Musical Score Research Articles

Perceptual selection of a musical score during binocular rivalry reported by a relevant action with or without auditory feedback.

Perceptual selection of a musical score during binocular rivalry reported by a relevant action with or without auditory feedback.

UNRAVELLING THE HISTORY OF A VENETIAN ANTIPHONARY

ABSTRACT We present the results of a multifaceted study of an antiphonary—liturgical song book—presumably made in Venice in 1607, now in the Ringve, National Music Museum of Norway in Trondheim1. The book is hand-sewn on raised cords, bound in full leather on cardboard covers, originally with metal clamps. The paper block consists of pages printed in black and red that include both song texts and music scores. The red ink is based on vermillion and red lead while the black ink is carbon based. The treads and cords were made of flax. The leather used was made from goat skin. Radiocarbon results confirmed the printing date. The antiphonary shows several signs of repair including the possibility of re-binding. Animal-based glue was used for the repairs as well as for the sizing of both original and repair paper. Two potential periods were identified for reparations, 1670–1710 AD and 1782–1830 AD. This case study was conducted prior to the opening of a new permanent exhibition, Soundtracks, at the Ringve Museum where the book is displayed.

Musical sources – meaning of the term in bibliology and museology

Although it may seem improbable, various types of musical sources can also be found in the collection of the Publishing Art Department of the National Museum in Wrocław. They are not only music sheets and songbooks, but also written documents related to musical works or people of music, and in the future, they could be even printed elements of sound documents or ephemeras related to music life. This was the reason for the general reflection on the understanding of the term “musical sources” (“musicals”) and its meaning in relation to the universes of music and publishing art. Then, basic categories of museum objects that are simultaneously from both universes – music and publishing art – were presented (with examples).

Probabilistic modelling of microtiming perception

Music performances are rich in systematic temporal irregularities called “microtiming”, too fine-grained to be notated in a musical score but important for musical expression and communication. Several studies have examined listeners’ preference for rhythms varying in microtiming, but few have addressed precisely how microtiming is perceived, especially in terms of cognitive mechanisms, making the empirical evidence difficult to interpret. Here we provide evidence that microtiming perception can be simulated as a process of probabilistic prediction. Participants performed an XAB discrimination test, in which an archetypal popular drum rhythm was presented with different microtiming. The results indicate that listeners could implicitly discriminate the mean and variance of stimulus microtiming. Furthermore, their responses were effectively simulated by a Bayesian model of entrainment, using a distance function derived from its dynamic posterior estimate over phase. Wide individual differences in participant sensitivity to microtiming were predicted by a model parameter likened to noisy timekeeping processes in the brain. Overall, this suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying perception of microtiming reflect a continuous inferential process, potentially driving qualitative judgements of rhythmic feel.

Effects of Model Recordings on Undergraduate Conductors’ Tempo Selections

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of model recordings on undergraduate conductors’ tempo decisions for selected wind band excerpts. Participants ( N = 42) studied three music score excerpts for 5 minutes each either (a) with an increased-tempo recording, (b) with a decreased-tempo recording, or (c) with a metronome set to the faster, printed tempo in the score, followed by a tapping task to demonstrate their preferred tempo. Participants returned 48 hours after their score study session for retention testing in the form of a second tapping task. Results indicated that for two of the three pieces, participants tapped faster in response to the metronome compared to both the decreased- and increased-tempo model recordings. Participants’ tempo choices at the first testing session were most often not significantly different than the tempos they heard during study. However, we found that participants’ preferred tempos did not vary as a function of study conditions during the retention testing session that occurred 48 hours later, where tempos trended toward moderation across all three musical selections. We speculate that pedagogical recommendations to avoid using model recordings may have limited empirical support, at least among novice conductors and at least in terms of possible long-term effects from short-term use.

With trumpets?

