European Voices II

Although the fundamental meaning of basic terminology is well established for every scholarly discipline, many concepts are often questioned and redefined. In the case of ethnomusicology, this process is all too familiar, as researchers within the discipline focus on the most diverse of music cultures. The manifold worldviews of the resource persons, as holders and presenters (in both meanings of the word) of a tradition make the matter more complex. Such a situation has particular significance in the context of multipart singing because of the specific musical aesthetics and vocabularies established among singing groups. Additionally, it is accentuated by processes of change within every musical culture and those of ethnomusicology. Examining this question from the viewpoint of folk terminology means primarily considering specific and individual concepts of cultural listening, in the sense of 'paying attention', 'con-centrating' and 'focusing on'. These concepts are established on the one hand through the processes of music listening and music making and on the other hand through the local dis-course, in which singers and musicians as well as local communities are very much involved. The discourse as a communication category with which people communicate about the claim to validity of rules also plays an important role in processes of legitimating and power within the community. An essential part of the discourse is singing itself. The music therefore becomes the object and subject of research. Of particular relevance in this framework are questions of gender, applying to communities in which women practice multipart singing and others where they are mostly listeners, although contributing decisively in the discourse processes. A specific role become issues of brain research. In this context the functionality of an exact motor control system within the body for precise timing, sequencing and the spatial organisation of movements during musical performance become particularly important. Performing and listening to music are culturally conditioned, but they are at the same time natural human abilities. Therefore the study of underlying processes is crucial and promises to uncover fun-damental properties of the human brain. The different theoretical viewpoints in the first three chapters of the book are followed by ap-proaches of a "Lexicon of Local Terminology on Multipart Singing in Europe". These reflect the situation of a few but different communities and areas in Europe, helping to obtain additional insights into the topics in question.Die grundlegende Bedeutung der Terminologie steht für jede Wissenschaft zwar außer Streit, viele Termini werden aber oft in Frage gestellt und immer wieder neu definiert. In der Ethnomusikologie ist dieser Vorgang eine all zu bekannte Erscheinung, beschäftigen sich doch die Forscher dieser Disziplin mit unterschiedlichsten Musikkulturen. Die mannigfaltigen Weltanschauungen der Gewährspersonen, die gleichzeitig Träger und Darsteller (im doppelten Sinn des Wortes) der jeweiligen Tradition sind, machen die Frage noch komplexer. Dieser Zustand nimmt in Fragen vokaler Mehrstimmigkeit eine besondere Stellung ein, auf Grund der eigenen musikalischen Ästhetik und des eigenen Vokabulars, die sich unter Sängergruppen etabliert haben. Er wird zusätzlich durch Änderungsprozesse in jeder Musikkultur und jene in der Ethnomusikologie betont. Diese Frage vom Blickwinkel der Volksterminologie zu erkunden, erfordert zuerst spezifische und individuelle Konzepte des kulturellen Hörens im Sinne von ‚Aufmerksamkeit schenken', ‚sich konzentrieren auf' und ‚Aufmerksamkeit ausrichten auf' in die Untersuchungen mit einzubeziehen. Diese Konzepte sind einerseits durch Prozesse des Musikhörens and Musikmachens, andererseits durch den lokalen Diskurs, in dem Volkssänger- und -musikanten, wie auch die jeweilige lokale Gemeinschaft mitwirken, etabliert. Der Diskurs als jene Art der Kommunikation, durch die sich Personen über den Geltungsanspruch von Normen verständigen spielt eine wichtige Rolle in den Prozessen von Legitimation und Macht innerhalb einer Gemeinschaft. Ein wesentlicher Teil des Diskurses ist das Singen selbst. Die Musik wird daher Objekt und Subjekt der Untersuchungen. Von besonderer Bedeutung sind in diesem Zusammenhang Gender-Fragen. Sie betreffen Gemeinschaften in denen Frauen aktiv in der Praxis der vokalen Mehrstimmigkeit teilnehmen sowie andere, in denen sie vor allem Zuhörerinnen sind, trotzdem aber eine entscheidende Rolle in den Diskurs-Prozessen spielen. Eine spezifische Rolle kommt Fragen der Hirnforschung zu. Besonders wichtig in diesem Zusammenhang ist die Funktionalität eines exakten motorischen Kontrollsystems innerhalb des Körpers für die präzise Zeitmessung, die Sequenzbildung und die Raumorganisation der Bewegungen während der musikalischen Interpretation. Musikinterpretation und -hören sind kulturell bedingt, aber sie sind gleichzeitig natürliche menschliche Fähigkeiten. Die Untersuchung der zugrunde liegenden Prozesse ist daher entscheidend und verspricht die Entdeckung grundlegender Merkmale des menschlichen Gehirns. Die unterschiedlichen theoretischen Blickwinkeln in den drei ersten Kapitel des Buches werden von Annäherungen an ein "Lexikon der lokalen Terminologie zur vokalen Mehrstimmigkeit in Europa" gefolgt. Diese widerspiegeln die Situation weniger aber unterschiedlicher Gemeinschaften und Regionen in Europa und helfen zusätzliche Einsichten zu den gestellten Fragen zu gewinnen

