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The increasing participation rate in higher education has raised its own issues, such as how to fund the growth while retaining the quality of education. In Finland, it has been argued that the tuition-free higher education policy increases equality. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, establishing a system of tuition fees supported by an income-contingent loan system for students has also been argued to increase equality. In Australia, students also face high tuition fees for higher education, as well as a support system focused on domestic students. In addition to tuition fees, entrance examinations also play a crucial part in higher education systems. In order to examine inequalities in higher education from the students’ point of view, tuition fees are scrutinised in connection with equality, and entrance examinations in relation to cultural reproduction. Comparing examples of higher music education institutions in Finland, the United Kingdom, and Australia shows that there are large differences between the tuition fees charged for domestic and international students, as well as between countries. Entrance examinations in higher music education are similar in these countries, but may include inequalities based on long traditions in the field of music, especially in classical music. By revealing misconceptions about equity in higher education, it is possible to have a critical debate about the role of tuition fee systems as they are connected with the economics of higher education, and about entrance examinations as reproducing social class inequalities. This discussion may contribute to the redefinition and reformation of more equitable and just education systems, and promote equality in general in society.

Automatic chord recognition (ACR) has long been a topic of interest in the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), due to not only its commercial applications, but also its support for advanced music analysis. While a lot of ACR-related work deals with audio data, ACR from symbolic music has received less attention. In addition, conventional ACR systems specify chords in a key-dependent way (usually with the root note and the chord quality) and hence are unable to reveal the high-level patterns and harmonic structures. These issues hinder the developments of music analysis and music generation via ACR systems. With the success of deep learning, it is viable to build a symbolic ACR system using a more comprehensive chord vocabulary such as functional harmony. Recently, two advanced models, namely the Bi-directional Transformer for Chord Recognition (BTC) and the Harmony Transformer (HT), introduced for the first time the multi-head attention mechanism to ACR, showing the great capability of the attention mechanism to improve the performance of ACR. In this paper, we systematically study the performance of the BTC and the HT in terms of symbolic ACR, and propose an improved model. Experiments on conventional ACR and advanced functional harmony recognition indicate that the HT has the potential to surpass the BTC, especially in terms of chord segmentation quality. Also the overall performance of the HT is further improved by enhancing the learning of local context and positional information.

In India, Bengal’s most celebrated literary figure, Rabindranath Tagore, was specifically sensitive regarding the various seasons occurring in India. The monsoon and its relation with Tagore’s songs is the main focus of this paper. The monsoon, when Mother Nature spreads her beauty by unravelling her bounty treasures, is richly expressed by Tagore. In the composition for the khanika (poem) ‘Asho nai tumi phalgune’ [you did not come in the spring season] Tagore says: “when I awaited eagerly for your visit in the spring, you didn’t come. Please, don’t make me wait any longer and do come during the full monsoon”. In another of his songs he visualises on a cloudy sunless day, a person’s longing to share his or her deepest treasure of feeling for that particular important person ‘Emon ghonoghor boroshaye’ [in this heavy downpour] (Tagore 2002: 333, song 248). Through these poetic compositions and many more, one may understand the depth in Tagore’s understanding of the human’s emotional details regarding this specific season. The monsoon may also be disastrous. According to Tagore’s a composition ‘Bame rakho bhoyonkori’ [keep aside the destructions] (Tagore 2002: 394, song 58) he describes as well as wishes that the monsoon keeps away the damage or distress from people’s lives. His tunes blend with his words and emotions, not to mention the ragas that are believed to be related with rain that is popular to the Indian subcontinent such as Rag Megh or Rag Mian ki Malhar. These have been affluently used by Tagore to create emotional feelings through his words. He expresses being a philosopher with whom people can find a connection, irrespective of their regional background.

We set out to perform a cluster analysis of harmonic structures (specifically, chord-to-chord transitions) in the McGill Billboard dataset, to determine whether there is evidence of multiple harmonic grammars and practices in the corpus, and if so, what the optimal division of songs, according to those harmonic grammars, is. We define optimal as providing meaningful, specific information about the harmonic practices of songs in the cluster, but being general enough to be used as a guide to songwriting and predictive listening. We test two hypotheses in our cluster analysis — first that 5–9 clusters would be optimal, based on the work of Walter Everett (2004), and second that 15 clusters would be optimal, based on a set of user-generated genre tags reported by Hendrik Schreiber (2015). We subjected the harmonic structures for each song in the corpus to a K-means cluster analysis. We conclude that the optimal clustering solution is likely to be within the 5–8 cluster range. We also propose that a map of cluster types emerging as the number of clusters increases from one to eight constitutes a greater aid to our understanding of how various harmonic practices, styles, and sub-styles comprise the McGill Billboard dataset.

In facing ever-growing technology of audio peripherals, there is a concern of balancing in delivering technical knowledge to students dealing with audio recordings in the Music Department at Putra University, Malaysia (UPM). It seems to be difficult for them to do current multitrack recordings and at the same time maintaining the aesthetic aspect of past technology. In other words, if one preserves the recorded item, they have also to care about the specific features coming with these recordings. It is not the primary recorded subject alone they may have to consider. There is an urgency to migrate the recorded material such as cassette tapes that come in varying forms ranging from Ferric-Oxide, to Cro2, and Metal. These carriers are warranted to be extracted and migrate onto a more stable medium, not only in general as everywhere in the world, but also since it has become the university policy that equipment’s exceeding certain years will be disposed of. The selection focuses on the recording materials that includes live musical performances, multitrack musical compositions, and final recording projects. In this context the ‘recording’ may just mean the audio information. It is important for any archive to establish a general policy with regard to the limits of its collection as was pointed out repeatedly (Schuursma, 2010). Viewing from the perspective of preservation (Musib, 2015) of content, a lack of awareness in handling these carriers may lead to complications when extracting the signal from still available machines. The paper is intended to discuss the challenges and requirements in the process of signal extractions using exemplarily the two formats, namely the 4-track recorder and the digital standalone multitrack machine.

Steeped in a cultivated European tradition and burdened by several personal tragedies, Gustav Mahler undeniably shaped the course of classical music leading into the twentieth century. Holding fast to late Romantic stylistic conventions including complex rhythmic concepts, emotional and expansive melodies, and a strict adherence to form allowed the forward-thinking composer to seamlessly introduce modern elements into his symphonies. Through Mahler’s commanding symphonic output, the composer successfully maintained strong Austro-German stylistic principles while propelling the genre forward. In these symphonic writings, modern techniques of tonal decentralization, chromaticism, quotation, and paraphrasing are met with cohesive and compelling narratives to create balanced and engaging compositions. By studying Gustav Mahler’s symphonic writings, one can both gain an understanding of his compositional brilliance and acknowledge his legacy as a pivotal protomodernist who worked to bridge the musical gap into early twentieth-century modernism.

The ongoing paradigm shift from traditional methods of teaching music composition towards new approaches based on computer technology for sound production is the main focus of the article. The paper reviews the evolution of teaching methods throughout the Classical, Romantic and Modern periods, demonstrating how certain standard practices from former ages, based on the professional profile of the Chapel-Master, become theoretical golden principles for subsequent periods. After the French Revolution the traditional method of individual practical exchange between master and disciple was upgraded at the Conservatory. Classes for groups of students required a new approach based on theory abstraction. Although none of these teaching methods have been abandoned up today, a new paradigm appears when the tools of computer technology became widespread. An unpredictable equilibrium between the traditional methods and the new techniques of computer-assisted or computer-generated music composition tends to emerge.

