Modern Music Research Articles

Revitalizing Tradition: The Role of the Erhu in Modern Music and Global Culture

Revitalizing Tradition: The Role of the Erhu in Modern Music and Global Culture

On the Fusion of Hainan Folk Songs and Modern Music

Hainan folk song, as a bright pearl in the treasure house of Chinese folk music, carries the rich regional culture, historical memory and national emotion. Its unique melody, lyric content and singing style not only show the natural scenery and cultural customs of Hainan Island, but also deeply reflect the life philosophy and aesthetic taste of Hainan people. With the acceleration of globalization and the rapid development of modern music technology, Hainan folk songs are facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This paper aims to explore the possibility, path, significance and influence of the integration of Hainan folk songs and modern music, and analyze the cultural value reconstruction and artistic innovation in the process of the integration of the two, in order to provide new ideas and direction for the inheritance and development of Hainan folk songs.

Defining ‘Russianness’, defining ‘Austrianness’ – defining ‘Europe’: Austrian Tchaikovsky imageries during the Allied occupation, 1945–55

ABSTRACT This essay will examine critical discourses regarding Peter Tchaikovsky as a symbolic figurehead of high-brow Russian music in the two most widely circulated Austrian newspapers of the Allied occupation period: the Wiener Kurier (WK) and the Salzburger Nachrichten (SN), both affiliated with the US administration. In the context of Austria’s (problematic) denazification, post-war reconstruction, nation-building and reorientation towards the West, the reception of Tchaikovsky serves as a litmus test of negotiations concerning questions of cultural capital, habitus, musical canon, and nationalism (Otherness), Austria’s position as Europe’s Musikland, and a composer’s branding. Influential critics evaded a clear positioning within the Cold War ‘East–West’ context by appropriating Tchaikovsky for constructing an Austrian, European identity from a position of cultural power. This led to the coexistence of several musical ‘Russias’ in the Austrian public space: Soviet cultural diplomacy, US promotion of musical modernity (Stravinsky) and Austrians’ own, and self-interested, reconstruction of a Russian ‘national’ canon. Wiener Kurier and Salzburger Nachrichten columnists display a significant degree of middle-term continuity, while developing remarkable independence from and agency vis-à-vis the hard power presence of both the United States and the USSR, by subverting the superpowers’ cultural offensives, engaging in Austrian prestige politics, and affirming their interpretative sovereignty and knowledge-power within the re-emerging Austrian musical field. The music critics’ robust judgment, combined with the relative popularity that Tchaikovsky enjoyed, affirmed the considerable autonomy of the cultural field, and the discursive pre-eminence of musical conservatives and their knowledge-power.

Alan Bush, Modern Music, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc by Joanna Bullivant (review)

Alan Bush, Modern Music, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc by Joanna Bullivant (review)

A Study on the Sources of Lyrics in Botong gyoyuk changgajip (1910), Korea's First Modern Music Textbook: Based on the Characteristics and Significance of the New Lyrics

A Study on the Sources of Lyrics in Botong gyoyuk changgajip (1910), Korea's First Modern Music Textbook: Based on the Characteristics and Significance of the New Lyrics

Music in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology

Music in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology

An Analysis of the Current Application Status of Modern Music Production in Macau

With the rapid advancement of digital technology, modern music production has become a central force driving the development of the global music industry. Macau, as a unique region where Eastern and Western cultures blend, has a particularly noteworthy current status and potential in the field of modern music production. This study aims to comprehensively explore the actual application status of modern music production in Macau, covering multiple aspects such as technology application, education and training, and industry development. Through literature review and case studies, this paper delves into the level of technology application in modern music production in Macau, the construction of the education and training system, and the current status and trends of music industry development. The research finds that although Macau has made some progress in adopting and applying modern music production technology, especially showing a positive development trend in music education and talent cultivation, it still faces challenges such as rapid technology updates, shortage of professional talent, and intense market competition. Based on these findings, the paper suggests strengthening education and training related to music production, encouraging technological innovation, and promoting international cooperation to enhance the overall competitiveness and influence of Macau's music industry. These measures will help Macau better utilize its unique cultural advantages and promote the development of its modern music production and music industry.

