Musical Categories Research Articles

Distonía del músico: fenomenología y desencadenantes vinculados a la ejecución musical

Dystonias are defined as a joint sustained and involuntary contraction of agonist and antagonist muscles, which can cause torsion, repetitive abnormal involuntary movements, and/or abnormal postures. One special group of dystonias are those known as occupational, which include dystonia disorders triggered by a repetitive motor activity associated with a specific professional activity or task. Musicians are a population particularly vulnerable to these types of dystonia, which are presented as a loss of coordination and voluntary motor control movements highly trained in musical interpretation. Our aim is to describe a clinical series of focal dystonias in musicians evaluated and treated in our centre. Patients and methodsData is presented on a clinical series of 12 musicians with occupational dystonia. Their history and phenomenology are described, as well as well as their outcome after therapy. ResultsDemographic details: Mean age 34.8±11.8 years, 10 males (83.3%) and 2 females (16.7%). Clinical history: History of trauma in dystonic segment, 6 patients (50%); family history of neurological diseases in first-degree relatives, 6 patients (50%); occupational history according to music category, 8 patients (66.6%) were classical musicians and 4 patients (33.3%) were popular musicians. PhenomenologyThe dystonia syndrome was characterised by having a mean age of onset of 28.2±11.3 years (range 18-57 years). The segment affected was the hand (91.7%) in 11patients. Of all the musicians seen in the clinic, 9 of them (75%) received therapy. The majority of patients appeared to have triggering factors specific to musical execution and linked to the requirement of fine motor control. It should be mentioned that 50% of the musicians treated maintained their professional activity or position in the orchestra to which they belonged. ConclusionsThe majority of our phenomenological findings are consistent with those reported in the current literature. However, it is worth mentioning the presence of triggering factors attributed to the specific requirements of performing music, linked to the participation of fine motor control.

The Collaborative Role of the Technician in ...sofferte onde serene...

The music of the late 20th and early 21st centuries presents a challenge to traditional music theory through the adoption of a musical language containing sonic elements that previously fell outside the scope of accepted musical categories (primarily those of pitch and rhythm). Experiences gained by performing the electronics in a transitional work ("¦..sofferte onde serene...) by a pivotal figure (Luigi Nono) in this development are explored as a potential inspiration for new notational and analytical models of sound-based composition. Spectrograms and other technologically derived visualizations of sound are proposed as potential aids to both the performance and analysis of music from this period. The importance of .....sofferte onde serene... is emphasized not only in the context of these analytical developments, but also within the oeuvre of Nono as a whole, with its revolutionary shift towards pure sound as a primary compositional material.

The true voice of Whitney Houston: commodification, authenticity, and African American superstardom

Taking its title from the 1994 AT&T commercial starring Whitney Houston, this article examines how Houston’s voice has functioned in the construction of her star persona from her 1985 debut album to her premature death on 11 February 2012, recognising three phases: the formative years (1985–1991); the commercial and artistic high point (1992); and the years of decline (1993–2012). Throughout her career, Houston has been reduced to her vocal instrument, defining both her success (when her voice was most powerful) and her decline (when her voice failed). Houston is similar to other female African American superstars, like Diana Ross and Beyoncé, in the way she has adopted a glamorous crossover pop image that transcends musical categories connoted as ‘black’ such as soul and R&B, often resulting in the criticism that she has ‘sold out’ or is ‘too white’. Yet Houston differs from Ross and Beyoncé in the way her voice is most dominant in the construction of her star persona. Rather than analysing her vocal performances, this article focuses on how her voice plays a pivotal role in Houston’s ‘star image’ and ‘metanarrative of stardom’ by analysing how her voice is emphasised on the production side (albums, music videos, film) as well as the reception side (critical review, tabloid press). Houston’s from-triumph-to-tragedy narrative reveals the tensions that exist between commodification and ‘authenticity’ in the construction of the star persona, which continues to be discussed in racial terms.

