Parmi les différentes régions de Grèce, l'Epire nous présente, outre les chansons folkloriques monophoniques courantes, chantées également dans les autres régions de Grèce, une catégorie de chansons folkloriques polyphoniques spéciales, exécutées dans certaines régions et présentées non d'apres les règles connues, mais d'une manière plus ou moins primitive.

L'étude que voici se base sur des éléments musicaux trouvés dans les chansons de la région Dropolis en Epire du nord, recueillis et enregistres durant deux missions speciales, en 1951 et 1956. Dropolis est un district situé en Epire du nord et s'étend du détroit de Sotiras et de la petite montagne de Mourganas jusqu'aux villes d'Argyrocastros et de Limbohovos. La partie méridionale se trouve inclue dans le territoire grec.

There are two basic approaches to counterpoint, one based on consonance, the other on independent melodic-rhythmic progressions. As a conservative, Hindemith employs counterpoint in the first sense only, yet uses dissonant counterpoint, the dissonance being the result of (1) non-traditional chords, (2) an extended application of non-harmonic notes, (3) certain melodic tehniques, and (4) polytonality.

These approaches were illustrated by examples from his Ludus tonalis. Under (1) the use of three-seven, four-seven, and five-seven chords was discussed. All of these and their inversions are employed not only as structural harmonies, but also often as the result of non-harmonic notes, and they lead to frequent parallel sevenths. As to (2), non-harmonic notes serve to bring about dissonance clashes between parts. They are freely used, but their function remains always clear; often their resolutions are delayed to provoke further clashes. They also serve to counteract the romantic effect of chromaticism.

The sacred chant of Rome, apart from its liturgical value, is of importance to musicology. In it there lives on as a substratum the remembrance of popular traditional songs. Also from Roman Chant there came the development of polyphonic music and the art of instrumental variation in Europe. In addition, it was the origin of a great number of vernacular religious chants associated with the different Christian creeds. I consider, therefore, that I am justified in claiming that the liturgical chant of the Roman Church represents a musical repertory of the highest order which can be regarded as an artistic patrimony not only of the Christian Church but of all mankind

The central corpus of the Roman Chant—known since the ninth century as “Gregorian Chant”—was already in existence during the eighth and ninth centuries. In it there are to be found reminiscences of eastern and western song of the most remote epochs: musical elements of the most ancient cultures which would have been lost for ever, had not Pontifical Rome recollected them and conserved them in its liturgy.

Les sources manuscrites des IXe et Xe siècles nous laissent assister à l'apparition d'une forme nouvelle, qui pendant sept siècles connut une floraison sans pareille. Cette forme, la séquence, influence profondément la musique mondaine et représente avec l'hymne un des grands points de départ de l'art moyenâgeux. La question que nous nous posons, c'est, d'où provient l'impulsion pour la formation de cette séquence, si toutefois une telle impulsion paraît possible ou probable. Doit-on supposer que, contrairement à l'hymne, avec une histoire déjà plusieurs fois centenaire au IXe siècle, la séquence soit due à l'invention heureuse d'un personnage inconnu, à une naissance subite, que l'ombre des âges nous cache. Il est à constater que dans l'évolution des formes liturgiques, des formes littéraires ou musicales, une telle naissance ne se trouve que très rarement. Nous questionnons les séquences elles-mâmes pour voir si elles laissent apparaître des liens avec des formes antérieures au IXe siècle.

Hasidism, the last of the Jewish mystical movements, created a characteristic wordless vocal melody which is called in Hebrew nigun. These nigunim are often used as an extension of the existing liturgy, and serve as a prelude or postlude to the traditional prayers; there may even be devotional gatherings during which only these nigunim are heard.

Hasidism originated in Eastern Europe about 1750. It spread quickly over the Jewish diaspora in the Slavic countries, and is still alive in many communities such as Jerusalem, Safad, London, New York and elsewhere. It is the latest, but not the sole mystical movement that attracted masses of the people. Disastrous persecutions were often followed by a withdrawal of the Jews into an inner life beyond grim reality.

The synagogical songs of the Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria can be divided into two main sections: (1) recitative singing of texts in prose, which is performed in accordance with definite fixed patterns in different scales, and (2) solemn hymns on poetic texts.

The recitatives differ in their manner of performance and in melody from the people's songs of the Balkans. Similar are only their scales, which are in general encountered in the songs of all Balkan peoples (including the Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria).

The solemn hymns, however, are very close in melody to some urban songs of the Balkan peoples, and in particular to those of Greeks and Bulgarians. In certain cases we encounter direct borrowings of melodies from urban folkore, to which paschal, atonement (Yom Kippur), Friday evening, etc., synagogical songs are sung. Performed by the cantors and the congregation, these songs show a certain similarity with liturgical songs in general.

In early Talmudic texts we already find a discussion about “Western versus Eastern” oral traditions of Bible reading. These refer to the so-called Palestinian (“Western”) Massora and to the Babylonian (“Eastern”). The two traditions merged later to form the very complicated “Tiberian” Massora, which seems to be more a sophisticated notation or a system of syntactical-rhetoric way of punctuation (perhaps also meant to reconstruct or revitalize a dying folk-tradition, in the ninth-tenth century), rather than a living tradition of chant. Three or four main types of Biblical cantillation have survived until today in the form of oral synagogal traditions, more or less connected with the written “Tiberian” signs, which appear in all Hebrew printed Bible texts. They show broad stylistic and modal differences, parallel to those between “Western” and “Eastern” modern music: diatonic (or tetrachordal) systems versus microtonal (or “maqamic”) ones, syllabic versus melismatic trends, etc.

