Architecture for Music : Sonorous Spaces in Sacred Buildings in Renaissance and Baroque Rome

Architectural spaces are usually considered only in their visual and threedimensional character. However, the proper experience of space is multisensory. Sonority is undoubtedly the non-visual characteristic that most affects architecture, influencing its three-dimensional shape, and the size and distribution of its individual parts. Early modern sacred architecture is a case in point. Focusing on Rome and the development of architecture in relation to musical practices, this article demonstrates how architectural forms evolved through a process that ranged from provisional installations to the design of entirely new churches and oratories. In the Baroque period, these religious structures were conceived as synaesthetic spaces of sonority and architecture, in which vision, hearing and liturgical acts merged in an expressive unity.

Central Europe in the Sixteenth Century: A Musical Melting Pot

After briefly reviewing the problems arising from attempts to dentify precise geographical outlines of Central Europe in the course of time, the author opts to use the limitations existing in the sixteenth century, the time frame of the presentation. This means, essentially, the borders of the Habsburg homelands, i.e., the southeastern part of the Holy Roman Empire. The paper argues that the roots of Central European musical practices were established through the foundation of regulated institutional entities such as the imperial chapels of Maximilian I (1496) and other rulers (Albrecht V of Bavaria, 1550), their successors and imitators, as well as the transalpine Renaissance church centers. As these institutions were staffed by musicians coming from virtually every corner of Europe – each practitioner bringing his own territorial contribution with him – the emerging musical consciousness of the Central European region had as cosmopolitan a foundation as that of Europe at large. Still, the proximity of the Central European art music scene to the variety of local ethnic traditions may be interpreted as lending a flavor to the musical expression of the area, endowing it with a character of its own. While in its beginnings the recipient of many influences from multinational contributors, in a later, equally cosmopolitan period (the Classicism of the eighteenth century), Central Europe reciprocates in equal measure, its contributions exerting impact upon European music in general.

Singing and playing music through mobile applications: Smule, a new music experience

Mobile phones and the Internet combined have led to the creation of applications that allow their users to perform music using only their Smartphones. With the Smule applications that we analyze in this paper, people can sing karaoke together with other singers from all over the world, or play a tune with their fingertips tapping on a phone’s screen. Besides providing new entertainment activities, the Smule applications and their multiple options regarding audio and video editing can bring about new musical practices and musical artifacts. Smule users can sing duets remotely, without actually singing on the same time – a virtual collective performance. Singing karaoke becomes a solitary practice where togetherness is contrived but not achieved. Video recordings can be edited and shared on a built-in social network, thus being endorsed with a new function: to create bonds within a social network. Analyzing the discourses of Smule creators and developers, we also show that the applications do not achieve what they are promised to do, namely providing social and authentic practices.

Enabling FAIR use of Ethnomusicology Data – Through Distributed Repositories, Linked Data and Music Information Retrieval

Recordings of musical practices are kept in various public institutions and private depositories around the world. They constitute valuable data for ethnomusicological research and are substantial for the world's musical heritage. At the moment, there are no commonly used systems and standards for organizing, describing or categorizing these data, which makes their use difficult. In this paper, we discuss the required steps to make them findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), and outline action items to reach these goals. We show solutions that help researchers to manage their data over the whole research lifecycle and discuss the benefits of combining technologies from information science, music information retrieval, and linked data, with the aim of giving incentives for the ethnomusicology research community to actively participate in these developments in the future.

Poscolonial Peruvian Sheep and Their Digital Dreams: Pure Data as a Tool for Conceptual Reconfiguration in Peruvian Musical Education

In this work, I discuss the use of Pure Data as the main tool for the development of paradigmatic changes in Peruvian musical education, through the implementation of the Laboratorio de Música Electroacústica y Arte Sonoro of the Universidad Nacional de Música in Lima - Perú. This analysis is made taking under consideration the particularities present in the development of the study of technology-based music in the country and the historical shortcoming that have marked that development. This work complements my previous research regarding the relevance of specific social narratives present through the history of the nation in regards to technology and musical innovation. In that sense, it presents a historical that seeks to revert the course of a musical learning history that excludes technology based musical practices associated with Pure Data, from becoming part of the official processes for musical creation in the country.

FAIR for whom? Commentary on Hofmann et al. (2021)

In this commentary on Hofmann et al. (2021), the notion of ethnomusicology and some of its underlying biases are questioned and reflected in the light of applying FAIR data principles to musicological research data from outside a Western canon and its musical practices.