A Critical Study of the Iranian Teaching Textbooks on Iranian Classical Performance

Introduction Many Iranian and international authors and researchers such as Bruno Nettl, Jean During, Stephen Blum, Laudan Nooshin, Nelly Caron with Dariouche Safvat, Hormoz Farhat, Sasan Fatemi, Mohsen Hajarian, Ameneh Youssefzadeh, and Mohammad R. Darvishi have attempted to construct a broader understanding of Iranian music structure and to place it in the context of postrevolutionary sociopolitical change in Iran. (1) Since the turn of the twenty-first century a significant number of publications pertaining to Iranian music have been released by Iranian scholars in Iran. Scholarly interest in Iranian music has been mirrored by an increasing number of performances and a general growth in cultural-musical festivals and industry publications within Iran. Support and patronage for Iranian music has reached a point where one cannot count the number of concerts (Western, popular, regional, and Iranian classical), festivals, and music competitions that take place in Iran today. For example, one Iranian music association released a collection of ninety-six cassettes of regional music, with booklets, in Tehran in 1995. (2) Despite religious restrictions over the use of music, Iranian classical music has remained of great interest to both Iranian and foreign scholars. Iranian classical music education refers to the master-disciple educational framework in which all performance and interpretation happens through imitation, memorization, and repetition of the radif--the Iranian music repertoire-until, after many years of study, the student becomes a mature improviser-composer. (3) Despite widely held misconceptions, the 1979 Islamic revolution can be considered the greatest renaissance in the history of Iranian music because to a large extent it protected Iranian classical music against semi-Westernized pop music during the late 1970s. In 1968 the Centre for the Preservation and Dissemination of Music (Markaz-e Hefz Va Esha'e-Ye Mosiqi Sonati), which was initially proposed by Nur-Ali Borumand (1909-76), was established under the support of National Iranian Radio and Television. The Centre aimed to revive Iranian classical music, and it significantly preserved Iranian classical music during the late 1970s. (4) There are a few exceptions to this, such as motrebi, a kind of traditional entertainment music genre. (5) It can be argued that the increase in the musical literature of Iran reflects the people's nationalistic passion for their cultural roots and the government's effort to promote the cultural reconstruction that had begun earlier in the 1990s. This research examines the development of Iranian music pedagogy through a critical study of the teaching materials and textbooks in the field of Iranian classical music pedagogy. Context In general, the literature published on Iranian music can be organized thematically into six categories: (1) biographical literature; (6) (2) theoretical analysis of Iranian classical music; (7) (3) historical and sociopolitical contexts; (8) (4) regional music of Iran; (9) (5) musical instruments; (10) and (6) Iranian music pedagogy. (11) Of the six music categories noted above, writing on the theoretical analysis of Iranian classical music encompasses the greatest percentage of publications, while the research on regional music and Iranian music pedagogy are quite limited in number. (12) Among these categories, only the Iranian pedagogical category is relevant to this research, as it will be addressed throughout the article. Challenges Confronting Iranian Music Pedagogy Many rapid socioeconomic and political changes have impacted Iranian instrumental teaching and learning processes since the early twentieth century. Prominent among these changes are the institutionalizing of Iranian music education and the introduction of sound technology and Western notation. The two other factors that emerged in the late twentieth century are financial issues (e. …

Strange Sampling: Nina Simone and Her Hip-Hop Children

This essay examines how contemporary hip-hop artists, as diverse as Cassidy, Common, Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, and Kanye West, invoke Nina Simone as both a heuristic and musical material that recalls a particularly radical moment of American culture and simultaneously undergoes transformation as they cite her in response to the aesthetic and political forces of their times. Through their songs, Simone emerges as both a compelling singer and a cultural signifier, a virtuoso and political visionary, whose sampled voice, pianism, and performative strategy enable these artists to access a version of “sonic black radicalism”—Simone’s daring reinvention of musical categories, which, animated by the radical politics of the 1960s, created a new musical vision of blackness and model of sonic experimentation and performance strategies for a new generation of hip-hop artists and listeners to follow.