Assessing the Influence of Modern Music on Ghanaian Lifestyles and Culture

The study focused on the influence of modern music (Hiplife, Dance Hall, Drill, Afrobeat) on the youth, other patrons and culture. The researchers are of the view that the impact of modern music and its related practices, including lifestyles on most consumers particularly the youth, has culminated into a plethora of vices which the fundamentals of Ghanaian culture frowns upon. Data was gathered through the use of the descriptive survey, purposive sampling and unstructured interviews to elicit information from Tertiary students, High school students, Heads of schools, Parents and Guardians in the Greater Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana. The findings showed that music and daily human activities are inseparable, therefore, as patrons consume the brand they are easily attracted to the visuals, lyrics of the music, utterances and the general behaviour of the artist, which are mostly emulated by fans. The authors recommend that since music and the activities of the artist massively affect patrons holistically, steps must be taken by the appropriate state institutions to put in measures to check what musicians or artists put across as music, dress code, lyrics, actions on stage to the audience as part of their performances. This is to check the levels of acculturation and its negative effects to safeguard the foundations of Ghanaian culture and to protect its identity. Keywords: Social life, Modern music, Culture and Crime, Lifestyle, Impact.

韩中音乐创作中核心素材的发展手法之比较

This paper takes two works in the 15th “Oriental Era” Modern Music Exchange Season between Korea and China, Trio by Park Jun-young of South Korea and Light & Dark by Hao Yukai of China, as research objects. It analyzes and discusses the similarities and differences between Korean and Chinese modern composers in terms of musical language and creative style，especially the developing skills of core materials, through the comparison of composing techniques, and shows the cultural and ideological characteristics of composers of the two countries from one perspective.

Cross-cultural Communication and Integration of Guzheng Music under the Perspective of Modern Music Culture

With the development of globalization and the strengthening of cultural exchanges, traditional music culture has been given new meanings. In this context, Guzheng music, as one of the representative musical instruments of Chinese traditional music culture, has also carried out cross-cultural exchanges and integration with other cultures while marching to the world. From the perspective of modern music culture, this thesis will discuss how Guzheng music communicates and integrates with other cultures in cross-cultural communication and analyze the influence of such integration on contemporary Guzheng culture.

The Influence of African Rhythms on Modern Music: A Case Study of Afrobeat in Nigeria

This abstract provides a concise overview of the discussion on Afrobeat, encompassing its historical roots, global influence, challenges, and future prospects. Afrobeat, originating from Nigeria, has achieved enduring global recognition for its rhythmic complexities and socially conscious themes. The genre’s journey, marked by collaborations and adaptability, is discussed, along with the challenges it faces, such as commercialization and socio-political complexities. The abstract concludes by highlighting Afrobeat’s potential for future innovation and the importance of educational initiatives in preserving its authenticity.

Cultural Harmony in Education: A Comparative Study of Traditional and Modern Music Teaching Methods in Kazakhstan

This paper presents a comparative study of traditional and modern methods of music teaching in Kazakhstan, exploring how these approaches coexist and complement each other in the current educational landscape. It examines the integration of Kazakhstan's rich musical heritage with contemporary educational techniques, highlighting the balance between preserving cultural identity and embracing global music trends. The study involves a literature review and case studies from various educational institutions across Kazakhstan. It discusses the impact of such integration on students' musical skills, cultural awareness, and creative development. The paper also addresses the challenges and opportunities in harmonizing traditional Kazakh music with modern pedagogical practices. The findings reveal the importance of a diversified approach to music education, which not only fosters a deeper appreciation of Kazakh cultural heritage but also equips students with a broad range of musical competencies.

Perception of Kyrgyz music as a factor of motivation to a healthy lifestyle: Survey

The aim of this research is to identify the relationship between perception of Kyrgyz music and motivation for healthy lifestyle, and to understand the mechanisms of music impact on people's behavior within the context of healthy lifestyle. The research methods included literature review, questionnaire development and statistical analysis of data. A total of 248 participants, dominantly young people and women, took part in the online survey. Results showed that musical lyrics covering themes of health, physical activity, and positive thinking can inspire listeners to lead healthy lifestyles. Key images of space, emotions and natural phenomena in Kyrgyz song lyrics reflect the diverse understanding of health and well-being in the culture of Kyrgyz people. Both great composers of the past and modern musicians motivate Kyrgyz people to take care of their health with their patriotic and lyrical songs. The novelty of the research is in the study of a relatively new area of the influence of music on people's behavior within the scope of a healthy lifestyle.

