Western Music Research Articles

TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: MUSIC IN ASEAN COMMUNITIES

The traditional music and performing arts in the ASEAN have found new powerful conduits of transmission with the advent of the digital age. Although claims of cultural ownership over music and dance occasionally appear on social networks and media platforms, the ubiquity of the Internet has in fact benefitted the general public, allowing them access to images and sounds hitherto unknown. Modernisation has taken its toll on the region’s musical heritage. Ancient elements of indigenous music have faded away. The influx of popular and Western music has increasingly eroded the space and demand for traditional music. Many orchestras in the region feature diverse musical instruments tuned to a common Western tuning system, thus relinquishing their Asian musical roots. The fusion of Asian musical ensembles with Western musical instruments has forced the tuning of gongs, xylophones, metallophones, and singing to the Western diatonic scale, losing their indigenous resonances, sonorities, and timbres. Urbanisation and the migration of the young into urban areas disrupted the discontinuity in generational transmission of music. Village rituals and ceremonies play an important role in preserving ancient religious systems where music, dance, and theatre were essential as part of agricultural life, trance and curing rites, and communal well-being. The onslaught of mass media and the Internet has also accentuated the de-sacralisation of ritual spaces, leaving many musical traditions behind as memories of the past.Keywords: traditional music, urbanisation, de-sacralisation, memories, ASEAN.

Statistical characteristics of tonal harmony: A corpus study of Beethoven's string quartets.

Tonal harmony is one of the central organization systems of Western music. This article characterizes the statistical foundations of tonal harmony based on the computational analysis of expert annotations in a large corpus. Using resampling methods, this study shows that 1) the rank-frequency distribution of chords resembles a power law, i.e. few chords govern a large proportion of the data; 2) chord transitions are referential and chord predictability is significantly affected by distinguished chord features; 3) tonal harmony conveys directedness in time; and 4) tonal harmony operates differently at the hierarchical levels of chords and keys. These results serve to characterize tonal harmony on empirical grounds and advance the methodological state-of-the-art in digital musicology.

Stimulating Student’s Interest in Listening through Western Music (PkM)

Bahasa Inggris adalah salah satu bahasa yang sudah wajib untuk kuasai oleh penduduk dunia. Terlebih lagi dengan dicetusnya perdagangan bebas, masyarakat dituntut untuk menguasai bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa transaksi internasional. Bagi kaum pelajar bahasa Inggris adalah ilmu yang diwajibkan untuk dipelajari sehingga tuntutan dunia pendidikan dalam memperdalam pembelajaran dan pengenalan bahasa Inggris semakin ditingkatkan. Dalam bahasa Inggris ada empat skill yang harus dikuasai oleh pelajar, skill tersebut adalah speaking, reading, writing, dan listening. Salah satu skill yang paling sukar untuk dipelajari adalah listening. Hal tersebut dikarenakan listening membutuhkan keahlian dan konsentrasi tinggi dalam mempelajarinya.Tujuan umum pada PKM ini adalah memberi pemahaman kepada siswa SMA dalam mempelajari bahasa Inggris khususnya kemampuan menyimak atau listening. Bagaimana metode yang tepat dan mudah dalam mempelajari bahasa Inggris. Metode yang digunakan dalam PkM ini adalah memberikan materi, praktek, dan games tentang bahasa Inggris terutama listening.Kata Kunci: Stimulating, Listening

The structure of musical harmony as an ordered phase of sound: A statistical mechanics approach to music theory.

Music, while allowing nearly unlimited creative expression, almost always conforms to a set of rigid rules at a fundamental level. The description and study of these rules, and the ordered structures that arise from them, is the basis of the field of music theory. Here, I present a theoretical formalism that aims to explain why basic ordered patterns emerge in music, using the same statistical mechanics framework that describes emergent order across phase transitions in physical systems. I first apply the mean field approximation to demonstrate that phase transitions occur in this model from disordered sound to discrete sets of pitches, including the 12-fold octave division used in Western music. Beyond the mean field model, I use numerical simulation to uncover emergent structures of musical harmony. These results provide a new lens through which to view the fundamental structures of music and to discover new musical ideas to explore.

