Mass Perception about Music during Lockdown in Nepal

Engaging along with music during lockdown is a kind of common behavior of human beings. This article mirrors the mass perception of music during the specific situation of lockdown in Nepal. The descriptive online survey design was used by taking 136 participants from Fine Arts Campus by purposive sampling technique. Frequency, percentage, and presentation of chars were major statistical techniques used in this research. The finding indicates that most of the participants were enjoying by listening and participating in musical activities during the pandemic. Whatever the purpose of listening, singing, dancing, composing, recording, playing the musical patterns, mass people knowingly-unknowingly connected with music during a lockdown. So, concluded that almost all respondents voted for the need for musical activities and varieties of music for managing their stress.

Symmetry, Combinatorics, Artificial Intelligence, Music and Spectroscopy

Symmetry forms the foundation of combinatorial theories and algorithms of enumeration such as Möbius inversion, Euler totient functions, and the celebrated Pólya’s theory of enumeration under the symmetric group action. As machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques play increasingly important roles in the machine perception of music to image processing that are central to many disciplines, combinatorics, graph theory, and symmetry act as powerful bridges to the developments of algorithms for such varied applications. In this review, we bring together the confluence of music theory and spectroscopy as two primary disciplines to outline several interconnections of combinatorial and symmetry techniques in the development of algorithms for machine generation of musical patterns of the east and west and a variety of spectroscopic signatures of molecules. Combinatorial techniques in conjunction with group theory can be harnessed to generate the musical scales, intensity patterns in ESR spectra, multiple quantum NMR spectra, nuclear spin statistics of both fermions and bosons, colorings of hyperplanes of hypercubes, enumeration of chiral isomers, and vibrational modes of complex systems including supergiant fullerenes, as exemplified by our work on the golden fullerene C150,000. Combinatorial techniques are shown to yield algorithms for the enumeration and construction of musical chords and scales called ragas in music theory, as we exemplify by the machine construction of ragas and machine perception of musical patterns. We also outline the applications of Hadamard matrices and magic squares in the development of algorithms for the generation of balanced-pitch chords. Machine perception of musical, spectroscopic, and symmetry patterns are considered.

Hard Rock, Glam Rock, and Progressive Rock in the 1970s

This chapter places Queen within the network of the principal rock labels of the 1970s. Extending the work of classical and popular music analysts, a distinction is drawn between style and genre, as pertaining to replicated musical patterns and the cultural meanings afforded by such patterns, respectively. With this distinction in place, Queen’s 1970s outputs are analysed in relation to the style and genre conventions of hard rock, glam rock, and progressive rock. It is demonstrated that the band engaged the style conventions of the former and latter labels, but were positioned closer to glam rock in genre terms. This is evident through their subversive exaggerated articulation of hard and progressive rock style traits, with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ encapsulating this relationship.

Modal Intonation Features of Crowd Scenes in the Operetta “O olmasyn, bu olsun” (“Not that, so this”) by U. Hajibeyli

The article analyses the features of the crowd scenes’ structure in the operetta “O olmasyn, bu olsun” (1910) by the outstanding composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli (1885–1948), who founded the Azerbaijani professional composer school at the beginning of the 20th century. In this operetta rich in comic imagery, the composer’s style is reflected in choral scenes influenced by harmonious recitatives and musical patterns and analyzed as a philosophical sphere of reflection of events in the comical plane. He also interprets the development of the operetta genre as a genre of contemporary music in the professional traditions of Western European music in Azerbaijan, as well as the features of intonation that are relevant in Azerbaijani folk music in terms of its structure and thematic focus. The purpose of the research is to analyze the modal features of the operetta “O olmasyn, bu olsun”. For this, the variety of characters available in the work, the line of development of these characters as an issue to study the compatibility of the inner world of characters, given both emotionally and comically, come to the fore. It is also noteworthy that the comparison of moods and intonations in the events taking place in the crowd scenes is naturally reflected here. The research methodology draws attention to the comparative and historical analysis of music theory and history of music, axiological and cultural approaches. Here, the principle of using texts in musical scenes reflects the originality of the composer’s style. Our analysis made it important to consider the research of various researchers who adhere to the principle of secularism. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time in U. Hajibeyli's operetta “O olmasyn, bu olsun”, an extensive analysis of fret features in crowd scenes with different editions was carried out. The emergence of these features also serves as an example for musicians and composers working in the field of musical composition. Conclusions. The analysis of the modal intonations’ features of crowd scenes in the operetta by U. Hajibeyli “O olmasyn, boolsun” shows the clarity of the intonation principles in Azerbaijani folk music from the point of view of the correspondence of images. This aspect also shaped the composer’s intonation concept. Musical materials suitable for the composer’s comedy scene explain the different situations of the protagonist. The article draws attention to the combination of images and choral performance used in public scenes, for example, the combination of mood and intonation. The use of historical, musical theory, composition, modal intonation features on the public stage is more consistent with the fret concept created by the composer U. Hajibeyli.

