Musical Structure Research Articles

Оперное творчество Майкла Наймана: художественные идеи и принципы их музыкального воплощения

The article makes a study of the artistic concept of several of Michael Nyman’s operas and the formation of their semantic space within the immanent musical structure of the text. It is noted that the composer’s works pertain to post-minimalist musical theater and are often based on documentary sources. Despite the variety of issues involved — cloning and scientific racism in Facing Goya, copyright issues in Letters, Riddles and Writs, a distorted perception of reality in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Love Counts, and differences of worldviews in the opera Man and Boy: Dada, — the metatheme of Nyman’s opera work is music itself and, more broadly, art and its transformative power. The article pays special attention to the composer’s work with “derived” material. The deconstruction technique is singled out as the leading artistic means, it is shown how it contributes to the identification of artistic meanings. Thus, the free recombination of the segments of Schumann’s song Ich grolle nicht leads to the effect of “erasing” the original, revealing the essence of Professor P’s illness in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The verticalization of the segments of a chorale by Bach in the opera Love Counts embodies the impossibility of building syntagmatic connections in Patsy’s mind. The elaboration of musical material by Mozart in Letters, Riddles and Writs reveals its inner kinship with minimalism, which makes the problem of plagiarism irrelevant. The collage of stylistically diverse musical material in the opera Man and Boy: Dada serves as an analogue of the concept Merz, developed by the artist Schwitters.

Rudolf Arnheim: Perceptive dynamics in musical expression

Summary A pupil of Köhler and von Hornbostel in Berlin, Arnheim published an article in the Musical Quarterly in 1984, where he applied the principles of visual composition to the musical form. In a painting, for example, the forces of visual composition are essential for aesthetic enjoyment; in music, sounds are essential as they are always occurring in time, and this constitutes the main dynamic vector of music. Starting with the tetrachord of ancient Greek music and analysing the relationships between notes in the major and minor scales, Arnheim identifies what in the Western musical tradition represents the basis on which each note must relate: the tonal centre, the attractive motor that determines the perceptual dynamics of musical expression. Two examples, taken from Schubert and Béla Bartók, show us how the structure of the melodic construction is essential in generating different states of mind; Arnheim, however, does not stop at the simple eliciting of an emotion, but situates the musical structure in a more general framework, which refers to perceptual patterns belonging to any sphere, mental or physical, thanks to which we experience our reality.

The Semantic Interpretation of the Figure of Myroslava in the The Golden Crown Opera by Borys Lyatoshynsky

The article provides a semantic interpretation of the figure of Myroslava in The Golden Crown opera by Borys Lyatoshynsky. It establishes that the woman’s image embodies the best features of female characters in the work, such as poetic and gentle nature, the ability to love faithfully and devotedly, loyalty to the native people and the land and readiness to protect it from enemies. The author explores Myroslava’s leading role in the formation of the opera’s dramaturgy as the main factor of the dynamic development of the plot that accelerates the change of events and expedites the actions of other characters. The article studies the complex psychological development of the woman’s character, reflected in the gradual qualitative transformation of her musical depiction. The author outlines the main stages of the woman’s psychological transformation presented by the composer in the opera. Further, this study analyzes the semantic significance of intonation, harmony, mode and tonality, thematic constructions, and other musical structures, thanks to which the image of Myroslava is formed. The article establishes the leading role of this character in the concept of the work and points out the composer’s interpretation of this female character as a kind of ideal of beauty, youth and hope for the future

Frevo: The State of the Art in Music

Frevo is a Brazilian cultural expression composed of music and dance. Its musical genre is popular, but part of its musical structure is based on classical music theory. In recent years, research on frevo music has been growing. This is likely related to the recognition of frevo as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In this literature review, I present the current state of the art of frevo music. Research on frevo music is primarily focused on the field of Ethnomusicology and technical aspects, such as technical and interpretive analysis.