Transpositions of Spectacle and Time: The Entr'acte in theTragédie en musique

ABSTRACTThe entr'acte in thetragédie en musiqueis the site of compelling yet often overlooked musical and dramaturgical activity. The term refers to both spatial and musical categories: the space between acts in which rapid and potentially astonishing set changes occur and the instrumental music that accompanies these transformations. Practices in French classical tragedy established a precedent for opera; largely observing the ‘unity of place’ after 1640, spoken tragedy included brief instrumental interludes between acts while the stage remained unoccupied. These intervals punctuated the action and created suspensions in mimesis, allowing off-stage events to occur in unfixed temporal and spatial dimensions. Characterized by Mikhail Bakhtin as a ‘chronotope’ of theatrical time and space, the entr'acte exposes foundational issues concerning representation in opera and drama, including questions of illusion and the status of fictional actions and worlds. This article examines the role played by the spectator's reflection and rumination during operatic entr'actes and the use of narrative reference to shape the awareness of unseen actions presumed to transpire within them. These modes of representation and spectatorship are illustrated by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin'slivretsforJephté(1732) andHippolyte et Aricie(1733). Parodies ofHippolyte et Ariciefurther demonstrate that the possibilities of unseen action had a vital effect on the reception of thetragédie en musique.

Representations of Invariant Musical Categories Are Decodable by Pattern Analysis of Locally Distributed BOLD Responses in Superior Temporal and Intraparietal Sulci

In categorical perception (CP), continuous physical signals are mapped to discrete perceptual bins: mental categories not found in the physical world. CP has been demonstrated across multiple sensory modalities and, in audition, for certain over-learned speech and musical sounds. The neural basis of auditory CP, however, remains ambiguous, including its robustness in nonspeech processes and the relative roles of left/right hemispheres; primary/nonprimary cortices; and ventral/dorsal perceptual processing streams. Here, highly trained musicians listened to 2-tone musical intervals, which they perceive categorically while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Multivariate pattern analyses were performed after grouping sounds by interval quality (determined by frequency ratio between tones) or pitch height (perceived noncategorically, frequency ratios remain constant). Distributed activity patterns in spheres of voxels were used to determine sound sample identities. For intervals, significant decoding accuracy was observed in the right superior temporal and left intraparietal sulci, with smaller peaks observed homologously in contralateral hemispheres. For pitch height, no significant decoding accuracy was observed, consistent with the non-CP of this dimension. These results suggest that similar mechanisms are operative for nonspeech categories as for speech; espouse roles for 2 segregated processing streams; and support hierarchical processing models for CP.

Subverting the German Volk: Racial and Musical Impurity in Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues

Considering that the Nazis relied upon narrowly defined categories of race and art in an effort to cleanse German genetic stock and artistic culture, it is notable that the title of Esi Edugyan’s second novel, set largely in Germany and France at the outbreak of WWII, signals a violation of both racial and musical categories. The title, Half-Blood Blues, suggests the racial mixture of several of the characters (which contravenes dichotomous racial categories) as well as the blending of musical genres in the namesake song, “Half-Blood Blues.” The characters acknowledge that the song is not “true blues” because it lacks “the right chord structure,” but they are unconcerned since “blues wasn’t never bout the chords” (275). Thus the book title alerts the reader that the novel will challenge authoritative classifications by undermining prescriptive definitions of purity. In particular, the novel explores the implications of mixture for the original “pure” categories being violated—specifically, those categories that were understood to define German people and culture. The song “Half-Blood Blues” is the musicians’ subversive interpretation of the Nazis’ own “Horst Wessel” and it therefore constitutes a kind of dialogue between the German (“Horst Wessel”) and that which corrupts the German (jazz) according to National Socialist leadership. Ultimately, the novel’s exploration of racial and musical designations is a simultaneous examination of the customary formulation of Germanness (taken to an extreme under the Nazis). Half-Blood Blues challenges the foundational claims to purity that characterize the long-established conception of Germanness by depicting impure Germanness. By portraying blackness and jazz as unquestionably German and thus demonstrating the Germanness of non-Aryan race and culture, Edugyan’s novel subverts the conventional—and still prominent—understanding of Germanness and gestures toward the growing conundrum of Western European nations: how to reconcile black citizenry with a white cultural, national, and racial “heritage.” Since the novel challenges German notions of purity, it is essential to understand how the concepts of “pure” racial, national, and cultural identity were constructed in Germany. The concepts of volkisch and Volk that the novel challenges are not simply a matter of what North Americans might consider racial or phenotypical whiteness. Translated as “folk” and signifying a people, a nation, and a race or tribe, the terms refer to the nationalist ethnic German identity that existed well before and after National Socialism. That this conception of Germanness has persisted for so long demonstrates its deep roots in German culture and consequently explains, in some small part, how Nazi ideology could arise. As Clarence Lusane explains in Hitler’s Black Victims,

Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China: Ethos, Theory and Practice by Alan R. Thrasher (review)

Reviewed by: Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China: Ethos, Theory and Practice by Alan R. Thrasher Yu Hui (bio) Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China: Ethos, Theory and Practice. Alan R. Thrasher. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 218 pp., photos, figures, music examples, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index. ISSN: 0169-9563. ISBN: 978-90-04-16500-7, $121.02. Indigenous Chinese instrumental ensemble traditions of different regions feature various instrumental combinations, repertoires, intonations, folk ethos, and performance aesthetics nurtured by local native subcultures. With much attention paid to those traditions, modern Chinese music scholars and Western ethnomusicologists have for the past three decades, conducted extensive fieldwork research and musical analyses on some of the best known genres, including Jangnan Sizhu and Chaozhou Xianshiyue. Thrasher’s investigation of parallel ensemble traditions in adjacent provinces of South China exemplifies a new comparative and categorical approach in this area of research. The book is very well organized in structure, and informative in its subject matter. Thrasher offers many new insights into the sizhu (silk and bamboo) ensemble traditions of Hakka, Chaozhou, Minnan, and Cantonese music primarily in the South Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, extending potential readership in the fields of Chinese music theory, Chinese culture and history studies, and Western ethnomusicology. Thrasher discusses both shared features of each tradition and the uniqueness of individual genres, tracing the musical, cultural, and aesthetic roots back to the ancient court and folk music of the Confucius era. He presents a clear picture of what these traditions are, their origins, and how they function and survive in contemporary China. Slightly different from the ethnographic approaches in Western mainstream ethnomusicology evident in previous research on individual Chinese ensemble traditions, Thrasher’s narrative takes on both emic and etic interpretations, using broad geographical, historical, and cultural perspectives. Comparing the commonalities and uniqueness of each ensemble tradition, Thrasher demonstrates a new approach for the study of traditional Chinese musical culture, known for its thousands of years of history and abundant philosophical perspectives, which is not always within the scope of Western ethnomusicological methodology. Thrasher also provides the most updated bibliographic information on sizhu traditions in both Chinese and Western studies. Most of the author’s viewpoints are clearly presented, supplemented with cross-references to his informants’ interview notes, modern Chinese scholars’ research findings, ancient classical Chinese music literature, and Western ethnomusicologists’ insights. Sizhu is both a categorical term for a type of string and wind instrument chamber music ensemble and a name for a regional instrumental music [End Page 139] tradition in Eastern China’s Yangzi Delta area known as Jiangnan sizhu. In recognizing the commonly shared crucial musical features and cultural aesthetics, Thrasher borrows this terminology and categorizes four ensemble traditions in Fujian and Guangdong provinces with generalized analysis. The first chapter, “Sizhu Music in South China,” introduces Chinese music categories in Chinese music scholarship, within which sizhu is a distinguished domain of instrumental music, comprising several local music traditions throughout China. The background information in relation to music cultures of South China and social perspectives of this category are discussed in great detail. Categorizing traditional music genres has been a subject of modern Chinese music research prior to the People’s Republic, when Lu Ji published his well-known thesis Outline of National Folk Music Research in 1942, where he summarized traditional Chinese music into eight types. One of them, according to Lu Ji, is folk instrumental music consisting of two subtypes of solo and ensemble traditions. In the later twentieth century, Chinese musicologists Li Minxiong and Ye Dong divided Chinese instrumental ensembles into two categories: sizhu and chuida, while Gao Houyang and Yuan Jingfang divided them into five categories, with sizhu as a category domain. Thrasher adopts the former concept toward what he sees as two basic instrumental ensemble domains—“the relatively soft chamber and the louder ceremonial music.” He emphasizes the shared music aesthetics of the four traditions, underlining the influences of Confucian social values. In chapter 2, “Yuelun: The Confucius Foundation,” Thrasher provides a penetrating examination of Confucian theory, the ancient corpus of behavioral doctrine, which promoted music as a means of achieving social harmony. Through his analyses of musical forms and styles, such as the...

