Melodic Themes Research Articles

General aspects of Dumitru Capoianu's music in the feature film Adventures in the Danube Delta

Romanian film music of the 20th century was a very well-developed field, especially in terms of symphonic music. However, research and musicology studies on this cinematic period are at the beginning, as there is little information on this area. Dumitru Capoianu is among the composers with an already established career in concert music who have also taken the step towards film music. Its adaptability to the script was realized in soundscapes of extended durations or in melodic themes that became a sound exponent of the characters and the action, transposing in them moral valences, particularities of age, tensions and also musical illustrations of the video landscape. All these qualities and the compositional patterns that he and other Romanian composers followed can also be observed in the feature film Adventures in the Danube Delta (1973), part of the particularities of the musical language elements used closely related to the script being presented and analyzed in this article.

Generating rhythm game music with jukebox.

Music has always been thought of as a "human" endeavor- when praising a piece of music, we emphasize the composer's creativity and the emotions the music invokes. Because music also heavily relies on patterns and repetition in the form of recurring melodic themes and chord progressions, artificial intelligence has increasingly been able to replicate music in a human-like fashion. This research investigated the capabilities of Jukebox, an open-source commercially available neural network, to accurately replicate two genres of music often found in rhythm games, artcore and orchestral. A Google Colab notebook provided the computational resources necessary to sample and extend a total of 16 piano arrangements of both genres. A survey containing selected samples was distributed to a local youth orchestra to gauge people's perceptions of the musicality of AI and human-generated music. Even though humans preferred human-generated music, Jukebox's slightly high rating showed that it was somewhat capable at mimicking the styles of both genres. Despite limitations of Jukebox only using raw audio and a relatively small sample size, it shows promise for the future of AI as a collaborative tool in music production.

Ryuji Kunimatsu Guitar Arrangement on the Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla: A Critical Analysis

This study examined the characteristics of Kunimatsu’s guitar arrangements in Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion by comparing aspects of musical form, melody, and harmony. As with other arrangements’ performances, the primary motif of Astor Piazzola’sOblivion melodic theme in Kunimatsu guitar arrangement has always been played differently from the original version. This performance phenomenon could responsibly risk blurring the identification of structural boundaries within its musical form. The purpose of this study is to prove the basic construction of Oblivion melody, including its form structure and rhythmic characteristics, by comparing Kunimatsu’s arrangements against the composer’s original score. This study uses musicological research methods. The approaches applied in studying this work are analytical, theoretical, and comparative. This study compares the two data to reveal the musical forms and the differences in the primary motive rhythmic characteristics. The results of this study are findings of the Oblivion musical forms in both publications and the differences in primary motives rhythmic patterns in both sources. The difference in musical form is impressive, possibly caused by the insertion of auxiliary members. As a result, Kunamitsu arrangement includes using the two-part song form, originally a three-part song form. With the revelation of the original melodic structure that is clear from the results of this study, the musicians who will present the Oblivion will at least have the essential reference in their interpretation. This research contributes to expanding studies in classical guitar performance and musical forms and new approaches in textual musicological analysis that are still infrequent.

Firefly Energy

Firefly Elegy uses a 12-note melodic theme, which through the course of the piece undergoes a series of transformations - mirroring the metamorphosis that takes place over a firefly's brief life span. The piece comprises four sections that reflect the four life stages of the firefly. During the motionless egg stage, some types of fireflies glow dimly; the opening section of the piece (following a short fanfare of flashing-light) is likewise static and calm, while at the same time features an internal motion hinting at subdued energy. The following groovy section is at times aggressive, not unlike the firefly during its larva stage, when it is hunting and digesting insects using special enzymes. The firefly hibernates through the pupa stage - reflected in the third section of the piece by seemingly everlasting sustained chords in the strings. Like a flash of light, each new phrase begins with an ascending scale, while the harp provides groups of repeated notes, recalling the synchronized flashes that are found in groups of tropical fireflies. Firefly Elegy ends with an elegy in which the now mature firefly looks back at its life. It has gone through such an extensive journey but only long enough to mate and lay eggs, sometimes without feeding during its adult stage. In the summertime, I often watch the firefly in his lonely flutter, flashing about and looking for a mate so he can complete the sole purpose of his short life before dying away. He must sometimes look back and wonder: was it all worth it?

«Pictures at an Exhibition» by Modest Mussorgsky: the correlation of melos and colourfulness

«Pictures at an Exhibition» by Modest Mussorgsky: the correlation of melos and colourfulness

“Jazz Slide” by M. Tovpeko – A. Strilets: Aspects of the original source interpretation

“Jazz Slide” by M. Tovpeko – A. Strilets: Aspects of the original source interpretation

Genre transformation in the musical folklore (“Shamil’s Prayer” case)

«Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Искусствоведение» — научно-теоретический рецензируемый журнал, обобщающий результаты исследований ученых всего мира в различных областях искусства, включая музыковедение, культурологию и художественное образование.