European Voices II

Although the fundamental meaning of basic terminology is well established for every scholarly discipline, many concepts are often questioned and redefined. In the case of ethnomusicology, this process is all too familiar, as researchers within the discipline focus on the most diverse of music cultures. The manifold worldviews of the resource persons, as holders and presenters (in both meanings of the word) of a tradition make the matter more complex. Such a situation has particular significance in the context of multipart singing because of the specific musical aesthetics and vocabularies established among singing groups. Additionally, it is accentuated by processes of change within every musical culture and those of ethnomusicology. Examining this question from the viewpoint of folk terminology means primarily considering specific and individual concepts of cultural listening, in the sense of 'paying attention', 'con-centrating' and 'focusing on'. These concepts are established on the one hand through the processes of music listening and music making and on the other hand through the local dis-course, in which singers and musicians as well as local communities are very much involved. The discourse as a communication category with which people communicate about the claim to validity of rules also plays an important role in processes of legitimating and power within the community. An essential part of the discourse is singing itself. The music therefore becomes the object and subject of research. Of particular relevance in this framework are questions of gender, applying to communities in which women practice multipart singing and others where they are mostly listeners, although contributing decisively in the discourse processes. A specific role become issues of brain research. In this context the functionality of an exact motor control system within the body for precise timing, sequencing and the spatial organisation of movements during musical performance become particularly important. Performing and listening to music are culturally conditioned, but they are at the same time natural human abilities. Therefore the study of underlying processes is crucial and promises to uncover fun-damental properties of the human brain. The different theoretical viewpoints in the first three chapters of the book are followed by ap-proaches of a "Lexicon of Local Terminology on Multipart Singing in Europe". These reflect the situation of a few but different communities and areas in Europe, helping to obtain additional insights into the topics in question

Understanding Music: Past and Present

Understanding Music: Past and Present is an open Music Appreciation textbook co-authored by music faculty across Georgia. The text covers the fundamentals of music and the physics of sound, an exploration of music from the Middle Ages to the present day, and a final chapter on popular music in the United States. Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/arts-textbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

Towards a Philosophy of the Musical Experience: Phenomenology, Culture, and Ethnomusicology in Conversation

