Art of Contemporary Composer Jia Daqun in Context of Chinese Culture

На современном этапе развития китайской профессиональной музыкальной культуры композитору и музыкальному теоретику Цзя Дацюню принадлежит особая роль. В статье рассматриваются его жизненный путь, композиторское творчество и музыкально-теоретические работы. Цель исследования — определить роль композитора в развитии современной китайской академической музыки; создать панораму его творчества; выявить в произведениях специфические формы претворения китайских национальных традиций, сочетающихся с элементами композиторских техник XX–XXI веков. Многие аспекты китайской музыки до сих пор не изучены и представляют исследовательский интерес; в результате получают характеристику яркие черты стиля Цзя Дацюня, как основная идея его творчества выделяется органичный синтез китайской народной музыкальной культуры и европейских универсалий. Цзя следует современным музыкальным тенденциям: он применяет в сочинениях такие композиционные техники, как серийность, сериализм, пуантилизм, минимализм, микрополифония, алеаторика, пространственная музыка, а также активно работает в области музыкального театра. Во всех его музыкальных произведениях присутствуют национальные китайские элементы, которые представлены музыкальными инструментами, народными темами и звукорядом пентатоники, воплощая образы китайской культуры в их неповторимом своеобразии. The article examines life path of a contemporary Chinese composer Jia Daqun and his art as a composer and music theorist. The purpose of research is to determine the role of the composer in the development of modern Chinese musical culture; to create a panorama of his art; to identify the main features of his style; to designate in his compositions specific forms of implementation of Chinese national traditions, combined with characteristic tendencies of musical compositions of the XX–XXI centuries. The scientific novelty of the article lies in fact that many aspects of Chinese music have not yet been studied and are of a research interest. At the present stage of development of the Chinese professional musical culture, special role belongs to the composer and musical theorist Jia Daqun. The research highlights bright features of the composer’s style and the main idea of his art, namely the idea of organic synthesis of Chinese folk and European musical cultures. In his compositions Jia follows modern musical trends, uses such compositional techniques as seriality, serialism, pointillism, minimalism, micropolyphony, aleatorics, spatial music. He also actively works in the field of musical theater. All his musical works contain national Chinese elements, which are represented by musical instruments, folk musical themes and pentatonic scale, and images of Chinese culture.

Grounded Framework for Culturally Relevant and Responsive Music Teaching

Building upon the work of Ladson–Billings, Lind and McKoy, and Shaw, our proposed framework takes into consideration the depth and breadth of musical experiences and contexts, musical content, and the diversity of musical cultures. The proposed framework includes four quadrants: (a) teacher competencies, (b) informed choices, (c) authenticity, and (d) holistic and comparative lessons. The framework provides K–16 teachers with tangible, accessible, and actionable methods for implementing a teaching pedagogy that has often been misunderstood or implemented without fidelity, and therefore ineffective. Each quadrant’s description and detail provide educators with guidance, supporting their individual musical growth, facilitating authentic relationships with students, authentic performances, and careful idea development for lesson planning that is inclusive of multiple musical perspectives and origins. Muñiz and Richards et al. acknowledged that community support and teacher capacity are essential for culturally relevant pedagogy to be implemented effectively, thus increasing students’ academic growth.

Adyghe (Circassian) theme in the work of Western European composers of the 19th century