Music Received

Music Received David Knapp Introduction This column presents a comprehensive list of new music publications that have been sent recently by publishers and distributors for possible review in Notes. Self-published music is listed when a source of acquisition is provided. The primary aim of this column is to provide brief listings of a broad range of new editions of music, thereby assisting in selection and ordering for libraries or personal collections. After the listing is prepared, the publications are sent selectively to Keith Cochran the “Music Reviews” column editor. Organization and Scope Notes Scholarly & Historical Editions: Primarily volumes of collected editions and monumental series. Extensive critical apparatus is generally assumed and therefore not noted in the entries. Facsimile Editions: Limited to publications presenting a reproduction of an item that emphasizes its nature as a primary source rather than its simple intellectual content. Orchestral Music: Works for full and chamber orchestra, and chamber groups of more than nine players. Full scores of concertos are included, but reductions for solo instrument(s) with keyboard are listed in the appropriate chamber music category. Band Music: Brass and wind ensemble music intended for more than one player to a part, and wind chamber groups of more than nine players. Choral Music: Includes all types of nondramatic choral works, in full scores or vocal scores. Dramatic Music: Operas, musicals, and ballets, in full or vocal scores. Chamber Music with Strings; Chamber Music without Strings: Duets through nonets other than one instrument with keyboard. “Strings” includes harp and guitar, but excludes keyboard instruments. String Instrument with Keyboard; Woodwind Instrument with Keyboard; Brass Instrument with Keyboard: Includes reductions for one solo instrument with keyboard (including organ). Music for more than one instrument with keyboard is listed as Chamber Music. Music for solo instrument with basso continuo is listed here, however, since the bass part is often presented as optional or for a choice of instruments. Solos for Bowed or Plucked Strings, Unaccompanied; Solos for Wind Instruments, Unaccompanied: Music for single solo instrument. Studies are included here unless they are technical exercises, orchestral studies, or methods. Music for Organ: Solo organ music, duets, arrangements, and reductions. Music for Piano or Harpsichord: For any keyboard instrument other than organ. Includes solo music and like-instrument ensembles such as 4-hand piano and 2-piano duets, keyboard reductions of piano concertos, and larger keyboard ensembles. Music for Percussion: Includes percussion solos (with or without keyboard accompaniment) and ensembles. Chamber music with other instruments is listed in the appropriate category above. Music for Voice: Music for one or more solo voices (one singer per part) with any accompaniment, including chamber ensemble. Opera excerpts, such as collections of arias, are included, but complete opera vocal scores are listed under Dramatic Music. Other works for solo voices with chorus are listed under Choral Music. Methods and Studies: Includes method books, technical exercises, and orchestral studies; studies that might be used in performance are listed above as solo music. [End Page 194] Music for Children: Materials designed for study and performance by children of preschool or elementary school age. Miscellaneous: For music that defies inclusion in the categories above. Citation Style Citations include publishers’ numbers or plate numbers, ISBN, and ISMN, where available. In order to keep the citations brief, description of introductory notes, critical reports, etc., is not included unless the material is considered unusual for the type of publication, or an indication of languages is warranted. Abbreviations for publishers are listed at the end of the column with complete imprints, U.S. distributors, and Web sites. Some well-known collected works series titles are abbreviated according to usage in works lists of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (2001). Most other abbreviations follow The Chicago Manual of Style and the Notes Style Sheet. Scholarly & Historical Editions Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Arias and Chamber Cantatas. Edited by Bertil van Boer. (Works (2005), VI/4.) PHI, 2010. ISBN 978-1-933280-43-1. xxiv p.; facsims.; score, 160 p. Cloth, $25. Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Arrangements of Orchestral Works I. Edited by Douglas A. Lee. (Works (2005), I/10.1.) PHI, 2007. ISBN 978-1-933280-27-1. xv p.; facsims...