Profesyonel Viyolonsel İcracılarının Performans Gelişim Süreçlerini Etkileyen Unsurlar

The aim of this study is to examine performance development processes of professional cellists in Turkish Music, to identify musical behaviors and knowledge required by the profession, and to contribute to professional music education. In this research, phenomenological methodology was utilized. The study group was selected through a combination of snowball sampling (chain sampling) and maximum variation sampling methods, which are purposeful sampling strategies (n:15). The research data were obtained by semi structured interview method. The interview questions were prepared by the researcher and they consist of 6 open-ended questions. The data were subject to content analysis via the computer software NVivo 12. The study revealed that all the participants carried out their studies on Western Music by means of methods and studies on Turkish Music by listening, imitating, performing, practicing taksims and transposition. Moreover, the participants reported that they are motivated by a number of factors, such as their love for cello, quality of the instrument, accompanying, etc. to play their instrument. The cellists whom the participants most commonly listen to are Tanburi Cemil Bey, Mesut Cemil Bey, Ismail Akdeniz and Ozer Arkun.

Claude V. Palisca as Music Educator: The Yale Seminar on Music Education and the Norton Anthology of Western Music

Claude V. Palisca (1921–2001) was a prominent American musicologist and music educator. He authored books and articles about Renaissance and Baroque music theory and developments in musicology, but is most widely known as the founder and first editor of the Norton Anthology of Western Music ( NAWM) and coauthor of A History of Western Music, the two music history textbooks that are still in use in classrooms worldwide. In this article, we trace Palisca’s first idea of the NAWM’s structure, content, and purpose through his writings and activities between the 1950s and late 1970s. The central part among Palisca’s activities in music education belongs to his organization of the Yale Seminar on Music Education, his seminar report, and the listening curriculum designed to instill more balance between performance and academic study in largely performance-oriented public school music programs. In his listening curriculum, Palisca argued for emphasis on understanding music through listening within the historical and theoretical context of the music work, an approach he would later pursue in the NAWM. Palisca hinted that a similar teaching “package” is needed for the undergraduate level, thus identifying the listening curriculum from his Yale Seminar report as the first glimmer of the future NAWM.

Qin Music: Two Recordings

Qin Music: Two Recordings Aaron Judd (bio) Qin: Himmelsk Musik för Qin och Xiao / Celestial Music for Qin and Xiao. Deng Hong, qin, and Chen Shasha, xiao. Caprice Records, Stockholm (CAP 21818), 2009. One CD (54 minutes). $20.00. Guqin / 成公亮的古琴藝術. Chen Gong-liang, qin. Wind Music, Taipei (TCD 1027), 2008. One CD (56 minutes). $47.40. The Chinese qin or guqin is a central instrument in Chinese music history and a symbol of traditional Chinese culture. These two recordings show its range, depth, and beauty. They would be welcome additions to any music library. Himmelsk Musik för Qin och Xiao / Celestial Music for Qin and Xiao features Deng Hong (qin) and Chen Shasha (xiao). The combination of qin and xiao creates a calm, gentle atmosphere. As one of the lightest, breathiest, and smokiest of Chinese wind instruments, the xiao pairs well with the sparseness and gentility of the qin. Virtuosity is rare and unobtrusive, as in the latter [End Page 175] portion of "Flowing Waters" (Liushui), which aptly conveys the rushing and gurgling of a mountain stream. At 54 minutes, the program is on the short side. But for listeners who have endured too many overstuffed 80-minute albums, this may be a welcome change. The engineering is excellent, sharp, and incisive—you can hear the sliding fingers, wobbling strings, and scrapy fingernails, which are so important to this repertoire and are sometimes difficult to discern in less detailed recordings. The last track, "Creaks of the Oars" (Ao ai), is a highlight. Deng's playing has a rustic, almost guitar-like vigor, with heavy strumming that evokes the dipping of boatmen's oars as they move upstream on the Yangtze River. Deng also brings out the varied possibilities of dynamics, texture, and reverberation in the middle section with its playful repetitions. A wonderfully long diminuendo ends the piece, passing from antiphonal chords to an angular melody and then into a flurry of slides and rasps. As the disc closes, we linger not only on the music but also on the textural qualities of the strings. The cover art, with its dignified portrait of the two artists clad in gold against a black and dark gray background, matches the feeling of the music: in Polonius's words, "rich, not gaudy." In the cover photo, Deng is in the foreground, Chen behind—this too is appropriate, given that the qin stars and the xiao is treated as an obbligato instrument. The liner notes, in Swedish, English, and Chinese, are excellent. Cecilia Lindqvist (b. 1932), the disc's producer, writes with deep knowledge of and affection for the guqin and Chinese culture as a whole. This is unsurprising, as Lindqvist began her qin study in Beijing in the early 1960s, when her teachers included such celebrated figures as Guan Pinghu. One of that master's star students was Wang Di, who in turn is the mother of Deng Hong, so the disc has an air of multigenerational collaboration between Chinese and Western musicians that is rare and laudable. Especially welcome in the liner notes are Lindqvist's details about the provenance of pieces. Thanks to these notes, the listener can learn when a piece was first notated and which qinpu (book of tablature) Deng has used in her recording. As the date, form, and style of pieces differ significantly with different qinpu, the information Lindqvist provides is invaluable. Be sure to leaf through the entire booklet, as illustrations with bilingual Swedish-English captions are sprinkled among the different translations. Comparisons of qin of different shapes, details of decorations such as jade insets and tassels, and a scale drawing of the Marquise of Dai's qin from 167 BCE are among these thoughtfully selected images. Himmelsk musik is a gem of a disc for qin lovers and beginners alike. It can be recommended without reservation. Sadly, the Caprice label is no longer [End Page 176] producing new recordings, according to its website (http://musikverket.se/capricerecords/om-caprice-records/?lang=en). Whereas Himmelsk music is straightforward and artless in presentation, the second disc, a recording of solo qin pieces by Cheng Gong-liang (called Guqin or, in Chinese, The Guqin Art of...

