Musical Motifs Research Articles

The Railway as a Cultural Phenomenon and Poetic Text

Purpose. The article examines two aspects of the railway: as a cultural phenomenon and as an example of thematic motif in poetic text.Results. The appearance of the railway was not only an important technical achievement, but also formed a previously unknown cultural code with distinctive features. Firstly, with a paradoxical sense of stability of the path and at the same time, promising disaster in case of deviation, incommensurable rides on horseback. Secondly, with the feeling of simultaneous presence into opposite spaces – at the unchanging point of the carriage and in the constantly changing panorama outside the window. Thirdly, a qualitatively new sense of rhythm, accelerated and hinting as the possibility of change. As a result, a new type of discursive reality arises, leading to an original type of text formation. So, in parallel with the cultural code, another arises – an artistic one, characterized by uniqueness and exclusivity. An example of an artistic code related to the theme of the railway is M. Tsvetaeva’s poem Rails (1923). Based on the tradition of traveling by rail as symbolic movement towards non-existence, Tsvetaeva actualizes the mortal motif in her own way, built on conflict of hard (iron) and soft (canvas), as well as on introducing a musical motif into the text (the linearity of musical lines) along with the original sound recording, creating the effect of a patronymic attraction.Conclusion. Thus, in the poem Rails we observed the struggle of two models – generative inscribed in the paradigm of culture, and inter-iterative, actively opposing the paradigm and, thanks to syntagma, determining the self-closure of the poetic text.

Michael Tippett: Specification of the Work for Orchestra and Soprano "Byzantia"

The purpose of the research is to reveal the deep image-sound layers and features of the Irish bardic tradition in the work of M. Tippett through the prism of the work for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium". The methodological basis of the research is historical-conceptual, hermeneutic method and comparative analysis of factual data based on the works of Thomas Weiskel, David Clark, Edward Venn, and Meirion Bowen. Scientific novelty. For the first time in the Ukrainian art history segment, M. Tippett's work for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium" was analysed with an emphasis on the dramaturgy of the composition, cyclical elements, metaphorical sound images, symbolism and characteristic features of the musical and poetic tradition of Irish bards. Conclusions. Biographical collisions of M. Tippett influenced his creative aspirations and attitude to the surrounding world. M. Tippett's aesthetic views are a dialogue between romantic aspirations and sceptical realism of the modern era. Michael Tippett's musical language absorbed both tradition and the entire palette of accumulated world musical experience, as well as duality of meanings, symbolism, imagery and conflict. The work analyses the composition for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium" by M. Tippet, which is based on the mosaic of images, the logical sequence of musical motifs, and cyclicity. It is necessary to highlight the fragmentary nature of musical sections, variable motifs, the presence of contrasting material, the symbolism of magical, changing life force as secular ephemerality, the destruction of the musical text using the technique of expansion and fragmentation. Thus, the composition "Byzantium" is a reincarnation of Irish cultural nationalism in the aspect of traditional forms of bardic poetry. The musical language of M. Tippett in the work "Byzantium" is based on the forms crystallised by the work of L. Beethoven and updated by the musical context of modern and postmodern.

Developing Students’ Readiness for Musical Improvisation in the Context of Selected Assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Learning Theory

The article is an attempt to highlight selected assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s music learning theory in the context of developing readiness for music improvisation at school and outside school. Improvisation is, in this case, understood as one of the instruments of interpersonal communication, which can be developed through musical dialogue using tonal and rhythm patterns. The article is also a subjective presentation of the values inherent in the theory of music learning in the context of developing the above-mentioned readiness for music improvisation in students of different ages. Developing readiness for musical improvisation involves assimilating tonal and rhythm patterns into the students’ musical vocabulary so that they can participate in musical dialogue with others. This happens thanks to students’ active experience of music in an individual and social context. In developing readiness for musical improvisation, the student begins by actively listening, repeating and assimilating musical motifs, which, in music, are the starting point for complex mental operations related to musical audiation, which, to a musician, is what thinking is to language. The effect of applying the concept of improvisation suggested in the theory of music learning will be to increase the creative, expressive and improvisational activity of students in the process of music education and to develop the tonal, rhythm and melodic vocabulary necessary to independently undertake creative and improvisational activity with full awareness, taking into account the processes of musical audiation.

