Past Events
Program for “Redefining Music Theory Through Translation”
(November 10, 2023 at the Annual Meeting of the SMT in Denver, CO)
A Linguistic Approach to Music Analysis in 21st-Century China
Rong Qian
Department of Musicology and Institute of Musicology, Central Conservatory of Music, China
This presentation on linguistic approaches to music analysis has four main elements. First, it describes characteristics found across the five major language families in China, including the concept of tonality (melodic tone) that characterizes mainstream languages, the often extreme distinction between local dialects—even when separated by only a few miles—and the interrelatedness of speaking and singing in traditional Chinese music. Second, it briefly describes the germination, growth, and systematic construction of linguistic approaches to music studies in China. Third, it offers a brief report on two of my main projects, “Analysis of Music Sounds of Singing Words” and “‘Yueshuo’ in Chinese Vocal Music,” summarizing their main research content and implications. And fourth, it provides a concrete example by analyzing the specific timbral composition of orinasal sounds across different dialects with the help of anatomical diagrams, clarifying the role of orinasal singing words in constructing regional styles in traditional Chinese vocal categories.
Translator: Yiyi Gao (University of North Texas)
Metric Theory as an Instrument of Nationalism: Dobri Hristov’s “Rhythmic Fundamentals of Bulgarian Folk Music” (1913)
Daniel Goldberg
University of Connecticut
Meters featuring sequences of unequal durations, such as the alternating groupings of two and three eighth notes represented by time signatures of 5/8 and 7/8, occur frequently in Bulgarian folk songs and dance music. The first published theory of such unequal meter in Bulgarian music, “The Rhythmic Fundamentals of Our Folk Music,” was written in 1913 by composer and choral director Dobri Hristov (1875–1941) and became a model for conceptualizing, notating, and cataloguing meters within Bulgarian-language scholarship. Hristov’s theory and those of his successors also influenced authors whose writings about unequal meter are more widely known, including Béla Bartók and Constantin Brăiloiu.
In this presentation, I argue that Hristov’s foundational study demonstrates how music theory can serve a nationalistic agenda. Specifically, Hristov’s belief in the uniqueness of Bulgarian music shapes his theoretical claims, and he makes those claims with the goal of raising Bulgaria’s political status. For example, Hristov repeatedly insists that the Bulgarian meters he identifies do not derive from similar rhythmic patterns in Turkish music, and in a 1925 revision of the text, he adds the assertion that Bulgarian unequal meters also differ categorically from occurrences of 5/4 and 7/4 in Western art music. For Hristov, the distinctiveness of the Bulgarian metric system proves that his country, which at the time had recently gained independence after centuries of Ottoman control, deserves the respect of the international community. Moreover, as Karen Peters (2003) and Svetlana Zaharieva (2000) have noted, Hristov’s polemics about meter against his Serbian counterparts relate directly to the Bulgarian government’s aspiration to annex the region of Macedonia.
Hristov’s theory of unequal meter thus is not separable from his nationalism; rather, the theory is part of a worldview in which cultural, historical, and scientific knowledge cannot fail to support the interests of the nascent Bulgarian nation–state. As such, Hristov’s study illustrates the type of interconnectedness between music theory and worldview that Philip Ewell (2020) identifies in writings by Hristov’s Austrian contemporary, Heinrich Schenker.
Gusti Putu Made Geria’s World of Balinese Music Theory
Michael Tenzer
University of British Columbia
Writings by Balinese musician Gusti Putu Made Geria (1906-83) will be introduced and assessed in historical perspective. He was in effect the first Balinese musicologist, but his work evokes older anonymous lontar (palm leaf manuscripts) of Balinese scribes, themselves heir to traditions of Hindu-Buddhist thought. Some of his descriptions of instruments and ensembles mimic the discourse of high priests and invoke unseen worlds. To grasp their resonance I will briefly consider their relationship to specific lontar and to Tantrism (Bandem 1986, Becker 1993).
With keen powers of observation, Geria invented a witty cornucopia of terms in Balinese for instrument functions and melodic patterns where none previously existed in oral tradition. His lexicon is a product of his insight into particular linear-intervallic structures and the motile impulses they evoke, which must be understood as music analysis given the cultural context. Geria in effect provides a theory enabling close readings of “classical“ Balinese gamelan repertoires, which teem with these patterns. I will consider a selection of them in detail, amplifying (and, where necessary, culturally decoding) Geria’s classifications and notations with a more granular but, I aver, ethnographically relevant approach. Recordings and notations of each will be discussed. Research and conclusions are based on fieldwork, personal experience, consultation with I Made Bandem, heir to Geria’s personal notebooks, and other Balinese musicians.
