RE: klezmer melodic contours 4

[Katherine Breslow <kbreslow...>]

I just wanted to say that I am most excited and impressed by this series of
correspondences.  I recently graduated with a Bachelor of Music in vocal
performance.  While I have always been a serious student and musician within
the academic setting, I found a great need to devote myself to Jewish music.
My senior honors thesis was a recital of music by and about Jewish women.
The project took about a year and a half to research and provided me with
enough material for about 4 recitals, a fact to which you can attest but
which few classically trained musicians appreciate.

I must say how refreshing it is to witness a serious, in-depth musical
analysis in relation to Jewish music, which is so dear to me.  This list is
so precious.  Upon reading these emails, I wanted to forward them to someone
who would appreciate the discussion, and could not think of anyone I know
who would appreciate both the analytical treatment and the Jewish subject
matter.  What a blessing to be able to share that with this list.  Thank
you, and keep these profound discussions going!

And Aaron, BEST of luck on your thesis-I KNOW what it's like to be devoured
by something like that and to put heart and soul into something unique and
unusual to most other people!

Sincerely,
Katherine Breslow

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
[mailto:owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org]On Behalf Of Joshua Horowitz
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 1999 12:03 PM
To: World music from a Jewish slant
Subject: klezmer melodic contours 4


Aaron wrote:

I have a few questions
> regarding your e-mail: Are the examples that you provided just examples
> or do they represent the more common overlapping contours?

Josh answered:

The examples I provided were just off-the-cuff. To provide a list of all
of the overlaps that occur would be like trying to figure out how many
pop song texts have the word *love* in them (not meant to be insulting).

 Are there a
> large amount of overlapping contours, or are there just a few?  Also, do
> the specific motifs vary based on the relationship between the two modes?
> Are there contours that overlap with more than just two modes?

the answer to all the above yes, though I've never done a statistic
analysis of them (I do have a life you know). But if you play the music
enough, you'll begin to notice that your fingers kinda just go the right
notes no matter what mode you're in. That means that the fingers get
trained to form musical *words* out of the 12 notes of our system, not
matter which key or mode we're in. These words are groups of notes which
we can call *motifs*, and their direction and form makes up what we call
*contour*. In short -  the contours of melody which exist in klezmer
music overlap in the extreme from mode to mode. They form one  basic
macro level aspect of the musical vocabulary of the genre. This same
morphemic level can be shared by other related music, in much the same
way that there are related languages and dialects which use the same
words with similar meaning. Compare English, German and Yiddish: House
and Haus; Hound and Hund; Door and Tur, etc, etc.

But while we're on the subject of linguistics: One important aspect of
creativity involved in music analysis is developing your own models to
observe the phenomenon you are studying, or using existing models from
other disciplines. In this particular case, it might be helpful to apply
the Chomskyan linguistic model, as Leonard Bernstein did in his book,*
The Unanswered Question*.

Phoneme - sound unit

Morpheme - group of sound units forming an intelligible *word* or motif

Syntax - The ordering, arrangement and hierarchy of morphemes creating
an intelligible phrase or section (i.e. *grammar*)

Semantics - the meaning which the reciever or listener interprets (in
music als the associative value and emotional response to what is heard

This model may help to analyse the overlap you are talking about. If you
break down the motives you are trying to find the overlap in into
smaller units, or
*phoneme cells* you can then begin to compare the overlap. In order to
do this, I would first suggest islolating your *syntactic units* into 2
bar phrases in the following way:

1) 2 bar beginning phrases of each section (musicologically termed
incipits)
2) 2 bar cadential phrases (last 2 bars of each section)
3) Transitional phrases (phrases which connect one idea or mode to
another

After you've done this, break down your motives into smaller cells of 2,
3 and 4 notes, depending upon the logic of the motif. Then presto!
Compare them. If you've ever analyzed fugues, after you're finished
isolating the subject, answer countersubject and cadences, the only
thing you're left with are the non-formalized section of the piece, the
so-called *free parts*. Surprisingly, the quality of a piece can be
determined by these ree parts, as they are the only portions of a
composition which are subject solely to the composer's fantasy and are
not dependent upon the pre-formed aesthetic rules of the genre.

Similarly in klezmer music, often incipits and cadences belong to a
fairly formalized canon of gestures, whereas the other parts are less
so. If you take on this suggestion please do share your results with us,
though. If enough people are interested we can begin advertising bogus
degrees in musicology via intermail correspondence courses in the
National Enquirer. Josh



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