Indian Culture and Music as a Source of Inspiration for French Opera Composers

"The current paper strives to discover and reveal the influences of Indian culture and classical Indian music in French operas. At first, the evocation of India was obtained through the subjects of the operas and stunning scenic designs, fulfilling the requirements of exoticism. Gradually, the composers attempted to include in their musical discourses exotic rhythmic and melodic elements, in some instances inspired by Indian classical music, thus aiming to evoke a genuine image of India. At the same time, the use of elements pertaining to Indian music (rāgas, rhythmic patterns, timbres) offered the musicians the possibility to create novel sound discourses. The analysis focuses on several operas, composed between the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, following the evolution of Indian representations in several dimensions: dramatic (libretto), visual (scenic representations, dance), and musical (melody, rhythm, timbre). The present paper investigates the way Indian themes influenced the conception of the libretto, and at the same time the visual dimension of the works (setting, costumes), observing how these visual elements were gradually absorbed into the musical discourse (analysis of the melodic structures), through the incorporation of Indian rāgas in works conceived according to the rules of Western music composition. Keywords: exoticism, orientalism, India, French opera, rāga "

Narratiiv ja topos Heino Elleri “Sümfoonilises legendis”

This article focuses on the narrative analysis of late-romantic instrumental music. Having adopted the structuralist-semiotic conception of musical narrative as proposed by Byron Almén (2008) as the transvaluation of an opposing hierarchy, and the concept of the musical topic as musical elements with specific stylistic-cultural associations, I analyse the expressive form of Heino Eller’s early symphonic poem “Symphonic Legend” (1923). Narrative logic was found to permeate the musical work despite its collage or suite-like form, as the composer introduces characteristic musical actors that re-appear in different musical contexts. These actors are largely distinguished by musical topics, the conventional stylistic associations related with their musical characteristics as Eller’s piece presents a wide synthesis of styles – from musical impressionism and expressionism to lyrical or chromatic late-romantic; and various topics, such as fantastic, ombra, apassionata, pianto, heroic, and pastoral. Further, I propose a layered narrative structure for the “Symphonic Legend”, as the jarring and abrupt changes in musical material, affect and topic between different movements of the piece suggest shifts in the level of musical discourse and a framed narrative, as proposed by Hatten (1994). The primary order-imposing hierarchy is identified as the pastoral-impressionist topic that acts as the introduction and coda to the entire piece while the transgressive hierarchy is carried by antagonistic musical material associated with fantastical and dysphoric topics (whole-tone scale, chromaticism, fanfare-like brass and ombra) and with the main theme-actor of the piece (a theme strongly resembling the main theme of the first part of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherezade”). While the pastoral beginning and end of the piece (1st and 11th sections) suggest a narrative trajectory of a romance or “the victory of the order-imposing hierarchy over the transgression”, the abrupt shifts that occur between those sections and the middle-sections of the piece suggest that these take place at a different level of discourse, placing the narrative weight in sections 2–10, where the primary conflict seems to be between the antagonistic material and the theme-actor. In the middle sections Eller seems to problematize the typical narrative trajectory of dysphoric to euphoric in 19th-century symphonic poems, as the theme-actor’s heroic apotheosis in the 9th section is undermined by its reprise in section 10 and ultimate inability to be united with the order-imposing hierarchy in the coda, suggesting an ironic narrative. This reading is hopefully the first of many narrative analyses of Eller’s and other Estonian composers’ unique late-romantic and early modern symphonic poems.

Space oddity: musical syntax is mapped onto visual space

Increasing evidence has uncovered associations between the cognition of abstract schemas and spatial perception. Here we examine such associations for Western musical syntax, tonality. Spatial metaphors are ubiquitous when describing tonality: stable, closural tones are considered to be spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and nonmusicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, implicitly or explicitly, and whether such mappings are consistent with established metaphors. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location (Exp.1) or size (Exp.4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp.2), lateral position (Exp3) and size (Exp.5). Tonal stability was indeed associated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale-degrees. However, inconsistently with musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward (instead of central) and higher (instead of lower) spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, the results demonstrate a new type of cross-modal correspondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure. Importantly, the results suggest that the spatial mappings of an abstract domain may be independent of the spatial metaphors used to describe that domain.

Aspects of the treatment of the technical-expressive and interpretative means of the trumpet in the Concert Study by Alexandr Sochireanschii and Oleandra by Vladimir Slivinskii

The instrumental chamber music works by composers from the Republic of Moldova are rich and diverse, both in terms of the musical genres addressed and the instruments required, either for the ensemble or solo parts. The trumpet, an instrument with wide technicalinterpretative and expressive possibilities, offers composers an ample opportunity for harnessing its potential. The two works, which we will analyze from an interpretive point of view – “The Concert Study” for trumpet and piano (in B) by Alexandr Sokireanski (1977) and “Oleandra” for trumpet and piano (in B) by Vladimir Slivinski (1979), are part of the active repertoire of trumpeters and are of interest to researchers. They require certain execution skills and a certain level of handling the instrument, as they contain elements with a high degree of difficulty; we refer here to the rhythmic structure, the complexity of dynamic nuances, technical elements, the change of tempo during the proceeding of the musical discourse, the exploitation of the acute register of the trumpet.