Verbal Responses to Music Listening by Adult Nonmusicians

Abstract The central purpose of this research was to determine the nature of musically untrained adults’ verbal response to repeated hearings of music excerpts when asked questions that encouraged interpretive responses. Two specific research questions served as the basis for the investigation: What categories emerge from an analysis of verbal responses? How does the musical understanding represented by verbal responses compare to extant literature on the music listening of adult nonmusicians? Twelve adult nonmusicians ranging in age from 28 to 77 were interviewed individually after they had listened twice to six musical excerpts, followed by a repetition of the procedure after a one-week interval. A content analysis of their responses employed a grounded theory approach to generate a list of categories. Results indicate that participants responded across a range of musical, extramusical, affective, and preference categories, and that repeated hearings of selected pieces resulted in more detailed responses for several participants.

EEG-Based Music Mood Analysis and Applications

Music is known to be a powerful elicitor of emotions. Music with different moods induces various emotions, each of which corresponding to certain pattern of EEG signals. In this paper, based on current music mood categories, we discuss how the music belonging to different mood types affect the pattern EEG activity. We review several literatures verifying that certain characteristics of EEG differ from each other induced by different types of music. Such differences make it possible for emotion recognition through EEG signals. We also introduce some applications of emotional music such as improvement of human emotions and adjuvant treatment of diseases.

Development and validation of a Chinese music quality rating test

Objective: The present study aims to develop and validate a Chinese music quality rating test (MQRT). Design: In Experiment 1, 22 music pieces were initially selected and paired as a ‘familiar music piece’ and ‘unfamiliar music piece’ based on familiarities amongst the general public in the categories of classical music (6), Chinese folk music (8), and pop music (8). Following the selection criteria, one pair of music pieces from each music category was selected and used for the MQRT in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, the MQRT was validated using these music pieces in the categories ‘Pleasantness’, ‘Naturalness’, ‘Fullness’, ‘Roughness’, and ‘Sharpness’. Study sample: Seventy-two adult participants and 30 normal-hearing listeners were recruited in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Results: Significant differences between the familiar and unfamiliar music pieces were found in respect of pleasantness rating for folk and pop music pieces as well as in sharpness rating for pop music pieces. The comparison of music category effect on MQRT found significant differences in pleasantness, fullness, and sharpness ratings. Conclusion: The Chinese MQRT developed in the present study is an effective tool for assessing music quality.

Musical Washing Machines, Composer-Performers, and Other Blurring Boundaries: How Women Make a Difference in Electroacoustic Music

This essay explores the possibilities and limitations of an écriture féminine musicale in electroacoustic music. Theories by Cox, Dame, and Citron about "women's music" are discussed alongside research on women electroacoustic composers by McCartney and Hinkle-Turner, and analyses of works by Rudow, Isadora, and LaBerge. The operation of gendered musical categories is analysed in the appropriation of Cathy Berberian's "voice" by Berio. Strategies for destabilizing historically gendered categories in music are discussed, including feminine/feminist content, composer-performers, interdisciplinarity, and collaboration. The interdisciplinary character of many women's work may hamper its documentation and thus its survival. The author's research at NEAR/Donemus focuses on this problem.

