closely dates only from the mid eighteenth century. In these contradictions lies music’s textual dilemma: music historians and performers must depend upon texts, but even supplemented by research in performance practice, texts do not necessarily provide the information necessary to support informed discussion.

Frédéric Chopin, entre exacerbation romantique du modèle vocal et innovations percussives : une mixité dynamique

After some in-depth analysis, for instance, of the first Ballade in G minor (1836), Frédéric Chopin’s music reveals itself as a striking case of a musical equilibrium between two major musical tendencies. On the one hand, his music brings the reaching towards an idealised voice to a full and very convincing development. His musical themes sing most of the time while all the main characteristics of his writing explore continuous spaces, to the extent the piano can achieve. He uses many melodic chromaticisms and broad gestures, very voice-like phrasings ranging from the most delicate pianissimi to the extremely dramatic fortissimo, and other vocal features. On the other hand, his music is unavoidably written for a percussion instrument (the piano), makes much use of rhythms and often dances as well, while his accompaniments are thick with vertical features, accents and other percussive traits. In reality, Chopin’s music is in a striking state of equilibrium between the vocal and the percussive and constitutes a rich case of a mixed status between the two poles. Perhaps for one of the last times in Western music, Chopin is precisely at the point of equilibrium, before the rise of the percussive that gave birth to much of the twentieth century’s music. Chopin’s music will remain a true and much beloved monument of equilibrium.

Rhythm Quantization: Notes on the History of a Technocultural Practice

This chapter sketches a general history of rhythm quantization as a widespread practice in popular music culture. Quantization—a sound technology that automatically maps microrhythmic fluctuations onto the nearest beat available within a predefined metric grid—challenges traditional notions of musicking as an embodied activity that is grounded in the co-presence of human agents. At the same time, it encapsulates cultural and cognitive processes that are entirely human, fitting into a broader historical shift towards chronometric precision in Western music. Questions arising from this apparent contradiction are taken up in this chapter, which situates rhythm quantization as an emergent technocultural practice, examining its attendant technologies and requisite structures of music-theoretical knowledge, as well as its reception within the context of different musical genres.

Դոդեկաֆոնիայի դրսևորումները Առնո Բաբաջանյանի ստեղծագործության մեջ

Dodecaphony, or twelve-tone system, which was one of the composers’ technical directions in the 20th century western music, was employed in Armenian music, too, particularly, in Arno Babajanyan’s work. The study of theoretical principles of dodecaphony in the composer’s works in accordance with the categorization, accepted in European and American researches, showed that when weapply the western model of analysis, the uniqueness of Babajanyan’s style becomes even more apparent.

Exploring Ethiopian Instrumental Music and Musicians

In many Ethiopian traditional cultures, vocal music dominates the musical repertoire. It is only in a handful of traditional contexts, where solely instrumental music becomes part of the repertoire. Contrary to this, however, the modern music domain in Ethiopia offers a wide range of instrumental music. The root of instrumental music in Ethiopia is, most probably, connected with the emergence of independent/private bands in the early 1960s. These modern bands with highly trained Ethiopian musicians, among others, offered ‘light-music’ in hotels and restaurants. In the initial periods, their repertoire mainly entailed re-arranged international melodies. The advancement of the modern music paved a way to increasing musical creativity over the decades to follow. My presentation will attempt to look at instrumentals performed with western music instruments, of which the large part derives from already existing traditional and modern songs. Representative musical pieces will be given special focus in terms of their instrumentation, rearrangement, melodic and metro-rhythmic structures, form and style along with their function, meaning and understanding.

Colonialism, Cosmopolitanism, and Nationalism: The Performativity of Western Music Endeavours in Interwar Shanghai

This article examines the meaning of Western music performances in interwar Shanghai through the theoretical framework of performativity that originated in John Austin's speech act and Judith Butler's notion of identity as performed. The early concerts of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO), I suggest, were an assertion of settler sovereignty in a treaty port such as Shanghai. Therefore, Chinese musicians performing Western music – propagated through the establishment of the National Conservatory of Music by Chinese elites in Shanghai's French Settlement in 1927 – was the embodiment of three contradictory ideals: colonialism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Zooming in on four SMO concerts that featured Chinese musicians in 1929, I argue that they were sites of identity and power negotiation, the SMO and the Chinese musicians asserting quite distinct performative utterances. On the one hand, the performing Chinese body enacted the cosmopolitan outlook that the Municipal Council was eager to project, not only for the sake of ideology but also to increase SMO's concert revenue by appealing to the increasing number of Chinese concert attendees. On the other hand, it meant national glory to Chinese residents in Shanghai, marking Chinese musicians participating in a global musical network. Lastly, this study draws attention to the diverse geographies of Western music in the twentieth century and its coeval development beyond the West, testifying to the timely need for a global music history in which the musicking of Western music in so many Asian cities should be interwoven into its narrative.

An Evaluation of Music’s Adherence to Benford’s Law Throughout History

Western Music history can be divided into six major categories: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Post-War. We analyzed a large collection of music from each time period and discovered a clear mathematical connection. Within each time period, we found that the note frequencies measured in hertz (Hz) and note durations are all Benford distributed. We also found that as music progressed through time, note lengths adhered closer and closer to the Benford distribution with the exception of the Post-War time period.