Influences of Classical Indian Music in Albert Roussel’s Evocations

"An important figure of early 20th century music, the French composer Albert Roussel was deeply influenced by his encounter with India, which led to the composition of several orientalist works. The present paper aims to disclose the influences of classical Indian music in the orchestral work Evocations. Despite the Impressionist sound of the musical discourse, a careful analysis reveals the incorporation of several scalar structures in which Hindu rāgas can be recognized. Roussel goes beyond the musical representation of India: his goal is not the creation of a musical work with powerful oriental sound, but the evocation of the impact this encounter had on his creation. Situated at the crossroad of several stylistic orientations, Roussel incorporates Impressionist, Neo-classical and Post-romantic influences in rigorously devised structures, aiming to create an unusual and novel sound. Keywords: Albert Roussel, orientalism, Impressionism, India, rāga "

Shostakovich’s Topics

The study of musical signification constitutes an important key for the comprehension of Shostakovich’s music. This becomes particularly evident when one observes that social and political background plays an important role in his compositional process through the configuration of specific musical topics on structural positions of his music. These specific topics have arisen after cultural and social events during the establishment of the Soviet Union and became typical elements of the Soviet Music. This paper aims to show the function of these elements as compositional roots in the creative concept of Shostakovich’s music. The rising of the concept of musical topic after Leonard Ratner (1980) has opened new paths for a consistent comprehension of the musical discourse, identifying social and cultural signs that may articulate ideas which go beyond the music itself: ideology, criticism and politics became elements of musical expression, composing a new soundscape of music in Revolutionary Russia.

Figurative language used in Blackpink featuring Selena Gomez's song lyric "Ice Cream": A discourse analysis

A pop song is one of the popular genres widespread in society. The label 'popular' is used as it covers a diverse range of masses, started from pre-dominantly youth to adult, that target them as the market. To the extent of the popular meaning, a song is supported with alluring music video clips, entertaining musical instruments, and lyrics that make an addiction by turning the repeat mode on a music player. Regardless, no all of the songs carried by singers incorporate lyric meanings of what they indeed seem. They thus frequently embed figurative features of the language to fit the context of a song. The figurative language feature is a variety of language that authors operate to convey out of the comprehension of literal meaning. It then involves no surface context instead of a deep one. Therefore, this descriptive qualitative analysis study was conducted to investigate how figurative language features carry and influence the meaning behind BLACKPINK-Selena Gomez's song Ice Cream. The findings showed that metaphor (48%) was the most frequent figure spotted in the musical discourse, followed respectively by simile (28%), hyperbole (12%), and repetition (12%). It indicated the song was intended to convey the lyrics contained no real-context meanings that can cause misleading or even be puzzlement if the listeners cannot comprehend the song as a whole. Therefore, further research may comprehensively consider this issue with different perspectives to broaden the language field.

On correlation of musical and natural languages: rock music and english

The article deals with the points of intersection of musical discourse and national languages. This issue is relevant for modern linguistics, discourse studies in particular. The issue of the interpenetration of various discourse types over the last decade has been activated at all levels of the leading directions of the anthropocentric paradigm in academic research. Music and verbal language have repeatedly become the object of analysis and detection of semiotic interaction, but this has mainly concerned folk or classical music and folk songwriting. However, British rock music and English have been studied fragmentarily at the level of individual performers. The purpose of the article is to identify semiotic correlations between music and natural languages. The leading approach to studying the issue is a discourse analysis of empirical material at the level of terminology and prosody of sign functioning. A hypothesis is put forward that the worldwide success of British rock is due not only to the realization of the creative possibilities of talented musicians but to the specific structural and semantic features of the English language and British culture. The authors describe the synergetic elements of English phono-stylistics at the level of diphthong (triphthong) functioning, rhythmic prosody, melodic structures, versification mechanisms, and singing components. Several semiotic correlates of the verbal and non-verbal continuum of rock music and English have been identified. An important element of the discovered correlations is the belonging of musical and verbal discourses to the phenomenon of artistic creativity, in particular, the British historical and cultural tradition. The results of the study can be applied in further research in the field of synergetic correlation between three types of linguocultural substances: music, mentality, and national language.

Space Oddity: Musical Syntax is Mapped onto Visual Space

Musicians ubiquitously apply spatial metaphors when describing the stability hierarchy established by tonal syntax: stable tones are considered spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and non-musicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, and whether such mappings are consistent with tonal discourse. We examined explicit and implicit associations. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location on a two-dimensional grid (Exp. 1) or with one of 7 circles differing in size (Exp. 4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp. 2), lateral position (Exp. 3) and object size (Exp. 5). Tonal stability was indeed as- sociated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale degrees. However, inconsistently with the hypotheses implied by musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward and higher spatial positions, relative to unstable tones, rather than with central and lower spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, results suggest that abstract syntactical relationships may consistently map onto concrete perceptual dimensions across modalities, demonstrating a new type of cross-modal cor- respondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure.