Musical Repertoire Research Articles

Identity, Representation and the Canon in Classical Music

Classical music has in recent years been under hostile investigation within society as never before: it is alleged to be elitist, sexist and racist, and has been left in a position where it seems unable or unwilling to defend itself. This article, from a British perspective, examines the imprecise but weighted vocabulary which drives the debate, and considers the complex and apparently unresolvable demographic issues around musical representation by identity classification, of whatever kind. The issue of legacy repertoires and quotas is discussed, as well as the concepts of fairness and decolonization, and some of the reasons which drive the selection of musical repertoires.

Ondes Martenot at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937

The purpose of the study is to reveal the figurative, semantic and symbolic specificity of the interpretation of the timbre of "Ondes Martenot" in line with the musical, cultural, and socio-political guidelines of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. Research methodology. Cultural-historical, interdisciplinary historical-cultural, as well as analytical-musicological methods were essential for this work. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that it introduces for the first time into the circulation of art historians the materials related to the musical component of the artistic events of the Paris World Exhibition of 1937, voiced, including with the help of the timbralness of the "Ondes Martenot", which became the personification of the union of art and technology as a leading symbol of its shares. Conclusions. Interwar France, being at the edge of a difficult socio-political and cultural situation, grasped at the saving idea for it – the holding of another "World's Fair" in 1937, the slogan of which was chosen as the thesis – "Art and technology in modern life". Achieving the set goals and demonstrating to the whole world the high-tech side of France's existence became possible thanks to the musical part of the exhibition, namely "concert-performances" and night shows on the banks of the Seine – "Holidays of sound, water and light". An important component of most of these presentations is the electronic musical instrument "Ondes Martenot". As a result, the popularity of "concert-performances" and night extravaganzas "Saint of Light", the essential component of which were the spiritual and mysterious timbral features of the "Ondes Martenot", stimulated the aesthetic preferences of modernist composers. It was during this period that a significant part of the musical repertoire was created for this instrument, which was always connected precisely with the sphere of the Sacred and the Cosmic. This also marked the leading spiritual, social, and aesthetic guidelines of the World Exhibition of 1937, which, in the most difficult political situation on the eve of the Second World War, tried, including through the diverse involvement of the timbrality of the "Ondes Martenot" involved in the mysterious spectacular actions of this project, unite the human community and avoid global catastrophe.
 Keywords: World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, "Feasts of sound, water and light", "concerts-spectacles", Ondes Martenot.

Mechanisms of Generating Emotions in Audio-Based Media

Audio-based content is considered to be extremely intimate and easily evoking emotions in listeners. The aim of this article is to determine the affective mechanisms used in audio productions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 The analysis focuses on radio programmes of public and commercial radio stations and the broadly defined audio media segment: podcasts and streaming services from Europe, the USA, and Australia. The content created during the so-called first wave of the pandemic (March–June 2020) was considered. Sound recordings are analysed in terms of four aspects related to the structure of audio content: words, music, acoustic effects, and silence. This study aims to present the perspective of a broadcaster who designs the audience’s affective reactions and the unique nature of radio journalists’ work during the pandemic.
 The study confirmed the use of mechanisms intended to intensify and regulate emotions in audio productions in all of the analysed areas. This is especially true for emotionally-charged lexis, voice expressions, selection of musical repertoire and solutions applied in sound editing. The importance of silence as an acoustic equivalent of distance, void and isolation is emphasised. We put forward a list of mechanisms behind generating and modulating emotions in audio-based media. The study shows how sound, as diverse as it is, conveys emotions in the media.

AESTHETIC THEORY IN TURKIS MUSIC PERFORMANCE METHODS

The issue of what should be the elements that make up the aesthetics in Turkish Music performance methods has not been adequately addressed scientifically. However, Turkish music contains the rich aesthetic accumulation of a deep-rooted cultural heritage that extends to the present day. It is inevitable that the aesthetic elements in the maqam, rhythm and melodic structures of Turkish Music works will make significant contributions to both academic studies and performance. In this context, aesthetics and music philosophy especially in the creation processes of musical works have a special importance. Therefore, the study of aesthetic elements in the genres and forms of Turkish Music repertoire emerges as a compulsory field. The value of aesthetics, which is defined as the way of searching for the beautiful, in Turkish Music works is directly proportional to the compositions of the makams and tempos. In the analysis of a musical work, the form that forms the building blocks of the work is very important. Aesthetic questioning on the form should be made through the elements of motif, sentence, clause and section. However, studying all of the aesthetic elements of Turkish Music, which has a very wide repertoire, requires a lot of effort and time. In this article, first of all, aesthetic perception, aesthetic attitude, aesthetic pleasure etc. related to aesthetic theory. By emphasizing the main concepts, the aesthetic elements in the performance of Turkish Music works with the aesthetic questioning method, which is one of the most basic elements of creativity, are studied under the headings by giving examples.

From the iron cage to ‘La Jaula de Oro’: Music as a cultural object

AbstractThe norteño band Los Tigres del Norte (LTDN) are widely known as the ‘voice’ of the undocumented community for using their music as a vehicle to create and raise social consciousness on pressing issues of immigration. Utilizing Griswold's cultural diamond approach to analysing culture, I examine the culture/society relationship that emerges from their musical repertoire. Using this sociological model of culture, I argue that the wide receptiveness of their music is based on the constructed phenomenon that more than just a celebration of dance rhythms and entertainment their music poses itself as a cultural object attached with ideologies. By appropriating the dominant national discourse that has traditionally belittled, discriminated and dehumanized immigrants in the United States, in particular immigrants of Latin American descent, the music of LTDN markets itself less as a product and more as a cultural component of identity empowering marginalized communities by not only telling their stories but also nurturing a sense of pride. Analysing 56 songs within the musical repertoire of LTDN from 1970 to 2022, I demonstrate how their music on immigrant‐related struggles serves to reinforce a Latina/o collective identity by fostering solidarity, educating the public and instilling pride.

Neo-liberal Transgressions in the Contemporary Film Industry: Classical Music and Dehumanised Musical Bodies in the Films The Perfection (2018) and Nocturne (2020)

The aim of this paper is to examine what I call “dehumanised musical bodies” in the psychological horror films The Perfection and Nocturne. These multi-deficient neo-liberal bodies are exposed to the stereotypical, strikingly negative image of the sophisticated world of art. Particular attention is paid to the provocative treatment of classical music, focusing on the non-normative institutional practices and ethical reconfiguration of their representatives. A strikingly raw form of musical dehumanisation is found in the film The Perfection, whose soundtrack combines ambient sounds of terror and popular tunes with great classical works by Handel, Mozart and Casadesus. The film Nocturne, on the other hand, offers a more contemplative audio-visual aesthetic with a deceptive hierarchisation of the classical music repertoire. Mozart’s music is frivolously devalued, while Saint-Saëns’ “Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor” is used as a narrative device for a destructive manifestation of power that leads to an avalanche of conflict between the sisters. Such explicit play with the classical music signifiers drastically deviates from conventional musical protocols and leads to alienation and, ultimately, transgressive neo-liberal dehumanisation of contemporary musicians.

Sounding Slavery in the Victorian Drawing Room: The ‘Blackface’ Ballads of Philip Klitz

Abstract In 1847, Southampton’s Philip Klitz (1805–1854) added two ‘blackface’ ballads to a cultural craze reflecting that year’s British tour by the white American minstrel troupe, the ‘Ethiopian Serenaders’, and their imitators, the ‘Ethiopian Harmonists’. I show how Klitz and his fellow composers reflected and fed a potent stereotype, circulating songs in the bourgeois home that adversely affected the British perception of African Americans by sustaining racist themes and images in the popular-cultural imagination. Notwithstanding the negative impacts for black residents and visitors in Britain at the time, minstrelsy is also widely understood to have exerted considerable cultural influence throughout the nineteenth century. Among investigations of how the Victorian arts constructed race, few give music the significance it holds in this interpretation of how black caricature functioned in a post-abolition British context through the medium of music and musical orientalism in Victorian drawing-room ballads. This case study of previously neglected musical repertoire details an important episode in the history of ‘blackface’ minstrelsy, showing how racial attitudes formed within British domestic spaces during the late 1840s were affected by those of the popular stage in ante-bellum America.