“Redneck Woman” and the Gendered Poetics of Class Rebellion

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 2004 Gretchen Wilson exploded onto country music scene with The blockbuster single led to early release of her first CD, Here for Party, and propelled it to triple platinum sales that year, highest for a debut in any musical category. shot to No. i faster than any country track in previous decade and held top spot for five weeks. Wilson garnered a raft of distinctions, including a Grammy for best country song and best female vocalist honors from both Country Music and American Music Awards. (See video at http://www.cmt.com/videos/gretchen-wilson/30774/redneck-woman.jhtml.) The record a milestone in country music and in career of Wilson, who went in a few weeks from struggling Nashville unknown to top-selling Nashville star. In process, she had created with co-writer and MuzikMafia crewmate John Rich became not only her signature song but her star persona. Redneck Woman was tag line that served to introduce Wilson in public appearances and media features. The neck of her guitar even proclaimed REDNECK in mother of pearl inlay. More than a nickname, handle keyed to a network of images, attributes, and attitudes that Wilson represented and that, for fans, represented her in an essential way. Loretta Lynn was Miner's Daughter, Johnny Cash in Black, and now Gretchen Wilson was Redneck Woman. Anyone curious about meaning of any of these monikers could simply listen to eponymous song. All three songs have served as identity totems for their singers and fans who have embraced them. All are first-person narrations on themes that have been prevalent in postwar country music, including an identification with humble folk--both materially impoverished and socially scorned. Coal Miner's Daughter (#1 1970) poignantly chronicles singer's hardscrabble family origins in a Kentucky holler. Its message is familiar to country fans: We were poor, but we had love--of God and each other? The narrator in Man in Black (#3 1971) explains that he shuns color in his dress to protest poverty, hopelessness, and lives lost to war and imprisonment. That song's lyrics invoke another champion of downtrodden, Jesus. The persona in acknowledges her own scorned status but frames it with neither poignancy nor righteous protest. Her statement is a defiant apologia for herself and her redneck sisters and their trashy social position. Wilson's breakthrough single and its extraordinary reception remakes white working-class female identity through language, sound, and images and in relation to middle-class/working-class, male/female, and individual/communal affiliations. It is an identity bereft of cachet, or exchange-value, according to Beverley Skeggs, a British sociologist whose work powerfully illuminates cultural terrain on which song is produced and received. Skeggs offers a theory on workings of contemporary Western political and symbolic economy--a cultural system that elevates stories of individual and rewards those who can access, use, and display right identity attributes. The winners here are those who are positioned to access other subjects' properties. These powerful actors can classifications and characteristics of race, sexuality, class, and gender as by borrowing them, fluidly and according to circumstances, from subject positions to which they are seen to belong. Such self-resourcing takes place in a modern neoliberal context of propertized personhood. Here, exchange-value attaches, not only to objects or labor that transforms them into possessions (as in Marx), but to the cultures, experiences, and affects of others that entitled subjects use as resources for middle-class self-construction. Less entitled subjects, however, are limited in their ability to trade and convert their characteristics and classifications because they are positioned as those classifications and are fixed by them. …

The constraints of colour: popular music listening and the interrogation of ‘race’ in post-apartheid South Africa

AbstractIn post-apartheid popular culture, there is a tension between the persistence of ‘race’ as a structural category of difference, and its transformation in the lives of young South Africans. In this paper, through the examination of case-studies, I explore how popular music may allow for the mediation of this tension. Drawing on Heidegger's notion of an ‘equipmental whole’ to conceptualise ‘race’, I discuss the specific ways in which individuals may come to an awareness of the potential fluidity of racial identities, and the role of music-listening practices in this process. I argue that reflecting on articulations between music and racial categories allowed listeners to critique understandings of ‘race’ underpinning post-apartheid political discourse. Such a critique enabled listeners either instrumentally to affirm a reconfigured understanding of a racial identity, or to reject ‘race’ as a meaningful category of difference altogether.