The article analyzes the theory and practice of acoustic guitar performing in the fingerstyle – a special technique of playing simultaneously conducting several parts (solo, rhythm and bass). This style, turning the guitar into a kind of “orchestra in miniature”, significantly expands the range of expressive possibilities of the musician-guitarist, allowing him to fully reveal the content of the performed works. Along with a discussion of the prerequisites to the emergence of an acoustic guitar as a musical instrument and show its evolution in the development process, authors provide a brief historical background on the origins and causes of fingerstyle, characteristics of sound and sound production methods, activities of its developers and popularizers, the content of the tutorial for the fingerstyle guitarist. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of the original author’s methods of performing this style. Among them: a complex reception from a pinch and a slap and a “phantom pick” for the thumb (without using the “claw”). The necessity of their application is justified, the technique of performance and the achieved results of these methods of sound extraction are described in detail. The article describes the possibilities of using electric sound amplification in the performance of fingerstyle on an acoustic guitar, analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of using various types of sound amplification equipment in a concert performance. Authors emphasize that the connection of these devices when performing fingerstyle creates a number of additional opportunities for enriching the sound, allowing to increase the artistic level of interpretation. The conclusion is made about the prospects for the development of this style. Recommendations are given for solving specific technological problems for guitarists who use fingerstyle in concert practice, both with and without sound amplification equipment.

Thomas Tallis, known by some as the "Father of English Church Music," accomplished one of the most impressive feats in the history of musical service: surviving in the Chapel Royal through the reigns of vastly different monarchs during one of the most volatile political climates in the country's history. A clear streak of pragmatism shines through this stability and success, but exactly how did that pragmatism demonstrate itself within his compositional style? Through exploration and analysis of Tallis's musical style in different political and religious periods, one discovers the answer to how he managed to navigate the winds of change that led to ostracization and demise for so many leaders in the flux of power. His brilliance becomes evident as the diversity and skill with which he composed allowed the music to speak to its audience in a way that was both politically acceptable and stylistically creative. Through his adaptability and keen sense, Tallis’s compositions became exemplars for the musical principles espoused in whatever period he composed within, whether it be the austere practice of the Cranmer/Edwardian period, or the decidedly more expressive works composed under Queen Mary. The fact that his music still speaks to many today shows the legacy that this titan of church composition left behind as the nimble purveyor of distinct and period defining styles in composition.

Human perception of musical structure is supposed to depend on the generation of hierarchies, which is inherently related to the actual organisation of sounds in music. Musical structures are indeed best retained by listeners when they form hierarchical patterns, with consequent implications on the appreciation of music and its performance. The automatic detection of musical structure in audio recordings is one of the most challenging problems in the field of music information retrieval, since even human experts tend to disagree on the structural decomposition of a piece of music. However, most of the current music segmentation algorithms in literature can only produce flat segmentations, meaning that they cannot segment music at different levels in order to reveal its hierarchical structure. We propose a novel methodology for the hierarchical analysis of music structure that is based on graph theory and multi-resolution community detection. This unsupervised method can perform both the tasks of boundary detection and structural grouping, without the need of particular constraints that would limit the resulting segmentation. To evaluate our approach, we designed an experiment that allowed us to compare its segmentation performance with that of the current state of the art algorithms for hierarchical segmentation. Our results indicate that the proposed methodology can achieve state of the art performance on a well-known benchmark dataset, thus providing a deeper analysis of musical structure.

Choral singing is a central part of musical cultures across the world, yet many facets of this widespread form of polyphonic singing are still to be explored. Music information retrieval (MIR) research on choral singing benefits from multitrack recordings of the individual singing voices. However, there exist only few publicly available multitrack datasets on polyphonic singing. In this paper, we present Dagstuhl ChoirSet (DCS), a multitrack dataset of a cappella choral music designed to support MIR research on choral singing. The dataset includes recordings of an amateur vocal ensemble performing two choir pieces in full choir and quartet settings. The audio data was recorded during an MIR seminar at Schloss Dagstuhl using different close-up microphones to capture the individual singers’ voices. In this article, we give detailed insights into all stages of creating DCS: recording process, data preparation, generation of annotations as well as development of suitable interfaces for publicly accessing and reusing the data. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential of the dataset for MIR research by discussing case studies on choral intonation assessment and multiple fundamental frequency (F0) estimation.

In this paper, we address the problem of modeling and predicting the music genre preferences of users. We introduce a novel user modeling approach, 'BLLu', which takes into account the popularity of music genres as well as temporal drifts of user listening behavior. To model these two factors, 'BLLu' adopts a psychological model that describes how humans access information in their memory. We evaluate our approach on a standard dataset of Last.fm listening histories, which contains fine-grained music genre information. To investigate performance for different types of users, we assign each user a mainstreaminess value that corresponds to the distance between the user’s music genre preferences and the music genre preferences of the (Last.fm) mainstream. We adopt 'BLLu' to model the listening habits and to predict the music genre preferences of three user groups: listeners of (i) niche, low-mainstream music, (ii) mainstream music, and (iii) medium-mainstream music that lies in-between. Our results show that 'BLLu' provides the highest accuracy for predicting music genre preferences, compared to five baselines: (i) group-based modeling, (ii) user-based collaborative filtering, (iii) item-based collaborative filtering, (iv) frequency-based modeling, and (v) recency-based modeling. Besides, we achieve the most substantial accuracy improvements for the low-mainstream group. We believe that our findings provide valuable insights into the design of music recommender systems.

Carlo Gesualdo Prince of Venosa’s sixth and final book of Italian madrigals has puzzled scholars since its resurgence in the early twentieth century. Written during a transition between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Gesualdo’s late madrigals present a musical style that seems to deny any attempt at precise classification with a stylistic movement. So where does Gesualdo’s astonishing style fit within its historical context? And what about his music has drawn the attention of so many scholars? By analyzing representative madrigals of the Mannerist style, a stylistic movement of the Late Renaissance, and the emerging Baroque style, one can understand the general attributes of the musical context in which Gesualdo lived. After identifying the defining characteristics of Gesualdo’s late madrigals, a comparison of Gesualdo’s style and the styles of other madrigalists of his time reveals both the conventional and radical elements of his music. Through this method, one finds that Gesualdo’s compositional style is derivative of the Mannerist movement but pushes the limits of this movement to new extremes, creating a style that would not be heard again for nearly three centuries.

The analysis of recorded audio material using computational methods has received increased attention in ethnomusicological research. We present a curated dataset of traditional Georgian vocal music for computational musicology. The corpus is based on historic tape recordings of three-voice Georgian songs performed by the the former master chanter Artem Erkomaishvili. In this article, we give a detailed overview of the audio material, transcriptions, and annotations contained in the dataset. Beyond its importance for ethnomusicological research, this carefully organized and annotated corpus constitutes a challenging scenario for music information retrieval tasks such as fundamental frequency estimation, onset detection, and score-to-audio alignment. The corpus is publicly available and accessible through score-following web-players.