Geria’s analytical thinking dwells in a network of ideas bridging his precolonial umwelt with an inchoate Indonesian modernity. The last part of the paper sorts Geria’s terms by lexical field: the natural world, emotion or character, action and perception, and the unseen world. Concluding with support from Blum’s (2023) comparative approach to world music theories, his achievements are placed in international context.
Program for “Music Theory in the Plural”
(April 22-23, 2023)
Harvard University and Griffith University, co-sponsors
Day 1
Friday, April 22, 2022 7:00–11:00 pm UTC
(3:00–7:00 pm in Boston, USA; 5:00–9:00 am in Brisbane, Australia)
Block 1
Music as Language of the Upper Realm: Li Tsing-chu’s Conversations on Music (1930) and A General Discourse on Music (1933)
Edwin K.C. Li - Harvard University
Analysis and Transcription of a Song-Text Notated in a Fusion Notation Method (Abjadic- metric) by Mehdi-Gholi Hedāyat (Mokhber-al Saltaneh)
Farzad Milani - McGill University
That thing: ii-centric songs
Clay Downham - Independent scholar
Musical Accent Classifications by Du Yaxiong: Temporality Distinct from the West
Yiyi Gao - Independent scholar
10-minute break
Block 2
Nationalistic Roots of Theory of Unequal Meter: Dobri Hristov's “Rhythmic Fundamentals of Bulgarian Folk Music”
Daniel Goldberg - University of Connecticut
Nuclear Tones and Tetrachords in the Work of Koizumi Fumio
Liam Hynes-Tawa - Yale University
Polemic Argument on Modes of Pansori: Timbre as Differentiation in Korean Music
Seokyoung Kim - University of Texas at Austin
Realist Flute Acoustics in al-Fārābī’s Kitāb al-Mūsīqī al-Kabīr
Jordan Lenchitz - Florida State University
Day 2
Saturday, April 23, 2022 1:00–4:30 pm UTC
(9:00 am –12:30 pm in Boston; 11:00 pm–2:30 am in Brisbane).
Block 1
"Explanation of Makams in the Generation of Melodies": Kemâni Hizir Ağa's Treatise from the 18th Century
Ozan Baysal - Istanbul Technical University
Gözde Çolakoğlu Sari - Istanbul Technical University
Recep Uslu - Istanbul Medeniyet University
Libidinal Ear: Institutional Memory and Dominic Avron’s L'Appareil Musical (1978)
Patrick Valiquet - Independent Scholar
"You Grasp the Tones": Isang Yun's Theory of East Asian Music
Joon Park - University of Arkansas
10-minute break
Block 2
When is Samba Samba?: 'Musical Premises' in Carlos Sandroni's Feitiço Decente
Chris Stover - Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University
Translation and Transliteration of the Byzantine-Post Byzantine Music Theory Sources and Searching for the Interaction of these Sources with Turkish-Ottoman Music Theory
Cenk Guray - Hacettepe University
Nevin Şahin - Boston University
Lülü jingyi [Precise principles of the musical pitches] by ZHU Zaiyu : The invention of 12-tone equal tuning
Shingkwan Woo - Independent Scholar
Perspectives from Two Field Interviews on Mode, Key, and Expressivity in Kua-a Opera
Anna Yu Wang - Harvard University
Program for “Translations of Underrepresented Languages in Music Theory”
(November 4, 2021 at the Annual Meeting of the SMT)
“Arabic or Greek music theory? Understanding al-Fārābī’s Kitāb al-Mūsīqī al-kabīr”
Yasemin Gökpınar, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
“Translating Tanaka Shōhei’s Translations of Indian Music Theory”
Daniel Walden, Durham University.
“The Theosophical Music Theory of a Forgotten Danish Woman Composer: Tekla Griebel Wandall’s Microcosm of Tones (1936/39)”
Thomas Jul Kirkegaard-Larsen, National Museum of Denmark
"Towards an Autochthonous Understanding of Mesopotamian Tuning."
Jay Rahn, York University
"Isang Yun's String Theory: Hauptton Technique and Flowing Lines"
Joon Park, University of Arkansas
“‘All Polish Grammarians agree’: Józef Elsner’s 1818 Treatise on the Meter and Rhythm of the Polish Language”
Derek Myler, University of Rochester
"Translating the Ritsugen Hakki (1692): Ancient Chinese Mathematical Music Theory in Early Modern Japan"
Liam Hynes-Tawa, Yale University