Transcript 42 Years of Popular Music Analysis Teaching in 21

42 Years of Popular Music Analysis
Teaching in 21 Minutes
[2 years per minute]
A short audit of a few problems in the denotation of
musical structure, with suggestions for improvement
Presentation at Popular Music Analysis Conference,
University of Liverpool, 4 July, 2013
Philip Tagg
Visiting Professor, Universities of Huddersfield and Salford (UK)
www.tagg.org
http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4 or http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRs must be accessible
Previous versions ‘The Trouble with Tonal Terminology', ‘Too Important to Fail', etc. presented in Rome,
Glasgow, Århus, Göteborg, Durham, Liverpool (2011); Newcastle, Lancaster, Nottingham, Berlin, Granada,
London (City), Manchester, Granada, Cáceres, Huddersfield (2012), Cambridge (Anglia), Naples, Trento,
Nantes (2013).
Overview
presentation overview as intended in Liverpool, 4 July 2013
• Background and aim
• ‘Tonality’
• ‘Time’
• ‘Totality' or ‘form’
• Que faire?
BACKGROUND
Background
[potted CV 1]
• 1957-62 Organ, composition, trad. jazz
• 1962-65 BA in Music (Cambridge);
Scottish country dancing, soul/R&B
• 1963 -66 Cert. Ed. (Manchester);
mainstream blues/jazz, pop demos
• 1966-71 Various gigging combos (Sweden)
• 1971 Full time employment as music teacher
Background
[potted CV 2]
•
•
•
•
1968-72
1971-76
1971-78
1971-
Choir (sing & arr.)
Agitrock band
Keyboard harmony, etc.
History and analysis (incl.
•
•
•
•
19931998-2001
2009
2012
Music & Moving Image courses
EPMOW articles
euroclass., pop, jazz, ‘world’, etc.)
Everyday Tonality
Music’s Meanings: a musicology
for non-musos
Visited 2012-05-03
Sets and subsets (1)
Rain
‘popular’
‘ethno’
‘world’
‘dance’
Hail
‘MUSIC’
PRECIPITATION
‘contemporary’
‘medieval’
‘jazz’
etc.
Snow
‘avant-garde’
‘early’
‘rock’
etc.
TONALITY
Sets and subsets (2)
Rain
Hail
‘modal’
‘pretonal’ (!)
‘posttonal’ (!?)
Euroclassical
c. 1730 – 1910
― ‘functional’ (!?)―
—‘tonal’ (!?)—
TONALITY
‘contemporary’
‘medieval’
‘jazz’
etc.
Snow
‘atonal’ (!?)
‘primitive’
etc.
Tonal Terminology
• Aspects of musical structure compatible
with Western notation:
• i.e. a system of graphic representation
developed to encode mainly
monometric music whose pitches
conform to the twelve notes of our
chromatically divided octave.
• (a v. small % of all music at any time anywhere)
Basic definitions
•
•
•
•
TONE : note with audible fundamental pitch
TONAL : consisting or characteristic of tones
TONALITY : system of tonal configuration
TONIC : central reference tone in relation to
which other tones in a piece or extract of
music are audibly related
One problem :
Tonalité/tonalidad/tonalità, etc. = key/Tonart
—idiome tonal for ‘tonality’/‘Tonalität’— ?
‘ATONAL’ !?
Linguistic derivative pattern 1
— -al -ality
Noun
root
Adjective
derivative
Abstract noun
derivative
brute
crime
form
mode
TONE
brutal
criminal
formal
modal
TONAL
brutality
criminality
formality
modality
TONALITY
Linguistic derivative pattern 2
-ic -ical (-icality/-icism)
Noun
cleric
comic
ethic[s]
magic
mystic
sceptic
tactic[s]
tropic[s]
Adjective
clerical
comical
ethical
magical
mystical
sceptical
tactical
tropical
Noun
clinic
critic
lyric[s]
music
physic[s]
rhetoric
topic
TONIC
Abstr. n. musicality, physicality, topicality
OR criticism, mysticism, scepticism
Adjective
clinical
critical
lyrical
musical
physical
rhetorical
topical
TONICAL
HENCE TONICALITY OR TONICISM
Tonality v. Modality
Which of these modes are tonal and which are modal?
ionian (heptatonic/diatonic)
phrygian (heptatonic/diatonic)
All MODES are
Nawa Athar (heptatonic)
by definition
‫نوى أثر‬
TONAL
doh-pentatonic (anhemitonic)
ré-pentatonic (anhemitonic)
hirajoshi (pos. 4: hemitonic, pentatonic)
Chordal mystery category
TERTIAL
‘triadic’? ‘functional’ ? ‘diatonic’?
