Western Music Research Articles

Christian Rap in Latvia: A New Page in the History of Contemporary Christian Music in Baltic Christianity

Excerpt: "In the context of the Soviet period and the huge effectiveness of Christian gospel rock as a vehicle of evangelization, however, these innovations’ proximity to “worldly” music, and the notion of protest and/or renewal that came along, provided the necessary attraction for Christians, converts, and people interested in contemporary Western music. Christian rap in Latvia, on the other hand, has developed in a context where popular culture including rap music was readily available to the audiences, and rap acquired the notion of protest that to most rappers and listeners, religious or not, is incompatible or even in conflict with Christianity. It is also important to note that Latvian rappers may employ religious references and explore existential topics in their work, thus fulfilling the hermeneutical function of religion and responding to the demand for this function among the audience. In this situation, Christian rap is a marginal phenomenon both to the Latvian rap industry and to Christian circles—too worldly for many believers and too Christian for many in the general audience."

Konservatuvar Şan Anasanat Dalı Öğrencilerinin Covid-19 Sürecinde Piyano Ve Eşlik Derslerine İlişkin Görüşleri

The aim of this study is to determine the views of the students studying in Conservatory Classical Western Music singing departments about online distance education piano and accompaniment lessons, which were switched to emergency online education during the Covid-19 period. This study is a qualitative study and has a phenomenological design. The data in the research were obtained through a semi-structured interview technique with a form created with open-ended questions created by the researcher within the framework of the literature. According to the content analysis, internet connection and synchronization cause the most problems due to the fact
 that synchronization, which is a very important element of piano and accompaniment lessons by nature, cannot be provided in online education. In addition, it is seen that not being able to read body language, gestures and facial expressions are the most negative factors in piano and
 accompaniment education.The most negative criticism about online education is that online education cannot be effective in piano and accompaniment lessons, and the most positive opinion is that the exams are evaluated based on audio and video recordings. As a result of this
 qualitative research, it can be recommended to develop the technical infrastructure, update the curriculum, and support the online learning environment with augmented reality applications

RAGA DETECTION

The Indian music genre bestows an artist to offer their own particular flavor to a raga makes it delicate for a neophyte to spot two contrasting performances of the identical raga. The importance of Raga identification in Indian music cannot be inflated. The analysis must begin with relating the underpinning raga. There are various attempts made in relating the raga in an exceedingly music. The identification of ragas is intelligible and comes only after respectable quantum of revelation. For automated identification, several the attributes of ragas must be converted into applicable features. This becomes particularly difficult for Indian music because of the subsequent reasons which must be addressed while transforming a music piece into swara strings It might be difficult for a novice to distinguish between two different renditions of the same raga because the Indian music genre allows a performer to add their own unique flavour to a raga. It is impossible to overstate the significance of raga identification in Indian music. Identifying the underlying raga is the first step in the investigation. Various attempts have been made to relate the raga in a very musical way. Raga classification is comprehensible and follows a reasonable amount of revelation. Several ragas' properties must be transformed into relevant traits in order for them to be automatically identified. Due to the ensuing considerations that must be made while converting a musical composition into swara strings, this becomes especially challenging for Indian music. During a performance, numerous instruments are also used to create a musical composition. Indian music uses a relative scale rather than a Kelvin scale for its notes, in contrast to Western music. A very raga lacks a rooted beginning swara. In Indian music, notes contain a spectrum of frequencies (also known as oscillations) surrounding them rather than a fixed frequency. Each raga has an unfixed number of swaras, and if all of the raga's attributes are present, colourful extemporizations are permitted when citing a particular raga. These elements present a significant obstacle to the automatic discovery of raga. One of the methods for raga type is the recapitulation of raga into swaras at each point in time and classification using a classifier similar to K Nearest Neighbor model has been created and published while the model offers more nuance on the test dataset sample. There have been attempts to relate the raga to a piece of music. A strategy for determining the raga type involves resuming the raga into swaras at regular intervals and categorising using techniques like KNN and SVM.