경제 범패 <복청게>의 갈래별 음악적 특성 비교 분석

Baggatchaebi-sori and anchaebi-sori in beompae (Buddhist chant) have been
 considered as having extremely different musical characteristics. However, as a
 result of taking a look at the hotsori Bokcheongge as the baggatchaebi-sori
 and the getakseong Bokcheongge as the anchaebi-sori , substantially similar
 musical characteristics have been discovered. In addition, the distinguishable
 musical characteristics have been found out in them. Based on the analysis
 results, the commonality and distinction can be summarized as follows.
 In the hotsori Bokcheongge and the getakseong Bokcheongge, common
 characteristics are observed in the musical elements including tempo and
 meter, text setting, range, musical structure, kkeukneun-mok (decorative
 sound) between re'-do', yoseong (vibrating sound), the use of ‘main melody
 types' (Type A~C), cadence, and tori (melodic mode reflecting the locality).
 There is somewhat difference in the way of utilizing 'main melody types', but
 it can be said that it is common that both utilize the ‘main melody types’.
 Meanwhile, the distinguishable musical characteristics of the hotsori
 Bokcheongge and getakseong Bokcheongge is that the scale of the hotsori
 is composed of mi, sol, la, do', re', mi', fa' and sol' while that of the
 getakseong does not include fa'. This phenomenon is caused by partial
 transposition that occurred due to the expansion of the vocal range. Since the
 decorative sound (kkeukneun-mok) between re'-do' becomes sol'-fa' when it is
 changed to a perfect 4th above, fa' appears as a constituent sound in the
 hotsori Bokcheongge. On the other hand, in the getakseong Bokcheongge,
 the vocal range is expanded, but it does not lead to transposition and thus fa'
 does not appear. The text setting in several ways of making lyrics is the same
 in both, but two verses of the getakseong are characterized by syllabic setting (one note per syllable). In addition, the jachulineun-sori (singing technique
 with gradually lowering the melody) is used in hotsori while it is omitted in
 the getakseong .

Angel Singing as the Basis of Choral Singing of the East Slavic Tradition and Choral Heritage of K. Pigrov

The purpose of the research is to identify the cult (angelic) genesis of the art of choral singing in the East Slavic cultural and historical space, including in the activities of K. Pigrov. The methodology of the work has a complex nature and is based on a combination of the principles of hermeneutic, art history, historical-typological, etymological, aesthetic, and musical-intonation research. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by its research perspective, which takes into account not only the uniqueness and originality of the choral technique of K. Pigrov, which is the background of the Odesa Choir School, but also its rootedness in the concept of angeloglass as the basis of choral singing in the East Slavic cultural and historical tradition. Conclusions. The concept of angelic singing, described in Dionysius the Areopagite's treatise "On the Heavenly Hierarchy", laid the foundations for the formation of religious and ethical guidelines for liturgical and singing art, the principles of the spiritual being of a person, as well as the further development of academic choral art. The conducting and choral activity of K. Pigrov, his innovative methodology, which became the basis of the Odesa Choir School, is not only an essential page of his creative biography, but also summarises the most important spiritual and meaningful aspects of the national choral culture, formed on the basis of centuries-old church singing practice and spiritual-ethical guidelines for angelic singing. The latter affected the principles of K. Pigrov's work on purity of intonation, musical structure, ensemble and principled avoidance of forced dynamics, which collectively contributed to the formation of a special "sound culture". Involvement in them, their research allows to deeply understand those processes in the culture of the past and the present, which reveal through artistic creativity the profound transformations of the human essence and its spiritual being.
 Keywords: angeloglassya, angel singing, church-singing routine, choir, choral technique of K. Pigrov, Odesa Choir School.

Auditory and reward structures reflect the pleasure of musical expectancies during naturalistic listening

Enjoying music consistently engages key structures of the neural auditory and reward systems such as the right superior temporal gyrus (R STG) and ventral striatum (VS). Expectations seem to play a central role in this effect, as preferences reliably vary according to listeners’ uncertainty about the musical future and surprise about the musical past. Accordingly, VS activity reflects the pleasure of musical surprise, and exhibits stronger correlations with R STG activity as pleasure grows. Yet the reward value of musical surprise – and thus the reason for these surprises engaging the reward system – remains an open question. Recent models of predictive neural processing and learning suggest that forming, testing, and updating hypotheses about one’s environment may be intrinsically rewarding, and that the constantly evolving structure of musical patterns could provide ample opportunity for this procedure. Consistent with these accounts, our group previously found that listeners tend to prefer melodic excerpts taken from real music when it either validates their uncertain melodic predictions (i.e., is high in uncertainty and low in surprise) or when it challenges their highly confident ones (i.e., is low in uncertainty and high in surprise). An independent research group (Cheung et al., 2019) replicated these results with musical chord sequences, and identified their fMRI correlates in the STG, amygdala, and hippocampus but not the VS, raising new questions about the neural mechanisms of musical pleasure that the present study seeks to address. Here, we assessed concurrent liking ratings and hemodynamic fMRI signals as 24 participants listened to 50 naturalistic, real-world musical excerpts that varied across wide spectra of computationally modeled uncertainty and surprise. As in previous studies, liking ratings exhibited an interaction between uncertainty and surprise, with the strongest preferences for high uncertainty/low surprise and low uncertainty/high surprise. FMRI results also replicated previous findings, with music liking effects in the R STG and VS. Furthermore, we identify interactions between uncertainty and surprise on the one hand, and liking and surprise on the other, in VS activity. Altogether, these results provide important support for the hypothesized role of the VS in deriving pleasure from learning about musical structure.