Guitar Textural Analysis is an analytical proposal devised for the composition for the guitar that exposes the relations between the textural structure and the technical procedures used in the instrumental performance. The Guitar Textural Proposals (GTPs) are the specific configurations extracted in this analytical process. In the present work, the focus remains on recognizing parsimonious movements between GTPs, that is, minimal distinctions between patterns of use of the instrument combined with respective textural configurations. Parsimoniousness is defined in the context of Developing Variation, Neo-Riemannian Theory, and Partitional Analysis. Previous works by Fabio Adour and authors Sérgio Freire and Pedro Cambraia present perspectives on the relation between texture and guitar performance. Leo Brouwer’s series of progressive pieces Études Simples is adopted as a reference. The work results in a proposal for a ordered network of technical-textural configurations connected by parsimonious relations.

Research on technology-based learning and teaching has demonstrated evidence of its relevant role in music education. However, the application of technology to studio-based instrumental learning and teaching remains a relatively under-researched area. The article draws on findings from a recent exploratory study (HAMOND, 2017) which included fieldwork in Brazil. The aim of this study was to investigate the nature and potential pedagogical use of technology-mediated feedback in a higher education piano studio. Participants were one student-teacher dyad plus the researcher (the first author) with the dyad working on a memorised movement of a classical sonata of the student’s current repertoire. The technology system involved a digital piano connected to a laptop computer running Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software via Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) interface, and an additional computer screen. Three data sets were collected: videoed piano lessons (n = 2), semi-structured interviews with participants after each piano lesson (n = 4) and technology-generated MIDI data through the use of DAW software. Qualitative data analysis (QDA) involved a multi-methods approach. Research outcomes demonstrated how new digital technology can improve accessibility to aspects of advanced musical behaviour and learning that are often outside the individual’s conscious awareness. The use of new digital technology can also optimise traditional pedagogical approaches in one-to-one piano studios, since it is likely to make the lesson foci clearer and the learning process more efficient.

Lofi hip hop is a musical genre which is distributed and mediated entirely via the internet, and which, to our knowledge, is currently unexamined academically. This article serves as an introductory investigation into the genre, which we hope may inspire further research and perhaps call into question existing trends in the analysis of “internet-born” music genres, which, as Adam Harper (2017) notes, often emphasize the degenerative effects of digital technology. We briefly define lofi hip hop stylistically and aesthetically, before exploring its contradictory relationship with nostalgia. We then consider the genre’s mediation and reception in terms of its participants’ relationship with the material conditions of late capitalism. We conclude that lofi hip hop is characterizsed by a series of complex paradoxes navigated effortlessly by its listeners, highlighting a shift in everyday reality amongst a generation of young people for whom the social internet is simply an ordinary part of life.

This short essay reviews a specific aspect of Ennio Morricone’s work as a film music composer. The review is of personal character and analyses the expectation of the composer as a projection of the social conditions he lived in. The review invites controversial discussions and may show some ideas of the way how purposeful research can turn into culturally contributing subjectivity.

Volume 20 of the Nordic Research in Music Education Yearbook marks the yearbook’s transition from printed physical book to open access publishing under the name Nordic Research in Music Education (NRME), as part of a newly established collaboration between the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Norwegian publishing house Cappelen Damm Akademisk. As editors, we endorse this development towards improved visibility, a better profile, and the widening of access to research in music education to the public.

У статті проаналізовано особистісно орієнтовану концепцію розвитку музичного мислення студентів у мистецьких вищих навчальних закладах. Проектування навчального процесу з урахуванням закономірностей розвитку та саморозвитку особистості створює сприятливі умови для самореалізації творчого потенціалу майбутніх музикантів-виконавців та активізації їхнього музичного мислення. Виявлено специфіку розвитку музичного мислення студентів у контексті особистісно орієнтованого підходу як важливого чинника вдосконалення процесу фахової підготовки. Мета статті – обґрунтування особистісно орієнтованої концепції гармонійного розвитку музичного мислення студентів у мистецьких вищих навчальних закладах, визначення доцільності впровадження у процес фахової підготовки майбутніх музикантів-виконавців особистісно орієнтованої методичної системи навчання. Визначено основні шляхи розвитку музичного мислення студентів: застосування у навчальному процесі гуманістичної моделі фахової підготовки майбутніх музикантів-виконавців, яка передбачає особистісно орієнтовані методи навчання; дослідження музичного мислення студентів з позицій взаємозв’язку інтелектуального, емоційного й особистісного розвитку; використання особистісно орієнтованих ситуацій, у процесі яких активізується творча музично-пізнавальна діяльність студентів, впровадження діалогу як засобу формування суб’єкт-суб’єктних стосунків на музичних заняттях. Доведено, що ефективність розвитку музичного мислення перебуває в прямій кореляційній залежності від розвиненості особистісних якостей і характеристик музичного мислення студентів. Досліджено найперспективніші у розвитку музичного мислення студентів форми й методи особистісно орієнтованого навчання, які спонукають самостійно мислити, спрямовують музичне мислення студентів до активних продуктивних дій, творчої художньо-інтерпретаційної діяльності, креативності. Застосовано комплекс методів дослідження, які спрямовані на активізацію музичного мислення в процесі особистісно орієнтованого навчання, а саме: розв’язування мислительних музичних задач, особистісно орієнтований тренінг, стильова інтерпретація, аналітичне пізнання музичного твору, інструментальний діалог, імпровізація тощо. Наукова новизна дослідження полягає у науково-методичній розробці особистісно орієнтованої концепції фахової підготовки майбутніх музикантів-виконавців як цілісного структурного процесу, яка спрямована на розвиток музичного мислення студентів на основі особистісно орієнтованого підходу. Висновки. Обґрунтована доцільність особистісно орієнтованої концепції розвитку музичного мислення студентів дала змогу розробленню методичної системи поетапного формування музичного мислення, яка забезпечуватиме ефективну фахову підготовку майбутніх музикантів-виконавців у мистецьких вищих навчальних закладах., The personality oriented concept of students’ musical thinking development in higher educational institutions of art is analyzed in the article. Planning of educational process with the regularities of development and the individual self-development creates the favorable conditions for self-realization of the creative potential of future musicians-performers and for activation of their musical thinking. The peculiarity of the students’ musical thinking development in the context of the personality oriented approach, as an important factor of the process of professional training improvement, is revealed. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the personality oriented concept of harmonious development of students’ musical thinking in art higher educational institutions, the expediency of implementation in the process of professional training of future musicians-performers of a personality oriented methodical system of education. The basic ways of development of students’ musical thinking were defined. They are appliance in the educational process of the humanistic model of professional training of future musiciansperformers, which provides the personality oriented methods of teaching; researching of the musical thinking of students from the positions the interconnection of intellectual, emotional and personal development; the usage of personality oriented situations, in the process of which the creative musical and cognitive activity of students activates, the introduction of dialogue as a mean of subject-subjective relations formation in the musical lessons. It is proved that the effectiveness of the musical thinking development is in the direct correlation dependency from the personal qualities and characteristics of students’ musical thinking development. The most perspective forms and methods of personality oriented learning in the development of students’ musical thinking, which motivate to think independently, direct the musical thinking of students to active productive actions, creative artistic and interpretive activity, and creativity, are investigated. A complex of methods, which are directed on the activation of musical thinking in the process of personality oriented education, are applied, namely: solution of thoughtful musical tasks, personality oriented training, stylistic interpretation, analytical cognition of a musical composition, instrumental dialogue, improvisation, etc. Scientific novelty consists in the scientific and methodical development of the personality oriented concept of professional training of future musicians-performers as a whole structural process, It is directed on the the musical thinking development of students on a base of a personality oriented approach. Conclusions. The expediency of the personality oriented concept of the musical thinking development of students made it possible to develop a methodical system of phased formation of musical thinking, which will provide the effective professional training of the future musiciansperformers in the art higher educational institutions., В статье проанализировано личностно ориентированную концепцию развития музыкального мышления студентов в высших учебных заведениях искусства. Проектирование учебного процесса с учётом закономерностей развития и саморазвития личности создаёт благоприятные условия для самореализации творческого потенциала будущих музыкантов-исполнителей, а также для активизации их музыкального мышления. Выявлена специфика развития музыкального мышления студентов в контексте личностно ориентированного подхода как важнейшего фактора усовершенствования процесса специальной подготовки. Цель статьи – обоснование личностно ориентированной концепции гармонического развития музыкального мышления в высших учебных заведениях искусства, целесообразность внедрения личностно ориентированной методической системы обучения в процесс специальной подготовки будущих музыкантов-исполнителей. Обозначены основные пути развития музыкального мышления студентов: применение в учебном процессе гуманистической модели специальной подготовки будущих музыкантов-исполнителей, которая предполагает личностно ориентированные методы обучения; исследование музыкального мышления студентов с позиций взаимосвязи интеллектуального, эмоционального и личностного развития; использование личностно ориентированных ситуаций, в процессе которых активизируется творческая музыкально-познавательная деятельность студентов; внедрение диалога как способа формирования субъект- субъектных отношений на музыкальных занятиях. Доказано, что эффективность развития музыкального мышления пребывает в прямой корреляционной зависимости от развития личностных качеств и характеристик музыкального мышления студентов. Исследованы перспективнейшие в развитии музыкального мышления студентов формы и методы личностно ориентированного обучения, которые способствуют самостоятельно мыслить, направляют музыкальное мышление студентов до активных продуктивных действий, творческой художественно-интерпретационной деятельности, креативности. Использован комплекс методов исследования, который направлен на активизацию музыкального мышления в процессе личностно ориентированного обучения, а именно: решение мыслительных музыкальных задач, личностно ориентированный тренинг, стилевая интерпретация, аналитическое познание музыкального произведения, инструментальный диалог, импровизация. Научная новизна исследования заключается в научно-методической разработке личностно ориентированной концепции специальной подготовки будущих музыкантов-исполнителей как целостного структурированного процесса, которая направлена на развитие музыкального мышления студентов на основе личностно ориентированного подхода.