Twirling Triplets: The Qualia of Rotation and Musical Rhythm

While musicologists have long noted that triplet rhythms evoke sensations of rotation in listeners, no theory has been proposed to account for this apparent association. To investigate this phenomenon, 33 excerpts of “spinning, rotating, twirling, or swirling” music were crowd-sourced from an online discussion forum. Analysis revealed a prominence of fast, repeated, isochronous patterns using stepwise pitch movement, with significantly more compound meters than generally found in Western music. Inspired by ecological acoustics, an Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds (ETRoS) is proposed to explain these associations. The theory maps patterns of loudness fluctuations to trajectories of rotating sound sources. Two experiments tested the theory. In Experiment A, listeners rated how much binary, ternary, quaternary, and quinary figures (of 2–5 notes) evoked sensations of rotation. Experiment B used a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm pitting ecological quaternary stimuli (strong-medium-weak-medium) against unecological stimuli with permuted stress values more typical of Western music (strong-weak-medium-weak). Results indicate that perceived rotation increases with tempo and is poorly evoked by binary rhythms. Loudness patterns consistent with rotating trajectories were perceived as more rotating than unecological patterns—but only when pitch was also moving. Altogether, moderate support is provided for an acoustic-ecological account of rotating sounds.

Topoi umuzycznione. Przegląd koncepcji toposu w muzyce

This article studies topos as a concept and its influence in Western Music. For this end, the history of how the understanding of topos developed, as well as how it manifested itself, shall be presented. This term, one which originates from the Ancient Greek’s study of Rhetoric, quicklygained acceptance in many cultural contexts. It is thanks to this growth that it was promptly incorporated into ars musica. During the Middleages, this concept from the Antique era was revived, notably influencing the illustrative nature of this era’s music. The concept continued throughout the Common era proceeding, especially in reinforcing the role of affects in music. The 20th century witnessed the progression of many unique understandings of topos coindependently. The contem- porary thought of this era has presented numerous propositions of one is to understand the term that oscillates between the fields of musicology, literature studies, and philosophy. It can be said, that defining topos in the field of music will be closely tied with the emerging „transcultural” pheno- menon; an appropriate paradigm with which to observe the variables shaping European culture, such as globalization and orientalism.

A Study on Changjak Gukak Composed by the Composers who Majored in Western Music

A Study on Changjak Gukak Composed by the Composers who Majored in Western Music

Arts Entrepreneurship in China: Exploring the Professional Career Development Model for Chinese Emerging Western Classical Musicians

Artists’ career management has become an urgent topic in the scholarship of arts administration and the creative economy in many Western countries. Although Chinese creative and cultural industries have also experienced significant attention and growth, the worklife experiences of Chinese cultural workers are rarely discussed in the international academic literature. Addressing that gap, this study investigates artistic careers and professional development of a small sample of emerging Western classical musicians in a Chinese second-tier city. We found similar patterns in career portfolios and strategies of career entrepreneurship between Western and Chinese musicians, although differing career opportunities and explicit career strategies seem related to local context.