A good deal of mystery still surrounds some aspects of Arcangelo Corelli's work. Firstly, although he was recognised as the main composer of Sinfonie in Rome around 1700, all of his repertoire of this genre, with the exception of one, seems to have disappeared; secondly, none of his survived orchestral scores contains evidence of the well documented practice of using winds, trumpets in particular, in conjunction with strings. To fill these gaps, speculations have tried to identify, amongst Corelli's works, not only the ones that might have originated as Sinfonie, but also those that might have included trumpets in their original form. This research moves along the same path but sets a slightly different goal: on the one hand it considers that it is virtually impossible to determine if any of Corelli’s survived compositions were originally conceived as Sinfonie with trumpets. On the other hand, it argues that through a study of Lulier's Santa Beatrice d'Este oratorio - a work that preserves the only genuine Corelli's Sinfonia that has survived - and through a comparative analysis of the two Handel's Roman oratorios, it is possible to approach closely the soundscape of Corelli's Sinfonie con trombe. To achieve that goal, in accordance with contemporary Roman examples, newly composed trumpet parts have been integrated into some movements of three concertos from Opus 6. The outcome can be listened in the audio-video material part of this paper. Whether the addition of trumpets on top of a string-only movement could have been improvised, and not planned beforehand with written parts, is open to further speculation.

Discurso feminista e identidad americana en la danza moderna: Martha Graham y el significado social del cuerpo femenino

. Este artículo reflexiona acerca de los conceptos del discurso feminista y de la identidad americana en el contexto de la significación social del cuerpo danzante tal y como está representado en las coreografías de la bailarina americana Martha Graham. Aquí abordamos el impacto de las obras revolucionarias Heretic (1929) Lamentation (1930), Primitive Mysteries (1931), Frontier (1935), Letter to the World (1940) y Appalachian Spring (1944), explorando su significado social con referencia a la demarcación de la masculinidad y de la feminidad en la visión de danza de Graham. La iconografía visual, las partituras extraordinarias y la atmósfera sensorial creada por y para estas coreografías seminales son experiencias únicas de una danza artística específica que construye el discurso feminista. La contribución de Martha Graham a la formación de la danza moderna y sus característicos movimientos de ‘contract and release’ que forman la Graham Technique, en la que la energía se localiza en el centro del cuerpo, está saturada de emoción humana. El discurso feminista incorporado en estas coreografías habla del amor y de la muerte, de la opresión y de la libertad, de las limitaciones del género y de la lucha por identidad. Su contribución iluminadora a la danza contemporánea se basó en sus frases de movimiento corporal únicas y en su cuestionamiento sin concesiones de los cuerpos construidos socialmente. Martha Graham creó un nuevo vocabulario de movimiento que revolucionó la danza y se configuró debido al ‘cultural embodiment, cultural communication and the whole shift in the Western lifeworld at the beginning of the twentieth century’ . Palabras clave. Martha Graham, Graham Technique, danza moderna, significado social, discurso feminista, cuerpo femenino, grupos sociales, identidad americana, paisaje musical, cuerpo danzante femenino.

Noise, ecological crises, and the posthuman sensibility of Michel Serres in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin

ABSTRACT This article revisits Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi film Under the Skin, ten years on from its release in 2013, to re-read it through Michel Serres’s posthuman philosophy as an allegorical warning about the ongoing ecological crises. Making this argument involves recognizing, through Serres, the crucial role of artistic practice in questioning our current neglect of sensible modes of being. Focusing upon the importance of ‘noise’ within Serres’s posthuman thinking, this article considers the alignment between the sensibility of ‘The Female’ in Under the Skin – an alien in human form (portrayed by Scarlett Johansson) – and the virtue of sensibility advocated by Serres of being ‘on the cusp of sense in the making’ (Webb 2018): a dynamic position situated between the chaotic noise of the world and the limitations of human language (Serres 2016). In combination with Glazer’s direction, the original musical score by Mica Levi and innovative sound design by Johnnie Burn are central to the argument. An additional aim of the article is to show the significance of Serres’s thinking within cultural studies, where this philosophy is currently undervalued.

Music Publishers and Synchronized Scores: Mascagni, Ricordi, and Rapsodia satanica

Music Publishers and Synchronized Scores: Mascagni, Ricordi, and <i>Rapsodia satanica</i>