Rethinking Bach

If Johann Sebastian Bach has loomed extra-large in the imagination of scholars, performers, and audiences since the late nineteenth century, this volume sets out to provocatively reshape that imagination from a multitude of present-day perspectives, both from within and outside of traditional Bach studies. The essays gathered here reconsider Bach’s musical practices from the vantage points of material culture, voice, embodiment, affect theory, and systematic theology; they challenge fundamental assumptions about the nineteenth-century Bach revival, about the rise of the modern work concept, about Bach’s music as a code, and about editions of his music as monuments; and they reimagine Bach as humorist, as post/colonial export, as pedagogue, as anti-modernist, and as uneasy postmodern icon. Collectively, these contributions thus take apart, scrutinize, dust off, and reassemble some of our most cherished narratives and deeply held beliefs about Bach and his music. In doing so, they open up multiple pathways toward exciting future modes of engagement with the composer and his legacy.

Assembling ‘indigeneity’ through musical practices: translocal circulations, ‘tradition’, and place in Otavalo (Ecuadorian Andes)

This article addresses the relation between Andean ‘traditional music’ and circulations of people, objects, ideas and sounds. Although many studies on Andean indigenous music have explored such circulations, scholars still tend to understand musical practices in terms of ‘cultures’. The case of indigenous music from Otavalo, in the Ecuadorian Andes, encourages us to go beyond this approach. I make two arguments. First, by conceiving of the translocal/transnational flows that have shaped ‘traditional music’ from Otavalo through the concepts of ‘network’ and ‘music world’, I unsettle the link – underlying previous approaches – between a specific people, music and place. Second, through the concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘mediation’, I closely look at processes of ‘traditionalisation’ and ‘indigenisation’ to show how, in the context of multiple circulations, social actors nevertheless produce a specific link between people, music and place in order to make a musical practice ‘traditional’ and/or ‘indigenous’.

Music, Migration, and Public Space: Syrian Street Music in the Political Context

Due to the lack of social systems supporting the cultural productions of migrant societies in Turkey, the venues and opportunities to which migrant musicians have access for the maintenance of their musical practices are limited. Under the given circumstances, especially in the first years after their arrival, street musicianship emerged as a new musical practice for Syrian musicians in Istanbul, and Beyoğlu District, the city’s cultural and political center, has become the venue for street musicians’ performances. Despite undergoing a rapid neoliberal transformation, Beyoğlu district, with Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue, is a venue of interaction among locals, tourists, and various migrant groups from diverse social classes and identities. As such, it still possesses the potential to be the public sphere which can operate as the space of “a democratic ideal.” For migrant musicians, the street music practices, which fill the very heart of city with their voices and sounds, are means of claiming their existence in the city as potential actors of this public sphere. However, conducting the interaction with the other public space actors and the state officials through street music is not an easy task for Syrian musicians, and it requires the use of tactics from them. In this article, I summarize the given circumstances of Syrian street music performances and discuss the Beyoğlu district in the frame of being—or not being—a public space. I propose street music practice as political action, a “social non-movement”, as Asef Bayat calls it, and situate migrant musicians as political actors who are possible allies of other subaltern groups in Turkey.

CREATIVE ETHNICITY: MUSIC AS AN ELEMENT OF ETHNICITY AMONG POLISH TATARS

The aim of this article is to analyse the role of ethnic music in the life of the Tatar minority in Poland as an example of creative ethnicity. On the one hand, modern Tatar musical practices construct an interesting example of “invented tradition” because the studied group does not have “musical memory”, while on the other hand, these activities are aimed at the group’s future. Music can fulfill different social functions. In the case of ethnic groups, three of these functions seem to be particularly relevant: integrational, political (ideological) and identity. Desk research reveals the formal and informal musical practices undertaken by Polish Tatars. The values and musical assets associated with Tatar culture reflect the minority’s identity. The main statement of the article is that music is an important element that contributes to constructing the contemporary group’s identity. Tatar music is becoming an essential element of Tatar culture, enhancing a sense of the group’s distinctiveness. The contemporary Tatar music groups construct a significant Tatar showcase to the audience outside of the Tatar ethnic group, as well as form an important identity element of the Tatar community and a manifestation of creative ethnicity. It is also possible to find correlations between their repertoire and contemporary group transformations, including those related to its identity.