The study deals with the relationship between myth and music of the 20th century. Myth is a structuring principle affecting music by remythologisation. The author analyses time models in mythological thinking in confrontation with new models of time in music. Myth and music contain a vertical and non-linear dimension with specific manifestation.

Research suggests that person-based dispositional factors, as well as properties of the music, influence a person's musical taste. In this study, we examined the possibility that the interaction between the stressfulness of the music and a listener's capacity for handling stress contributes to that listener's musical preferences. The key prediction relating fitness to musical preference is that the stressfulness of the music should tend to reflect the person's capacity for handling stress, including his or her physical fitness. The study method made use of an online questionnaire to assess physical fitness, impulsivity and sensation-seeking tendencies, and musical preferences. To create an independent index for estimating musical stressfulness, a parallel study was conducted, where an independent group of judges assessed the stressfulness of the music identified by participants in the main study. The stressfulness of the music was predicted using the survey-based dispositional factors in two regression models, where sex, current age, education, current fitness, and age at the time of musical preference were found to predict the stressfulness of the preferred music. The results suggest that males, younger participants, people with fewer years of education, and those who are more physically fit tend to prefer more stressful music.

Zagrebački Muzej za umjetnost i obrt pretprošle je 2017. godine u svoj zbirni fond prihvatio veliku donaciju baletnoga umjetnika Jelka Yureshe. Ovaj rad obrađuje najznačajniji dio (po vrsti artefakata) heterogene donacije – baletne kostime. Riječ je o u potpunosti stručno i znanstveno neobrađenoj građi te se ti kostimi sada prvi put dovode u svezu s baletima za koje su kreirani i opusima kostimografa koji su ih osmislili. Važan dio rada čini i (re)valorizacija značaja i muzealizacije čitave donacije, a uvodna poglavlja o životu donatora i o specifičnostima baletno-plesnih kostima čine pretekst interpretaciji i valorizaciji kostimā., Two years ago, in 2017, the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb accepted a large donation from the ballet artist Jelko Yuresha (9 May 1937, Zagreb, Croatia) and included it into its collective holdings. This paper analyses the most significant part (by the artefact type) of this heterogeneous donation – ballet costumes. The costumes have never been professionally and scientifically examined, and now they are analysed in light of the ballets for which they were created and of their costume designers’ oeuvres. An important part of the paper is also the (re)valorisation of the significance and musealisation of the whole donation. The paper opens with an introduction in which information on the life and work of Jelko Yuresha and his wife and artistic partner Belinda Wright (18 January 1929, Southport, England – 1 April 2007, Zurich, Switzerland) is presented; this is followed by a section on the structure and significance of the donation, where, along with basic facts about the donation, a critical revalorisation of its musealisation in the Museum of Arts and Crafts and a brief review of the musealisation of theatrical art in Croatia is given. The part of the work that directly deals with the ballet costumes from the Yuresha donation is introduced by a section on the specificities of ballet and dance costumes, which also revalorises and revises some of the ingrained postulates on this type of theatrical costume. The introductory chapters on the donor’s life and the specificities of ballet and dance costumes are a pretext for the interpretation and valorisation of the costumes. Ballet costumes from the Jelko Yuresha donation are analysed in the largest, separate section, i.e. costumes from the following ballets are analysed: The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet and Variations for Four. The costumes from the collection that have been chosen for analysis are those on which canons of ballet costume design can be pointed out well, but also those that represent deflection, novelties and certain specificities in the context of the ballets they were created for. Costumes are valorised and interpreted within the framework of the time when they were made, and the oeuvres of the costume designers who created them.

Supervised machine learning relies on the accessibility of large datasets of annotated data. This is essential since small datasets generally lead to overfitting when training high-dimensional machine-learning models. Since the manual annotation of such large datasets is a long, tedious and expensive process, another possibility is to artificially increase the size of the dataset. This is known as data augmentation. In this paper we provide an in-depth analysis of two data augmentation methods: sound transformations and sound segmentation. The first transforms a music track to a set of new music tracks by applying processes such as pitch-shifting, time-stretching or filtering. The second one splits a long sound signal into a set of shorter time segments. We study the effect of these two techniques (and the parameters of those) for a genre classification task using public datasets. The main contribution of this work is to detail by experimentation the benefit of these methods, used alone or together, during training and/or testing. We also demonstrate their use in improving the robustness of potentially unknown sound degradations. By analyzing these results, good practice recommendations are provided.