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

“Wedding” by Yakiv Yatsynevych: Peculiarities of Verbal Texts Musical Reading

The relevance of the research. Among the Ukrainian composers who, in the first third of the 20th century, turned to the musical design of the Sacrament of Marriage, is Yakiv Yatsynevych. In his work, the composer issued the structure of the cycle in a new way. There are no thorough studies of the music of "The Wedding" by Y. Yatsynevych. In the short analytical description of O. Zasadna, not all characteristics of the cycle are identified and commented on. Today there are no performances or audio recordings of "The Wedding". The reason for this is the lack of interest of choral groups in the sacramental music artists of this era. However, it is extremely necessary to research, revive and popularize high-quality Ukrainian music.&#x0D; Objective of the research – to investigate "The Wedding" songs by Y. Yatsynevych, to reveal the author's peculiarities of the verbal texts embodiment, to outline the musical characteristics of the work for the interest of performing choral groups. During the fulfillment of the mentioned tasks such methods of investigation were used: source study (search of documents in the archives of Kyiv), systematization (division and classification of found materials), history-chronological (arrangement and reconstruction of "The Wedding" creation), comparison (comparison and identification of musical features of "The Wedding" songs by Ukrainian composers of the first third of the 20th century), synthesis and generalization (joining of gained knowledge).&#x0D; Scientific novelty. For the first time in Ukrainian musicology, archival documents from the life of Y. Yatsynevych, archival manuscripts of individual sections of the composer's "The Wedding" songs have been published, the musical and performance features of the cycle have been analyzed in detail, and intonation original sources of the works have been found.&#x0D; Research results and perspectives. According to archival documents, the approximate date of "The Wedding" creation by Y. Yatsynevych was established - on the eve of 1927. Based on a comparison of the printed sheet music of the composer under the editorship of M. Hobdych with the work archival manuscript, a violation of the order of the chants was revealed. The structure of "The Wedding" was coordinated with the canonical liturgical sequence, and a separate numbering of the parts of the cycle was proposed: 1. "The Great Litany", 2. "Blessed are all", 3. "Prokymen", 4. "Isaiah, rejoice", 5. "For long years". Simplified versions of individual sections of the cycle were found and published for the first time – "Holy Martyrs" from "Isaiah, Rejoice", "To You, Lord" from "The Great Litany". The number of songs and their musical forms in Yatsynevich and his contemporaries (K. Stetsenko, O. Koshyts, P. Kozytskyi, Y. Kyshakevych) were compared. The peculiarity of the structure of "The Wedding" by Y. Yatsynevych was revealed – for the first time, the canonical texts of the two parts of the sacrament of Marriage (Engagement and Wedding) were voiced. The study of the musical features of "The Wedding" by Y. Yatsynevych leads to certain conclusions. In the compositions of the cycle, the author relied on the characteristic features of various stylistic sources – canto, folk song stylistics, techniques of church vocabulary in all the canticles of the cycle. Appeals to the concert genre (broad chants, contrast of choral tutti and solo parts in the long "Prokymen "), everyday chants (sound imitation in the short "Prokymen" of the pre-initial psalm "Bless my soul, God" of the Greek chant) were revealed. Important factors in ensuring the integrity of the cycle became intonation connections in the form of related melodic turns (wave-like development of the melody, broad chants). The citation of musical fragments in the work "Blessed are all" from "In Your Kingdom" from "Liturgy" by Y. Yatsynevych was found and illustrated. As an experienced conductor of professional and amateur choral ensembles, the composer took into consideration the performance capabilities of the singers and offered various versions of individual parts of the cycle - both virtuosic and simplified, which was not known before.&#x0D; Significance. The proposed research testifies to Y. Yatsynevych's professional implementation of the canonical texts of the ceremonial wedding service and it should encourage singers to perform the work not only in the church, but also in concerts.

Soundscapes, music, and memories: Exploring the factors that influence emotional responses to virtual nature content

From walking through a park to sitting on a beach, much is known about the therapeutic potential of direct contact with natural environments. Yet routinely in the UK, millions of people encounter nature in a completely different way: through their television screens. Despite the ubiquity of natural history programming, little is understood about its impact on the restorative and affective experiences of audiences. Nowhere is this truer than in the bold orchestral scores that accompany almost all nature documentaries. Whilst considerable evidence suggests that separately, both nature and music can provide a range of psychological benefits, how their pairing might affect the wellbeing potential of virtual nature encounters remains largely unknown. Similarly, scant research has considered how viewers’ own experiences, recalled through memories, might influence outcomes. To explore these areas, we formed a transdisciplinary broadcast initiative, called BBC Soundscapes for Wellbeing. Part of this project involved a randomized and controlled experiment that presented participants (n = 7636) with a dynamic nature scene accompanied by one of four acoustic tracks. Results demonstrated that whilst adding music to this scene led to increased feelings of excitement, it led to no other restorative or affective benefits when compared to silence. In contrast, the addition of natural sounds was associated with greater feelings of restorative potential, calmness, and excitement. Natural sounds also drove significant increases in the complex emotions of awe and nostalgia. Crucially, results showed the substantial moderating effects of participant memories. Those with positive memories stimulated by the experience reported significantly greater effects across all conditions and dependent variables. We find that although the acoustic design of virtual nature encounters can affect a range of emotional responses, the memories triggered by these experiences may be far more important for predicting viewer outcomes.

