Music Theory Research Articles

Exploring the Integration of Chinese Music in Western Musicological Literature: Trends, Gaps, and Multicultural Perspectives

The purpose of the article is to analyse Western musicological literature to identify key trends and gaps in existing research on Chinese music as an integral part of the contemporary multicultural educational space. The research methodology is based on content analysis, comparative analysis, and bibliographic review. The primary method is content analysis, involving a systematic review of academic articles, monographs, reviews, and other publications on Chinese music in Western musicological literature. Comparative analysis is used to compare Western research on Chinese music with scholarly work from China and other countries. Bibliographic review helps to identify scientific gaps and trends in Chinese music research. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive analysis of Western musicological literature on Chinese music to reveal key trends and gaps in existing research. The use of content analysis, comparative analysis, and bibliographic review allows for the first systematic organisation and comparison of approaches to studying Chinese music in different cultural contexts. The study also provides new insights into the role of Chinese music in the contemporary multicultural educational space, contributing to its integration and popularisation. Conclusions. Over the past three decades, publications on Chinese music within the context of multicultural music education have been irregular. Although the number of studies is not large, it shows moderate activity in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a noticeable increase after 2007 and periods of decline between 2010 and 2014. This indicates the need for further analysis of the reasons behind this dynamic and a deeper exploration of the integration of Chinese music into the Western educational context. The literature review shows that research covers a broad range of educational contexts, from early childhood to higher education and teacher professional development, indicating the potential for integrating Chinese music at various levels of formal education. The review also reveals that research on Chinese music often has a Eurocentric approach, evaluating it through the lens of Western music theory. This limits the full understanding and integration of Chinese musical traditions, highlighting the need for a deeper and more comprehensive approach that would foster an understanding of Chinese music in its own context.

KUNQU MUSIC THEATRE IN YANGZHOU IN THE 18TH CENTURY

This study focuses on the development characteristics of the traditional Kunqu opera in the Yangzhou theatre in the 18th century, particularly in the context of the emergence of the owery genre (huabu). The author identi es parallels in the historical cycles of the development of the owery genres and contemporary Chinese opera and suggests several recommendations for incorporating traditional techniques into modern productions to popularise Kunqu music theatre. The aim of this study is to deeply explore the history, culture, and art of the Yangzhou theatre and its in uence on Chinese theatrical art, as well as its value and inspiration in contemporary theatrical art. Furthermore, the study provides practical recommendations for presenting and developing the Yangzhou theatre.

Generative Adversarial Network Based Music Generation

Music has been an integral part of human civilization personally and culturally. Historically, music has been generated using various instruments, or natural sounds like water drops, or unconventional musical instruments like metal or glass-wares. At present, technologies like Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) are used to generate music electronically. This research investigates the use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for beginner-friendly music production. This model uses Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) generator and Patch GAN as discriminator for the GAN architecture. The generator consists of input layer, embedding layer, LSTM layer and generates output with a SoftMax function. Similarly, the discriminator consists of a convolution layer, the output of which is averaged by the global average pooling layer, and output is generated by the sigmoid function. The model is trained on Maestro MIDI dataset. We make the process understandable by delving into the implementation specifics and outlining the fundamental concepts of music. Our effective model highlights the potential of GANs in music composition by producing cohesive music. After training for 50 epochs, the model exhibited a remarkable precision of 91.82 percent. This project uses the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with music theory to provide intriguing new opportunities in the field of music. The model can be beneficial for different industries like gaming, music, entertainment, education, etc.

Visual and auditory factors on seat preference in a small musical theatre

This paper investigates the visual and auditory factors influencing seat preference in a small musical theater. The venue is as a versatile space capable of accommodating musical performances, with an irregularly shaped seating area designed for 300 seats. Specifically, the seating structure is designed to enhance intimacy, connecting from the first to the second floor, and features staggered blocks of seats arranged in a curved formation. Visual images of the stage view and binaural impulse responses towards the center of the stage were collected at nine selected seats in situ conditions. To determine factors related to visual, auditory, and seat preferences, a paired comparison method was employed in a laboratory setting to derive scale values for each seat. Ten subjects with experience attending musical performances and normal hearing were participated in the experiments. The auditory stimuli were convolved with vocal anechoic recordings, and visual images were synthesized to depict the same performance scene. Preference scores were obtained through three type of experiments, considering visual information only, auditory information only, and simultaneous presentation of visual and auditory information. Based on the results, influence of visual and auditory factors on seat preference was discussed.