Research on the Application of Music Technology in Modern Music Education in the Information Age

Abstract In the age of information technology, the way of music teaching as a whole has changed, and music technology has brought great impetus to modern music education. The purpose of this paper is to research music teaching and musicians’ paper-and-pencil music-making habits. Firstly, based on the joint hidden semantic model and convolutional neural network, we make full use of the decisive advantage of a deep neural network to extract features automatically, obtain higher-level music feature representation from audio content, meanwhile abstract the historical behavioral information of users’ interaction with music into scoring data and integrate it into the recommender system to generate reasonable music recommendation for target users, and realize note recognition through convolutional neural network. After verifying and analyzing the effects of note recognition and music recommendation models, they are used in music teaching. The results show that the model’s recognition of musical notes is more satisfactory, and the music recommendation accuracy is improved by 6.45%~10% compared with the comparison algorithm, and it still has a specific predictive recommendation ability in a cold-start environment. The music performance of the experimental class that uses the model presented in this paper to assist in music teaching has improved by 5.08%. The note recognition and music recommendation model can be introduced into music teaching to promote the innovation and development of music teaching concepts and teaching methods and improve the effectiveness of music teaching.

‘The Complexities of Music Licensing in the Digital Environment and the United States’ Music Modernization Act “Solution”

‘The Complexities of Music Licensing in the Digital Environment and the United States’ Music Modernization Act “Solution”

Startled Stomach: Contemporary Indigeneity and Sensorial “Culture Shock” in Aljenljeng Tjaluvie’s Paiwan Pop Music

In 2016, Aljenljeng ended a thirteen-year hiatus and returned to the pop music scene in Taiwan with her first solo album, all in the Paiwan language, Vavayan. Formerly a Mandopop singer, Aljenljeng used to be known by the Chinese stage name Abao and sang only in Mandarin Chinese. Her choice to compose and sing the whole album in Paiwan signals a critical re-evaluation of Mandopop culture and its lyrical paradigm, which normalized Mandarin monolingualism as both the index of musical modernity in Taiwan and the lingua franca of Mandopop’s internationalization during the 1990s and early 2000s. Aljenljeng’s Paiwan turn was an effort to disrupt both Mandopop’s consumption of Indigenous music in Taiwan and the settler structure of feeling. Aljenljeng’s audiovisual expressions, sensorial experiences, and depictions of contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures in Taiwan generate meaningful Indigenous-initiated transcultural conversations. Aljenljeng’s video for “Minetjus” (which translates as “startled” or “shocked”) counters settler (over)consumption by placing settler, rather than Indigenous, individuals in the position of being observed, absorbed, transformed, and compelled to adapt. Amid the rhythmic naming of an array of Paiwan dishes in the song and video, the singer playfully cautions, “Don’t eat too much, otherwise your stomach will be startled.” Here, the Paiwan idiom for stomachache, “to have one’s stomach startled/shocked,” signifies both an openness to intercultural exposure and a rejection of the settler desire to digest and consume. Extending from the music tradition of the Paiwan, one of the sixteen Indigenous nations on the island, Aljenljeng’s work affirms intercultural curiosity on the premise of Indigenous sensory and emotional sovereignty, further fostering the possibility of interethnic dialogue in multicultural contemporary Taiwan.

Metaphorical Expression of Emotions in Modern Music Composition Based on Emotional Calculations

Abstract In this paper, audio and lyrics features of music are fused from the audio and lyrics attributes of modern music tracks to obtain a joint representation of music. The features such as tempo, directionality, average value of intensity, beat, and change of rhythm of each musical segment are extracted from the main audio track to form the music feature vector. Subsequently, the music was separated into multiple segments with distinct emotions, and the emotional expression of modern music was evaluated using the Hevner emotion model. Finally, the note extraction performance of this paper’s model is analyzed, and the spectral contrast features of different music pieces and the emotional expression of music pieces under different features are explored. The results show that the pitch patterns of sad emotions are mostly distributed in the range of 0.5-0.55, and the values of the pitch patterns of angry music are basically larger than 0.55. The mean values of the spectral entropy of joy and calmness are mostly distributed in the range of 0.5-0.7, and the sad emotions are mostly in the vicinity of 0.7, while the mean values of the spectral entropy of angry emotions are larger than 0.8.