Conservation of Historic Buildings

The primary motive for historical restoration is always the Education. And to let everyone visualize the culture, society and tradition of place. The preservation safeguards the community and its heritage and make it uncommitted for communal and educational activities. The preservation shows that how much far we have travelled and travelling from where towards which direction. This can be and ‘environmental ’, although they are not mutually exclusive and indeed, they are often interlocked. The melodic theme to introduce research paper is to concentrate the attention towards the preservation of the historic buildings to save cultural and traditional values and find out the construction techniques and materials for its best survival.

Temperament traits and preferences of music works with specific musical elements

Abstract The objective of the research was to check the relationship between temperament traits as classified by Pavlov and preferences for works of music containing specified musical elements. 145 students aged 19-26 took part in the study. The respondents completed the Pavlovian Temperament Survey and a Music Preferences Form. Statistical analysis showed that all the temperament traits classified by Pavlov were related to musical elements contained in the subjects’ chosen pieces of music. The following proved to be significant in regard to the subjects’ musical preferences: Tempo, Changes in Tempo, Rhythm Values in Relation to Metrical Basis, Number of Melodic Themes, Scale of Performance, and Meter. The results are consistent with studies indicating the impact of temperament traits (related to the need for stimulation) on music preferences.

Women 's voices in alternative music: Lisa Gerrard and Elizabeth Fraser

This paper deals with the analysis of Lisa Gerrard's and Elizabeth Fraser's vocal styles that promoted a new way of singing on the alternative music scene. Instead o f the traditional usage of lyrics in the English language as their mother tongue, they use so called 'glossolalia', meaning wordless, or substituting language with a melodic, exploratory rapture by their vocal range alone in a couple o f octaves. The main points of analysis are the relationships between the vocal interpretation and instruments, music form, main melodic themes, rhythm, accomplished with iconography in the relationship between vocal interpretations and stage performances.

Satzstruktur und Möglichkeiten des Konzertierens

In contrast to the obvious thematic relationships between the first and third movements of Schumann’s piano concerto, the pianistic writing and interplay between soloist and orchestra are sharply divergent. Based predominantly on cantabile melodic themes, the interaction between piano and orchestra in the first movement exhibits a continually alternating function of lead voice and accompaniment; when the piano accompanies, it often employs imaginatively varied arpeggiated triadic patterns. Conversely, in the final movement, the often dominant piano part thrives on virtuosic passage work, while the orchestra merely lends motivic and harmonic support. This notable foil to the original features of the first movement can be interpreted as a concession to the conventions of the instrumental concerto at that time.

Recognition of the Main Melody in a Polyphonic Symbolic Score using Perceptual Knowledge

It is in many cases easy for a human to identify the main melodic theme when listening to a music example. Melodic properties have been studied in several research projects, however, the differences between properties of the melody and properties of the accompaniment (non-melodic) voices have not been addressed until recently. A set of features relating to basic low-level statistical measures were selected considering general perceptual aspects. A new ‘narrative’ measure was designed intended to capture the amount of new unique material in each voice. The features were applied to a set of scores consisting of about 250 polyphonic ringtones consisting of MIDI versions of contemporary pop songs. All tracks were annotated into categories such as melody and accompaniment. Both multiple regression and support vector machines were applied on either the features directly or on a Gaussian transformation of the features. The resulting models predicted the correct melody in about 90% of the cases using a set of eight features. The results emphasize context as an important factor for determining the main melody. A previous version of the system has been used in a commercial system for modifying ring tones.

A novel XML music information retrieval method using graph invariants

The increasing diffusion of XML languages for the encoding of domain-specific multimedia information raises the need for new information retrieval models that can fully exploit structural information. An XML language specifically designed for music like MX allows queries to be made directly on the thematic material. The main advantage of such a system is that it can handle symbolic, notational, and audio objects at the same time through a multilayered structure. On the model side, common music information retrieval methods do not take into account the inner structure of melodic themes and the metric relationships between notes. In this article we deal with two main topics: a novel architecture based on a new XML language for music and a new model of melodic themes based on graph theory. This model takes advantage of particular graph invariants that can be linked to melodic themes as metadata in order to characterize all their possible modifications through specific transformations and that can be exploited in filtering algorithms. We provide a similarity function and show through an evaluation stage how it improves existing methods, particularly in the case of same-structured themes.