The article is devoted to the psychological and cognitive problem of “stalled ambitions” on the example of Mozart-son. The research relevance of Franz Xaver Mozart is due to the further study of his activities spheres in Lviv, as well as respond to events concerning Mozart’s name, which is associated with the Festival MozArt. The purpose of the article is to review a range of Mozart-son’s name in the context of his opera-activity in Lviv, the influence of Mozart father’s name, as well as in the context of “stalled ambitions” of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Munich. The scientific novelty of this work is aimed at exploring new perspectives of “cult of Mozart-son” in Lviv and intends to expand the orbit of European cities, actively developing “cult of Mozart” (Salzburg, Vienna and Munich). In the work such research methods were applied as cultural-historical, when analyzing the art of Mozart-son and Mozart-father in the context of artistic development of Munich and Lviv, comparative, when analyzing the conditions of art being of Mozart's-son and Mozart-father heritage, biographical, psychological and cognitive in studies of "Mozart-son and Opera, Mozart-son and Mozart ", "Mozart and women". Life of Mozart-son was burdened with the serious psychological conflicts. On the one hand it was the dilemma of the son-father, son-mother and the severe geometry of "love triangle" on the other hand. The drama of forbidden love to the wife of a provincial Advisor reaches the comparisons with Liebestod (German, love-death) by Wagner. "Tristan and Isolde" owes its emergence into the light of unrealized love Wagner to Mathilde Vezendonk. The reason of unconscious and perhaps conscious attempts of Mozart-son to escape from himself could be the glory of the father-genius as well as the passion for Jozefine, sublimated in his art works. Isn’t it a plot for new opera about “Lviv” Mozart? The mystery of the creative crisis turning into the renaissance, insanity, misery, disappointment, creative sublimation puts Franz Xaver Mozart on an equal footing with such composers as Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Gaetano Donizetti, Gustav Mahler, poets and artists Nikolaus Lenau, Friedrich Gelderlinom, Adolf Velfli, Louis Sutterom, Robert Valzerom, and many others.

This article deals with generalized analysis of artistic and scientific activity by famous performer and researcher from Canada – Andrij Hornjatkevyc (Edmonton), in context of bandura art development in Ukraine and abroad. This article deals with the complex analysis of Andrij Hornjatkevyc 's multi-vectoral activity, based on the research and popularization of kobzar art of past and present times. The phases of his life path and professional development, activity in spheres of Ukrainian language research, Ukrainian oral and music folklore, traditions of authentic kobzar movement, popularization of epic kobzar repertoire are being pointed out, and this is the first time for the information to be entered in scientific circulation as introductory research. The methodology of the study encompasses historical, systemic, axiological, cultural lens approaches and corresponding specific techniques of scientific knowledge: historical and chronological, systematic classification methods etc. Among priority subjects of scientific researches by Andrij Hornjatkevyc there are past and modern kobzar movements, especially about kobza-bandura, traditional kobzar art, articles-potraits of Ukrainian diaspora artistic personalities – Zinoviy Shtokalko, Hryhoriy Kytasty, Mykhaylo Teliha. These topics are being analyzed. Publication cycle about Lebian language, its meaning, interpretative dictionaries are also being reviewed. Andrij Hornjatkevyc’s contribution to the decryption and editing of Zinoviy Shtokalko’s methodical and repertoire manuscripts, publishing preparations and issue of «A Kobzar Handbook» – «Kobzarskyi pidruchnyk» (1992) and music sheet collection «Kobza» (2002), and also the research and generalization of sound recording activity and legacy of this bandura player are being noted. The general characteristics of Andrij Hornjatkevyc’s personal repertoire as musician-performeris are being made. It covers traditional genres of kobzar movement – dumas, historical songs, instrumental melodies. Simultaneously, personal features of Andrij Hornjatkevyc as a member of Ukrainian community, scientific and artistic organizations and unions – «Plast», Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, Shevchenko Scientific Society, Ukrainian National Composers’ Union are being underlined.

Among the professional roles in the recording industry, studio musicians have received relatively little academic attention. The present study explores the work realities of professional studio musicians in Germany, one of the largest music industries in the world, and is based on interviews with six pop musicians; guitarists, bassists, keyboardists and drummers who are between 27 and 66 years old. The findings show how changes in the recording industry - most notably dwindling budgets, the rise of project studios and virtual collaboration - have affected working practices, skill requirements and business models. The findings indicate that in Germany it is hardly possible to make a living from studio work as a professional musician. This is true even for leading session players. Sinking fees and the lack of access to royalties pose a problem that is not tackled due to fierce competition and the risk of damaging one’s reputation.

While it may seem effortless for great musicians to deliver beautiful works of art, little is known about the hard work behind these performances. Musicians require grit to sustain effort over many years of training but flow can sweeten this experience. Growth mindset, referring to the belief that ability is malleable, is often related to grit and has been theorized to be conducive to flow. Self-identified musicians, between 18 and 57 years of age ( N = 162), participated in an online survey investigating the potential links between grit, growth mindset, and dispositional flow. Correlational analyses revealed that grit was a significant predictor of flow but no correlations between growth mindset and grit or flow were found. Furthermore, a hierarchical regression analysis taking into account participants’ musical training, personality traits, and performance anxiety found that grit did not predict dispositional flow over and above what can be predicted by practice hours and music performance anxiety. Altogether, these findings offer a closer look at the effects of the non-cognitive factors of growth mindset and grit on the experience of flow in music performance.

Organ tablature music notation differs considerably in structure and form from the music notation used today. The manual transcription of organ tablature compositions to modern music notation is time-consuming and often prone to errors. In this paper, we present a deep learning approach to automatically recognize organ tablature notation in scanned documents and transcribe it to modern music notation. Our approach is aimed at generating a uniform transcription that remains as close as possible to the original sheet music and therefore does not perform automatic error correction or musical interpretation. The artificial neural network model developed for the recognition of tablature characters is trained using a combination of real annotated tablature staves and tablatures produced by a synthetic data generator. The results of our experiments are evaluated on tablatures taken from two tablature books. We identify several types of error and validate that these are primarily caused by the poor legibility of relevant parts of some tablature scans. Overall, our approach achieves an accuracy of 97.2% and 99.3% correctly recognized bars, depending on whether note pitch and rest characters or note duration and special characters are considered, respectively.

Pitch-class distributions are of central relevance in music information retrieval, computational musicology and various other fields, such as music perception and cognition. However, despite their structure being closely related to the cognitively and musically relevant properties of a piece, many existing approaches treat pitch-class distributions as fixed templates. In this paper, we introduce the Tonal Diffusion Model, which provides a more structured and interpretable statistical model of pitch-class distributions by incorporating geometric and algebraic structures known from music theory as well as insights from music cognition. Our model explains the pitch-class distributions of musical pieces by assuming tones to be generated through a latent cognitive process on the Tonnetz, a well-established representation for harmonic relations. Specifically, we assume that all tones in a piece are generated by taking a sequence of interval steps on the Tonnetz starting from a unique tonal origin. We provide a description in terms of a Bayesian generative model and show how the latent variables and parameters can be efficiently inferred. The model is quantitatively evaluated on a corpus of 248 pieces from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic era and describes the empirical pitch-class distributions more accurately than conventional template-based models. On three concrete musical examples, we demonstrate that our model captures relevant harmonic characteristics of the pieces in a compact and interpretable way, also reflecting stylistic aspects of the respective epoch., Paper with appendix

Eating disorders are serious disturbances in eating habits, body image attitudes, and weight that affect overall well-being and can have life-threatening consequences. Participation in music therapy sessions may allow for healing of anxiety, self-worth, and body-image challenges that each person may face. In this manuscript we examined the music therapy literature pertaining to clinical work with persons who have eating disorders. We describe six techniques (clinical improvisation, song autobiography, song discussion, songwriting, music assisted relaxation/imagery, and Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music) and their reported uses in the literature. While the evidence supports that these techniques are effective, we acknowledge that what works in one context may not be culturally relevant or effective in another. The overview of the evidence in the literature corroborates how therapists who work with persons who have eating disorders tend to use music therapy techniques as pathways for contributing to sense of self. For each technique, we provide clinical examples with a strong element of the need to redevelop or discover identity.

