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Comment on “A study of the styles and characteristics of basic music theory textbooks in China in the past 100 years”

Due to various historical and realistic reasons, the development of basic music theory in China lags behind in the teaching system, teaching content and other aspects. It is an important task for Chinese music workers to revise or supplement the current basic music theory and related textbooks and then build a discipline system of basic music theory in China. This paper synthesizes the theories of music education and music history, music culture, music morphology and other related disciplines. It uses scientific, objective and rational values and holistic and comprehensive concepts. It takes the development of the basic music theory education of China as the research object and takes history as a mirror to further consider and prospect the construction of the basic music theory discipline system of China. The basic theory of Chinese Music can be roughly divided into three stages: (1) The basic music theory from the early 20th century to the founding of the People’s Republic of China; (2) From the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the period of reform and opening up; (3) Basic music theory compiled and published since the reform and opening up. It can be seen, from the development of the basic theory education of Chinese Music and its teaching materials, that the development of western music theory in China, before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, was a process from passive acceptance to active absorption. The scope of spreading western music theory was from the palace to the church, then to the school, and, finally, to the society, which made the music theory teaching in China gradually develop into a major and minor system as the leading mode. The basic theory of Chinese Music gradually deviated from its own track. With the deepening of music research after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the discipline development of basic music theory has witnessed a prosperous situation, and the construction of basic music theory is moving towards the direction of diversification and deepening. Many musicologists and music educators have made contributions to the construction of basic music theory in China from different disciplines and research perspectives. Based on the principle of “combining history with the theory” and combing the development of basic music theory in China, the ideal model of Chinese music theory discipline construction is conceived to promote the integration between traditional music theory and modern music theory from a diachronic perspective What is relevant to strengthen the unity of the nation and the world in basic music theory from a synchronic perspective, and to pay attention to the connotation of technology and culture in music theory teaching. But also to strengthen the scientific and logical concept in music theory textbooks.

The book by Jennifer Snodgrass reviewed here focuses on the teaching of music theory at the first stage of the university education of American students who choose the path of advanced musical studies. From a pedagogical-didactic point of view, the discipline that forms the object of investigation in the book is the version of it practiced in the Anglo-Saxon educational context, more specifically in North America, and is composed of two areas: music theory and the development of listening skills. This review briefly addresses the topics dealt with in Snodgrass’ book, trying to highlight the main argumentative nodes of the volume, and paying critical attention especially to the theoretical roots of the scientific reflections developed by the author, and to the methodology of the fieldwork she conducted, and describes, in this monograph.

This didactic module - based on the Andante from W. A. Mozart’s K 22 Symphony - consists of an integrated set of activities including analytical listening, transcription, score reading and music theory training. It is addressed to students of Theory, Analysis and Composition in music high schools, as well as to those of similar disciplines taught in music conservatories and in musicological university courses. Apart from some sections on analytical study, the proposed activities can be carried out, if appropriately simplified, even in non-specialized educational settings, both in secondary schools and universities. The module is based on a specific model of didactic listening, whose main purpose is to help students understand the piece under examination, directing their attention to different aspects of musical construction, which are gradually highlighted, in order to grasp their morphological, functional and expressive features in the dynamics of temporal development. The analysis aims above all to investigate aspects related to process, energy and function in the unfolding of musical structures in time, their tension towards intermediate and final goals, and their ever-changing, often unpredictable organization. In terms of methodology, the aim of creating a ‘laboratory’ learning context is pursued by adopting appropriate teaching strategies that develop investigative thinking and an attitude to research.

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In his writings Antonio Minturno shows a most notable interest in music and dance; in fact, from the pages of the third book of his Arte poetica and from many of his early works (especially the Amore innamorato), the interest for the ancient music theory as well as poetic-musical forms (such as the madrigal) is very important. Unfortunately, these fields of work are still totally unknown today. The aim of this essay is therefore to clarify and explain the principal point of interest of his thinking about these disciplines. His participation in the Academia dei Sereni and the contacts with Salinas and Trojano and his Musica de Virtuosi (1569) not only prove his interest in the Horatian unity of Music and Poetry, but also demonstrate how much musicians between the XVI and XVII centuries have gained from, and what they understood by, reading his treatises in terms of a new poetic style and a new metrical language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay presents, without claiming to be exhaustive, some significant transformations of the meaning of music between the Early and the Late Middle Ages. Starting from the traditional Boethian vision of music as a liberal art, based only on the theoretical study of mathematical proportions, I deal with the progressive attention towards musica practica from the 11th century until the beginning of the 14th century: it slowly takes shape a decisive change in the way of understanding the musical discipline that from "science without sounds" becomes the meeting place of theory and practice on the threshold of Humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the question of modes as it is discussed in Gioseffo Zarlino’s Istitutioni harmoniche and Michael Praetorius’s Syntagma musicum. First, Gioseffo Zarlino’s adoption of Heinrich Glarean’s system of twelve modes is presented, along with the changes he introduced. Gioseffo Zarlino’s system is then compared to that of Michael Praetorius.