Personality and Music Preferences: The Influence of Personality Traits on Preferences Regarding Musical Elements

The purpose of this scientific study was to determine how personality traits, as classified by Cattell, influence preferences regarding musical elements. The subject group consisted of 145 students, male and female, chosen at random from different Polish universities. For the purpose of determining their personality traits the participants completed the 16PF Questionnaire (Cattell, Saunders, & Stice, 1957; Russel & Karol, 1993), in its Polish adaptation by Choynowski (Nowakowska, 1970). The participants' musical preferences were determined by their completing a Questionnaire of Musical Preferences (specifically created for the purposes of this research), in which respondents indicated their favorite piece of music. Next, on the basis of the Questionnaire of Musical Preferences, a list of the works of music chosen by the participants was compiled. All pieces were collected on CDs and analyzed to separate out their basic musical elements. The statistical analysis shows that some personality traits: Liveliness (Factor F), Social Boldness (Factor H), Vigilance (Factor L), Openness to Change (Factor Q1), Extraversion (a general factor) have an influence on preferences regarding musical elements. Important in the subjects' musical preferences were found to be those musical elements having stimulative value and the ability to regulate the need for stimulation. These are: tempo, rhythm in relation to metrical basis, number of melodic themes, sound voluminosity, and meter.

Melodic and Nonmelodic Sequences of Tones: Effects of Duration on Perception

Familiar melodic phrases were played repetitively with note durations ranging from 40 msec to 3.6 sec. Recognition required note durations approximating those normally used for playing melodic themes (roughly 150 msec to 1 sec per note). Additional experiments with nonmelodic sequences of tones indicated that different rules applied for nonmelodic patterns: Permuted orders of the same items could be distinguished from each other at all durations employed (10 msec to 5 sec per item). Recognition of different arrangements occurred not only when each tone differed in pitch, but also when all tones had the same pitch but differed in timbre. It was concluded that the durational limits for melodic recognition are not based on perceptual limits applicable to tonal patterns in general, but rather reflect special rules governing melodic organization. Hypotheses concerning the bases for these rules are suggested.

Some influences of accent structure on melody recognition

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the roles of joint accent structure and familiarity in delayed recognition of relatively long tonal melodies. Melodic themes of target melodies were defined by correlating contour-related pitch accents with temporal accents (accent coupling) during an initial familiarization phase. Later, subjects gave recognition responses to key-transposed versions of the target melodies as well as to decoys with same and different contour accent patterns. In Experiment 1, all to-be-recognized melodies occurred both in an original rhythm, which preserved accent coupling, and in a new rhythm, which did not. Listeners were best at distinguishing targets from different decoys, especially in the original rhythm. In Experiment 2, the familiarity of target tunes and the rhythmic similarity in recognition were varied. Similar rhythms preserved accent coupling, whereas dissimilar rhythms did not. Listeners were most adept in distinguishing familiar targets from different decoys (Experiment 2A), particularly when they appeared in novel but similar rhythms. However, in similar rhythm conditions, listeners also frequently mistook same decoys for targets. With less familiar targets (Experiment 2B), these effects were attenuated, and performance showed general effects of pitch contour.

Devil's Music

A La Mode (1984) is an extremely eclectic work scored for synthesizers (Casio CZ101, Yamaha DX7, and TX7) and eight instruments performed here by the Philadelphiabased contemporary music group Relache. Within its 20 min, one is treated to a somewhat bumpy and, at times, incongruous tour of no less than five completely different musical idioms ranging from minimalism (in the style of Glass, Reich, et al.), to passages with a distinctly Baroque character. This attempt to embrace such a wide variety of disparate styles makes me recall the work Sinfonia (1968) by Luciano Berio. However, unlike that piece, which successfully captures a stream-ofconsciousness, parallel flowing of multiple melodic themes and forms, Rolnick's work is somehow lacking in essential lubricants that would permit all of the thematic elements to coexist, interweave, and transform seamlessly one into another. Instead, the overall result is a disjointed effect.