Peculiarities of Stepan Budnyi’s Artistic Works: Song and Musical Aspects

The poetic, prose and memoir works of Ukrainian writer Stepan Budnyi are considered in the article. He has left a noticeable mark in the history of Ukrainian literature of the 1950s. The focus of the research includes the analysis of the song concept, used frequently by the author and designated as a genre (in his own works). Many poetic works of S. Budnyi, characterized by melodiousness, emotionally elevated mood, simplicity of expression, vivid imagery, and the presence of striking figurative details, have a musical orientation. The frequency of the poet’s use of the song lexeme is counted in the article, indicating the folk-song character of S. Budnyi’s entire poetic heritage. This is reflected particularly in the titles of poetic works, evoking musical associations simultaneously. The poet has preferred those poetic works containing musical terminology in his translations from various languages. It is revealed that S. Budnyi’s relatively small prose heritage also includes musical motifs. Similar to poetry, the song in the writer’s prose works holds a distinct place and is a leading motif throughout his entire creative output. The author’s position and understanding of the essence of beauty are traced through the expressions of the lyrical heroes in prose sketches about music, song and dance. The author’s appeals to song and music are also considered in the writer’s epistolary. Texts by S. Budnyi, set to music by various Ukrainian composers such as Yaroslav Vyshyvanyi, Oleh Herman, Bohdan Klymchuk, Bohdan and Ivan Kravchuk brothers, Faina Moldavska, Volodymyr Obukhivskyi, Mykhailo Obleshchuk, Andrii Plishka, and others, are distinguished. Attention is drawn to the linguistic features of the writer’s artistic works, emphasizing especially that the author’s neologisms, used frequently, imbue the texts with a peculiar musicality. In general, Stepan Budnyi’s poetry has an original sound, impressing with a variety of artistic means, especially the vivid metaphorical expressions.

Motivation Levels of Preservice Music Teachers in Turkey

Individuals need motivation in their work, this motivation makes individuals more efficient. Considering that music education is a long way, individuals become more successful with certain discipline and motivation, and the pleasure in the work done increases. This study was conducted to examine the musical motivation levels of prospective music teachers in Turkey. In this study, survey design, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The sample group of the study consisted of 4th grade students by using the easily accessible case sampling method, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. The first data collection tool is the «Personal Information Form» developed by the researcher to obtain the demographic characteristics of the students, and the second data collection tool is the «Motivation Scale» developed by Asmus in 1989 to measure the musical motivation of the students. Percentage, frequency and independent t-test analysis techniques were used in the analysis of the research data. According to the results of the research, it was seen that musical background affected motivation in the gender variable, while environmental factors and individual music interest in the family did not affect motivation. Regarding the age variable, it was found that musical background and environmental factors had no significant relationship with musical motivation, but individual musical interest in the family affected motivation.

The Development of Moral Values of School Children with Visual Impairments Folk Music

The relevance of the presented paper is conditioned upon the fact that today, the subject of the development of moral values in children with visual impairment through musical motifs of folklore is a very understudied issue. However, based on the statistics of the World Health Organisation for 2021, about 2.2 billion people worldwide have visual impairments. The purpose of this paper is to study the features of the psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with visual impairments, their moral development, and the development of ways of spiritual and moral education through folk music. To achieve this purpose, the following methods were used: analysis, synthesis, comparison, induction, statistical analysis, and deduction. In particular, the method of statistical analysis of sources of American, Kazakh, and Russian researchers within the boundaries of the subject was used. The practical basis was the statistical data of the WHO company for 2021. The result of the study was a complete analysis of the statistics of children with visual impairment in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study’s main conclusion is that modern methods of teaching children with visual impairment are based on the musical accompaniment of educational activities since the musical form allows the development of moral values. Visually impaired students are characterised by insufficient development of the visual-imaginative level of mental activity, which determines the uniqueness of specific conceptual thinking due to visual perception disorders and limited visual experience. The alienation of a child with visual impairments from others entails secrecy and lack of communication, which can be expressed in a large volume of complexes in the future. The applied value of this paper lies in the development of recommendations for improving the system of pedagogical education of children with visual impairment through folklore-applied developmental classes.