‘Cant About Decorum’: George Thomson’s Singular Edition of Robert Burns’s ‘The Jolly Beggars’

Abstract Robert Burns’s song editor George Thomson (1757–1851) issued the poet’s cantata ‘Love and Liberty’, also known as ‘The Jolly Beggars’, for the first time with music in 1818 (a setting of Burns’s text for narrator, solo singers, choir, and piano trio). The musical score was by London theatre composer Sir Henry Bishop and the text was edited by Thomson in line with his strict policy of decency and politeness. This essay tracks Thomson’s editorial curation of Burns’s text in the context of polite ‘improvement’ and argues that while pursuing apparent ‘decorum’, Thomson’s treatment struggles to negotiate the unruliness at the centre of what is now considered one of Burns’s most important works. The article pays particular attention to the complicated publication history of this work, revealing a chronology of popular print editions in advance of Thomson’s own, as well as the notable influence of Walter Scott’s remarks on the piece in the Quarterly Review. Examining the musical context of Thomson’s ‘Jolly Beggars’ alongside the text reveals a similar aspiration for elevation and the article presents the conversation between Thomson and Bishop, from manuscript correspondence.

Good

Good

Anatoly Kuznetsov. &lt;i&gt;A soul inspired&lt;/i&gt;

A book of remembrance by Anatoly Kuznetsov, an enthusiastic scholar of the life, beliefs and works of the 20th-c. pianist and Christian philosopher Maria Yudina. Referring to her personality as ‘symphonic’ and ‘faithful to sobornost’, Kuznetsov spent forty years celebrating Yudina’s memory and sparing no effort to collect and preserve her legacy. He searched for and gathered her articles, letters, reminiscences, and diaries, and brought to light her informal connections, discovering her friends of some years and correspondents from all over the world. Yudina exchanged letters with Adorno, Balanchine, Bakhtin, Zabolotsky, Karsavin, Lozinsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Suvchinsky, Florensky, Favorsky, Chukovsky, Shostakovich, and Yavorsky. The rich ‘musical score of life’ is accentuated by the symphonic and polyphonic qualities of her letters. Searching for synthesis, Yudina became its true epitome. Supplementing Yudina’s own writings with scholarly essays and reminiscences about her, Kuznetsov succeeds in capturing the vanishing era.

Design of Angklung Music Scoring System Based on Remote Training

Angklung is a traditional musical instrument from West Java, Indonesia. To play a song using this instrument can only be played in groups. The size of the musical instrument is quite large and prone to damage if carried anywhere, making it challenging to practice except in schools or music clubs. Since the pandemic, it has become increasingly difficult for students to practice angklung due to the limitations of face-to-face learning. This study aims to make it easier for students to practice and play angklung. The system is based on online multiplayer games so that students can learn and play angklung with more fun, and players can play anywhere. Players can use the mobile version of the angklung application as a substitute for the angklung instrument. Players can perform a duet with other players in playing the same song. The results of the player's performance will be displayed as scores and stored in the database. Besides that, a real-time feedback function is always displayed for each note played. To distinguish individual players and/or notes, we use vibration sensor technology installed in each mobile application or signal processing, and the system will recognise them properly. We propose a Short-time Fourier Transform (STFT) algorithm as a scoring system and realtime-feedback performance. We use class diagrams to describe the whole application system and describe the functionality of the system in detail. We collect some research related to angklung and technology. Currently, there is a little study that could answer all the problems of learning and training angklung. The results of this study in the form of a system design are the initial research stage and are used for the following research phase. In conclusion, the design of this study can solve the existing problems so that the system will make it easier for students to practice and play angklung.

Inducing and disrupting flow during music performance.

