Re: shashmaqam

[Matthew Fields <fields...>]

In article <Pine(dot)3(dot)05(dot)9302051916(dot)B15348-b100000 (at) 
eis(dot)calstate(dot)edu> <jewish-music (at) israel(dot)nysernet(dot)org> 
writes:
>I stumbled across Shasmaqam in my local record store in a 1992 release
Mazel tov.

>This cassette comes with copious liner notes.  Most of the music
>is homophonic-- the melody the singer presents is duplicated with
>subtle embellishments by the instruments.  No Barry Sisters on this album!

The usual musicological usage would be "heterophonic".  "Homophonic"
would mean that the instruments play exactly the same thing.  Heterophony
is what you'll hear in shul, where it arrises partly because some of the
singers aren't very good, and partly because some of the singers ARE very
good and are ornamenting their music to be more expressive of their
supplications---or to show off.  But "heterophony" doesn't mean's there's no
harmony or counterpoint in the concept of the music, just massed simultaneous
variations on the tune.  Western music has several hundred years of this before
and after the rise of organum, and it continues to the present day as a
western folk-music practice.

Somehow, heterophony is what I always pictured in my mind when the
Psalms said things like "Give praise with the trumpet, the timbrel,
the cymbal, with the sound of raised voices the mountains give
praise..." (or whatever it was they said).

-Matt

------------------------------