Views of Folk Music Making in 19th-Century Visual Arts. Views of folk music making in 19th-century visual arts are marked by leading contemporary spiritual courses and artistic schools. The Romantic ...discovery of folk art, longing for non-artifical and simple phenomena, but also the search for the exotic, the country idyll and the characteristic - all this characterized visual art views of folk music making, singing and dancing. Special attention is given to the ideological use of the folk musician and singer motives. From Romantic idealization to late 19th-century positivism, views of folk music are precious sources both for ethnomusicology and the history of ideas on folk art. In this study less known visual sources, among which are also travelogues, are commented on, - forming by their visual material and accompanying texts - a category of sources, insufficiently investigated up to now.
Brauchen wir Musik? Kalisch, Volker
International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music,
12/1991, Volume:
22, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Do We Need Music? In arts man meets himself, his interior and his ideas, as - vice versa - arts, and especially music, have a task to offer undefined inner layers, feelings and images. This ..."self-meeting" encompasses and links in a twofold manner: a psychological and self-reflexive dimension (a meeting with itself, and with individual "inner layers") and a sociocultural dimension (an experience of common feelings, ideas, etc.). Therefore, music is something essential to man, something which is in the same way usable and self-understandable, and, at the same time something wonderful and superior to him. Man and music prove to be indissolubly mutually imbued, because man understands himself through music in a particular way and - vice versa - experience and understanding of music bring us inevitably back within ourselves. The answer to the initial question - "do we need music?" - is: yes, we need it and we shall always need it, because by the means of music man can, as nowhere else, experience his humanness in an existential way.
The Concept of Revolution in the Theoretical Writings on Music before 1789. The first occurence of the concept of "musical revolution" appears during the 18th century in France. It is used as a way ...to describe an historical scheme. This late expression can be explained by the persistence of the idea of continuous progress. The concept of "musical revolution" is integrated into an astrobiological scheme. With the "Réflexions critiques" (1719 and 1733) of the Abbé Dubos a new way to exploit the expression becomes possible through the introduction of the concept of sudden perfecting. Unfortunately Dubos does not apply his new theory to music history. Chabanon, in his "Eloge de M. Rameau" (1764), inscribes the ideas of Dubos in his description of the revolution caused by Rameau. With four occurences he defines the meaning of the expression and the conditions of a musical revolution. The idea of a sudden and fast break becomes common. Marmontel gives to one of his essay (1777) a title with the expression "musical revolution". While the meaning is the same, the point of view of Marmontel differs from Chabanons. The pupil of Rameau has a retrospective perspective while Marmontel has a prospective one. His concept of musical revolution helps him more to define a musical poetics than a historical situation. The concept is already used during the 18th century in two ways: analytical and polemical. Chabanon and Marmontel inaugurate a tradition of critical writing still alive in our ending century.
Populäre Musik und ihr Publikum Rösing, Helmut; Rosing, Helmut
International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music,
06/1989, Volume:
20, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Popular Music and Its Public. "Popular music and its public" - is not that a senseless title? Is it not one of the characteristica of popular music that it always has its public, unlike, for example, ...contemporary art music? If this were really so, some phenomena should not be considered to be included in the notion 'popular music': progressive rock, punk, rockjazz, ethnobeat, chanson and some others; and - according to general opinion - all this is included in 'popular music' because it does not belong to the so-called 'E-Musik'. Nevertheless, the public which appreciates folk music or the German 'Schlager' is completely different from the public, for example, which is delighted with international hits of Anglo-Saxon provenience, or with rhythm and blues or beat music. And, finally, what is meant by - public? Behind the quantitative shells of sales figures or the results of demoscopic research a qualitative core is hidden: the public as a composite whole made up of a great number of individuals with, from time to time, typical personal, time and socially conditioned variables. On the basis of data furnished by recent research of public opinion, attempts are made more closely to determine both the role of music in today's society, and expectations projected into music, as well as the needs and motivation leading towards musical activities. In spite of all limitations on the strength of expression, it is possible to discern - from the results of research - guide-lines towards a change of musical paradigms (thematicized on the examples of the German 'Schlager' and rock), a typology of listening, and the variability of musical preferences and ideologies. Primarily, however, it has been stated that a public for popular music exists, insomuch as popular music itself exists. In spite of all trends towards standardization of the music market, it can be stated that clear differences exist in the musical preferences of individual groups of the public. A manifold determinateness of musical activities speaks up to now against the thesis of complete standardization of music preferences imposed by the standardizing music on offer, directed by the mass media.
L'analyse melodique Mâche, François-Bernard
International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music,
12/1986, Volume:
17, Issue:
2
Journal Article
The Melodic Analysis. Traditionally, the melody is analysed in function of harmony. The purely syntagmatical axis is neglected in profit of the paradigmatical axis. The gradual disappearance, in the ...20th century, of harmonical functions gives again all its importance to the concept of melodical "contour", pertinent in Schönberg as well in ethnomusicology. It seems that the contour can be isolated as such, independently of rhythm and of tonal or modal functions, as one of the important dimensions of a melody.
The Systemic and Enigmatic Aspects of Tonal Music. The article comprises two parts. The first one presents a systemic-structuralistic approach which, "inter alia", introduces a distinction between ...the "pre-composed" elements (generated by the tonal system) and the "composed" elements (created by the composer). Concrete musical examples are used to demonstrate the self-explanatory power of the systemic approach (in connection with both melodic and harmonic phenomena), while comparing this approach to normative "ad hoc" rules. The second part of the article re-examines the ontological status of the musical phenomenon as such. Musical examples are used to demonstrate the failure of the current analytical methods to establish a correlation between the formal structures (as they appear in the score) and the structures of musical experience. This part of the article explicitly questions the validity of basing aesthetic judgment or qualitative evaluation in music on the consideration of "intrinsic features".
Methodes d'analyse en ethnomusicologie Lortat-Jacob, Bernard
International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music,
12/1986, Volume:
17, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Methods of Analysis in Ethnomusicology. What methods are used in ethnomusicology and what problems arise? Is it possible to define them? The procedures are as different as is the music studied on the ...one hand, and the personality of a musicologist on the other hand. The problems of presenting music were set up in a communication in "Courrier du CNRS" 42, and especially in the author's essay on a dance from Sardinia, which was transcribed in two ways: through synoptic presentation where a clear series of six-measure phrases (of which the dance is composed) were presented, and through a spiral figure which represents the type of relationship in which cells are mutually united. The problems of approaching music from distant parts are dealt with in a general way. Two procedures are examined: the study of the material collected, regardless of its kind, from a strictly musical standpoint, or the consideration of the music as the one and only form of expression of a certain society, which should not be taken out of context. The examples used to analyse this approach were taken from the author's experiences from Sardinia; singing with the guitar and music on the clarinet. In both cases the same main difficulty arose: how to establish a formal grammar. In the second example, borrowed from the thesis by André Boncourt on the music of a transe from Morocco (the Aissaoua Brotherhood) a very close relationship is noticed between the form and the function of a public musical event. In all these cases stress is laid on the importance of the field work and on the quality of contacts with "the participating musicians".