A collection of five video essays on embodiment and social distancing, with a focus on projects. ANNIE ABRAHAMS AND DANIEL PINHEIRO, “Why is the use of videoconferencing so exhausting? An analysis on the demands” (00:10): Video footage from Distant Feeling(s) project run by Annie Abrahams & Daniel Pinheiro, a yearly reconnection, eyes closed, no talking. MAURICIO CARRASCO AND DANIEL ZEA, “Vortex Decameron: Building narratologies in pandemic times” (05:22): Emerging from another plague, the fourteenth century Black Death, Boccaccio’s Decameron presents the reader with examples of pre, mid and post-plague societal perceptions and norms. This correspondence inspired Ensemble Vortex to propose a newly commissioned series of contemporary narrative works. TINA LA PORTA, “Internet Art At The Turn Of The Millennium” (11:32): This body of work spans from 1994 to 2005, during this time I made over twenty web-based works that explored the idea of “live-ness” on the internet. ALICIA DE MANUEL, DAVID CASACUBERTA, AND PEP GATELL, “La Maldición de la Corona: Revisiting videoconference as a system to foster group creativity” (16:50): A collective and remote experiment based on William Shakespeare’s classic 'Macbeth', carried out by Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus during the lockdown. The experiment has involved around thirty creatives and resulted in a pioneering work that transcends technological barriers and investigates the future of theater. MELISSANDRE VARIN, “Freezing Elements of Research” (21:54): the visual is the abstract of the audio/the audio is the abstract of the visual – altogether – with you – it forms an assemblage into braids.

Musical themes are essential elements in Western classical music. In this paper, we present the Musical Theme Dataset (MTD), a multimodal dataset inspired by “A Dictionary of Musical Themes” by Barlow and Morgenstern from 1948. For a subset of 2067 themes of the printed book, we created several digital representations of the musical themes. Beyond graphical sheet music, we provide symbolic music encodings, audio snippets of music recordings, alignments between the symbolic and audio representations, as well as detailed metadata on the composer, work, recording, and musical characteristics of the themes. In addition to the data, we also make several parsers and web-based interfaces available to access and explore the different modalities and their relations through visualizations and sonifications. These interfaces also include computational tools, bridging the gap between the original dictionary and music information retrieval (MIR) research. The dataset is of relevance for various subfields and tasks in MIR, such as cross-modal music retrieval, music alignment, optical music recognition, music transcription, and computational musicology.

This video article expands upon the Poetics of Relations, the embodied research of VestAndPage (Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes), which informs their performance-based filmmaking theory and practice. Since 2010, the artist duo inquires into the pillars that constitute the cross-contamination of the two art forms of time-based live art and filmmaking. Their films have been produced geo-psychologically in a variety of locations around the world: from the remote regions of Chilean Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctica; from socio-cultural areas of conflict like Kashmir and North-West India to the volcanic island of Formentera; and during a month-long performance walk through Germany, Poland and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Each of the films focuses upon a particular research and artistic subject. In this video article, their film projects are taken under the pinhole to look into what could constitute a manifesto of sorts in which the embodied research process identifies the essentials constituents of their practice, and elaborates on the integration of filming, story, time, space, character, action, objects, text, sound, effects, atmosphere, production and editing.

In der Regel endete der Kompositionsprozess nicht mit Fertigstellung des Autographs. Die von professionellen Schreibern angefertigten Kopien dienten Beethoven oft als Grundlage fur bisweilen umfangreiche Revisionen; oft geht der Notentext letzter Hand aus dem Autograph noch gar nicht hervor. Es ist erfreulicher, dass nun die umfangreiche, von Beethoven uberprufte Kopistenabschrift einer vollstandigen Symphonie vorliegt, und das, obwohl das Autograph erhalten und bereits selbst sowohl als gedrucktes Faksimile als auch digitalisiert im Internet leicht zuganglich ist, und obwohl die Abschrift nicht einmal besonders viele autographe Eintragungen erhalt. Es handelt sich um die Partiturabschrift der Pastoralsymphonie, die der Kopist Joseph Klumpar als dritte Kopie (nach den Orchesterstimmen und der Partiturabschrift fur den Verleger Breitkopf & Hartel) angefertigt hat und die bei der offentlichen Urauffuhrung im Dezember 1808 als Dirigierpartitur diente. Sie wird heute in der Universitatsbibliothek Ljubljana verwahrt.

The DALI dataset is a large dataset of time-aligned symbolic vocal melody notations (notes) and lyrics at four levels of granularity. DALI contains 5358 songs in its first version and 7756 for the second one. In this article, we present the dataset, explain the developed tools to work the data and detail the approach used to build it. Our method is motivated by active learning and the teacher-student paradigm. We establish a loop whereby dataset creation and model learning interact, benefiting each other. We progressively improve our model using the collected data. At the same time, we correct and enhance the collected data every time we update the model. This process creates an improved DALI dataset after each iteration. Finally, we outline the errors still present in the dataset and propose solutions to global issues. We believe that DALI can encourage other researchers to explore the interaction between model learning and dataset creation, rather than regarding them as independent tasks.

Classification of organisms and languages has long provided the foundation for studying biological and cultural history, but there is still no accepted scheme for classifying songs cross-culturally. The best candidate, Lomax and Grauer’s “Cantometrics” coding scheme, did not spawn a large following due, in part, to concerns about its reliability. We present here a new classification scheme, called “CantoCore”, that is inspired by Cantometrics but that emphasizes its “core” structural characters rather than the more subjective characters of performance style. Using both schemes to classify the 30 songs from the Cantometrics Consensus Tape, we found that CantoCore appeared to be approximately 80% more reliable than Cantometrics. Nevertheless, Cantometrics still demonstrated significant reliability for all but its instrumental characters. Future multidisciplinary applications of CantoCore and Cantometrics to the cross-cultural study of musical similarity, musical evolution, musical universals, and the relationship between music and culture will provide the true test of each scheme’s value.