Целью является рассмотрение в контексте эстетики романтизма тип отражения образов Кавказа композиторами XIX века в Западной Европе без апелляции к «чужому слову» и использования этнических языковых элементов. Вводятся в научный обиход две фортепианные пьесы - «Черкесский марш» австрийского композитора Иоганна Штрауса (сына), «Черкесская песня» немецкого композитора Жана Вогта (Фогта) и пьеса Альфреда Лебо для фисгармонии (органа) «Черкесский марш». Использование контекстного подхода и музыковедческого инструментария анализа, позволяет выявить существенные черты музыкальной поэтики сочинений и прийти к выводу, что инонациональная образность передается западноевропейскими композиторами посредством условного обобщенно-поэтического воплощения темы Кавказа. Теоретическая значимость состоит в изучении творчества европейских композиторов, в том числе и «второго ряда», но весьма значимых для выявления отношения к адыгской (черкесской) теме в культуре Европы XIX в. и понимания специфики отражения этой темы в творчестве композиторов иных музыкальных культур. Практическая значимость - в возможности дополнения содержания дисциплин национально-регионального компонента образовательных программ вузов культуры и искусства. The goal is to consider, in the context of the romanticism aesthetics, the type of reflection of the images of the Caucasus by composers of the 19th century in Western Europe without an appeal to the "alien word" and the use of ethnic language elements. Two piano pieces "Circassian March" by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss (son), "Circassian Song" by the German composer Jean Vogt and the play by Alfred Lebeau for harmonium (organ) "Circassian March" are introduced into scientific use. The use of a context approach and musicological tools of analysis allows us to identify significant features of musical poetics of compositions. The author concludes that Western European composers convey foreign imagery through a conditional generalized poetic embodiment of the Caucasus theme. Theoretical significance lies in the study of the work of European composers, including the "second row", but very significant in identifying the attitude to the Adyghe (Circassian) topic in the culture of Europe of the 19th century and understanding the specifics of reflecting this topic in the work of composers of other musical cultures. Practical significance - in the possibility of supplementing the content of disciplines of the national-regional component of educational programs of universities of culture and art.

Asymmetry in scales enhances learning of new musical structures

Despite the remarkable variability music displays across cultures, certain recurrent musical features motivate the hypothesis that fundamental cognitive principles constrain the way music is produced. One such feature concerns the structure of musical scales. The vast majority of musical cultures use scales that are not uniformly symmetric—that is, scales that contain notes spread unevenly across the octave. Here we present evidence that the structure of musical scales has a substantial impact on how listeners learn new musical systems. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that nonuniformity facilitates the processing of melodies. Novel melodic stimuli were composed based on artificial grammars using scales with different levels of symmetry. Experiment 1 tested the acquisition of tonal hierarchies and melodic regularities on three different 12-tone equal-tempered scales using a finite-state grammar. Experiments 2 and 3 used more flexible Markov-chain grammars and were designed to generalize the effect to 14-tone and 16-tone equal-tempered scales. The results showed that performance was significantly enhanced by scale structures that specified the tonal space by providing unique intervallic relations between notes. These results suggest that the learning of novel musical systems is modulated by the symmetry of scales, which in turn may explain the prevalence of nonuniform scales across musical cultures.

Bodies Resounding

This article explores the significance of the body in decadent writing about music. It focuses on the fictional and nonfictional writings of the American journalist and critic James Gibbons Huneker (1857–1921). Huneker’s texts demonstrate the striking ways in which literary decadence aligns musical experience with nervous illness and madness, how it dwells on the materiality of sound as it is sensed through the body, and how it frames musical talent as fundamentally shaped by the gender, sexuality, and race of performers and listeners. The article concludes by examining those decadent musical cultures that Huneker’s writings overlook, such as the Harlem Renaissance, to demonstrate how literary texts present new modes of decadent community emerging from embodied and affective responses to music.

Song Beyond the Nation

Within classical music, much writing on the Western song tradition since 1800 has assumed a direct link between musical cultures and national literatures, and song has typically been interpreted as one of the means by which constructions of nationalism and nationhood have been pursued in the cultural sphere. Yet song can also be a mobile and cosmopolitan genre and form of cultural practice, able – through performance, publication, and translation – to cross boundaries between cultures and languages. This volume brings together musicologists, literary scholars, linguists, and cultural historians to examine the ways in which song creation, practice, and interpretation has been defined by, and in turn defines, conceptions of nationalism and the transnational. It focuses on four key poets – the Persian Hafiz, German Heine, American Whitman, and French Verlaine – and examines how their poems have been ‘translated’ into song, and how music can challenge the seemingly organic relationship between language and nation.