An in-depth analysis of music structure and its effects on human body for music therapy

An in-depth analysis of music structure and its effects on human body for music therapy

An adaptive control framework based multi-modal information-driven dance composition model for musical robots.

Currently, most robot dances are pre-compiled, the requirement of manual adjustment of relevant parameters and meta-action to change the dancing to another type of music would greatly reduce its function. To overcome the gap, this study proposed a dance composition model for mobile robots based on multimodal information. The model consists of three parts. (1) Extraction of multimodal information. The temporal structure feature method of structure analysis framework is used to divide audio music files into music structures; then, a hierarchical emotion detection framework is used to extract information (rhythm, emotion, tension, etc.) for each segmented music structure; calculating the safety of the current car and surrounding objects in motion; finally, extracting the stage color of the robot's location, corresponding to the relevant atmosphere emotions. (2) Initialize the dance library. Dance composition is divided into four categories based on the classification of music emotions; in addition, each type of dance composition is divided into skilled composition and general dance composition. (3) The total path length can be obtained by combining multimodal information based on different emotions, initial speeds, and music structure periods; then, target point planning can be carried out based on the specific dance composition selected. An adaptive control framework based on the Cerebellar Model Articulation Controller (CMAC) and compensation controllers is used to track the target point trajectory, and finally, the selected dance composition is formed. Mobile robot dance composition provides a new method and concept for humanoid robot dance composition.

Teaching the connections between music and mathematics

Mathematics is often perceived by students as being difficult. However, when they see how math and music are intimately related, their attitude often changes. Some of the most fundamental aspects of music are described by math. For example, the Circle of Fifths closely reflects musical structure and is used to create scales and chord progressions. The Circle is structured around the mathematical relations of frequency ratios of the corresponding notes in a 12-tone scale. The reactions to music of consonance and dissonance are related to the relative ratios of the notes in a chord or note sequence in a piece. The connection between music and math forms the basis for creating instruments that play the music. I will suggest ways to present these concepts to students for their greater appreciation of music and math.

Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared American Vernacular Form

Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared American Vernacular Form

Local Assembly in the Orchestral Thinking

The artistically important phenomenon of the temporary separation of ensembles from the orchestral whole, which lasts for a certain structural unit of the composition, is considered. This phenomenon is called "local ensemble". The principles of distinguishing in the existing literature between orchestral solos and soloist ensembles as mainly a group sound effect are defined. The scientific novelty of the study, which stems from a special view of the orchestra as a field of intersection and emergence of instrumental ensembles, is substantiated. A comparative analysis of scores from different eras was carried out in the context of the dynamic opposition "completeness - incompleteness". The additive and subtractive principles of correlation of orchestral integrity with instrument samples are revealed, where the first is formed by adding ensembles that collectively form the orchestra as a result, and the second — by selecting individual ensembles in the orchestra as its temporarily autonomous parts. It was found that despite the presence of orchestral patterns (groups of timbres) and the mention of ensembles of orchestral soloists in previous studies, group ensemble as a structurally separate phenomenon has not yet been sufficiently considered. The effectiveness of using local ensembles to emphasize the architecture of works, to provide an impetus for the active development of drama (introduction to the opera "Parsifal" by R. Wagner) is shown. The simultaneous division of the orchestra into subgroups with different textural and thematic content in the second part of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 is analyzed. The phenomenon of "an ensemble outside the general orchestral development" in Gia Kancheli's Sixth Symphony has been revealed. A peculiar phenomenon of the accompanied sequence of local ensembles in the second part of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is described. The indirect consequence of local ensemble in scores for a large orchestra is highlighted on the basis of a comparison of orchestral compositions in the works of I. Stravinsky, E. Varese and A. von Webern. It is proven that the local ensemble is a phenomenon of dialectical interaction of the orchestral integrity and its parts, which contributes to the enrichment of orchestral thinking, the demarcation of musical structures, gives impetus to musical-dramatic collisions and the search for new types of orchestra and its functioning.

