A Szép Énekszó Muzsájához

Title:A Szép Énekszó Muzsájához by Zoltán Kodály
Performers: The Hartt School Tour Choir-2011
Instrumentation: SATB Choir
Culture: American Choir. Music is from Hungary.  

While I may be a bit biased because this choir consists of myself and all of my classmates, I believe that this choir does an excellent job at the re-creation of "world music." While reading Campbell's book this week, I found it interesting as to how there were several different stances on the re-creation of world musics in other cultures. One stance believes that the performance of music should stay close to its source, so that a reproduction of it can be pay tribute to the culture it comes from. This stance includes using enactive listening exercises and recordings, as well as performing the actual piece in an extremely similar venue to its original, if not returning to the actual place itself. The other stance regarding re-creation is taken by those musicians who are drawn to music because of its very nature as an expressive art form. They value potential for new musical expression that can emerge as an outgrowth of experience and training in a wide variety of musical traditions. 

Campbell makes the point that some teachers may have reasons to act as both conservationists and expressionists in their design of curricular experiences for their students. In my experience in this choir, I feel as though my director acted as both a conservationist expressionist. As far a conservationist perspective, we really tried to perform the piece while paying perfection attention to Hungarian diction and style. We did various enactive listening exercises, and repeated Hungarian vowels and consonants back and forth until we got them exactly right. He expressed that this was extremely important because if we got it right, we could easily make people forget that we were an American choir. Based on the applause we got after this performance, I think we definitely succeeded. Another way we stayed true to conservationist style is going back and performing this piece close to its source. This performance takes place in a church right in Budapest, for an audience full of mostly Hungarian people. I feel as though we really experienced this piece and paid tribute to its origin by returning to its routes. I feel like we strived for as much cultural authenticity as possible. If not then, we certainly had a sense of cultural validity, as we have discussed in previous weeks. 

In a way though, our director also worked as an expressionist. As a choir, I believe that we all experienced musical expression like we never had before throughout this tour. This experience gave us an appreciation for world music and performing it in within that culture. I did not believe my conductor when he said people were going to cry because our Hungarian was so beautiful. I saw a lot of tears though in the eyes of the audience when we performed this piece. While we were paying attention to hitting all of the right diction, we were also focused on being as expressive as possible. This expression gave us an experience like no other. Now I have a better understanding of what teachers should strive for when teaching world music. The conservationist approach clearly helps to pay homage to the country that is being performed, where the expressionist point of view gives the performers an additional opportunity to just think about the music, how to deliver it and what that experience will leave you feeling afterwards.  

Barbara Allen

Title: Barbara Allen
Performer: Emmy Rossum as Deladis
Instrumentation: Voice
Culture: Appalachian Mountains (Text originally from England)

While I realize this is from a movie and not a performance, it is no different than someone trying to perform this English ballad who is not originally from England in any context. I chose this video because there was a lot of discussion in Nettl's reading this week regarding oral/aural traditions of passing on music. This song is a Ballad that originally comes from England but here it sung by people in America residing in the Appalachian Mountains. Originally the piece has a much more "proper" English tone to it, but changes based on the performance of this culture.

One of the problems that occurs with oral/aural traditions is the variations the occur when the piece is transferred from nation to nation. Little changes are naturally going to occur the more and more a certain is passed along by aural and oral traditions. This recording sort of proves that performances are going to change based on who is performing it. Clearly this piece sounded different in England in its original setting than it did in this performance. Relating back to our previous readings and discussions regarding authenticity, this performance would be argued as not being "authentic" to its origin. The more and more I study music like this, I think it is healthy for there to be variations the come from oral/aural traditions of learning music like this recording. Yes, we want to keep cultural authenticity of world music alive, but I feel like the reason certain music becomes recognized by different areas of the world is the "not-authentic" performances that occur throughout the world.

 Right after Deladis finishes singing, Dr. Penleric asks Deladis where she learned the song. Deladis replies that her grandmother taught it to her. Dr. Penleric than asks if her grandmother was from England to which Deladis replies "no." Dr. Penleric is amazed by this as am I. I think this is a wonderful demonstration of how music should be shared via oral/aural traditions. The point of oral/aural tradition of learning music is for it to spread throughout the entire world, and give it a change to grow in various cultures. Clearly Deladis has joy in her wonderful performance of this ballad, and that's how music like this should be.

The Sho

Title: The piece is not named

Performer: Naomi Sato

Instrumentation: The Sho

Culture: Japan 

While I have been taking a lot of opportunities to show off a certain piece in the past couple weeks, I really wanted to take a step back this week and try to find something that really featured one of the traditional japanese instruments. This instrument is an aerophone called the sho. In Japanese gagaku music, the sho players will sit at the rear of the ensemble. 

Looking back to the readings from this week, I was very intrigued by the chapter "Thinking About Pitch." After reading this chapter, I came to the conclusion that pitch cannot be easily identified in one simple textbook definition. Rather, there are multiple layers that go into the description and definition of pitch. What drew me to searching for music played on the sho was the section on tone clusters. A tone cluster by definition is a vertical set of pitches, without functional implications of chords in the tonal system. The effect of the sho cluster is of a complex chord played on an organ. Without the sound of the sho, the texture of the Gagaku ensemble lacks layers and sound. 

It's funny because before I chose this recording, I listened to a Gagaku ensemble by itself, and couldn't quite hear what instrument the sho was based on the sound of the entire group. Most people think of instruments of only being able to produce once sound at a time, unless it's a keyboard instrument where multiple notes can be played at once. When first looking at the sho, it looks more like a flute then a keyboard instrument to me. This was partially while I couldn't pick out the tone clusters at first. Now that I have isolated the sound of the sho, I can now here its pitches within an ensemble. The sho is often compared to the Irish bagpipes since the bottom pitch of the cluster is always played and occasional melodic pitches occur on top. This instrument is a perfect example of how pitch isn't always what we think it is and it can't always be obviously heard within an ensemble. It can sometimes have multiple layers or tone clusters like the sho that are hard to pick out and isolate the first time they are heard. 

"Snow"

Title: "Snow" from the album "Zen Garden" by Masa Yoshizawa.

Performers: Various artists listed on Yoshizawa's Album. Which can be found here.
http://www.kokingumi.com/zengarden.html

Instrumentation: Traditional Japanese Instruments. Various strings, flutes percussion and keyboard.

What I thought was extremely important recently was trying to find Japanese music that I like listening to. I know that I would find my project on Japan absolutely miserable if I didn't take the time and search for Japanese music that I am passionate about. These past weeks, world music and its "authenticity" was a large them that kept re-occurring throughout our readings and classroom discussions. While this album is very modern being only released in 2002, I feel that it has a very authentic sound to it, while being something new and exciting at the same time.

The orchestration used is clearly all instruments that are traditional to Japanese culture. The different keyboard styles are definitely a newer addition to the orchestration, but I think this is a nice addition. One may argue that this music should not be introduced because it isn't "authentic" enough I must disagree. It keeps the tradition of Japanese music alive, while adding a little something new and exciting for the listener. While I may not be able to use this piece for performance authenticity in my classroom since I wouldn't have access to all the instruments, this would be a great exercise for movement and listening. This music is so soothing and relaxing. I would love to use it at the end of a warm-up exercise for either a choir or general music classroom. The students could very easily move freely to the beat of this music either with little simple stretches or even some artistic movements like in Dr. F's "Move Its!" It would also be nice to just use this music as a mediation tool. It is another way to clear the mind and prepare the body for music making.