Improvisation is a novel tool to study musicality

Humans spontaneously invent songs from an early age. Here, we exploit this natural inclination to probe implicit musical knowledge in 33 untrained and poor singers (amusia). Each sang 28 long improvisations as a response to a verbal prompt or a continuation of a melodic stem. To assess the extent to which each improvisation reflects tonality, which has been proposed to be a core organizational principle of musicality and which is present within most music traditions, we developed a new algorithm that compares a sung excerpt to a probability density function representing the tonal hierarchy of Western music. The results show signatures of tonality in both nonmusicians and individuals with congenital amusia, who have notorious difficulty performing musical tasks that require explicit responses and memory. The findings are a proof of concept that improvisation can serve as a novel, even enjoyable method for systematically measuring hidden aspects of musicality across the spectrum of musical ability.

Comparison and Analysis of Timbre Fusion for Chinese and Western Musical Instruments.

Timbre fusion is the theoretical basis of instrument acoustics and Chinese and Western orchestral acoustics. Currently, studies on timbre fusion are mainly focused on Western instruments, but there are some studies on the timbre fusion of Chinese instruments. In this paper, the characteristics of timbre fusion for Chinese and Western instruments are explored, focusing on the subjective attributes and objective acoustic parameters, and a series of experiments is carried out. First, a database containing 518 mixed timbre stimuli of Chinese and Western instruments was constructed to provide basic data that are necessary for the subjective and objective analyses of timbre fusion. We designed and conducted a subjective evaluation experiment of timbre perception attributes based on the method of successive categories. The experimental data were processed using statistical approaches, such as variance analysis, multidimensional preference analysis, and correlation analysis, and we studied the influence of the temporal envelopes and instrument types on fusion, segregation, roughness, and pleasantness. In addition, the differences between Chinese and Western instruments were compared based on these four perception attributes. The results show that fusion and segregation are the most important attributes for Chinese instrument timbre, while roughness is the most important attribute for Western instrument timbre. In addition, multiple linear regression, random forest, and multilayer perceptron were used to construct a set of timbre fusion models for Chinese and Western instruments. The results show that these models can better predict the timbre fusion attributes. It was also found that there are some differences between the timbre fusion models for Chinese and Western instruments, which is consistent with the analysis results of subjective experimental data. The contribution of acoustic objective parameters to the fusion model is also discussed.

On the Study of Thai Music Emotion Recognition Based on Western Music Model

The mood of the song could be identified by tracking the listener’s emotion. The research in this area is growing significantly at the present. There are many research studies in western music, but a few in Thai music. Therefore, in this research, Thai songs were chosen because the Thai is a native language and Thai songs are quite popular in the region of research. This research is divided into 2 parts. First, Thai music was evaluated by the set of a system based on western music training settings. By using valence-arousal values, multiple linear regression, and k-nearest neighbors to represent the emotional annotations from the music. As a result, the highest f-measure of Thai music from multiple linear regression by ALL model was 41% and the f-measure of western music from multiple linear regression by No Tempo model was 51%, which was very different because ALL model in western music has lower efficiency than other models. Second, we measured the mood of 125 Thai popular songs and used valence-arousal (energy) values from Spotify API to investigate the results. In this research we used multiple linear regression (MLR) and support vector regression (SVR). Experimental results show that the multiple linear regression provides the highest accuracy of 61.29% with the precision of 65%, recall of 61%, and f-measure of 60% which is more than support vector regression.

Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920–1936 by Peter Keppy

Reviewed by: Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920–1936 by Peter Keppy Abdiel Enrique Sánchez Revilla Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920–1936. By Peter Keppy. Singapore: NUS Press, 2019, 288 pp. ISBN: 978-981-3250-51-2 The debates on modernity finally abandoned the material path taken by Marxists and capitalists and are now centred on cultural discussions. Popular culture is the centre of this new historiographical path which seeks to address the important question of how modernity is embodied in cultural practices. In this sense, I find Keppy's book particularly meaningful because it leads us to the centre of the building process of popular culture debate in the Philippines and in Dutch East Indies. The author's work focuses on the meaning of popular culture during the 1920s in both countries and on how a new set of cultural practices appeared. If, as he states 'popular culture significantly exposes mentalities and ethics as a prism for social change', it is important to direct the discussion on how music was appreciated and used in the Philippines and Indonesia. In that sense, he adopts New Cultural History ideas to state that the meaning of 'music' must be contextualized in a determined time and place. Both Luis Francisco Borromeo, Filipino jazz singer, and Javanese Miss Riboet (Ribut in Bahasa Indonesia), opera singer, were the visible part of the emergence of a new culture in colonized societies. Although as Keppy states that both societies were different, they were at the centre of a worldwide modernization process, and consequently, they emerged in the midst of political and social turmoil. At the same time, both singers revitalized local theatre and music by localizing Western music and giving it a new meaning in their societies. As a first step, Keppy analyses popular culture and its relation with three different but interconnected realms. Firstly, with the growing nationalist sentiment; secondly, within the modernist way of life and thirdly, with the rampant cosmopolitanism. The author convincingly argues that those three aspects are well-connected with the emergence of a new set of cultural practices in the 1920s. To grasp the consequences of the cultural transformations of that era in the Philippines and in Indonesia, the author reuses the concept of in-between culture. He states that the concept is a functional tool that enables an escape from the earlier debate that divided culture into notions of low and high culture. Consequently, Keppy challenges notions of cultural homogeneity and the belief in an all-powerful imperial force that had the power to impose a consistent ideology. By doing that, Keppy questions the simplicity of the binary conception of culture. Instead, he states that identity emerges as a terrain in which the individual creates a life strategy. The relation between identity and music is present in every part of Keppy's book as he seeks to reconstruct the now-forgotten history of the emergence of identity sentiments in both societies. One of the main contributions of Keppy's study to an understanding of popular culture is precisely his statement that culture in both places was implemented not only by the metropolis or the local elites but also by the masses. In this respect, the author suggests that both singers created a cosmopolitan pop culture and a popular modernity largely ignored by the United States and by the Netherlands. The comparison between Borromeo and Miss Riboet highlights another important aspect of the current global shift in the [End Page 129] humanities. The use of Western music by both singers blurs the apparent closed cultural circuits between the colony and its metropolis to shed light on a more wide-ranging history of global music. The use of jazz, tango, and other foreign musical styles is representative of an era in which jazz was used as a musical wildcard for which every society had a different meaning. Even though both musical movements were comparable, the truth is that their development was different. For example, in the case of Borromeo music, the evolution of popular art 'offers a complex picture of non-elite and elite participation in...

Polyphonic Theory in the Perspective of Intersexuality—The Relationship Between Bakhtin’s Polyphonic Novel and Polyphonic Music

The “polyphonic novel”, as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin, has a limited connection, commonality and a great difference with the “polyphonic music” in the history of Western music. The “interartistry (a concept derived from intersexuality, meaning intersexuality between two categories of art)” between the two can be examined in two ways: the intertextuality of the two theories themselves, and the profound artistic dialogue between Bakhtin and the composer Mikhail Glinka on an intellectual level that is not separated from the “intersubjectivity”. The heterogeneity between the two is mainly manifested in the dichotomous characteristics of “opposition and imitation” and “contradiction and harmony”. The “interartistry” of polyphonic novel and polyphonic music is examined from the perspective of “intersextuality”, which helps to fully understand the connection and difference between them and reduce the interdisciplinary misuse and abuse of related terms.

Archival Silence in the Collections of Dietrich Schulz-Köhn

Archival Silence in the Collections of Dietrich Schulz-Köhn

The Social Spaces of Music Traditions in Baghdad before and after Destruction

The Social Spaces of Music Traditions in Baghdad before and after Destruction

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project

Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550, by Sarah Ann Long

Book Review| April 01 2022 Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550, by Sarah Ann Long Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550, by Sarah AnnLong. Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2021. xxv, 350 pp. David J. Rothenberg David J. Rothenberg DAVID J. ROTHENBERG is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of The Flower of Paradise: Marian Devotion and Secular Song in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Oxford University Press, 2011) and coeditor of Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and the Oxford Anthology of Western Music, vol. 1, The Earliest Notations to the Early Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2013; 3rd ed. in preparation). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2022) 75 (1): 191–195. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.191 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David J. Rothenberg; Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550, by Sarah Ann Long. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2022; 75 (1): 191–195. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.191 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Like most people living through the current Covid-19 pandemic, citizens of European cities in the late Middle Ages experienced ongoing fear of disease and death, the most prominent though far from only cause of which was bubonic plague. As Sarah Ann Long states at the beginning of her excellent study, “The disease first appeared in Western Europe in 1347, recurring every ten to fifteen years until well into the eighteenth century, and had a profound effect on the populace” (p. 1). The sprawling effects of bubonic plague on medieval European society are well known, but the impacts of plague and other diseases on musical practice specifically are still coming into focus.1 Long makes an important contribution to this field with a richly documented study of the ways in which confraternities—urban organizations including both professional “trade confraternities,” commonly known as guilds, and purely religious “devotional confraternities”—used liturgical music to beseech... You do not currently have access to this content.

