Wednesday, April 30, 2008

153. Mysteries of D/D -- Nuristan

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(I've decided to drop the "Music of the Great Tradition" heading for the time being, as the drone traditions I'm now discu...
29 comments:
Sunday, April 27, 2008

152. Music of the Great Tradition -- 52. Mysteries of D/D

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The uncanny resemblance between the "drone dissonance" style duets of (mountainous) East Flores and the mountains of southwest Bul...
Thursday, April 24, 2008

151. Music of the Great Tradition -- 51:Mysteries of D/D

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The remarkable style of drone polyphony associated today primarily with Bulgaria (or more accurately Southwestern Bulgaria) is paralled by r...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

150. Music of the Great Tradition -- 50:Drone

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Of all the various types of polyphonic vocalizing characteristic of what I've been calling "Old Europe," drone polyphony would...
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

149. Music of the Great Tradition -- 49:A European Stratigraphy

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The relatively "quick and dirty" overview I've been presenting in the last several posts is far from a complete picture, as wi...
Sunday, April 20, 2008

148. Music of the Great Tradition -- 48:Drone

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Before continuing with our discussion of drone and the "drone problem," let's take a closer look at some patterns of distribut...
Sunday, April 13, 2008

147. Music of the Great Tradition -- 47:Drone

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Some of the most important types of vocal drone polyphony are described by Joseph Jordania on pages 26 and 27 of his book . The basic princi...
Thursday, April 10, 2008

146. Music of the Great Tradition -- 46. Europe

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In the last several posts I've been discussing some different, but nevertheless closely related, hypotheses: 1. considerable evidence po...
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

145. Music of the Great Tradition -- 45:Europe

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Before proceeding, it's necessary to point out certain problems with some of the "contrapuntal" traditions listed in the previ...
Friday, April 4, 2008

144. Music of the Great Tradition -- 44:Europe

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Of all the various types of traditional vocal polyphony to be found or reported in Europe, only so-called "contrapuntal" polyphony...
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

143. Music of the Great Tradition -- Europe

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It's important to understand that the pattern I've been discussing involves all forms of traditional vocal polyphony in Europe, not...
Monday, March 31, 2008

142. Music of the Great Tradition -- 42:Hocket

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Follow the evidence! And there certainly is evidence, as we have seen. The most important pieces of evidence, from a medieval historian...
Sunday, March 30, 2008

141. Music of the Great Tradition -- 41:Hocket

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My motto in dealing with fundamental issues such as similarity vs. difference; the superficial vs. the meaningful; what is likely, what is u...

140. Music of the Great Tradition -- 40:Hocket

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In his essay on African hocket, Nketia goes out of his way to make the sort of point that, for almost all the musicologists of his day, both...
2 comments:
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

139. Music of the Great Tradition -- 39:Hocket

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No one got it. (Admittedly I didn't allow much time, sorry.) That last example is from Africa, transcribed by J. H. Kwabena Nketia, in a...
Monday, March 24, 2008

138. Music of the Great Tradition -- 38:Medieval Hocket

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I left off last time with a cliffhanger, which I will now proceed to complete: "The whole question of hocket, its origins and the reaso...
2 comments:
Saturday, March 22, 2008

137. Music of the Great Tradition -- 37:Medieval Hocket

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One of the most mysterious and controversial elements of Medieval European "professional polyphony," both then and now, was the p...
Monday, March 17, 2008

136. Music of the Great Tradition -- 36:Grounded Rounds

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As Shai Burstyn's essay (see previous post) raises issues of special relevance to the traditions I've been exploring, I'll be ro...
Sunday, March 16, 2008

135. Music of the Great Tradition -- 35:Spring has come!

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"Sumer" was apparently the word for "spring" in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. And "is" meant something...
1 comment:
Thursday, March 13, 2008

134. Music of the Great Tradition -- 34:Monks and Missionaries

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Some of the earliest notated examples of medieval "professional polyphony" (to use Jordania's term), in a style known as organ...
Sunday, March 9, 2008

133. Music of the Great Tradition -- 33:Monks and Missionaries

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At this point it's probably a good idea for me to explain once more what I mean by the "Great Tradition." In my "Echoes...