QUARTAL
Tonal terminology conclusions
• Don’t confuse TONE with TONIC. Tonal music without
a tonic is ATONICAL, not ‘atonal’.
• Don’t confuse TRIADs with THIRDS. If harmony based
on stacked fourths is quartal, harmony based on stacked
thirds is TERTIAL.
• Don’t propagate false contradictions like ‘TONAL v.
MODAL’. Please conceptualise all modes, including the
ionian, as modes. Please also consider all modes as tonal.
• Don’t use TONAL and TONALITY in a musically,
culturally and intellectually restrictive manner. Please
consider the MULTIPLICITY of TONALITIES (tonal systems).
TIME
SORRY. NO TIME FOR TIME THIS TIME
except to mention just a few terms
Time: a few problem terms
—under construction—
•
•
•
•
•
syncopation
polyrhythm
polymetricity
cross-rhythm
extended
present
— only possible in monometric music
with unequivocal downbeats
— arises when >1 rhythmic pattern is
heard at the same time
— more accurate designation of rhythmic
traits in many Subsaharan musics
— term used by Subsaharan music
scholars and practitioners to cover
‘polymetricity’ (a eurocentric term)
— neuroscientifically established
concept essential to understanding
how batches of ‘now sound’
(syncrisis, groove, etc.) work
FORM
“a shape; an arrangement of parts”
(Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1995)
Visual “form” (‘composition’, ‘shape’, etc.)
vessel
formed
as a
coffee pot
bush
formed
as a
mushroom
Musical “form” (‘composition’?)
Exposition | Exposition | Development | Recapitulation
Chorus
A
|
|
Chorus |Middle 8/Bridge| Chorus
A
|
B
|A
Play video
http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4
or
http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRs
QUE FAIRE?
What to do? (1)
• Ostrich strategy. ‘Nothing is wrong’. Carry on as usual.
‘We may be in the minority but we’re always right.’
• Defeatist (‘realist’) strategy. Take note but no action:
‘interesting; some valid points but we have to deal with
music theory “as is”. You can’t change >100 years of
dubiously ethnocentric labelling. Get used to it!’
• Tokenist strategy. ‘We’re broad-minded and modern.
We have ethnomusicology and/or popular music
studies and/or music technology on the curriculum but
we see no need to change the basics of music theory.
• Laissez-faire (‘anti-authoritarian’) strategy. New terms
are as bad as old ones. You’re forcing everyone to
think like you. Let things develop organically, man!
What to do (2)?
• Risk alienation from conservative musicology
(both ancient and modern) by making life easier
for the popular majority of students through:
- simple reform of a few basic terms;
- recognition of vernacular musical competence;
- reintegration of music as a specific form of
symbolic production on a par with others.
What to do (3)
• Establish a forum of interested parties in
music education, media education, etc.
• Get together to decide on priorities for a
reform of music theory terminology.
• Involve experts from as many musical
territories as possible so as to minimise risks
of producing new ethnocentric concepts.
• Collaborate across cultural, disciplinary and
professional boundaries to produce a music
theory primer (max. 100 pp.) to take us into
the 21st-century and the age of globalisation.
Further edification
Music’s Meanings: a modern musicology for nonmusos (2013) tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.htmll [710 pp.]
Everyday Tonality (2009)
tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.html [334 pp.]
Troubles with Tonal Terminology (2011-13)
—tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Aharonian2011.pdf [32 pp.]
‘Not the sort of thing you could photocopy’ (2013)
A short idea history of notation with suggestions for reform in
music education and research [21 pp.]
—tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Frith1301.pdf
Dominants and Dominance
Musical Learning & Epistemic Diffraction
Scotch Snaps: the big picture
THE END
Philip Tagg — tagg.org — MMXIII