Singing a New Song: Christian Musical Literature for Chinese Women in the Republican Era

This paper focuses on the songs circulated in the first Christian woman’s magazine in China, Nü duo (1912–1951). Its first editor, American missionary Laura M. White (1867–1937), played a crucial role in creating a wide range of music for Chinese girls through journalism. White used print media to circulate songs that were viewed as an integral part of the spiritual life of ideal womanhood. Unlike the hymnody confined to congregational worship, the music circulated through Nü duo aimed to promote a vocalised expression of Christian faith in everyday life. This spiritual life was interwoven with secular concerns about the nation, social issues and home life. An exploration of music literature published in Nü duo shows how Western music was translated into local language that aimed to reach female Christians in mission schools and at home. It provided an alternative to the dominant indigenous development of Protestant hymnody in the Republican era. It went beyond the foreign and local dichotomy with a concept of universal modern citizenship. Furthermore, it added a gendered perspective to Christian sacred music that was linked to the creation of a sense of a female fellowship.

Using Turkish Aksak Rhythms To Teach Asymmetrical Meter

Ear training courses often treat the topic of asymmetrical meter (5, 7 beats) as uncommon in Western music. This causes musical examples in the subject to be less idiomatic than those which deal with more "normative" meters, in 2, 3, and 4 beats. Turkish music, on the other hand, often organizes beats asymmetrically, a feature known as aksak or "limping." This paper discusses strategies for incorporating both Turkish musical examples and pedagogical practices in aural skills class in order to teach the topic of asymmetrical meter.

Universals and variations in musical preferences: A study of preferential reactions to Western music in 53 countries.

Are there universal patterns in musical preferences? To address this question, we built on theory and research in personality, cultural, and music psychology to map the terrain of preferences for Western music using data from 356,649 people across six continents. In Study 1 (N = 284,935), participants in 53 countries completed a genre favorability measure, and in Study 2 (N = 71,714), participants in 36 countries completed an audio-based measure of preferential reactions to music. Both studies included self-report measures of the Big Five personality traits and demographics. Results converged to show that individual differences in preferences for Western music can be organized in terms of five latent factors that are invariant (i.e., universal) across countries and that generalize across assessment methods. Furthermore, the patterns of correlations between personality traits and musical preferences were largely consistent across countries and assessment methods. For example, trait Extraversion was correlated with stronger reactions to Contemporary musical styles (which feature rhythmic, upbeat, and electronic attributes), whereas trait Openness was correlated with stronger reactions to Sophisticated musical styles (which feature complex and cerebral attributes often heard in improvisational and instrumental music). The patterns of correlations between musical preferences and gender differences, ethnicity, and other sociodemographic metrics were also largely invariant across countries. Together, these findings strongly suggest that there are universal patterns in preferences for Western music, providing a foundation on which to develop and test hypotheses about the interactions between music, psychology, biology, and culture. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Effect of online quizzes on music theory achievement of freshman music teaching students

This research examined the effects of online quizzes on the music theory achievement of freshman music teaching students. For this purpose, the students who took the Western Music Theory and Practice I course were determined as the study group and experimental research was conducted. A pre-assessment test was given to determine students’ knowledge level about music theory and the median value of the test was determined as the cut-off point. The cut-off point was established as the experimental group, while the cut-off point was established as the control group. In the semester, four online quizzes were given to the experimental group apart from the midterm and final exams. Finally, a final test was applied to whether there was a significant difference between the groups. Consequently, there was no significant difference between the two groups. However, it was seen that the experimental group scores are slightly higher than the control group scores, thus the experimental group achieved the success of the control group. When it was compared to the pre-assessment test scores, it shows that the students in the experimental group achieved a remarkable positive difference in the process. The discussion includes recommendations about the use of online quizzes.