The Musicalization of Prose and Poetry in the Oeuvre of Daniil Kharms

The term ‘musicalization’ comes from Aldous Huxley’s novel Point Counter Point where it denotes the use of music-derived models in fiction. The oeuvre of Russian writer Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) provides telling examples of such an approach to constructing both prose and poetry, as in his works, the conventional features of art prose and art poetry are, as a rule, considerably reduced. Kharms’s pieces, typically, consist of discrete ‘incidents’, which can be compared to musical motifs or themes; their organization into finished works is often based upon principles that have their recognizable counterparts in art music of different epochs. Some of Kharms’s texts quoted and commented on in the article show affinities with compositional ideas by major twentieth-century composers such as Alban Berg, Witold Lutosławski, Morton Feldman, Gérard Grisey, and Sofia Gubaydulina.

Music motivation depends on what to motivate: research review of Gumm’s music teaching and conducting models

The history and philosophy of music education are traced with varied efforts to hone, enhance, and shift a strong tradition of performance-based instruction. The purpose of this study is to summarize the research of Gumm’s empirical models of eight music teaching and six conducting approaches and their application in the profession across three decades toward varied philosophical aims. Each approach coordinates a distinct set of instructional and motivational behaviors toward a particular learning effect or outcome. Different balances of approaches reveal broader aims, such as performance, comprehensive musicianship, cooperative, discovery, and affective learning, or even basic on-task behavior. Broader yet are two overarching aims found in common to both music teaching and conducting—to control or release. Controlling music teaching asserts correct on-task behavior through clear task directions and corrective feedback, motivates attention to task nonverbally, efficiently fills time with active tasks, and clarifies and affirms positive learning. In contrast, cooperative group leadership releases interdependent learning, questioning fosters music concept learning, imagery and movement release artistry, and discussing unique perspectives releases independent ideas and feelings. In conducting, precise gestures control accurate timing, signals and alerts motivate attention, and mimicry of musician exertions controls physical tone production; whereas shaping of phrases and score markings release musical expression, psychosocially familiarized gestures foster interdependence, and tension-easing gestures release freer independent tone production. Control-oriented teaching is most prevalent across the field, yet links to greater burnout and appeals to accommodating students motivated by effort and ability more than students motivated by social and affective enjoyment of music. In conducting, music-oriented precision and expression are more prevalent than musician-oriented approaches. Releasing approaches are more prevalent in Western than Eastern culture, upper levels, early rehearsals well before concerts, smaller ensembles, competitive ensembles, and teachers and conductors with greater experience or varied movement training. Conclusive implications are that the key to motivation is to draw attention to specific and intentional forms of learning, and that whatever is motivated to attention also motivates a particular philosophy of music education. Future research is suggested in general music and ethnic, folk, popular, community, and professional music ensembles.

“No Anthem Linked to Russia”: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Olympic Games

At the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and again at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, Russian athletes taking home Olympic gold heard Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 in place of their national anthem. The prohibition of Russia’s anthem, along with the nation’s flag and other state symbols at international sporting events, was the result of an investigation into Russia’s state-run doping program. Although this restriction was heavily debated on social media outlets during the Games, the choice of Tchaikovsky’s beloved concerto was widely accepted as a symbol of the Russian state. The “Russianness” of Tchaikovsky’s concerto, however, is capacious and complex. In this article, I examine the Russian state’s appropriation of Tchaikovsky’s concerto not only as a nationalist musical motif, but as an irredentist anthem reflecting President Vladimir Putin’s intention to restore Russia’s “historic frontiers.” In addition to analyzing how the work was deployed before, during, and after the 2020 and 2022 Games, the article explores the composition’s appearance in contemporary Russian internet culture, including in a popular mashup of the concerto with Queen’s anthem “We Will Rock You.” Arguing that these examples offer musical evidence for the political rhetoric that insists Ukraine is rightfully a part of Russia, this article illustrates the ways that musical nationalism has proven malleable and been (mis)used in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The Belarusian Chameleons: Pesniary’s Popularity and the Ambiguity of Soviet Identities

