Szczepanski

AAWM JOURNAL VOL. 4 NO. 1 (2015)

Impossible Melodies: Octave Cycles and Illusory Pitch Shifts in a North Chinese Wind Repertoire

Beth Szczepanski

---

Abstract:

Buddhist monks at Wutaishan in Shanxi Province, China perform melodies on shengguan wind instruments that seem to move to lower and lower pitches while actually remaining in the same narrow range. Pitch paradoxes such as octave cycling have been documented in music of Africa and Europe, but this is the first such example from East Asia to receive scholarly attention. This article examines how the pitch and timbre of the flute, double reed pipe, and mouth organ work together to create the auditory illusions in shengguanyue. It also argues that the discovery of pitch paradoxes in this repertoire should inspire scholars to undertake more rigorous analysis and more detailed transcription in order to discover the complexities that might be hidden inside what seem to be simple Chinese traditional tunes.

Read full article in PDF version

Contributor Information:

Beth Szczepanski is Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Lewis and Clark College.

© 2015 by the author. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of this article without requesting permission. When distributing, (1) the author of the article and the name, volume, issue, and year of the journal must be identified clearly; (2) no portion of the article, including audio, video, or other accompanying media, may be used for commercial purposes; and (3) no portion of the article or any of its accompanying media may be modified, transformed, built upon, sampled, remixed, or separated from the rest of the article.

---