Chamber music examples and performance analysis for the development of musical talent for undergraduate education

The development of musical talent can be possible with the mentoring of scientists in the field of musical talent. Academics in the field of music have tested the effectiveness of examples, and their analyzes can make important contributions to the development of musical talent. This research has a qualitative character since it was conducted with a document analysis technique based on experience and observation, and it is an examination of the researcher's selection of materials to be used in music teaching, the reasons for this, and analysis. This study provides fifteen chamber works including string duos, trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets suitable for the undergraduate students. The aim of this study is during undergraduate education, the technical development of the student is prioritized in instrumental studies. Secondly, solo repertoire decision is made by teachers for the young student to expand their repertoire. Chamber music education is neglected in comparison to solo repertoire and technical repertoire. Playing together with other students is a very helpful to hear and play simultaneously. Therefore, this list will help students to analyze their chamber music repertoire and understand the technical difficulties as well as publisher info, timing etc.

Opera trainees' cognitive functioning is associated with physiological stress during performance.

In an opera performance, singers must perform difficult musical repertoire at a high level while dealing with the stress of standing before a large audience. Previous literature suggests that individuals with better cognitive functions experience less stress. During a music performance such functions, especially attention, memory, and executive function, are in high demand, suggesting that cognitive functions may play a role in music performance. This study used physiological and cognitive measures to examine this phenomenon in opera performance. Cardiac activity data were collected from 24 opera trainees during a resting-state period before and during a real-life performance. Heart-rate variability (HRV) was used as an indicator of physiological stress, such that higher HRV indicates lower stress. Standardized neuropsychological tests were used to measure attention (IVA-2), memory (CVLT-3, WMS-IV), and executive function (Trail Making Test). Results showed cognitive function- and state-specific relationships between HRV and cognitive function: HRV during the resting state had a positive correlation with attention, while HRV during a performance had a positive correlation with executive function. These results suggest that greater cognitive function is related to lower stress during opera performance. The findings of this study provide initial evidence for a relationship between cognitive functions and music performance stress in opera trainees.

Oktoechos Classification and Generation of Liturgical Music using Deep Learning Frameworks

An important feature of the music repertoire of the Syrian tradition is the system of classifying melodies into eight tunes,  called ’oktoe\={c}hos’.  In oktoe\={c}hos tradition, liturgical hymns are sung in eight modes or eight colours (known as eight ’niram’ in Indian tradition). In this paper, recurrent neural network (RNN) models are  used for  oktoe\={c}hos genre classification with the help of musical texture features (MTF) and i-vectors.The performance of the proposed approaches is evaluated using a newly created corpus of liturgical music in the South Indian language, Malayalam. Long short-term memory (LSTM)-based and gated recurrent unit(GRU)-based experiments report the average classification accuracy of  83.76\%  and 77.77\%, respectively, with a significant margin over the i-vector-DNN framework.   The experiments demonstrate the potential of RNN models in learning temporal information through MTF in recognizing eight modes of oktoe\={c}hos system. Furthermore, since the Greek liturgy and Gregorian chant also share similar musical traits with Syrian tradition, the musicological insights observed can potentially be applied to those traditions. Generation of oktoe\={c}hos genre music style has also been discussed using an encoder-decoder framework. The quality of the generated files is evaluated using a  perception test.