Investigating the canon in A-Level music: Musical prescription in A-level music syllabuses (for first examination in 2018)

AbstractThe canon forming the backbone of most conceptions of Western music has been a feature of musical culture for decades, exerting an influence upon musical study in educational settings. In English school contexts, the once perceived superiority of classical music in educational terms has been substantially revised and reconsidered, opening up school curricula to other musical traditions and styles on an increasingly equal basis. However, reforms to GCSE and A-levels (examinations taken aged 16 and 18 respectively), which have taken place from 2010 onwards, have refocused attention on canonic knowledge rather than skills-based learning. In musical terms, this has reinforced the value of ‘prescribed works’ in A-level music specifications.Thus far, little attention has been paid to the extent to which a kind of scholastic canon is maintained in the Western European Art Music section of the listening and appraising units in current A-level music specifications. Though directed in part by guidance from Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation, the regulatory body for qualifications in England), there is evidence of a broader cultural trend at work. The present article seeks to compare the historical evidence presented in Robert Legg's 2012 article with current A-level specifications. Such a comparison establishes points of change and similarity in the canon of composers selected for close study in current A-levels, raising questions about the purpose and function of such qualifications.

Syntactic complexity and musical proficiency modulate neural processing of non-native music

In music, chords are organized into hierarchical structures on the basis of musical syntax and the syntax of Western music can be implicitly acquired by listeners growing up in a Western musical culture. Here, we investigated whether Western musical syntax of different complexities can be implicitly acquired by non-native listeners growing up in China. This study used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure how the neural responses to musical sequences that either follow a simple rule, i.e., finite state grammar (FSG), or a complex rule, i.e., phrase structure grammar (PSG), are affected. We tested three groups of Chinese listeners who varied in their proficiency and experience in Western music. Only the high-proficiency group had received formal Western musical training, whereas the low- and moderate-proficiency groups varied in their degree of exposure to Western music. The results showed that in the FSG condition, the event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by regular and irregular final chords were not significantly different in the low-proficiency group. In contrast, in the moderate- and high-proficiency groups, the irregular final chords evoked an ERAN-N5 biphasic response. In the PSG condition, however, only the high-proficiency group showed an ERAN-N5 biphasic response evoked by irregular final chords. This study provides evidence that although simple structures of Western music, such as FSG, can be acquired by long-term implicit learning, the acquisition of more complex structures, such as PSG, merely from exposure to western music may not be as easy.

Model-Based Digital Pianos: From Physics to Sound Synthesis

As a result of their complexity and versatility, pianos are arguably one of the most important instruments in Western music. The size, weight, and price of grand pianos as well as their relatively simple control surface (i.e., the keyboard), have led to the development of digital counterparts that mimic the sound of acoustic pianos as closely as possible. While most commercial digital pianos are based on sample playback, it is also possible to reproduce a piano's sound by modeling the physics of the instrument. The process of physical modeling starts with first understanding the physical principles, followed by creating accurate numerical models, and finally, finding numerically optimized signal processing models that allow sound synthesis in real time by excluding inaudible phenomena and adding some perceptually important features by using signal processing tricks. Accurate numerical models can be used by physicists and engineers to understand how the instrument functions or to help piano makers with instrument development. On the other hand, efficient real-time models are geared toward composers and musicians who perform at home or onstage. This article provides an overview of a physics-based piano synthesis beginning with computationally heavy, physically accurate approach followed by a discussion of the approaches that are designed to produce the best possible sound quality for real-time synthesis.

Corrientes, campos y escenas: una propuesta sociomusicológica de clasificación de la música occidental

The History of Music has always been represented, in the Western Academic tradition, as a series of great works signed by geniuses. From this corpus, the necessary cuts were planned and the terminology which will end up configuring the history of the musical styles was provided. Currently this chronology represents an obstacle to add to and contextualize the contemporary creations and it isolates music as an artistic form disconnected from other cultural manifestations. Our theoretical contribution is the result of an interdisciplinary work which conjugates the heritage of Musicology, Sociology and Historiography. The synchronic reflection of these disciplines allows us to articulate a new chronology for Western Music. This proposal establishes as its main cores the historic matrix of the term stream of Philip Ennis, and the concepts of field of Pierre Bourdieu and musical scene of Will Straw. We can, thus, take Music back to its social context and understand its historical process as an uninterrupted flow –a simultaneous combination of four trends and two fields or scenes– and in constant dialogue with the rest of social manifestations.