Formed in 1969 and active through the early 2000s, Pesniary were arguably the most popular band in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Their music is distinctively Belarusian, but still fits neatly within a broader Soviet narrative. This article explores the extent to which Pesniary represent an independent Belarusian identity or Soviet kitsch. It considers both the group’s reception at home in the Soviet Union and abroad. Pesniary’s ability to repackage both Soviet cultural policy directives and Western popular music motifs as authentic folk material was key to their success in the 1970s Soviet music scene and beyond.

The Synchrony Era

The Synchrony Era

A Domain-Knowledge-Inspired Music Embedding Space and a Novel Attention Mechanism for Symbolic Music Modeling

Following the success of the transformer architecture in the natural language domain, transformer-like architectures have been widely applied to the domain of symbolic music recently. Symbolic music and text, however, are two different modalities. Symbolic music contains multiple attributes, both absolute attributes (e.g., pitch) and relative attributes (e.g., pitch interval). These relative attributes shape human perception of musical motifs. These important relative attributes, however, are mostly ignored in existing symbolic music modelling methods with the main reason being the lack of a musically-meaningful embedding space where both the absolute and relative embeddings of the symbolic music tokens can be efficiently represented. In this paper, we propose the Fundamental Music Embedding (FME) for symbolic music based on a bias-adjusted sinusoidal encoding within which both the absolute and the relative attributes can be embedded and the fundamental musical properties (e.g., translational invariance) are explicitly preserved. Taking advantage of the proposed FME, we further propose a novel attention mechanism based on the relative index, pitch and onset embeddings (RIPO attention) such that the musical domain knowledge can be fully utilized for symbolic music modelling. Experiment results show that our proposed model: RIPO transformer which utilizes FME and RIPO attention outperforms the state-of-the-art transformers (i.e., music transformer, linear transformer) in a melody completion task. Moreover, using the RIPO transformer in a downstream music generation task, we notice that the notorious degeneration phenomenon no longer exists and the music generated by the RIPO transformer outperforms the music generated by state-of-the-art transformer models in both subjective and objective evaluations. The code of the proposed method is available online: github.com/guozixunnicolas/FundamentalMusicEmbedding.

Musicality of Plays by A. P. Chekhov and G. M. Musirepov

ABSTRACT The dramaturgy of Musirepov and Chekhov is very closely related to music. The writers understood that with the help of music, the problems posed by playwrights acquire philosophical depth, images and situations are voiced, and the composition of a play is built. The study of the musicality of Chekhov and Musirepov’s plays is an urgent problem for both Russian and Kazakh literature. To analyze the musicality of their plays, various methods of scientific knowledge were used. Particular attention is paid to the study of the sound of musical instruments in Chekhov and Kazakh drama. Guitar, piano, flute, and dombra are designed to create a unique atmosphere and enhance psychologism. Thus, musical motives not only have an auxiliary function, but they, along with dialogues, are an integral and equal part of the dramatic structure. The analysis of the role of music in the plays of Chekhov and Musirepov can be used to study the creativity of the authors. This work can be used by teachers and students of higher educational institutions to study the musicality of plays during lectures and practical classes.

Sound-meaning mapping: Verbal imitation of Super Mario music by Yorùbá gamers

An aspect of gaming culture among Yorùbá millennials is verbally interpreting certain musical motifs of the popular videogame called Super Mario Bros. The themes of the verbal interpretations are comparable to those of music texts at traditional Yorùbá competitions. Drawing on the Yorùbá music tradition, the account in this work is that, to the gamers, the background music of the videogame performs a similar function as the music at traditional Yorùbá competitions. Semantically, the choice of words in the linguistic interpretation is conditioned by the situational contexts or scenes where the music is heard in the videogame. The results of an acoustic analysis show that the pitch contours of the linguistic interpretations resemble the pitch trajectories of the corresponding music motifs. Thus, the sequence of words in each linguistic interpretation is determined by vocal imitation. This study suggests that the linguistic processing of music does not only involve phonetic iconicity but includes contextual inference and social expectation. The interpretive moves clearly point to strong parallels between sound-meaning mapping in spoken language and music.