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Music of the 16th-century Khurasan in the 17th-century Ottoman Sources: Evidences from Darwish ʿAli Changi’s Treatise on Music

The compositions attributed to the early 15th-century music theorist and composer of Jalayirid and Timurid courts, Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir, in the Turkish musical repertoire, are usually considered to be a later pseudographic repertoire created with the intention of forging a link between medieval practice and the Ottoman tradition. Taking the music treatise of the late 16th-century musician from Khurāsān, Darwīsh ʿAlī Changī, into consideration, the present study sheds light on the Central Asian, Khurāsāni origins of eight such musical compositions from the 17thcentury Ottoman repertoire. The results of this study show that some of the pieces mentioned by Darwīsh ʿAlī as creations of composers such as Shah Pīladūz, Ri ā Samarqandī, Darwīsh Shādī, ʿAlī Kārmāl, Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir, and Sayf al-Mi r, reappear in the late 17th-century Ottoman sources, when the names of all but two of the composers (Khwāja ʿAbd al-Qādir and Sayf alMi r) had been forgotten. Thus, the survival of a 16th-century central Asian musical repertoire in 17th-century Ottoman repertoire is demonstrated.

Challenges and New Insights in the Critical Edition of the Persianate Repertoire in Ottoman Music

Many scribes of historical Ottoman song text collections attributed pieces related to the Persianate repertoire to renowned late medieval composers. Researchers working on the early song text collections more closely pointed to the considerable change Ottoman music repertoire underwent at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Apparently a shifted from a popular to a courtlier style occurred, while the Persianate repertoire regained significance and was perceived as old and authoritative. How this “revived” and established repertoire was transmitted in nineteenth-century music collections is still a pending and important research topic. This paper looks at three vocal pieces of the kâr genre that derived from the Ottoman Persianate repertoire and that was handed down in Hampartsum music collections. Based on Cantemir’s descriptions of the kâr, this paper will point to divergences in the transmission practices of the Persianate repertoire and suggest alternative readings based on historical musical and textual materials.

“I’ll Bring You More Than a Song”: Toward a Reassessment of Methodology in the Study of Contemporary Praise and Worship

In the recent study of Contemporary Praise and Worship (CPW), many studies have focused on musical repertory, including its text, music, and performance, as the foundational text(s) for theoretical analysis. In particular, scholars have relied on lists of the most popular songs that have been reported to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). This essay points out several critical weaknesses in the current overreliance on this methodology and instead contends for two underutilized methodologies—liturgical ethnography and liturgical history—that need to be developed in the scholarship. The essay argues that such a cultivation of methodology will enable the burgeoning scholarship on CPW to gain richer insight into the range of theological meaning expressed in CPW contexts.

Re-Thinking Virtuosity for the Hybrid Era of Multifarious Approaches

ABSTRACT Virtuosity in the twenty-first century is undergoing a transformation. Technological changes have altered the relations between artists, audience, critics and tools, requiring a redefinition of virtuosity. In recent years, these changes have caused musicians in the contemporary classical music tradition to adopt an increasingly varied set of workflows, tools and approaches, necessitating a recontextualisation of the ideas of technique and expertise. This article discusses how new music repertoire involving the use of technology relates to five new formulations of virtuosity and connects them to three brief case studies. In exploring how hybrid virtuosity, interdisciplinary virtuosity, virtuosity of adaptability, eco-systemic virtuosity, and the New Virtuosity relate to XR performance, collaboration with an AI, and inclusive co-creation between deaf and hearing artists, I question what virtuosity means in these examples and how technology is impacting the way virtuosity is transforming.

KAZAKH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN THE FIELD OF INTERMEDIAL STUDIES

The article deals with the problems of intermedial interaction of different types of arts – music and literature, painting and literature based on the stories of M. Kabanbaev. The emphasis in the article is on the compositional structure and images of the characters. As a result of the study, the musical repertoire was identified, the correspondence between the musical form and composition of a prose work was determined, verbal music in prose was analyzed, which helps to recreate the specifics of musical experience. The importance of different types of arts in the life and work of Kazakh writers of the twentieth century is emphasized.

Performing Music from Moravian Collections

ABSTRACT A significant amount of historical musical repertoire primarily from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries exists in collections of the Moravian Church. This is a resource for extended knowledge of music aesthetics’ of the Moravian Church, as well as for historical music in a wider perspective. This article focuses on musical performance practices and proposes a theoretical framework that can promote a performance taking into account significant aspects of the social context. Key concepts include emotion for feelings per se, emotional community for a collective where participants developed and shared a matrix for emotions and emotive as an operational concept in the work process of the musical performance. The concepts are motivated by the emphasis on the affective dimension in the spirituality. Finally, a suite of three duets with instrumental accompaniment by Christian Gregor serves as an example of application of emotive in the process of preparing a musical performance.