This dissertation engages the questions and methodologies of phenomenology, the philosophy of culture, the philosophy of music and ethnomusicology in order to investigate the significance of music in human life. The systematic orientation of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms provides the overarching framework that positions the approach in chapter one. Following Cassirer, art in general and music in particular are not regarded as enjoyable yet dispensable pastimes, but rather as fundamental ways of experiencing the world as intuitive forms and sensations. Establishing the ontological significance of music entails unpacking the sui generis experience of time, space and subjectivity that characterize the musical experience. Phenomenology, in particular the thought of Alfred Schütz, provides a point of departure for thinking more concretely about the musical experience. The turn to phenomenology is motivated both by its systematic consanguinuity with Cassirer’s project as well as its insistent focus on the details of lived experience. However, bolstered by what is argued to be a more holistic description of the musical experience gleaned from the work of ethnomusicologists, Schütz’s phenomenological account of the music is challenged on a number of key issues such as music’s ontological status and the tendency to equate “music” with “musical works.” Despite the blind spots of his writings on music, Schütz’s phenomenology of the social world proves to be a useful framework for thinking about the multiplicity of ways in which music is experienced as meaningful and how the equivocality of the concept of musical meaning brings the social nature of the musical experience into view. Sociality also figures into a discussion of improvisation, an important theme that has only relatively recently begun to receive philosophical attention. Arguing that an adequate philosophical treatment of music must account for both the variety of musical cultures as well as the variety of musical practices, a consideration of improvisation helps philosophy think outside of the work-paradigm that was critiqued in chapter two

The Music Sound

A guide for music: compositions, events, forms, genres, groups, history, industry, instruments, language, live music, musicians, songs, musicology, techniques, terminology , theory, music video. Music is a human activity which involves structured and audible sounds, which is used for artistic or aesthetic, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression, which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm, which is the organization of the durational aspects of music

Prioritizing Rhythmic Analysis: Temporal Organization of ’Are’are Solo Polyphonic Panpipe Pieces

The repertoire of polyphonic panpipe music for solo performance, termed “‘au ni aau,” by ‘Are‘are musicians in the southern part of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands is seemingly unique among musical traditions. As Hugo Zemp showed in 1981 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/851551), solo polyphonic panpipes were designed so that some pairs of adjacent pipes could be sounded simultaneously to produce two or three kinds of dyads within each piece rather than being restricted to single tones as is usual in solo panpipe performance. Whereas Zemp’s analyses understandably focused on aspects of tuning and melodic structure, the present report treats features of temporal organization as its starting point and main concern. As well, in order to draw conclusions that might provide a basis for comparisons with other pieces and performers in the much larger repertoire of solo polyphonic panpipe music, the pieces analysed here are by a single ’Are’are musician, Manamaetare of Takataka in the southeastern part of the island. In this regard, the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM) has streamed these pieces to the public (https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/items/CNRSMH_E_1995_004_001_001_04/dc/ and has graciously made them available to me as individual files for detailed acoustical analysis. Since Zemp’s initial study, software that provides acoustical corroboration of, and elaboration on, what one can hear in the original recordings has become widely accessible, both for free (e.g., Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/) or almost free (e.g., Transcribe!: https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html). By means of such software one can trace with precision temporal aspects of the pieces that inform one’s understanding of topics raised in his original analysis. In particular, the pieces’ inter-onset intervals (IOIs), inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), amplitude envelopes, and changing frequency spectra within individual dyads yield information relevant to the pieces’ meters, tempos, segmentations, formal structures, tremolos, and types of articulation, as well as issues concerning their relationship with the performer’s breath control, the layout of the polyphonic panpipe itself, and comparisons with the repertoire of polyphonic music for ’Are’are panpipe ensembles. In the present report, these topics are approached analytically in bottom-up fashion by applications of the Gestalt Grouping Principles of Similarity and Proximity (Wertheimer 1923) as well as the closely related principle of Analogy (http://iftawm.org/journal/oldsite/articles/2011a/Rahn_AAWM_Vol_1_1.htm).AAWM Special Topics Symposium 2023, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York Cit

Prioritizing Rhythmic Analysis: Temporal Organization of ’Are’are Solo Polyphonic Panpipe Pieces