Music Received

Music Received David Knapp Introduction This column presents a comprehensive list of new music publications that have been sent recently by publishers and distributors for possible review in Notes. Self-published music is listed when a source of acquisition is provided. The primary aim of this column is to provide brief listings of a broad range of new editions of music, thereby assisting in selection and ordering for libraries or personal collections. After the listing is prepared, the publications are sent selectively to David Gilbert, the “Music Reviews” column editor. Organization and Scope Notes Scholarly & Historical Editions: Primarily volumes of collected editions and monumental series. Extensive critical apparatus is generally assumed and therefore not noted in the entries. Facsimile Editions: Limited to publications presenting a reproduction of an item that emphasizes its nature as a primary source rather than its simple intellectual content. Orchestral Music: Works for full and chamber orchestra, and chamber groups of more than nine players. Full scores of concertos are included, but reductions for solo instrument(s) with keyboard are listed in the appropriate chamber music category. Band Music: Brass and wind ensemble music intended for more than one player to a part, and wind chamber groups of more than nine players. Choral Music: Includes all types of nondramatic choral works, in full scores or vocal scores. Dramatic Music: Operas, musicals, and ballets, in full or vocal scores. Chamber Music with Strings; Chamber Music without Strings: Duets through nonets other than one instrument with keyboard. “Strings” includes harp and guitar, but excludes keyboard instruments. String Instrument with Keyboard; Woodwind Instrument with Keyboard; Brass Instrument with Keyboard: Includes reductions for one solo instrument with keyboard (including organ). Music for more than one instrument with keyboard is listed as Chamber Music. Music for solo instrument with basso continuo is listed here, however, since the bass part is often presented as optional or for a choice of instruments. Solos for Bowed or Plucked Strings, Unaccompanied; Solos for Wind Instruments, Unaccompanied: Music for single solo instrument. Studies are included here unless they are technical exercises, orchestral studies, or methods. Music for Organ: Solo organ music, duets, arrangements, and reductions. Music for Piano or Harpsichord: For any keyboard instrument other than organ. Includes solo music and like-instrument ensembles such as 4-hand piano and 2-piano duets, keyboard reductions of piano concertos, and larger keyboard ensembles. Music for Percussion: Includes percussion solos (with or without keyboard accompaniment) and ensembles. Chamber music with other instruments is listed in the appropriate category above. Music for Voice: Music for one or more solo voices (one singer per part) with any accompaniment, including chamber ensemble. Opera excerpts, such as collections of arias, are included, but complete opera vocal scores are listed under Dramatic Music. Other works for solo voices with chorus are listed under Choral Music. Methods and Studies: Includes method books, technical exercises, and orchestral studies; studies that might be used in performance are listed above as solo music. [End Page 182] Music for Children: Materials designed for study and performance by children of preschool or elementary school age. Miscellaneous: For music that defies inclusion in the categories above. Citation Style Citations include publishers’ numbers or plate numbers, ISBN, and ISMN, where available. In order to keep the citations brief, description of introductory notes, critical reports, etc., is not included unless the material is considered unusual for the type of publication, or an indication of languages is warranted. Abbreviations for publishers are listed at the end of the column with complete imprints, U. S. distributors, and Web sites. Some wellknown collected works series titles are abbreviated according to usage in works lists of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. Most other abbreviations follow The Chicago Manual of Style and the Notes Style Sheet. Scholarly & Historical Editions Draghi, Giovanni Battista. From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony: A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687. Edited under the Supervision of the Purcell Society by Bryan White. (Purcell Society Edition Companion Series, 3.) Stainer, 2010. PC3. ISBN 978-0-2202-2278-8. ISMN 978-0-85249-909-2. xxvi p.; facsims.; score, 112 p. Cloth. £55. Google Scholar Fauré, Gabriel. Premier...

Típico, folklóricoorpopular? Musical categories, place, and identity in a transnational listening community

AbstractThe study of popular music often loses something in translation. The musical categories used by scholars and musicians in different locations vary widely in meaning, complicating both analysis and disciplinary divisions. Genre classifications also create blind spots which leave styles falling between the cracks out of the picture, impoverishing analysis and even denying musicians certain benefits. This paper examines the use of terms such asfolklórico, tradicional, popularandtípicoby both lay people and scholars in Latin America, then turns to Dominicanmerengue típicoas a case study showing how musical categories are often intensely local. I argue that – because it relies more on notions of place than on the ideas of time, class, race or production that inform other categorisations – the concept oftípicois useful in examining transnational ‘roots’ musics which bridge nations, classes and modes of production. In addition, using musicians' and listeners' own categories can help us to question the canons of musical scholarship, musical nationalism and music marketing, thus creating new possibilities for both scholars and musicians.

Music Information Seeking Behaviour Poses Unique Challenges for the Design of Information Retrieval Systems

Music Information Seeking Behaviour Poses Unique Challenges for the Design of Information Retrieval Systems

Attention must be paid, cried the balladeer: The concept musical defined

The concept musical, a fourth category of American musical theatre (following comedy, revue and the integrated musical), has been accepted as a legitimate category but never fully defined. This study examines the attributes of structure, theme, character and song that distinguish the concept musical category from the musical comedy, revue and integrated musical, and provides a concise definition. The analysis of representative concept musicals demonstrates the validity of the definition when applied to two shows, Company and A Chorus Line, and other concept musicals (beyond the 1970s) are identified.