A predictive coding approach to modelling the perceived complexity of popular music drum patterns

This study presents a method to estimate the complexity of popular music drum patterns based on a core idea from predictive coding. Specifically, it postulates that the complexity of a drum pattern depends on the quantity of surprisal it causes in the listener. Surprisal, according to predictive coding theory, is a numerical measure that takes large values when the perceiver's internal model of the surrounding world fails to predict the actual stream of sensory data (i.e. when the perception surprises the perceiver), and low values if model predictions and sensory data agree. The proposed new method first approximates a listener's internal model of a popular music drum pattern (using ideas on enculturation and a Bayesian learning process). It then quantifies the listener's surprisal evaluating the discrepancies between the predictions of the internal model and the actual drum pattern. It finally estimates drum pattern complexity from surprisal. The method was optimised and tested using a set of forty popular music drum patterns, for which empirical perceived complexity measurements are available. The new method provided complexity estimates that had a good fit with the empirical measurements (R2=.852). The method was implemented as an R script that can be used to estimate the complexity of popular music drum patterns in the future. Simulations indicate that we can expect the method to predict perceived complexity with a good fit (R2≥.709) in 99% of drum pattern sets randomly drawn from the Western popular music repertoire. These results suggest that surprisal indeed captures essential aspects of complexity, and that it may serve as a basis for a general theory of perceived complexity.

“Listen and Be Amazed!”: Odeon, Künneke, and the First Recordings of Complete Symphonies

Abstract Between 1911 and 1913, Odeon records, in Berlin, produced and made available for sale five complete, four-movement symphonies, the first complete symphonies ever recorded. They were Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (August and November–December 1911), and then Haydn’s Symphony no. 94 (“Surprise”) and Mozart’s Symphonies nos. 40 and 39 (in that order, March and April 1913). Each was performed by members of the Odeon company’s orchestra, billed as the “Großes Odeon-Streich-Orchester.” While no conductor is identified on the labels, it was surely Eduard Künneke, Odeon’s house conductor at that time. (Arthur Nikisch’s Beethoven’s Fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic would follow, from Grammophon records, in November 1913.) Odeon’s decisions to record these five symphonies took place within two larger corporate contexts, 1907–13: first, that of what was becoming increasingly possible within the enabling yet constraining affordances of the era’s music-recording industry; second, that of how those affordances were giving rise to the more innovative plans and economic gambles of recording extended classical works—longer stretches of operetta and opera, high-prestige orchestral music, and, eventually, symphonies. Much of this history can be traced in reports, reviews, and advertisements in the contemporaneous German trade journal the Phonographische Zeitschrift. The whole is framed here within the contexts of recent media theory and varying views of the impact of sound recordings on twentieth- and twenty-first-century listening practices. As Antoine Hennion put it, “The disc has been powerful enough to introduce modern listeners to musical repertoires conceived with a different relationship in mind.”

Black Sea Sketches: Music, Place and People Jim Samson

Jim Samson’s new monograph offers a sweeping overview of musical traditions and practices around the Black Sea, both on the littoral itself and in its vast hinterlands. The book creatively combines historical and ethnographic approaches to a wide variety of musics. Readers who have already encountered Samson’s earlier book Music in the Balkans (Leiden and Boston, 2013) will find the general approach and writing style familiar. There are many continuities with the earlier book, for example a focus on the relationship between music and place and an ecumenical concern with both ‘traditional’ and ‘art’ music repertories and practices. The somewhat informal, sometimes breezy prose style effectively brings the reader along on Samson’s journeys through the many contrasting places around the sea, often providing a ‘bird’s eye view’ of individuals, institutions, and compositions, and in some cases offering a more focused, detailed account of specific musics and practices. This approach allows him to employ a broadly comparative approach and identify continuities and commonalities as well as contrasts, enabling what he calls ‘a meta-regional approach to cultural history’ (p. 2).