The specificity of musical shaping in the “Psalms of David” choral cycle by R. Tolmachov

The relevance of the article. “Psalms of David” in the poetic adaptation of Taras Shevchenko have long been a part of the choral culture of Ukraine. More than 20 composers have created musical versions of these texts, using separate verses or the entire work.
 The latest version of the Psalter is the choral cycle of the Ukrainian conductor, singer, composer and teacher Ruben Tolmachov.
 The first nights of the work took place under his leadership in May 2023 and had great success and public resonance. That is why the introduction of this work to scientific discourse is relevant.
 The purpose of the article is to reveal the specificity of musical shaping in R. Tolmachov’s “Psalms of David” choral cycle in its relationship with textual semantics.
 The methodology. With the help of textual analysis, the semantic types of psalms (didactic, pleading, laudatory, accusatory) and the peculiarities of their musical structure were determined. By the means of structural, musicological and intonation analysis, the implementation regularities of the semantics of the psalms into specific musical forms have been established.
 The results. The musical structure of all psalms was analyzed, the patterns of musical shaping were revealed, and the specifics of the relationship between the musical form and the content of the poetic text were described.
 The scientific novelty. For the first time, the analysis of the structure of Ruben Tolmachov’s choral cycle based on Taras Shevchenko’s poem was introduced into scientific discourse.
 The practical significance. The results of the research have practical value for performers of works by R. Tolmachov, as well as composers and researchers of choral music.
 Conclusions. In R. Tolmachov’s “Psalms of David” cycle the principle of strophic composition of parts prevails.
 In general, four main types of musical shaping can be highlighted, which are partially correlated with the thematic focus of the psalms.
 Didactic (enlightening) psalms, which depict the pious life of the community, have more “stable” forms (two-part, three-part).
 Psalm 12 and Psalm 149 have signs of a thorough development based on monothematism.
 The accusatory psalms, dedicated to the future Judgment Day (52, 93, 81), are made up using strophic forms with elements of reprise. At the same time, the 81st psalm is characterized by a less active dramatic development and contains a solo episode of a cathartic nature, which is designed to emphasize one of the central ideas of the cycle about the mortality of a person, regardless of his/her status, about higher moral and spiritual values.
 It is also worth noting that the architectonics of R. Tolmachov’s psalms is mostly characterized by the final position of the climaxes.

Exploring the Characteristics of the Musical Composition of Guangxi's Modern Piano Work "The Dance of the Bronze Drumn"

"The Dance of the Bronze Drumn" is a piano work with Guangxi's national characteristics. The composer, Wu Liyun, is a teacher of the Composition Department of Guangxi Arts University. This work combines the ethnic characteristics of Guangxi Dong tones and modern compositional techniques, fully utilizes modern non-harmonic phonemes in the form of different rhythms and speeds, so that the piano timbre presents the image of different brass drums. This paper discusses the musical creation characteristics of the work as well as the piano playing techniques by analyzing the musical characteristics, compositional techniques and musical structure of the work.

“Model Opera” of the 20th Century in Chinese Musical Culture

The article is devoted to the problem of studying the conditions of development of musical culture in China, in particular, the creation of the twentieth-century model opera, as a result of the synthesis of the East-West arts. The purpose of this article is to determine the components of the opera model and to indicate the prerequisites for its creation. The research methodology is based on the use of the hermeneutic-comparative method, which allows studying the model of Chinese opera in accordance with the conditions of the historical development of musical culture, as well as general scientific methods of analytical and historical-descriptive content, which formed, among other things, the methodological foundations of the art and cultural studies accepted for the study to understand the patterns and generalisations in accordance with the definition of the popularity of the twentieth-century opera model in Chinese culture. The scientific novelty lies in the universalisation of approaches to the synthesis of art in the East-West context and the study of the peculiarities of the existence of vocal and stage art in China as a component of the country's political programme of development and as a carrier of ideology. Conclusions. It has been determined that the performing tradition and functioning of vocal and stage art in China has a synthetic character, which took shape in the 19th century, but became active in the 20th century. The concept of a model opera came into use as an exemplary component of vocal and stage art that reflected political views and was also a carrier of the country's ideology. The creation of a number of operas based on the same model did not limit the development of Chinese musical culture, but rather created the conditions for the formation of a completely individual, unique national genre, which was embodied in a kind of model opera with its numerous experiments, but at the same time, some of its initiatives were distilled and even canonised into semantic units, performance practices, and norms of musical structure. Key words: model opera, Chinese music, vocal and stage performance, East-West, ideology.