The core of the history of musical thought consists of large-scale doctrines striving to explain the multitude of observed phenomena in terms of immutable categories and universals. All such doctrines are based on the belief of their authors that all the complex and differentiated phenomena have their origins in simple principles. Accordingly, any music that cannot be convincingly reduced to these principles is either ignored or declared ‘abnormal’. Any doctrine inevitably stops before what in music is not quite ‘system-defined’. Though doctrines may point to ‘irregularities’, they can hardly justify them aesthetically. The by-effect of their influence is the growth of prejudices around anything that is new and unusual.A huge array of musicological literature, developing the methodological principles of ‘big’ classical conceptions or propounding new conceptions that also claim to be scientific and universal, can hardly help the reader to clarify his perception of the unfamiliar or to discover new meanings in what is well known (the present paper illustrates this using several examples from different brands of musicology, both Russian and non-Russian). This arguably means that the ‘scientistic’ (reductionist) paradigm in musicology has been exhausted and the new, deeper knowledge of music has to be acquired through alternative, not strictly scientific – perhaps rather literary, openly subjective, authority-free – ways.

Schönberg’s Harmonielehre finishes on the evocation of the melody of timbre (Klangfarbenmelodie). The aim of this article is to analyse the function of timbre in relation to musical theory by establishing a parallel between the positions expressed by Schönberg and preceding classical positions, namely Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s definition of timbre and Leibniz’s concept of “clear and confused” ideas. Operating in this context, what will be shown is that timbre, according to Leibniz’s description, is a distinguishing, yet undistinguished, quality and that, precisely for this reason, timbre has a limited function in composition.

During the twentieth century the relationship between music and machines has become increasingly broad and complicated. Composers and musicians are now working within a complex setting of electronic, optic, and acoustic equipment, which results from the original combination between technological research and artistic experimentation. These artifacts are «materialized theories» of sound, because their construction is the concrete result of a specific interpretation of sound and audio, which contributes to determining the horizon of possible manifestations of musical thinking at any given time. They allow us to generate processes which make it possible to amalgamate different representations and effects, organizing the simultaneous presence and live interaction of heterogeneous devices for sound production and control. As a consequence, music materials can no longer be seen as the set of natural and intuitive elements internally processed by an artist. Contemporary musicians, on the contrary, are used to continuously shifting from the symbolic forms of notation for voice and acoustic instruments to electronic sound synthesis, from orchestral practice registers to live interaction using a computer. As part of these processes, action continuously reviews its operating patterns based on a recording of the effects on its performance. Therefore, the universe of the composition is not at all foreordained, but saturated with contingencies; the relationship between the system and its surrounding reality is not established a priori, because changes are based on the analysis of immediate effects. Thus, the preordination dictated by «musical logic» gives way to approximate calculation. For this reason we should acknowledge that the complexity of contemporary media leaves no room for purely textual approaches; on the contrary, in order to understand it, new conceptual tools are called for, to the extent that the equipment used for musical creation is suitable for the logic of systems: it refers not only to sound, but also to the system design itself that generates it which has become an integral part of the work project. The pathway suggested here is aimed at historicizing the development of technologically-driven expression forms, using the notions of time and energy as conceptual guidelines.