The repertoire of polyphonic panpipe music for solo performance, termed “‘au ni aau,” by ‘Are‘are musicians in the southern part of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands is seemingly unique among musical traditions. As Hugo Zemp showed in 1981 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/851551), solo polyphonic panpipes were designed so that some pairs of adjacent pipes could be sounded simultaneously to produce two or three kinds of dyads within each piece rather than being restricted to single tones as is usual in solo panpipe performance. Whereas Zemp’s analyses understandably focused on aspects of tuning and melodic structure, the present report treats features of temporal organization as its starting point and main concern. As well, in order to draw conclusions that might provide a basis for comparisons with other pieces and performers in the much larger repertoire of solo polyphonic panpipe music, the pieces analysed here are by a single ’Are’are musician, Manamaetare of Takataka in the southeastern part of the island. In this regard, the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM) has streamed these pieces to the public (https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/items/CNRSMH_E_1995_004_001_001_04/dc/ and has graciously made them available to me as individual files for detailed acoustical analysis. Since Zemp’s initial study, software that provides acoustical corroboration of, and elaboration on, what one can hear in the original recordings has become widely accessible, both for free (e.g., Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/) or almost free (e.g., Transcribe!: https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html). By means of such software one can trace with precision temporal aspects of the pieces that inform one’s understanding of topics raised in his original analysis. In particular, the pieces’ inter-onset intervals (IOIs), inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), amplitude envelopes, and changing frequency spectra within individual dyads yield information relevant to the pieces’ meters, tempos, segmentations, formal structures, tremolos, and types of articulation, as well as issues concerning their relationship with the performer’s breath control, the layout of the polyphonic panpipe itself, and comparisons with the repertoire of polyphonic music for ’Are’are panpipe ensembles. In the present report, these topics are approached analytically in bottom-up fashion by applications of the Gestalt Grouping Principles of Similarity and Proximity (Wertheimer 1923) as well as the closely related principle of Analogy (http://iftawm.org/journal/oldsite/articles/2011a/Rahn_AAWM_Vol_1_1.htm).AAWM Special Topics Symposium 2023, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York Cit

Prioritizing Rhythmic Analysis: Temporal Organization of ’Are’are Solo Polyphonic Panpipe Pieces

The repertoire of polyphonic panpipe music for solo performance, termed “‘au ni aau,” by ‘Are‘are musicians in the southern part of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands is seemingly unique among musical traditions. As Hugo Zemp showed in 1981 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/851551), solo polyphonic panpipes were designed so that some pairs of adjacent pipes could be sounded simultaneously to produce two or three kinds of dyads within each piece rather than being restricted to single tones as is usual in solo panpipe performance. Whereas Zemp’s analyses understandably focused on aspects of tuning and melodic structure, the present report treats features of temporal organization as its starting point and main concern. As well, in order to draw conclusions that might provide a basis for comparisons with other pieces and performers in the much larger repertoire of solo polyphonic panpipe music, the pieces analysed here are by a single ’Are’are musician, Manamaetara of Takataka in the southeastern part of the island. In this regard, the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM) has streamed these pieces to the public (https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/items/CNRSMH_E_1995_004_001_001_04/dc/ and has graciously made them available to me as individual files for detailed acoustical analysis. Since Zemp’s initial study, software that provides acoustical corroboration of, and elaboration on, what one can hear in the original recordings has become widely accessible, both for free (e.g., Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/) or almost free (e.g., Transcribe!: https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/overview.html). By means of such software one can trace with precision temporal aspects of the pieces that inform one’s understanding of topics raised in his original analysis. In particular, the pieces’ inter-onset intervals (IOIs), inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), amplitude envelopes, and changing frequency spectra within individual dyads yield information relevant to the pieces’ meters, tempos, segmentations, formal structures, tremolos, and types of articulation, as well as issues concerning their relationship with the performer’s breath control, the layout of the polyphonic panpipe itself, and comparisons with the repertoire of polyphonic music for ’Are’are panpipe ensembles. In the present report, these topics are approached analytically in bottom-up fashion by applications of the Gestalt Grouping Principles of Similarity and Proximity (Wertheimer 1923) as well as the closely related principle of Analogy (http://iftawm.org/journal/oldsite/articles/2011a/Rahn_AAWM_Vol_1_1.htm).AAWM Special Topics Symposium 2023, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York Cit