Musical Motifs in Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music': A Study

Vikram Seth, the acclaimed author and poet is known for his intricate and lyrical writing style. He has written several award-winning novels including ‘A Suitable Boy’, ‘The Golden Gate’, ‘Two Lives’ and ‘An Equal Music’. In addition to his novels, Seth has published several volumes of poetry as well. His works have been translated into several languages and have won numerous literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award. ‘An Equal Music’ is a book that celebrates classical music and is similar to Great Expectations. It has won the EMMA Award in 2001 An Equal Music' is a beautiful exploration of the relationship between music and human emotions. The Baltimore Sun praises it as “a beautifully written novel of music, romance, and the endless search for transcendent passion….A joy to read." The novel delves deep into the world of classical music and highlights the way in which music can have a transformative effect on our lives. One of the notable features of the novel is the use of musical motifs, which are recurring musical ideas that help to establish a sense of unity and coherence within the text. The present paper aims to examine the use of musical motifs in 'An Equal Music' and analyse the way in which they contribute to the novel's themes and overall impact.

Influence of musical stimulus on the perception of clarity in rooms and its relation to [formula omitted

C80 is an acoustic parameter that evaluates the influence of the room on the perception of musical clarity. Numerous studies have been carried out to determine its just noticeable difference (JND). In those evaluations different musical pieces have been used, and different results have been observed depending on the pieces. In some studies, the difference was considered significant, while in others it was not. The lack of agreement on the effect that the musical piece has on the assessment of C80 is the main motivation for this research.A listening test was carried out in order to assess whether the musical motif has an influence on the perceived musical clarity of a room. In studying this influence, it was necessary to use musical motifs with very different characteristics. A total of five pieces were selected: one liturgical vocal piece, one fast tempo solo piece, one slow tempo solo piece and two orchestral pieces, one fast and one slow. These motifs were used to create the stimuli used in the test by convolution with impulse responses of rooms with different C80 levels. Impulse responses were obtained by modifying the virtual models of three rooms. Eighteen impulse responses were used with C80 levels between −5.90 and 6.75 dB. The listening test was carried out by 36 participants with varying degrees of musical training.It was intended to answer two different questions. Firstly, whether the participants were able to percieve C80 changes in all musical motifs. And secondly, whether the musical motif was a significant factor when assessing the C80 level of a stimulus. The first question was assessed using regression analysis and Cochran-Mantel–Haenszel (CMH) analysis. It could be observed that the participants were able to notice changes in the C80 level for the solo instrument pieces and the vocal motif. For the orchestral pieces, on the other hand, this differentiation ability could not be seen. To assess whether the motif is a significant factor in evaluating a C80 level, a CMH analysis was performed. The results indicate that, for all rooms, musical motifs are a significant factor in assessing the clarity of a venue. Consequently, it can be stated that the musical motif used for the evaluation of the clarity of a room by means of a listening test has an influence on the results obtained.

Fractal patterns in music

If aesthetic preferences are affected by the fractal geometry of nature, scaling regularities would be expected to appear in all art forms, including music. While a variety of statistical tools have been proposed to analyze time series in sound, no consensus has yet emerged regarding the most meaningful measure of complexity in music or how to discern fractal patterns in compositions in the first place. Here, we offer a new approach based on the self-similarity of melodic lines recurring at various temporal scales. In contrast to the statistical analyses advanced in recent literature, the proposed method does not depend on averaging within time-windows and is distinctively local. The corresponding definition of the fractal dimension is based on the temporal scaling hierarchy and depends on the tonal contours of musical motifs. The new concepts are tested on musical “renditions” of the Cantor Set and the Koch Curve, and then applied to a number of carefully selected masterful compositions spanning five centuries of music making.