Ins, Outs of Frequency-lowering Processing

Ins, Outs of Frequency-lowering Processing

Formal-informal musical learning, sex and musicians' personalities

Research has suggested that differences in personality traits among western musicians, in comparison to the general population, may be related to gender. For example, studies suggest male classical musicians are more introverted than popular musicians, though female musicians may be more extroverted than population norms. Contemporary musical learning can be formal and/or informal, and changes in music education may have impacted upon traditional gender-based stereotypes. This study investigated similarities and differences between formal/informal musical learning, gender and musicians' personalities. The sample included 275 musicians (87 female, mean age 40.2 years, range 19–81, learning duration > 6 years). The participants were either self-taught (n = 74), formally taught (n = 62), or a mixture of the two (n = 139). A comparison of two brief inventories (TIPI and BFI-10) provided reliability and validity. Contrary to previous research, no gender differences were found for the trait of Extraversion. Group differences according to formal/informal learning styles were apparent. Higher levels of Conscientiousness were associated with formal music learning. Overall musicians had higher levels of Openness to Experience than population norms. Further research will be required to understand whether this is an artifact of access and provision to music education, or a systematic personality difference among musicians.

A Study on the Description Method and Composition of Western Music Historyin Music Textbooks

A Study on the Description Method and Composition of Western Music Historyin Music Textbooks

Influence of Musical Enculturation on Brain Responses to Metric Deviants.

The ability to recognize metric accents is fundamental in both music and language perception. It has been suggested that music listeners prefer rhythms that follow simple binary meters, which are common in Western music. This means that listeners expect odd-numbered beats to be strong and even-numbered beats to be weak. In support of this, studies have shown that listeners exposed to Western music show stronger novelty and incongruity related P3 and irregularity detection related mismatch negativity (MMN) brain responses to attenuated odd- than attenuated even-numbered metric positions. Furthermore, behavioral evidence suggests that music listeners' preferences can be changed by long-term exposure to non-Western rhythms and meters, e.g., by listening to African or Balkan music. In our study, we investigated whether it might be possible to measure effects of music enculturation on neural responses to attenuated tones on specific metric positions. We compared the magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) to attenuated beats in a “Western group” of listeners (n = 12) mainly exposed to Western music and a “Bicultural group” of listeners (n = 13) exposed for at least 1 year to both Sub-Saharan African music in addition to Western music. We found that in the “Western group” the MMNm was higher in amplitude to deviant tones on odd compared to even metric positions, but not in the “Bicultural group.” In support of this finding, there was also a trend of the “Western group” to rate omitted beats as more surprising on odd than even metric positions, whereas the “Bicultural group” seemed to discriminate less between metric positions in terms of surprise ratings. Also, we observed that the overall latency of the MMNm was significantly shorter in the Bicultural group compared to the Western group. These effects were not biased by possible differences in rhythm perception ability or music training, measured with the Musical Ear Test (MET). Furthermore, source localization analyses suggest that auditory, inferior temporal, sensory-motor, superior frontal, and parahippocampal regions might be involved in eliciting the MMNm to the metric deviants. These findings suggest that effects of music enculturation can be measured on MMNm responses to attenuated tones on specific metric positions.

Multimodal mood classification of Hindi and Western songs

Music mood classification is one of the most interesting research areas in music information retrieval, and it has many real-world applications. Many experiments have been performed in mood classification or emotion recognition of Western music; however, research on mood classification of Indian music is still at initial stage due to scarcity of digitalized resources. In the present work, a mood taxonomy is proposed for Hindi and Western songs; both audio and lyrics were annotated using the proposed mood taxonomy. Differences in mood were observed during the annotation of the audio and lyrics for Hindi songs only. The detailed studies on mood classification of Hindi and Western music are presented for the requirement of the recommendation system. LibSVM and Feed-forward neural networks have been used to develop mood classification systems based on audio, lyrics, and a combination of them. The multimodal mood classification systems using Feed-forward neural networks for Hindi and Western songs obtained the maximum F-measures of 0.751 and 0.835, respectively.