Flow is defined as a state of total absorption in an activity, involving focused attention, deep engagement, loss of self-conscious awareness, and self-perceived temporal distortion. Musical flow has been associated with enhanced performance, but the bulk of previous research has investigated flow mechanisms using self-report methodology. Thus, little is known about the precise musical features that may induce or disrupt flow. This work aims to consider the experience of flow from a music performance perspective in order to investigate these features and introduces a method of measuring flow in real time. In Study 1, musicians reviewed a self-selected video of themselves performing, noting first, where in the performance they recalled "losing themselves" in the music, and second, where their focused state was interrupted. Thematic analysis of participant flow experiences suggests temporal, dynamic, pitch and timbral dimensions associated with the induction and disruption of flow. In Study 2, musicians were brought into the lab and recorded while performing a self-selected musical composition. Next, participants were asked to estimate the duration of their performance, and to rewatch their recordings to mark those places in which they recalled "losing themselves in the moment." We found that the proportion of performance time spent in flow significantly correlated with self-reported flow intensity, providing an intrinsic measure of flow and confirming the validity of our method to capture flow states in music performance. We then analyzed the music scores and participants' performed melodies. The results showed that stepwise motion, repeated sequence, and a lack of disjunct motion are common to flow state entry points, whereas disjunct motion and syncopation are common to flow state exit points. Overall, such initial findings suggest directions that warrant future study and, altogether, they have implications regarding utilizing flow in music performance contexts.

Preferred Preservation Formats for Digital Music Scores: A Survey of University Music Faculty

Digitally notated music scores are widely created and distributed. But the collaborative nature of the online environment and variety of file formats and software choices, both proprietary and open-source, present unique challenges for archivists when it comes to sharing, preserving, and providing access to these digital scores now and into the future. This article addresses the advantages and disadvantages of file formats for digital notated music scores that offer the greatest potential for long-term preservation, sustainability, and future accessibility. These formats, outlined in the Library of Congress's Recommended Formats Statement, are MusicXML, the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) schema, and PDF/UA/A. The authors conducted a survey of eighty-nine music professors at twenty-two universities to determine the extent to which they utilize these different file formats as well as digital preservation best practices in their work. All respondents who create musical scores use digital notation software. While most utilize PDF and discuss this format with their students, far fewer use MusicXML and MEI. Only 46 percent were aware of the principles of digital preservation. The article concludes with a detailed analysis of the results from this survey, which revealed ways in which information professionals can educate faculty about responsible measures that will ensure the long-term accessibility and research potential of digital music scores in an ever-changing digital world.

From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution

During the Reign of Terror, the rhetoric of liberation served as cover for conquest. When it came to artistic masterworks belonging to ‘tyrannical’ regimes, revolutionary freedom justified confiscation. The painter Jacques Luc Barbier was one of many who provided a justification. Such masterpieces, Barbier said of paintings by Rubens, were ‘sullied by traces of servitude’ and in need of liberation. The revolutionary Temporary Arts Commission commissioned a convoy to retrieve other paintings, manuscripts and musical scores duly liberated by French troops in Belgium. Soldiers returned from Piedmont to great acclaim with works they had ‘conquered’ on foreign soil. Napoleon continued the plunder across Italy with similar confiscations, first authorized by the Directory and later justified as a fitting reward for spreading civilization. The role of music and musicians in this appropriation is a major theme of Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden’s From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution. ‘[M]usical “works” and composers’, she writes, ‘became cantered in a modern system of musical production destined to support nationalist, imperialist, and colonialist endeavors’. The examples she produces are telling. French musicians eagerly endorsed taking scores, manuscripts and instruments from other countries by force. Luigi Cherubini, the Italian-born Inspector of the new Paris Conservatory, imagined the core of its library coming from Italian cities. The ‘enemy’s contributions’, he wrote to the Director of Public Instruction, were ‘too important to be neglected’. The new musical order, writes Geoffroy-Schwinden, was complicit in an imperial project that would eventually encircle the globe.

Effects of Conducting With or Without a Musical Score on Observers’ Perceptions of Conductors

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of conductor score use (conducting with a musical score vs. conducting without a score) on observers’ perceptions of conductors. We also examined how those effects may differ when viewed from the ensemble perspective compared to the audience perspective. Participants ( N = 126) were collegiate musicians who viewed two video recordings of a conductor leading a collegiate symphonic band through an excerpt of Grainger’s Colonial Song. In one video, participants viewed the conductor using a musical score. In the other video, the conductor did not use a musical score. Half of the participants viewed the videos showing the front view of the conductor (ensemble perspective), and the other half viewed the back view of the conductor (audience perspective). Participants rated the conductor’s competence and knowledge of the score in each video. Results indicated a significant effect due to score condition. However, that effect was not independent of viewing perspective or presentation order. Responses to open-ended questions indicated that conductor gesture was the most common aspect observed by participants, but participants also reported that conductor score use was one of the common aspects noticed when evaluating knowledge of the score.