Music’s Textual Dilemma

Music is sound: audible, unique, ephemeral. For music composed before the advent of electronic recording a century and a quarter ago, musical texts — the unique arrangements of musical symbols by which music is represented in visible form — are our principal evidence for how that music sounded when it was created. But the texts in which Western music of the past is preserved are not necessarily accurate representations of the music they record. Although the symbols that make up Western musical notation have remained relatively stable over the centuries, much that they represent has changed. Tunings and temperaments have varied — from repertoire to repertoire and from place to place. So have styles of singing and of playing instruments. So have the instruments themselves. Most important in the present context, the conventions for realizing texts have varied substantially; the idea that performers should follow their texts closely dates only from the mid eighteenth century. In these contradictions lies music’s textual dilemma: music historians and performers must depend upon texts, but even supplemented by research in performance practice, texts do not necessarily provide the information necessary to support informed discussion.

Problem-based Learning to Encourage Active Learning and Teamwork Among First Year Medical Students - Student Reports in 2021 - What is the Best Western Music to Listen to When Studying? (Course Name: Listening Skills: Development and Assessment).

The goal of this study was to evaluate how listening to different types of music while studying affects learning. We conducted a survey to discover people's music listening habits. We designated calculation tasks or memorization tasks and asked students to work on the tasks while listening to nothing or listening to music The types of Western music had three categories: the accent of the singer, the pitch, and the speed. The participants were divided into six groups based on what tasks they did and what types of music they listened to. There was no correlation between the preference of study environment, whether students usually listen to Western music or any music while studying, and the task scores. We found that there was not much difference between the scores of calculations when listening to nothing or listening to some kind of music. It seems that the ideal type of music a student should listen to depends on what they study. It might be a good idea to listening to slow music or music at a low pitch when doing calculation tasks. On the other hand, when doing memorization tasks, it might be a good idea to play music that you have never listened to before.

Музична індустрія України за часів війни

The music industry consists of a number of components - the production of new products, their circulation in the media and the implementation of concert activities. Usually the process of producing musical products went through such stages as writing compositions, creating arrangements for them, performing at concerts and finally recording songs in studios. Subsequently, there was a tour, which could increase the ability to effectively implement the already finished musical product. As a result of the military events taking place in Ukraine, the modern domestic music industry, in which various forms of musical production and performing activities were presented, is currently in a state of significant transformational changes. As a result of active hostilities on the Ukrainian territory, there was a need to find new formats of implementation, first of all, concert activities. The representatives of Ukrainian show business have developed new strategies for promoting their performance. Firstly, the practice of holding concert events abroad with the participation of Ukrainian performers has spread. Events combining offline and online performances have also been introduced. There has been a practice of using such locations as the subway for concert activities, which, due to its characteristics, has an increased level of security in the event of the threat of artillery fire and missile strikes. Spontaneous open-air concerts, organized for charitable purposes, have also spread. The release of musical products continues, but the content of the musical content has acquired a more patriotic-tinged character and taken high positions in the charts, ratings, etc. The author states that some compositions have acquired the meaning of peculiar symbols of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their independence. Their numerous performance versions, in which Ukrainian and Western musicians took part, have acquired the status of "viral". This was facilitated by the creative collaborations of foreign performers with Ukrainian musicians. The goal of creative cooperation was to show support for the Ukrainian people, express it in musical form. Such actions are extremely important, and various musicians have demonstrated solidarity with the Ukrainians. All these factors have a fleeting effect on the increase of interest in the Ukrainian cultural product, support of the music industry. At the same time, they perform the role of psychological support. Key words: music industry, music product, concert, rating, war, Ukraine.

How to Recognize the Important Influence of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on Twentieth-Century Western Music and Modern and Contemporary World Music

The Nationalist Period, the Neoclassical Period, and the Dodecaphony music (or Twelve Tone Music) Period are three important periods in the life of the Russian-born American music composer Stravinsky. The ballet The Rite of Spring, which was composed during the “Nationalist Period”, has become a classic work in the history of music for its original composition, ingenious layout and bold innovative spirit, and has become an outstanding landmark work because of its uniqueness and exclusiveness. It also had a significant impact on twentieth-century Western music and contemporary world music. In order to analyse, explain, summarise and outline the “unique charm” and “artistic significance” of this epoch-making work of The Rite of Spring, this article has its focus on the following aspects such as the background of the composition, its musical features (harmony, orchestration, melody, structure, etc.) and its aesthetic characteristics.