Re: measure for measure

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Funny you should mention selecting only those pieces which lent themselves
to metric transcription, Adrianne. I was working with 79 tunes for this
project. Of those, I transcribed a total of 63. The others were simply too
elusive or scrambled to find a solution to. Of those 63, we settled on 55,
the others being discarded for various reasons (fragmented texts, etc.), and
51 reached the final round altogether.

Working to understand the rhythmic structure of some of the tunes themselves
was sometimes like trying to count the bricks on a warehouse. At times it
was difficult to even figure out which beat to call "1". For instance, the
tune Alevanta Sultanachi has a 36-beat structure. To add to the problem,
there is an extra 2 eighths at the very beginning, which you can't decide is
a pick-up or begins on beat 1. Sure, that's artificial until you try making
heads or tails out of a 36-beat strophe with 2 extra beats. Add to this the
breathing pauses, giggles, studdering and tempo fluctuation and you have
just entered musicologist hell.

I struggled with that tune for days before even hitting upon the solution of
splitting it up as 4 x (2+3+2+2) and 4 x (2+2+3+2) and leaving the first 2
beats as the pick-up to bar one. No matter which way you grouped it, beat
one never seemed to be beat one. That's because there is an elliptical shift
in the beat structure of the tune no matter which way you group it, a fact
which didn't even become apparent until after I had notated it 6 diffeent
ways.

This is one of the stunning qualities of certain Sephardic tunes - the
feeling of a kind of ellision whereby the end of a musical phrase seems to
form the beginning of a new poetic line. Its a similar quality which you get
when you sing the tune "Happy birthday." You can begin this song with the
word "Happy" being beat one (in which case you get a mazurka-type of rhythm
with the stress on beat 2) or with "birthday" being beat one (in which case
you get a kind of hora rhythm with the stress on beat 3). Its a bit like the
optical illusion of the staircase, where at first glance the stairs go up,
but if you look long enough, the stairs go down.

Well this same kind of rhythmic paradox shows up at times in the Sephardic
tunes, but with much more sophistication than "Happy birthday." You can
argue that any metrical grouping of these melodies is superimposed and
artificial, but try writing them out without the bars (I tried this too, it
was the only way I could get a handle on the structure) and your average
musician couldn't make heads or tails out of the result. Trust me. I myself
couldn't make heads or tails of the result until an angel visited me and
whispered in my ear, "Forget your troubled childhood. Forget your second
grade teacher, Miss Rains, who wanted to hold you back a year because you
had a nervous twitch. Forget your boyhood friend, Tommy, who bit you here he
shouldn't have, thus traumatizing you for the rest of your days. Forget
everything and listen, yes listen and hear what Dionysus has come back from
his place of rest to tell you through the undulating melodies of this aire.
Go forth now and WRITE, yes write it down for all those sad hungry saplings
waiting with open beaks, desirous to learn the strains which will edify,
fortify and ultimately petrify the wonderous gallaxy contained within these
melodies." Well, I listened and lo, the angel toldeth me to use measures. So
I hath done it. Praised be the name. Josh


>From: AGREENBA (at) aol(dot)com
>To: horowitz (at) budowitz(dot)com, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>Subject: Re: measure for measure
>Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2002, 3:09 PM
>

> Two absolutely delicious explanations of how we can handle these wonderful
> transcriptions, both written in just the last few days!  Thanks to both Josh
> and Judith for taking the great amount of time to enlighten some of us.
>
> I had recently been grappling with how to "deal" with the vocal line when
> listening to an example of field recordings, most often being non-metered.
> I'm fully aware that text and breathing and pausing and other imprortant
> things would add and subtract beats and I've most often decided that there
> really was a meter but that the added beats, for instance, were merely there
> when the vocalist sang because of logical pauses in phrasing, because of
> text, because of emphasis, because of feeling. But I did feel that there WAS
> an overall meter. I wanted desperately to think that. I also felt I had
> another option that I thought was going to "work" for me:  only stick to
> tunes that seem to lend themselves to meter. Go for easy solutions. I had my
> classical musician's crutch  ready and waiting to be leaned upon. But I've
> cautiously thrown away the walker for now and will try ever harder to
> understand what one is supposed to do when trying to fit appropriate
> "accompaniment" to such songs that add and subtract according to text and
> mood. I know I could greatly minimize extraneous backup or go total solo, but
> wish to think about other options as well.
> I could go on but dinner calls.
> Thanks again Josh and Judith.
> Adrianne
>
> 

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