Personal Mythic-Ritual Tunes in the Culture of the Ob-Ugrians

Статья посвящена персональным мифоритуальным наигрышам - феномену культуры обских угров (хантов и манси). Автором систематизированы нотные записи и аудиоматериалы из опубликованных и неопубликованных источников, в том числе полевых материалов, собранных на обском Севере в экспедициях 1980 - 2000-х гг. В репертуаре обско-угорских музыкантов есть два блока наигрышей. В первый входят мелодии божеств и духов-покровителей, в том числе медведя. Второй включает разнообразные наигрыши, связанные с людьми и животными: танцевальные (они различают людей по этнолокальному, половозрастному признакам); изображающие трудовые процессы; показывающие повадки и голоса животных; инструментальные «транскрипции» песен; входящие в состав повествований. Большинство инструментальных мелодий звучат во время проведения обряда: медвежьего праздника, шаманского сеанса, жертвоприношения. Персональные мифоритуальные наигрыши посвящены конкретному божеству или духу-покровителю, исполняются только на струнном инструменте и только мужчиной. Локальное распределение таких наигрышей показывает следующее: мелодии божеств, общих для хантов и манси, есть во всех группах обских угров; наделение духов-покровителей собственными мелодиями носит системный характер у манси, причем в сыгвинской и верхнелозьвинской традициях данный феномен выражен особенно ярко. Каждое божество через музыкальную характеристику становится узнаваемым, это достигается благодаря устойчивым мелодико-ритмическим оборотам в структуре наигрышей и общности мелодического фонда персональных наигрышей для разных обрядов. Феномен персональных мифоритуальных наигрышей описан впервые в музыкальном угроведении. Полученные результаты необходимы для проведения компаративных исследований народных музыкальных культур, взаимосвязей музыки и ритуала. This article is devoted to personal mythological melodies (naigryshi) - a phenomenon of the culture of the Ob-Ugrians (Khanty and Mansi). The author systematizes musical notes and audio materials from published and unpublished sources, including field materials collected in the Ob North during the expeditions of the 1980s-2000s. In the repertoire of Ob-Ugric musicians there are two groups of tunes. The first includes melodies of deities and patron spirits, including the bear. The second includes tunes from a variety of games related to people and animals: dances (which distinguish people by ethno-local, gender and age characteristics); depictions of labor processes; those showing the habits and voices of animals; instrumental “transcriptions” of songs; and tunes included in narratives. Most of the instrumental melodies are played during rituals - the bear festival, shamanic sessions, sacrifices. Personal mythological tunes are dedicated to a specific deity or patron spirit and are performed only on a stringed instrument and only by a man. The tunes are distributed locally in the following ways: the melodies of deities common to the Khanty and Mansi are found in all groups of the Ob-Ugrians; the endowment of patron spirits with their own melodies is characteristic of the Mansi, and this phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the Sygvin and Verkhnelozvin traditions. Each deity becomes recognizable through a musical characteristic. This is achieved via stable melodic-rhythmic turns in the structure of the tunes and a common melodic fund of personal tunes for different rites. For the first time in Ugric musical studies the article describes the phenomenon of personal mythic-ritual tunes. This is necessary for conducting comparative studies of folk musical cultures and for understanding the interrelationships of music and ritual.

Engaged Activist Research

Mainstream academia assumes a dichotomy between active political research for problem solving and theoretically driven research on the problem. In many music academies, the researcher is trained to be a detached neutral observer in the field who is expected to be objective in the analysis of the data collected. However, socio-cultural problems such as poverty, conflict, ethnic and class inequalities, or rights to cultural representation, which affect musical cultures, do not exist in a political void. If our goal is for the research to have a practical and social impact, we need to question the conventional neutral methods of research in music studies. Drawing on the praxis of arts activists in Asia, Freire’s ideas about education and social change, and Appadurai’s concept of “research from below,” this chapter argues for a type of activist research that is both politically engaged and scholarly. In a case study on a theater tradition that was on the brink of disappearance, it emphasizes collaboration at all levels of research with members of the community whose problems are being studied, and extension of the right to research to nonacademics. Collaborative research engaging the communities themselves can be seen as an intervention whereby communities are empowered to question and voice their opinions about their socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural development and transformation. This study is located within the wider agenda of bridging the gaps between academia and practitioner, and decolonizing collaborative research where paradigms of knowledge flow across regions rather than from North to South.