“Your Soul is the Whole World”: The Spaces of Claude Vivier’s Siddhartha

At 28’ duration and scored for a massive orchestra of eighty-nine players, Siddhartha (1976) eclipses all other works in Claude Vivier’s catalogue in dramatic scope and sonic grandeur. The composition dates from soon after Vivier returned to Canada following his studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1972–74, which left a lasting impact on the young composer. Siddhartha showcases the extent of that influence in its diligent use of “formula technique” and its unconventional distribution of the orchestra into smaller groups on stage. In this article, I outline how the work’s principal melody transforms across contrasting spatial domains: in “acoustic space,” expressed in physical location on stage, and in “metaphorical space,” expressed in pitches-in-register. Using Hesse’s novel as a hermeneutic model, I then consider alternate poetic readings of the work vis-à-vis its interaction of spatial properties in the large-scale form. Ultimately, I argue that Siddhartha is a deeply personal piece that communicates, through the medium of musical structure, feelings of alienation and connection during an unsettled time in Vivier’s life.

HYPERBOLIC SPACE AND VIOLETA DINESCU'S MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘WOMAN'S SOUL’

AbstractThis paper proposes an approach to the representation of mental musical space, understood here as a mental ‘hologram’ of a musical structure created while composing or listening to a piece of music. Composers claim to ‘hear’ music in their mind and ‘see’ it in their spatial imagination; normally we see music graphically represented on two-dimensional staves, but we could mentally decode it in a three- or multi-dimensional space, and I argue that Violeta Dinescu's musical vision occupies a non-Euclidean imaginary musical space rather than the Western classical-music template. Dinescu's graphical design suggests a hyperbolic space, distorting the musical parameters accordingly. Two of her works are discussed: Gehen wir zu Grúschenka, for cello with voice ad libitum, and Herzriss – Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen, an opera for solo voice(s), percussion and cello. The first views the behaviour of musical parameters as if in an imaginary hyperbolic space; the latter exemplifies intertextuality in a cultural hyperbolic space. Both are metaphors of the woman's soul.

Strategie językowe w powszechnym kształceniu muzycznym

The article presents an outline of various foreign language learning strategies, the presence of which can also be seen in well-known methods and concepts of music education at school. The similarities between music and language have been the subject of discussion among philosophers, musicologists, linguists, and psychologists for many years. Moreover, along with the development of neuroimaging techniques, scientific evidence has been provided to approximate the analogies that occur in the process of perceiving linguistic and musical structures. This article outlines the similarities of language and music in terms of didactics and focuses on the ways they are acquired. It presents the existent analogies between the strategies of foreign language learning and strategies used in music learning. The subject of consideration are also the ways of music and language learning integration, which could be provided by introducing CLIL method (Content and Language Integrated Learning). The CLIL method, which is now increasingly used in general education, can bring double benefits in relation to music. This form of integrated music and language teaching can be used both in general music education and in primary and secondary music education. In addition, recent research on the introduction of CLIL to secondary music education is briefly described.

Bins, Spans, and Tolerance: Three Theories of Microtiming Behavior

Abstract This study compares three recent theories of expressive microtiming in music. While each theory was originally designed to engage a particular musical genre—Anne Danielsen’s beat bins for funk, Neo-Soul, and other contemporary Black musical expressions, Chris Stover’s beat span for “timeline musics” from Africa and the African diaspora, and Mats Johansson’s rhythmic tolerance for Scandinavian fiddle music—we consider how they can productively coexist in a shared music-analytic space, each revealing aspects of musical structure and process in mutually reinforcing ways. In order to explore these possibilities, we bring all three theories to bear on a recording of Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Dream,” focusing on Monk’s piano gestures as well as the relationship between saxophonist Charlie Rouse’s improvised solo and Monk’s and bassist John Ore’s accompaniments.

Subversion and stratification

Unlike composition, improvisation offers performs greater flexibility and freedom. improvisation subverts musical structures and considers the ethical implications of improvisation. This diminishes the status of mistakes, which serve as platforms for further improvisation. Improvisation resists and subverts traditional musical structures while using the same musical material and processes as composition. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptual geometry of stratification and looking at the role of improvisation in their philosophy more generally, this article illustrates how improvisation and composition transform musical material in the same way while having different aesthetic aims. An improvisor’s aesthetic aims are not strictly-defined but are open-ended, subverting traditional conceptions of control and artistic genius. Besides witnessing how it subverts the musical structures that enable it, this illustrates the importance of improvising, in seeing the limits of a way of thinking and appreciating a multiplicity of perspectives.