Background: Although patient preferred live music (PPLM) can improve mood and pain with hospitalized adult medical patients, there is a lack of literature concerning therapist positioning within PPLM interventions. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of therapist positioning within PPLM on positive and negative affect, pain, and trust in the therapist with adults on a cardiovascular unit. Methods: Participants (N = 27) were randomly assigned to one of three single-session conditions: PPLM delivered with the therapist sitting, PPLM delivered with the therapist standing, or wait-list control. Positive and negative affect were measured with the Global Mood Scale, pain was measured with a 10-point Likert-type scale, and trust in therapist was measured with the Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale. Results: Results indicated no significant between-group difference in positive affect, negative affect, or pain. Control participants had the lowest posttest positive affect scores and highest posttest negative affect and pain scores, indicating that both PPLM conditions had more favorable results than the control condition. Concerning trust in the therapist, there was no significant between-group difference resultant of therapist positioning. Conclusion: Regardless of the therapist’s positioning, a single PPLM session can be an effective intervention for immediately improving positive and negative affect and pain for adult inpatients on a cardiovascular unit. Implications for clinical practice, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided. Keywords: music therapy, patient preferred live music, cardiovascular, positive and negative affect, pain, trust in the therapist

International audience; Automatic harmonic analysis has been an enduring focus of the MIR community, and has enjoyed a particularly vigorous revival of interest in the machine-learning age. We focus here on the specific case of Roman numeral analysis which, by virtue of requiring key/functional information in addition to chords, may be viewed as an acutely challenging use case.We report on three main developments. First, we provide a new meta-corpus bringing together all existing Roman numeral analysis datasets; this offers greater scale and diversity, not only of the music represented, but also of human analytical viewpoints. Second, we examine best practices in the encoding of pitch, time, and harmony for machine learning tasks. The main contribution here is the introduction of full pitch spelling to such a system, an absolute must for the comprehensive study of musical harmony. Third, we devised and tested several neural network architectures and compared their relative accuracy. In the best-performing of these models, convolutional layers gather the local information needed to analyse the chord at a given moment while a recurrent part learns longer-range harmonic progressions.Altogether, our best representation and architecture produce a small but significant improvement on overall accuracy while simultaneously integrating full pitch spelling. This enables the system to retain important information from the musical sources and provide more meaningful predictions for any new input.

Do the terms “modernism” and “postmodernism” objectively characterize the trends in the music history of the 20th century or are they merely theoretical abstractions? How can they be applied to the music history of specific countries, for example, when analysing a local historical experience? The article will consider these questions primarily to focus on the representation of the modernist and postmodernist aesthetics in the stylistic developments of the 20th-century Latvian music history.

The goal of music highlight extraction is to get a short consecutive segment of a piece of music that provides an effective representation of the whole piece. In a previous work, we introduced an attention-based convolutional recurrent neural network that uses music emotion classification as a surrogate task for music highlight extraction, for Pop songs. The rationale behind that approach is that the highlight of a song is usually the most emotional part. This paper extends our previous work in the following two aspects. First, methodology-wise we experiment with a new architecture that does not need any recurrent layers, making the training process faster. Moreover, we compare a late-fusion variant and an early-fusion variant to study which one better exploits the attention mechanism. Second, we conduct and report an extensive set of experiments comparing the proposed attention-based methods against a heuristic energy-based method, a structural repetition-based method, and a few other simple feature-based methods for this task. Due to the lack of public-domain labeled data for highlight extraction, following our previous work we use the RWC POP 100-song data set to evaluate how the detected highlights overlap with any chorus sections of the songs. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods over competing methods. For reproducibility, we open source the code and pre-trained model at https://github.com/remyhuang/pop-music-highlighter/., Comment: Transactions of the ISMIR vol. 1, no. 1

In this article, I analyze the ways in which community-based arts projects have the potential to challenge the gendered power dynamics of the music industries by creating productive spaces that encourage accessibility, promotion of female artists, and connection amongst girls and female-identified professionals. Specifically, I share my reflections on the inaugural Girls Rock Regina (GRR) camp, which took place in July 2017 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Drawing on interview data collected from the GRR organizing crew, participating musicians, volunteers and campers, as well as from my participatory experience as Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and Popular Music, and Director of the IMP Labs whose research often focuses on community arts-based research in popular music genres and creative technologies, I highlight the ways in which hegemonic ideas around the gendering of creativity, music technologies, and the music industries are being challenged.

This is the editorial introduction for a special issue of IASPM@Journal entitled Gender Politics in the Music Industry.

Жанр фортепіанного концерту посідає одне з чільних місць у творчості сучасних китайських композиторів. Інтерес до нього зумовлений: інтеграцією китайської культури у західний музичний світ, засвоєнням жанрової системи європейської музики, усвідомленням універсальності фортепіано як провідного музичного інструмента, поступовим опануванням його музично-технологічних і виражальних засобів у композиторській і виконавській площинах, а також можливістю адаптації національного музичного матеріалу і створенням самобутньої національної фортепіанної музичної культури.Питання розвитку жанру фортепіанного концерту у музичній культурі сучасного Китаю висвітлюються переважно китайськими дослідниками. І хоча вже зроблено чимало, але багато творів, написаних протягом останніх років, лишаються недослідженими. Одним з них є фортепіанний концерт «Чотири духи» відомої сучасної китайсько-американської композиторки Чень Ї (нар. 1953). Концерт був написаний у 2016 році, світова прем’єра відбулася 18 листопада 2016 р. в Пекіні. Виконавці – Китайський філармонічний оркестр, диригент Юн Лонг, солістка Клара Янг, прем’єра у США відбулася 8 грудня 2016 р.Метою статті є визначення впливу давніх національних вірувань на музичну поетику сучасного китайського фортепіанного концерту.Фортепіанний концерт «Чотири духи» є прикладом тенденції поєднання загальноєвропейського та національного, з переважанням національного. У концерті це виявляється на змістовному рівні, через образну систему китайської міфології, а також через музичну мову, шляхом стилізації та цитування народних мелодій, поширених у різних регіонах Китаю.Основний виклад матеріалу. Чотири духи є основою китайської міфології. У прадавніх китайських легендах та уявленнях вони представляли чотири священні тварини: синій дракон на сході, чорний хуанву (поєднання черепахи і змії) на півночі, білий тигр на заході і червоний фенікс на півдні. Зображення цих тварини надихнули композиторку на створення чотиричастинного фортепіанного концерту, у кожній з частин якого відтворюється уява про ту чи іншу символічну істоту.У лірично-енергійній музиці першої частини концерту стилізовані китайські народні пісні з Центрального Китаю. Таємничий настрій та образність другої частини відтворені сонористичним звукописом. Драматичні образи третьої створюються зіткненнями регістрів у партії фортепіано, що підсилено оркестровкою. Ця стрімка частина виступає зв’язкою до фіналу. Четверта частина є жвавою і надзвичайно енергійною, її тематичний матеріал запозичений з народної мелодії Південного Китаю. У всіх частинах фортепіано та оркестр перетворюються на органічне ціле, символізуючи національний дух китайської культури., Genre of the piano concert holds a prominent place in the works of contemporary Chinese composers. The interest is due to the integration of Chinese culture into the Western music world, the awareness of piano versatility for national musical material adaptation. Article analyses for the first time one of the most recently written works of the contemporary Chinese-American composer Chen Yi – the piano concert “The Four Spirits” (2016). The purpose of the article is to determine the effect of ancient Chinese mythology on the content and structure of the piano concert “The Four Spirits”, written by Chen Yi. The methodology uses musical and theoretical analysis method to study work’s musical drama and program basis.The concert analysed combines organically pan-European and national features, when the national dominates over the European. This is manifested in the concert at the content level, through Chinese mythology images, as well as in the musical language, by stylizing and quoting folk melodies common in various regions of China. Referring to the basics of Chinese mythology, Chen Yi reproduces in the 4-part cycle of the suite type the imagination of four sacred animals, symbols of Chinese culture: dragon, xuanwu (a combination of turtle and snake), tiger and phoenix.The composer stylizes in the lyrical and energetic music of the first part of the concert the Chinese folk songs from Central China. Mysterious mood and imagery of the second part are reproduced by the sonorous orchestral recording and spatial layers in the piano-solo part. Dramatic images of the third part, which is a link to the final, arise due to collisions of piano registers emphasized by means of orchestration. The fourth part is lively and energetic; the thematic material is borrowed from the folk melody of Southern China. The piano and orchestra are transformed in each part into an organic whole, symbolizing the spirit of Chinese culture. Conclusion. The unique national traditions, in particular the ancient mythology of the Chinese people, became the source of the original musical ideas and their original embodiment by the modern Chinese composers., Жанр фортепианного концерта занимает одно из важнейших мест в творчестве современных китайских композиторов. Это обусловлено интеграцией китайской культуры в западный музыкальный мир, осознанием универсальности фортепиано для адаптации национального музыкального материала. В статье впервые анализируется одно из недавно созданных призведений современного китайско-американского композитора Чень И – фортепианный концерт «Четыре духа» (2016). Цель статьи – определить влияние древней китайской мифологии на музыкальную поэтику фортепианного концерта «Четыре духа», написанного Чень И. Методология исследования предполагает применение методики музыкально-теоретического анализа произведения для изучения его музыкальной драматургии и программного содержания.Анализированный концерт органчески соединяет общеевропейские и национальные черты, когда национальное доминирует над европейским. В концерте это прявляется на содержательном уровне, через образы китайской мифологии, а также в музыкальном языке, путем стилизации и цитирования народных мелодий, распространенных в различных регионах Китая. Обращаясь к основам китайской мифологии, Чень И в четырехчастном цикле сюитного типа воссоздает представление о четырех священных животных, символов китайской культуры: дракона, хуанву, тигра и феникса.В лирико-энергичной музыке первой части концерта композитор стилизирует китайские народные песни из Центрального Китая. Таинственное настроение и образность второй части воспроизведены сонористическим звучанием оркестра. Драматические образы третьей части, являющейся связкой к финалу, возникают путем столкновения регистров фортепиано, подчеркнутых средствами оркестровки. Четвертая часть является быстрой и энергичной, ее тематический материал основан на народной мелодии Южного Китая. Во всех частях фортепиано и оркестр превращаются в органичную целостность, символизируя дух китайской культуры. Выводы. Уникальные национальные традиции, в частности древняя мифология китайского народа, послужили источником оригинальных музыкальных идей и их самобытного воплощения в творчестве современных китайских композиторов.