The Melodic Structure of Jiangnan Sizhu

T he structure of Chinese melody is one of the most imperfectly understood aspects of world music theory. Traditional Chinese music theorists, whose writings were actually more a rationalization of Confucian ideology than an explanation of practice, have for the last two thousand years ignored the musical traditions outside of the court. Their writings dealt largely with temperament theory, associations of music with cosmology, and the ethical implications of music-orientations which served primarily to legitimate the power of the state and control the behavior of the people. Their theory was a pure theory, one that in general did not seek to explain aspects such as form or execution. While practitioners of Chinese music, on the other hand, certainly understood how their music was structured, they had almost no opportunity or inclination to articulate this knowledge. Consequently, until the turn of this last century, most of the music common among the people went undocumented. Only since the 1950s have more practically-minded theorists begun to explain the basic formgiving elements of instrumental music, concepts such as qupai melodic model, diao modal structure, ban metric structure, phrase rhythm, and the technique of traditional variation. In fact, the large majority of these writings has appeared in Chinese publications only since the cultural thaw of the last six or seven years. The scholars Huang Jinpei of the Guangzhou Conservatory of Music and Gao Houyong of Nanjing have been particularly active in this area, and their research is cited in the text of this paper and in the bibliography. My purpose is to introduce this research to the Western world, and extend it by examining the derivative nature of Chinese melody and by demonstrating the close melodic relationships within the repertoire of this one region of China. In this paper I am able to show that nearly the entire instrumental repertoire of central eastern China has grown out of just a few old melodic themes or formulas. The instrumental musics of other regions will not be examined, though they are sometimes related to those of central eastern China and share in many of the structural elements.

A Footnote on Webern's Variations

IN HIS article on Webern's variations,1 Robert U. Nelson quotes Webern on fourth variation of second movement of his Symphony, Op. 21: it is the midpoint of whole movement, after which everything goes backward. Finding that entire movement does have certain palindromic aspects, Nelson can diagram and discuss some correspondences between theme and coda, variations 1 and 7, 2 and 6, 3 and 5; and he points to an axis of movement in m. 50, center of variation 4. He is somewhat tentative about matter, however: the correspondence between this [fifth] variation and number 3, claimed by Webern, would seem to consist in [etc.].... [The] similarity [of variation 6] to variation 2 may lie in [etc.] (my italics). And he concludes that evidence for such paired relationships ... is at times imprecise and But Nelson fails to introduce clinching evidence. An investigation of particular row forms and row transpositions chosen by Webern for use in each section of movement, and of some related matters, bears out precision of Webern's comment and makes Nelson's tentative elucidation of movement's total symmetry anything but conjectural. The single row from which symphony is composed is symmetrically organized as an intervallic palindrome: its second hexachord is, intervallically, a retrograde of first. Because of this structure, one may speak of only six levels of prime form (Po-P5), of its inversion (Io-I5) and of their retrograde forms (Ro-R5, RIo-RI5), since P6 = Ro, I6 = RIo, etc., as shown in Ex. 1. In second movement of symphony, theme, each of variations, and coda reflect this symmetrical structure of row in various ways and to various degrees, some of them pointed out by Nelson. The following discussion concentrates on that aspect left unmentioned by him, Webern's choice of row forms and row transpositions. The melodic theme of movement (in clarinet) is based on RI2; its accompaniment is based on 12. The coda uses these, and only these, forms of row, so combined that music (as in most of variations, although not theme) is a symmetrical expression itself, centered on silent m. 94. One nicety of relationship between theme and coda, reflected in others of paired variations, is that whereas theme begins with RI2, followed by I2 in accompaniment, situation is reversed in coda: harp's low B (m. 89) begins coda's unfolding of 12; its high f, one eighth note later, begins RI2. Variations 1 and 7 are similarly equivalent in row forms utilized. The double canons of variation 1 expose four forms of row (followed by their respective retrogrades): I3 (violin 1) is shadowed in canon by inversion by Pi (cello), RI3 (violin 2) by R1 (viola). In variation 7, a more complicated texture

Handel and the Aria

One of the aspects of Handel's many-sided genius to which particular tribute should be paid this bicentenary year is his extraordinary lyrical power. There can be few of those to whom serious music makes any appeal that do not know at least one aria by Handel, even if it be simply the noble Larghetto from Serse dressed up in one of a thousand guises. Yet this great composer, who wrote more arias in his operas alone than Schubert did songs of all types, is rarely thought of primarily as a melodist. But the splendid richness of his choral style, the brilliance of his purely orchestral works and the urbane virtuosity of his solo concertos should not distract one from the central source of his creative strength, a seemingly inexhaustible gift for melodic invention. Viewed from the musical background of today it may not always be easy to appreciate the nature of Handel's melodic writing; music has been mainly concerned during the last two centuries with different lines of development. Instead of Handel's long melodic line, constantly renewing and extending from resources within itself, composers have been increasingly interested in the organic growth of relatively short melodic themes, associated and integrated with harmonic, rhythmic and textural ideas. Musical thought has tended to move away from purity of line towards the co-ordination of varied elements on different planes into a significant pattern. Separated as we are from the eighteenth century aria by the achievement of the great symphonists and the steady drift towards declamation in the opera house, it requires a certain mental adjustment to be fully responsive to Handel's melodic process.