Singing Voice Handicap Index-10 Minimal Clinically Important Difference: A Prospective Determination.

The Singing Voice Handicap Index-10 (SVHI-10) is a validated patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) that assesses patients' perception of handicap related to singing voice. A normative value has been established with a score ≥20 being abnormal. However, there is no defined minimal clinically important difference (MCID). This study prospectively determines the MCID of SVHI-10 among a diverse group of singers. 103 adult singers with and without voice complaints completed SVHI-10 twice, 30 days apart. MCID for the SVHI-10 was determined using distribution-based receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Twenty-two men (1 transgender), 75 women (1 transgender), and 6 nonbinary individuals participated. The most frequently reported singing genres were classical (44.7%), musical theater (17.5%), and pop (10.7%). Mean initial SVHI-10 score was 13.05 (standard deviation 7.397), and mean follow-up SVHI-10 was 13.13 (7.994). There was a significant positive correlation between initial and follow-up SVHI-10 scores (r = 0.879, p < 0.001). SVHI-10 scores were significantly higher among participants who reported voice changes in the past year (p < 0.001) or sought voice treatment (p = 0.001) compared with participants who did not. SVHI-10 scores varied significantly based on singing type. The area under the ROC curve for SVHI-10 was 0.700 (p = 0.003). The SVHI-10 MCID was determined to be 9.5. An SVHI-10 score change ≥10 should be considered clinically meaningful. This definition has been missing from the literature and will improve understanding of patients' responses to treatment, which will help advance clinical care and track research outcomes. 4 Laryngoscope, 2024.

That musical politic: Musical theatre citations and satire in the Trump era

This article amplifies the intersection of musical theatre and political discourse during Donald Trump’s presidency by working against Trump’s imperative that musical theatre be a ‘safe’ art form. Rather than evaluating how Trump identifies with and mobilizes musical theatre numbers from Broadway’s megamusicals era, I assess how performers and multimedia artists critique Trump through musical theatre citation. In doing so, I argue that musicals, as a pervasive and emotionally resonant art form, serve as an effective vehicle for satire and political commentary in the digital era. This study tracks how Broadway artists like Patti LuPone leveraged community star power to challenge Trump’s rhetoric and actions, while performers like Randy Rainbow created online spoofs of well-known musical numbers to chronicle contemporary politics and inspire direct voting action. Finally, it moves to paratheatrical art in the work of graffiti artist TABBY, who used iconic musical imagery in pieces like The Lying King to appraise Trump’s political character. By recontextualizing musical numbers within political events and exploring their use in both supportive and critical contexts, I underscore the enduring influence and democratic potential of musical theatre in shaping and reflecting cultural and political narratives.

Marketing a (high school) musical on TikTok

This article explores the intersections between TikTok, musical theatre and youth cultures. Since its international debut in 2017, TikTok has become closely associated with teenagers and twenty-somethings who use the social media platform as a critical site to create, present and experience identities and generational culture at large. Musical theatre has been central to this cultural work. Teenage theatre makers, for example, use TikTok as a marketing tool that can be replicated by professional theatre companies and productions. I present an autoethnographic account of my work with high school students to market an all-school production of the musical Grease and use the experience to question the ways emerging digital platforms such as TikTok inform new, accessible ways of collaborating, experiencing, appreciating, conceptualizing and documenting musical theatre.