Wilhelm Stenhammar

Wilhelm Stenhammar’s contributions to Swedish musical life around 1900 are widely acknowledged. But his activities stretched well beyond the Swedish borders. The present article approaches Stenhammar from a transnational perspective, placing him in the broader context of European musical modernism around 1900. Following a clarification of the use of the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘modernism’ in the light of recent research on modernism in music, Stenhammar’s identity as a European modernist is discussed with special focus on Copenhagen and Berlin. Stenhammar’s compositional strategies in the finale of his String Quartet no. 3 op. 18 in F major are then analysed in terms of musical self-reflection, offering a new perspective on his compositional agency with a wealth of musical traditions at his disposal. At a time when travelling across borders by steam train had become a common part of modern life, transcultural interconnectedness seems to be a common framework for musicians to identify as modern composers. Keywords: Wilhelm Stenhammar, Henrik Hennings, Louis Glass, modernism, modernity, music analysis, self-reflection, European music historiography.

Ukrainian Musical Modernism: Prerequisites for Conceptualization

The article outlines the current cultural situation surrounding the issue of Ukrainian musical modernism, presenting examples of actualization of this issue in the national musical practice of recent years. The author considers the initiatives of Oleksiy Shmurak and Leah Batstone, the researchers who explore this issue. The article engages with Myroslava Novakovych’s substantive provisions on the scholarly interpretation of the concept of Ukrainian musical modernism, the defining features of its aesthetics and the circle of its representatives. The author identifies a number of prerequisites for the conceptualization of Ukrainian musical modernism in concerts, performances, public lectures, educational activities, and research projects. Building on her own concept of musical modernism, the author offers an original view of the phenomenon of Ukrainian musical modernism as an epoch, defines its chronological boundaries and specific factors. The article characterizes the correlation between modernism and social realism in the Ukrainian musical culture of the twentieth century.

Turkish Folk Music as a Modern Music of the Republic and Its Position in the Fine Arts System

Osmanlı Devleti'nin son yüzyılında sosyo-kültürel değişim modeli olarak benimsenen modernleşme, Cumhuriyet döneminde de ülkenin tüm kurumlarıyla birlikte sanatın ve özellikle müziğin modernite kapsamında devlet tarafından şekillendirilmesine sebep olur. Çağın ruhunu paylaşan modernist perspektif, klasik modernleşme teorileri kapsamında, Batı’daki sanat anlayışının olduğu gibi Türkiye’ye getirilerek kurumsallaşmasını ön görür ve kabul eder. Ancak İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası modernizmin sorgulanması, farklı perspektiften inşa edilen modernleşme teorilerini doğurur ve bu yaklaşımlar, modernitenin dünyanın her yerinde aynı deneyimlerle yaşanmadığını gösterir.
 Bu perspektiften bakıldığında geleneksel yönü öne çıkarılan icat edilmiş geleneklerin aslında modernite kapsamında inşa edilen modern sistemler oldukları dikkat çeker. Bu modern sistemler de ülkenin deneyimlediği özgün moderniteye göre kurumsallaşır. Ülkenin özgün modernite deneyimleri yalnızca icat edilmiş geleneklere değil, Batı’dan getirilen değer sistemlerine de ülkeye özgü nitelikler kazandırır. Bu ifadeler kapsamında Türk halk müziği, Türkiye’nin deneyimlediği modernite kapsamında üretilen, modern bir icat edilmiş gelenektir denilebilir. Moderniteyi Türk halk müziğinin neredeyse tüm bileşenlerinde okumak mümkündür. Benzer şekilde bugün bildiğimiz şekliyle kavram olarak sanat da tüm değer sistemiyle Batı’dan getirilen modern bir sistemdir ve modernite kapsamında sanat düşüncesi Türkiye’ye özgü bir hale bürünür. 
 Bu çalışma, Türk halk müziği ve yerel müzikler üzerine akademik ve/veya icraya dayalı çalışmalar yapan pratisyenler odağında yürütülen alan çalışmasındaki katılımcı gözlem ve deneyimlerle elde edilen nitel verilere ve literatür taramasıyla ulaşılan bilgilere dayanmaktadır. Ayrıca bu çalışma, modernite kapsamında inşa edilen Türk halk müziğini, modernitenin ürünü olan -bugünkü bildiğimiz anlamıyla- güzel sanatlar sistemini ve bu ikisinin birbiriyle ilişkisini, Batı-dışı modernlik kavramı kapsamında inceler.