Estreno absoluto: Concert Version of Felipe Pedrell’s La Celestina (1902) in Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela (2022)

<i>Estreno absoluto</i>: Concert Version of Felipe Pedrell’s <i>La Celestina</i> (1902) in Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela (2022)

Tania León's Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life by Alejandro L. Madrid

Reviewed by: Tania León's Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life by Alejandro L. Madrid Jade Kastel Tania León's Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life. By Alejandro L. Madrid. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. [xvi, 249 p. ISBN 9780252043949 (hardcover), $110; ISBN 9780252086014 (paperback), $24.95; ISBN 9780252052873 (e-book), price varies.] Music examples, photographs, bibliography, appendixes, index. The first comprehensive biography of composer, conductor, and educator Tania León (b. 1943) is arriving at a peak moment, an accented stride if you will, in León's career. She has been selected as an honoree in the 45th Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in December 2022—a celebration set to occur several months following the writing of this review. As attendees and viewers watch her don the familiar rainbow ribbon, it will likely ignite a desire for the back-story of this creative genius. Alejandro L. Madrid's biography is waiting to satiate this intrigue, chronicling León's journey from a poor neighborhood in Cuba, to accompanying the Dance Theatre of Harlem, to her conducting lessons with Leonard Bernstein, to collaborations with the American Composers Orchestra's series Sonidos de las Américas at Carnegie Hall, and to the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her orchestral work Stride. Tania León's Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life is one of more than 250 books in the longstanding series Music in American Life published by the University of Illinois Press. Madrid uses the introduction to explain how he chose the metaphor of counterpoint as a bibliographical form for this book, to place events in León's life in conversation with and show their relationship to significant historical and musical moments (p. 3). Just as rules and parameters undergird counterpoint exercises and compositions, Madrid and León likewise negotiated the project's scope and compositional parameters for how cultural, political, and personal events would work together in the biography. They arrived at some concrete rules, like leaving candid statements from friends or family still living in Cuba out of the book to avoid putting individuals at risk (p. 5). Madrid titled the chapters after musical motives to symbolize aspects of León's experiences (p. 7). Chapters are not arranged chronologically, allowing Madrid's counterpoint to position events side by side to show how a motif was present at various stages in León's life. The first chapter, "Tonic," as one might guess, includes home, family, and León's musical upbringing in the midst of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s. Photos of her grandparents (p. 16), eight-year-old León at the piano (p. 21), and a postcard from her piano teacher visiting Paris (p. 24) help illustrate the milieu of León's childhood in Cuba. "Modulation and Displacement" leans into the tensions between cubanos de adentro (Cubans residing on the island) and cubanos de afuera (Cubans living abroad). León's life modulated when she left Cuba as an exile, signaling an era when neither the US nor Cuba felt like a home key. The sadness and struggle of displacement is a theme throughout the book. Her passport was canceled as a result of leaving on one of the Vuelos de la Libertad (Freedom Flights; p. 35), which in turn led to León's missing the funeral of one of her foundational family figures, [End Page 407] her grandmother Mamota (p. 37). A section titled "1979: Seven Days That Shook Tania León" tells of her emotional return to Cuba to see her family for the first time in twelve years (p. 39). It was during this trip that León discovered how the Castro government silenced the accomplishments of creative exiles. León was determined to avoid taking sides in Cuban politics. Despite her apolitical stance, "her name and artist activities were still rendered invisible" in Cuba (p. 41). The 1970s feminist adage that "the personal is political" is a reality that León experienced all too frequently. Despite León's dislike of identity labels and her desire to remain neutral on the polarizing topic of the Cuban revolution—an effort to protect her family in Cuba...

Motivic Trees, Network Analysis, and Bartók’sEight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs, No. 5

AbstractThis article describes a method for using graph-theoretical trees to model relations between musical motives, turning primarily to Dora Hanninen’s notion of associative lineages, as well as to certain approaches from the field of phylogenetics. Since the fifth of Béla Bartók’s Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs (1920) presents a piece-spanning process that, while unidirectional, is also continuously branching, it forms the sole musical example. In addition, the article also examines philosophical dimensions by situating these analytical considerations within Deleuze and Guattari’s tree/rhizome distinction and the more general opposition between the discrete and the continuous.