Catch the references if you can: Marc Shaiman and stylistic pastiche

This article explores Marc Shaiman’s use of stylistic pastiche in Catch Me If You Can. Building on previous studies of style imitation in musical theatre, I develop a model for analysing different forms of pastiche. This model categorizes instances of pastiche according to the specificity of the stylistic reference, the function of the pastiche and how the pastiche is integrated into the song. Each component of the model is illuminated through a selection of examples. In Catch Me If You Can, I argue that Shaiman tends to use intra-opus (song) references in order to enhance the lyrical and narrative content, while his broader style references tend to be used for setting and reinforcing aspects of time and place. I conclude with the suggestion that this model could be deployed on other musicals. This will lead to a better understanding of how Shaiman’s practices align or deviate from other composers who engage with this widespread technique.

The Juncture Of Musical Theatre And Theatrical Music: A Literature Review

This paper is a position paper that highlights the intersection of musical theatre and theatrical music, two art forms within the Ghanaian context that blend music and drama but with distinct orientations. The essence is to clarify blurred boundaries and lack of clear distinction between these two art forms, which often leads students of music to confusion or misinterpretation in composition and performance discourse, performance practices, and artistic production. The approach used is a review of some topical issues related to the topic to unravel the distinction to make contribution to knowledge in music composition and performance as well as other cognate disciplines such as ethnomusicology and theatre studies. It is seen that while musical theatre integrates music as a vehicle for storytelling within a staged performance, theatrical music emphasises music's dramatic qualities without necessarily conforming to theatrical conventions. The two concepts have shared elements such as narrative, emotional expression, and performance as well as some differences in structure. Understanding the two Chiasmus is key to composing works that identify the key juncture where these art forms converge, offering insights into their mutual influence in contemporary performance.

Scoring, Sounding, and Silencing Death: Musical Depictions of Failure in Coherent and Incoherent Worlds—Part 2

Abstract The sounds and music that accompany moments of death in video games frame our understanding of the fictional worlds represented. Using (in part) ideas from game studies, music theory, and music cognition, this article examines how the notion of coherent and incoherent worlds (Juul) interacts with musical and sonic representations of death in video games.

Playing to Learn: Pedagogical Games in Music Theory and Aural Skills

Playing to Learn: Pedagogical Games in Music Theory and Aural Skills

The Seven-Year Twitch

In February 2024, the “Stream Team” of Ryan Thompson, Dana Plank, Julianne Grasso, and Karen Cook celebrated the seventh anniversary of the “Ludomusicology Thursday” livestream. These weekly broadcasts have evolved into a collegial gathering space engendering informal discussion of the soundscapes of the games we play, with a diverse audience. As we are scholars actively publishing on video games in musicology and music theory, our stream serves as an introduction to the field of game audio studies for students and the broader public. Livestreaming platforms are not only a convenient platform to connect with colleagues and develop a network of strong relationships outside of formal academic conferences, they are also a space to observe new music and sound and to develop ideas collaboratively, in real time, that might blossom into more formal, traditionally situated academic presentations and publications. In this article, we reflect on the history and evolution of our stream from its creation to the present day, share examples of our collaborative process of public scholarship on Twitch through moments of interesting musical observations or extemporaneous analysis, situate our stream in the context of public musicology by exploring how our experiences resonate with academic literature, and examine the significance of cultivating our collegial virtual community.

A Speedrun within a Rock Show

Bit Brigade is a five-piece band that combines hard-rock adaptations of classic-era Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) soundtracks with live speedruns of the game, performed in concert as a rock show. This article uses Bit Brigade as a case study to develop a conceptual model for multimedia analysis that investigates audiovisual integration in novel ways. The essay comes in four theoretical sections followed by a full analysis of Bit Brigade’s speedrun of The Legend of Zelda. The first section explores Johan Huizinga’s magic circle and Kofi Agawu’s region of play to describe types of semiotic play that involve the gamer, band, and audience at a show. The second and third sections focus on intertextuality and how adaptation and nostalgic recycling of the past yield meaning in this unique artform. The fourth segment unpacks intertextually enhanced agency and investigates audience immersion through the social act of performance. After developing this multi-part framework, the latter half of this article presents an analysis of Bit Brigade’s performance of The Legend of Zelda at MAGFest (2022), chosen because of the group’s unique musical and ludic approach to the game. Throughout, the goals of this study are to show how gaming performance parallels music making and to clarify the ways in which concepts associated with music theory can be reexamined through the study of video game performance art.