Robert O. Gjerdingen: Child Composers in the Old Conservatories: How Orphans Became Elite Musicians Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN 978–0–19–065359–0. 355 pp. €28.50.

Robert Gjerdingen scarcely needs any introduction. His 2007 book, Music in the Galant Style, has already become a classic, and his study of "schemas"—fixed, recognizable, and replicable musical patterns in the galant style—has had a profound influence on music-theoretical discourse. It has gained broad currency, and not just among music theorists and musicologists, for its holistic treatment of musical phrases attracts many non-specialists. The schemas discussed by Gjerdingen offer excellent tools for keyboard improvisation and are clearly recognizable from listening to eighteenth-century music in particular. […]

Frequently Occurring Melodic Patterns are Easier to Recall

Melodic memory continues to present a paradox. Listeners excel at recognizing melodies once encoded in long term memory, but often struggle during encoding. In order to investigate this paradox, we employ a recall design to investigate melodic encoding. Here we report results from a forward, serial recall within-subjects melodic memory experiment (n = 39) using an expert population of musicians trained in moveable-do solfege in order to model melodic memory using music theoretic response categories. Compatible with theoretical frameworks predicting a processing facilitation advantage, more frequently occurring musical patterns are remembered more quickly and more accurately than less frequently occurring patterns. The evidence presented here is consistent with evidence suggesting that latent understanding of musical schemas can be modeled with musical corpora. Further, computationally derived measures related to information processing from both the Information Dynamics of Music model and FANTASTIC toolbox outperform models of melodic memory that only account for the length of the melody measured in number of notes. Results from this experiment demonstrate how expert populations can provide valuable insight into melodic memory and tonal cognition. The framework provided here also provides an empirical basis linking literature investigating melodic anticipation with melodic memory.

Spatiotemporal brain dynamics during recognition of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach

ABSTRACTMusic is a universal non-verbal human language, built on logical structures and articulated in balanced hierarchies between sounds, offering excellent opportunities to explore how the brain creates meaning for complex spatiotemporal auditory patterns. Using the high temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography in 70 participants, we investigated their unfolding brain dynamics during the recognition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s original musical patterns compared to new variations thereof. Remarkably, the recognition of Bach’s original music ignited a widespread music processing brain network comprising primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus, insula, frontal operculum, cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, basal ganglia and hippocampus. Furthermore, both activity and connectivity increased over time, following the evolution and unfolding of Bach’s original patterns. This study shed new light on brain activity and connectivity dynamics underlying auditory patterns recognition, highlighting the crucial role of fast neural phase synchronization underlying meaningful, complex cognitive processes.

Digitizing the Txalaparta: Computer-Based Study of a Traditional Practice

This article describes a software implementation dealing with the ancient Basque musical tradition of the txalaparta. The research is different from earlier studies of the txalaparta in that, by digitizing the instrument and its performance rules, we have had to formalize and make explicit conventions that hitherto have been tacit knowledge of improvisational practice. Analysis through software development is an unusual case of musicological analysis as it demands clarity and precision, and often requires multidisciplinary approaches to understand the studied subject. We have developed software in order to analyze and understand a practice that has received little musicological analysis. By expounding musical patterns and performers' behaviors that have hitherto been difficult to analyze, we reveal the social and cultural aspects of performance practice. The txalaparta is a two-performer instrument and the software produces txalaparta rhythms and plays along with a human player, while learning and adapting to the player's style. The system helps novices to explore the rules of the txalaparta and more-experienced performers to approach the instrument from a new perspective. In this research we have applied a user-centered approach, where feedback from players using the digital txalaparta was collected. This feedback allowed us to approach the reflective vision of txalaparta players and their thoughts on the results of our research.

Partimenti and the Power of Improvisation

Like a lead sheet in popular music, a partimento gives a performer a single line of music to aid in the performance of a multivoice composition. Lead sheets provide a simplified melody and symbols for chords. Partimenti provide a bass and sometimes figured-bass numbers to indicate specific intervals. In both cases the reconstruction works well if the performer has a good knowledge of the style of music involved and a memory for the kinds of musical patterns needed. In Naples, children played the written partimento with their left hands at a small harpsichord. With their right hands they improvised the types of melodies, chords, and counterpoints implied by the bass. Beginners may have improvised mostly simple chords. Intermediate-level students improvised melodies and counterpoints. And advanced students developed highly contrapuntal realizations that included partimento fugues.