Analytical Approaches to World Musics
ISSN 2158-5296
2014, Volume 3, No. 2
AAWM JOURNAL Volume 3, No. 2 (2014)
Volume 3, No. 2 (2014)
Brent Keogh
Traditionally, students learning the maqāmātare taught aurally, in the master-student paradigm, where phrase-by-phrase they acquire knowledge of the maqāmāt, which forms the building blocks of taqsīmand composition. While Western forms of notation for the representation of Arabic maqāmāt have increasingly been used to represent these modes, many scholars have questioned their effectiveness within these traditions. Criticism of Western notation has raised issues concerning the fixing of the notes of a maqām to a fixed pitch, being unable to account for regional differences in articulation, and not accounting for crucial information such as the breaking up of a maqām into its distinct ajnās. This paper proposes a new system of representation for the organization of the maqāmāt and the interrelationships within these scales, used for modulation both in composition and improvised settings. Additionally, this paper argues that this system is more useful than existing forms of Western notation for addressing the problems mentioned above when articulating the maqāmāt.
Changing Performance Styles of Twentieth Century Ashkenazi Cantorial Recitatives
Amit Klein
Eastern European chazanut [hazzanut] is a form of art which has developed gradually since the mid-eighteenth century and reached a certain peak in the first half of the twentieth century. Eastern European cantors were brought up in the Orthodox tradition, some of them also in the Chasidic tradition, and their cantorial music stems from these musical legacies. In all of the great urban synagogues the congregations expected the cantor to sing traditional music based on the old Nusach motives (i.e. the traditional chant), yet at the same time they also expected the cantor to extend his music far beyond the traditional patterns. In their improvisations, also termed cantorial recitatives, the cantors sought to artistically elevate the traditional chant by using innovative melodic patterns and modalities, and by applying a great amount of coloratura and vocal virtuosity. Even in smaller towns such music was performed by itinerant cantors and, in a way, the cantorial singing was considered as both sacred prayer and entertainment. In various congregations one could hear connoisseurs arguing the merits of the cantor’s performance. From this background the art of cantorial singing developed into an improvisational art which culminated at the beginning of the twentieth century in what is called “The Golden Age of the Cantorial Art.”
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the increased production of commercial recordings brought the chazanut to its peak in terms of popularity and extent of distribution. The recordings released during the first half of the twentieth century were extremely popular among Jews in Europe, America, and elsewhere, and their huge success led to the development of a canon of recitatives that set the tone and standard for the entire cantorial world.2 Due to this canon’s unprecedented success,3 both in terms of popularity and wide distribution and in terms of its influence on the character of the cantorial recitative (see Klein 2011), many cantors following the golden age began to imitate the canonic style, using the earlier records to recreate the music in synagogue services, concerts, and in new recordings of their own. To this day cantors look to their predecessors of the golden age and regard them as models, imitating their style, their timbre, and even their mannerisms. The congregational admiration of the golden age cantors has not stopped, and cantors of our time constantly feel the need to please their audience by using golden age masterpieces in their services and especially in concerts and on CDs.
The first cantorial recordings were made mostly in Europe at the very beginning of the twentieth century by cantors such as Meir Schor and by European immigrants in New York such as Yechiel Alter Karniol. These recordings were limited in scope and dissemination and therefore were not as influential as the recordings of later generations. The next generation, the second, was fortunate to have cantors of the highest caliber such as Yossele Rosenblat, Zawel Kwartin, Gershon Sirota and others. In the 1940s a new generation of cantors developed who followed in the steps of their predecessors such as Shalom Kats, Moyshe Oysher and Moshe Ganchoff. These cantors form the third and last generation of the golden age.
As noted, contemporary cantors still rely heavily on compositions that were recorded in the great golden age. These cover versions seem in many respects to adhere to the original recordings, but they also demonstrate a new approach to the performance of cantorial music. The purpose of this article is to examine the changes in performance practice4 between the era of the original performances (in the second recording generation) and contemporary performances. Firstly, I will demonstrate that there have indeed been significant changes in performance practices. Secondly, I will show how these changes in various performance elements generally reveal one coherent trend towards an increased attention to small performance details. I will also demonstrate how the focus of later generations on the fine details of performance has led to more varied and accentuated performances. In the final section of this essay, I will address the cultural significance of this change in the specific context of the cantorial world as well as in the music industry in general. The approach of contemporary cantors may well be a consequence of global trends in the commercial music industry. However, I would like to argue that it also reflects deeper cultural changes related to the decline of cantorial art in its original, functional synagogue environment, and to its realization in the recording studio. This change in performance, I will argue, is also consistent with the prominence of interpretation and commentary on canonized texts in the Jewish tradition.
The Subversive Songs of Bossa Nova: Tom Jobim in the Era of Censorship
Irna Priore and Chris Stover
Bossa nova flourished in Brazil at the end of the 1950s. This was a time of rapid development and economic prosperity in the country, following President Jucelino Kubitschek’s 1956 proclamation of “fifty years of progress in five,” but after the 1964 coup d’état, when General Humberto Castello Branco’s military regime took control of Brazil, the positive energy of the bossa nova era quickly dissipated.1 Soon after the 1964 coup the atmosphere changed: civil rights were suppressed, political dissent was silenced, and many outspoken singer-songwriters, authors and playwrights, journalists, and academics were censored, arrested, and imprisoned. First-generation bossa nova artists, however, were able to avoid such persecution because their music was generally perceived as apolitical.2 This essay challenges this perception by analyzing the ways in which iconic bossa nova composer Antônio Carlos (“Tom”) Jobim inscribed subversive political thought through musical syntax and lyrical allegory in several of his post-1964 songs. We begin by providing a brief overview of the socio-political history of 1960s Brazil, considering some general features of the Brazilian protest song (canção engajada) before focusing on Chico Buarque’s anthemic “Roda viva” as an exemplar of that style. We then move to a detailed examination of the Jobim compositions “Sabiá” and “Ligia,” the lyrics to both of which speak of love, longing, and saudade in the manner of many bossa nova songs, but within which can be found incisive (if carefully coded) critiques of the Castello Branco government. In order to contextualize these works, we will consider aspects of Jobim’s composition studies and describe his affinity with and incorporation of tonal and post-tonal compositional techniques. Because Brazil’s musical landscape—including much of its popular music—was highly informed by European art music syntax, this kind of analysis is relevant; indeed we believe that a careful consideration of such relationships is necessary for a sensitive hermeneutic look at Brazilian popular music generally.3 We will describe how meaning can be coded in harmony: how harmonic syntax can add layers of meaning that reinforce the covert meaning of words through the use of compositional techniques like deceptive motion, mode mixture, and chromatic modulation, similar to text painting in the European art song tradition. By contextualizing Jobim’s work through engagement with its contemporaneous political and artistic history, and by considering the influence of aspects of Jobim’s musical studies through sensitive analysis of the works themselves, we will make claims about the relationship between musical syntax, lyrical meaning, and political motivation.
On Not Losing Heart: A Response to Savage and Brown’s “Toward a New Comparative Musicology”
David Clarke
Toward a New Comparative Musicology: Some Comments on the Paper by Savage and Brown
Victor Grauer
Let It Be Called “Comparative Ethnomusicology”
David Locke
Response to Mirelman: Orality and Aristoxenus; Pedagogy and Practice
Jay Rahn