British and American Musical Theatre Exchanges in the West End (1924–1970): The ‘Americanization’ of Drury Lane, Arianne Johnson Quinn (2022)

Review of: British and American Musical Theatre Exchanges in the West End (1924–1970): The ‘Americanization’ of Drury Lane, Arianne Johnson Quinn (2022) London: Palgrave Macmillan, 283 pp., ISBN 978-3-03114-662-6, p/bk, $119.99

Musculoskeletal Injury in Australian Music Theatre Performers

Musculoskeletal Injury in Australian Music Theatre Performers

Musical Theatre for the Female Voice: The Sensation, Sound and Science of Singing, Shaun Aquilina (2023)

Review of: Musical Theatre for the Female Voice: The Sensation, Sound and Science of Singing, Shaun Aquilina (2023) London and New York: Routledge, 105 pp., ISBN 978-1-03226-159-1, p/bk, $42.95

Dance2Music-Diffusion: leveraging latent diffusion models for music generation from dance videos

With the rapid development of social networks, short videos have become a popular form of content, especially dance videos. In this context, research on automatically generating music for dance videos shows significant practical value. However, existing studies face challenges such as limited richness in music timbre and lack of synchronization with dance movements. In this paper, we propose Dance2Music-Diffusion, a novel framework for music generation from dance videos using latent diffusion models. Our approach includes a motion encoder module for extracting motion features and a music diffusion generation module for generating latent music representations. By integrating dance type monitoring and latent diffusion techniques, our framework outperforms existing methods in generating complex and rich dance music. We conducted objective and subjective evaluations of the results produced by various existing models on the AIST++ dataset. Our framework shows outstanding performance in terms of beat recall rate, consistency with GT beats, and coordination with dance movements. This work represents the state of the art in automatic music generation from dance videos, is easy to train, and has implications for enhancing entertainment experiences and inspiring innovative dance productions. Sample videos of our generated music and dance can be viewed at https://youtu.be/eCvLdLdkX-Y. The code is available at https://github.com/hellto/dance2music-diffusion.

Study on the protection of Mongolian Chor music as cultural heritage in Northern China

The Mongolians in northern China have a vast distribution and a long history. Chor music is the cultural heritage of Mongolian in the north. After the rise of "Intangible Cultural Heritage upsurge" in the 21st century, scholars and folk artists rose to protect it and there were successively studies on Chor music theory, Chor music form and Chor historical evolution. However, scholars only focus on the research on the origin, classification, evolution and protection of Chor music, while the research on the relationship between Chor music and modern culture, summarizing that Chor music can be widely spread and recognized in modern society is lacking. This study mainly adopts qualitative methods in empirical research with literature research, field investigation and interview etc. to discusses the modern forms of Chor music, analyze the adaptation techniques in modern Chor works and identifies the musical elements recognized by the public. Therefore, we draw the conclusion of four-dimensional protection methods which includes preservation, innovation, crossover and communication.

Influencing Factors and Countermeasures to Improve the Expressive Power of Guzheng Artistry

As one of the traditional Chinese musical instruments, guzheng has a deep cultural heritage and unique artistic charm. The improvement of guzheng's artistic expression is of great significance to the inheritance and development of guzheng culture. This paper analyses the factors affecting the guzheng's artistic expression from the aspects of players' skill level, emotional commitment, music selection and arrangement, as well as the playing environment, and puts forward corresponding countermeasures to improve the performance. Firstly, to improve the players' professionalism, including skills training and music theory learning. Secondly, to cultivate the players' musical emotion, so as to make the performance more infectious. Thirdly, innovate music arrangement and performance techniques to meet the needs of different audiences. Finally, improve the playing environment and equipment to provide good material conditions for playing. Through empirical analyses, this paper verifies the effectiveness of the proposed countermeasures and provides useful insights for the future enhancement of guzheng's expressive power.

How Music Theory Can Inform Competitive Dynamics: Anticipatory Awareness and Successful Preemption

How Music Theory Can Inform Competitive Dynamics: Anticipatory Awareness and Successful Preemption