This paper takes a review of the various theories that study the percept of music. We analyzed the adaptive theory, the theory of transformative music and the idea of cultural evolution. Also we featured the neuropsychological approach to music through the analysis of patients with amusia or with aphasia without amusia, we discussed the latest research in the psychology of emotions related to music and hemispheric lateralization produced by listening to music with emotional connotations. Finally, we presented some studies based on cross-modal priming paradigm, able to provide new answers to the interpretation of the music. A study of musical emotions cross-modal complex and may offer an opportunity to expand the knowledge on how the music cognition may affect other activities, behaviors, domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

György Ligeti and György Kurtág are united by one of the most beautiful friendships between two composers of our times. It united them when they were contemporaries, it still unites them now, when Ligeti has long since stepped beyond the boundaries of this world. Their affinities were manifold, their personal history closely interwoven, in the time spent in Budapest during the precious years of their youth as well as in times when, though separated by geographical distances, they were never separated in spirit. The three texts entrusted to us by maestro Kurtág for translation into Romanian and publication abound in the particular notes owned by this dialogue of thought and affection: out of intimate scraps of mutual biography, out of confessions extracted from the affective memory, out of cultural metaphors with infinite reverberations (Dante, Lewis Carroll), out of the deeply impressed traces of things experienced, out of - maybe - commonplaces, which unexpectedly rise to the height of symbols - Kurtág's words cause revelation, beyond everything we knew and admired about the friendship of the two. We notice in these texts the reflex of a supplementary mutual trait shared by the two - the profound familiarity to Romanian cultural values, an asset that has always been a natural source for quenching their spiritual thirst. The three texts were published in the volume György Kurtág - Drei Gespräche mit Bálint András Varga und Ligeti-Hommagen (Holnap Kiadó KFT, Budapest, 2009). Laudatio auf György Ligeti was uttered on receiving the Siemens Foundation Prize (May 1993); Kylwyria - Kálvária; Über György Ligeti represents the speech given on the reunion in memoriam Ligeti of the Association "Ordre pour le mérite" from Berlin (2007); since the time of the speech was limited to ten minutes, Kurtág subsequently added a complementary Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the physiological and physical view of the human being had influenced the theory of music during the Middle Ages. The article focuses on the musical ideas of Italian philosopher Pietro de Abano. The author compares Abano's theories on music with the traditional "musica theorica." The author explains how the study of the physical and material dimension of men's nature expands into musical topics. The article also discusses the opposition between sensitiveness and intellect in Abano's musical theories.

The difficulty in applying modal theories to mensural polyphony of the 14th-16th centuries is often imputed to the dearth of theoretical sources specifically devoted to the discussion of the working of the modes within polyphony. This scarcity seems, however, to be more apparent than real and very few theorists actually offer an explicit anti-modal reading of polyphony; on the contrary we encounter several and significant passages where, at least starting from Marchetto da Padova, the authors assume or take for granted that the eight modes or the four maneri~ are equally applicable to chant and mensural music. Also the use of irregular finals is by and large admitted or at least acknowledged by most theorists. In Marchetto, Ugolino and Tinctoris, for instance, the discourse on irregular finals is intimately linked to modal transposition, whereby the identity of a mode is guaranteed not so much by the position of its final and repercussion within the gamut, but rather by the intervallic structure of its fourth and fifth species. Undoubtedly the preference for tetraand pentachordal species as modal determinants over the final facilitates a modal reading of polyphonic pieces, since the interplay of fourths and fifths and the com- mixture of their different typologies (i.e., the species) potentially affords the composer the greatest variety in colour palette and could even provide a stylistic-authorial perspective. In order to illustrate this, the essay analyses a couple of chansons by Du Fay and Binchois, where the different use of modality in terms of fourth and fifth species points out and tries to explain the often mentioned, but seldom consistently exemplified, stylistic contrast between the two composers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adriano Banchieri (Bologna 1558-1634) left a huge corpus of reflections on music theory - some twenty treatises, issued and reprinted between 1597 and 1633. Besides exploring the hiatus between traditional Renaissance contrapuntal conception and the new expressive innovations brought forth by "modern practice", he offered a thick body of analysis on specific issues, tackled with acumen and delivered with clarity, drawing from an extensive technical vocabulary. In particular, Banchieri's treatises offer notions and rules of musical syntax, information on vocal and instrumental performing technique, and related suggestions. All in all, Banchieri's theoretical opus stands tall as one of the richest contributions to Italian music theory scholarship between 16th and 17th century, thus proving the merits of the Bologna school, which was to become so highly productive, in terms of both quality and quantity, in the following centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the history of music has been writen and writen over, it has always been around the works and the composers. There is a place for a history of music written from the listener¹s point of view. The ability to listen is not so much a personal quality or the mechanical counterpart of the history of musical works and languages as the end result of having made the necessary time and space for this activity, after a long historical and collective apprenticeship which itself produced a world of coordinated objects. The paper gives elements of analysis and materials from a survey on music lovers, whose taste is seen as an active and reflexive practice, involving a collective, objects, and procedures, and not as a label put on social games of identity and difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]