The article focuses on the benefits of music for older adults in retirement homes. Relevant literature was studied to investigate the theoretical and sociocultural context. Furthermore, participatory action research was conducted in the Ptuj retirement home. The findings indicate that the music programme has substantial personal and social value for the residents.

Human rhythm perception and sensorimotor synchronization are both constrained by temporal thresholds on several levels. The lower limit for durations that allow for entrainment at the level of metric beat subdivision has been estimated at about 100–120 ms (London, 2002; Repp, 2003). Tempos and subdivision durations reported for American jazz and East African xylophone music performance, however, suggest that the perception of shorter subdivisions within a range of 80–100 ms may well be possible. This paper musicologically analyzes and empirically measures the fastest metric subdivisions in two sets of live recordings of vernacular dance music from West Africa. In two recordings of Ewe drumming from Ghana, subdivision durations display mean values within a range of 90–100 ms for extended periods of time. Four recordings of jembe drumming from Mali feature subdivision IOIs of about 80–90 ms during their final and fastest sections. A lower limit for metric subdivision durations is hypothesized to perceptually constrain West African drumming within a threshold range of about 80–100 ms.

Among the archaic archetypes of the Ukrainian musical culture, less researched ones belong to Indo-European (more specific – Indo-Iranian) origin. One of these is a tripartite music ( troyista muzyka ) that preserved deep links with pre-Christian (Scythian, Sarmatian-Alanian, Old Slavic) rituals, individual genres of the Ukrainian epic and calendar ritual folklore. The tripartite word genesis is associated with the ancient trizna Slavic word, related to the concept of a triple sacrifice – water, earth and sky, which Slavs-pagans offered to their gods. The triple ritual sacrifice is tied with the idea of a World Tree, which symbolized the ternary vertical structure of our ancestors’ universe. By analogy, the concept of tripartite correlates with the musical-spatial coordinate – the texture, its trinomial dimension. In the ancient rituals which have been accompanied by the instrumental play, the music has been performed the function of three-level vertical structuring space. An ancient Slavic ritual of triple sacrifice was accompanied by a play on a ritual musical instrument-mediator as an integral attribute of the ritual. The instrument realized a three functional idea, combining and protecting the integrity of the Universe (the world of people, gods and ancestors). Hence, the application of the tripartite idea semantics (trinomial, three-functional) to the tripartite music concept, from its sources rooted in the ritual, and the interconnection of tripartite music with the ancient pagan worship becomes clear. The same function has been performed by the tripartite music of the folk-professional instrumental ensembles of the Ukrainians, which later grew up with a lush blossom in the music of the Ukrainians’ professional tradition. The number of the tripartite musicians’ ensemble members can range from two to five or more musicians. The instrumental and instrumental parts functions are irreversible. The idea of trinomial in the tripartite music has been realized through its texture, the functional interconnection of the composition of three levels, they are upper, middle, lower, which have been embodied through the musical instruments system.

Objects come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and forms. The notion of musical works as objects, represented by their written scores, has proved to be effete and limiting to the study of music as diverse social-cultural practice and performed craft. The past two decades have witnessed considerable efforts to renew conceptual and methodological tools, and Neumann's study makes a valuable contribution to this effect. This commentary responds to some issues raised by Neumann's article in relation to the notion of musical "object". Specifically, I retrace the shift from a score-based to a process-oriented musicology geared towards performances, placing the concerns of contemporary opera studies within this broader disciplinary change. I consider some implications of technology in mediating new operatic objects for discourse. Finally, I reflect on some of the inherent dangers of objectifying performance in empirical analyses.

This paper deals with the tuning question as it is discussed in Gioseffo Zarlino’s principal musical-theoretical treatise, Istitutioni harmoniche (1558). First, Zarlino’s tuning system in vocal music (the syntonic diatonic) is presented; then, its shortcomings are discussed; and finally, its adjustment (temperament) for the use in instrumental music is explained.

The vocal duets of G. F. Handel are distinguished by a greater musical and dramaturgical diversity compared to the duets of his contemporaries, but this diversity has not yet been systematically examined in different contexts. This study investigates them in two genre traditions, that of the chamber duet and that of the so-called “dramatic duet”, a component of genres such as opera, cantata and serenata. It concentrates on London in the period 1706-1724 in order to explore to which extent Handel's treatment of duets differs from the contributions by his Italian contemporaries, who were either active in London at the time (e. g. G. Bononcini) or whose works were performed parallel to his.