The paper was introduced by a short historical survey of Jewry in Hungary from Roman times until 1944, when a great part of the Jews was displaced and annihilated. Attention was called to three aspects of their musical traditions.

1. (1) Their liturgical service representing a local fusion of the Ashkenazic rite of Eastern Middle Europe, which since the middle of the nineteenth century was supplanted by the so-called Sulzerian Viennese reform-liturgy.

2. (2) The family ceremonies in which Jewry preserved many more original traits, fairly rich local variants, peculiar lection- and blessing-types, archaic-primitive ditties, tritonic and pentatonic patterns and also a signal- or fanfare-like intonation, connected with certain public functions.

3. (3) The secular melodies which were influenced by Eastern European and also by Hungarian folk songs and dance melodies; in this respect they remind one of analogous phenomena in the cultural history of the Spanish, Italian and German Jews.

As is well known, there is no agreement as to the origin of the Samaritans. There is the Samaritan view and that of the Jews.

The Samaritans, Shomronim or Shomrim in Hebrew, hold themselves to be the “true Hebrews,” the “guardians of the Law,” and claim that their history is the history of the Jews until the tenth century B.C., when they separated from the main body of the Jews in a dispute over the location of the Temple site and other matters. It is their belief that the Jews transgressed in building the Temple in Jerusalem and not on Mount Gerizim. Also they claim that the Tenth Commandment of the Decalogue was altered by the Jews in order to justify the building of the Temple in Jerusalem.

L'introduction au présent débat a une portée limitée. Il ne s'agira ni de musique religieuse, ni de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler “musique savante,” ou “art de haute culture.” Il ne sera question que de musique populaire ancienne de tradition orale.

Pour prendre position, disons toutefois, en ce qui concerne la musique religieuse, que nous sommes entièrement de l'avis de Madame Edith Gerson-Kiwi lorsqu'elle démontre que les formes de base de la musique religieuse relevent d'une conception panasiatique; lecons et lectures appartiennent à une style récitatif monotonique où une note répétée obstinément sert de véhicule solennel aux textes sacrés, cette note obstinée étant par ailleurs agrémentée de sons légèrement plus graves ou plus aigus servant d'appuis ou de cadences vocales. On peut dire que cette conception s'étend au-delà de ce qui est 1'Asie proprement dite: elle est la même chez les Maoris de Nouvelle-Zélande pour la cantillation de leurs mythologies et généalogies.

Il semble que le rô1e important de l'improvisation dans l'évolution de la musique soit quelque peu oublié de nos jours, ainsi que le fait qu'elle peut être, souvent, considérée comme la base de toute production musicale. L'étude de la constitution et de l'évolution de nombreuses formes musicales est toujours révélatrice à cet égard et ceci surtout aux époques où l'artiste était à la fois créateur et interprète. Ne peut-on pas dire, en exagérant à peine, qu'avant l'invention d'une notation précise toute musique était plus ou moins improvisée ?

Il est certain que des formes telles que Prélude, Toccata et Ricercare ont été, à l'origine, des formes d'improvisation, mais on ne peut naturellement pas limiter à quelques formes ni à une certaine époque ce qu'on pourrait appeler “tendance a l'improvisation”, volonté qui se manifeste presqu' à toutes les époques, sous des aspects différents.

Béla Bartók et Zoltán Kodály comprirent dès le début de leurs recherches qu'ils ne connaîtraient à fond la musique populaire hongroise que par l'examen de celle des peuples avoisinants et apparentés, par la découverte des relations musicales formées durant la coexistence séculaire, en reculant même jusqu'à une époque antérieure pour étudier la musique des peuples finno-ougriens apparentés et aussi celle de leurs voisins turco-tartares.

Nous distinguons dans la musique populaire hongroise les éléments orientaux apportés de l'extrême Orient par les ancêtres des Hongrois vivant aujourd'hui en Europe centrale et les éléments occidentaux superposés depuis.

On pourrait répartir en deux grands groupes les nombreuses ethnies qui peuplent la République du Niger: d'une part les nomades, d'autre part les sédentaires.

Parmi les nomades, outre les Peul en partie sédentarisés, il convient de mentionner quelques tribus Toubou, venues du Tchad ou de Libye, un noyau arabe de faible importance dont le centre est Tahoua, et surtout les Touareg qui sont plus de 300.000.

C'est aux Touareg peuplant le massif de l'Aïr, au nord-ouest du pays, qu'aura trait mon exposé, établi à partir des documents que j'ai recueillis lors d'une récente mission.

On sait peu de chose sur l'origine et l'histoire des tribus touareg qui ont occupé successivement la région de l'Aïr et les traditions qui sont parvenues jusqu'à nous sont bien incertaines. Toutefois, le témoignage de l'écrivain arabe Idrisi révèle la présence de tribus berbères et libyennes à Tin Chaman, ville ancienne du centre de l'Aïr, en plein milieu du XIIème siècle.

According to a widely used definition a harp is “an instrument in which the plane of the strings lies at right angles to the sound-table, and a line joining the lower ends of the strings would point towards the neck.” In Africa this definition embraces many varieties of harps, and the variations in form may indicate different human migrations.

Perhaps the most important structural feature by which the various types are differentiated is the assembly of neck, resonator, and string holder. In the manufacture of harps many practical problems centre on this point and this is the basis of my classification of African material. At the same time I shall in this paper disregard many other criteria, such as the shapes and proportions of components, and the tuning pegs, etc. The net result is that it is possible to group present-day harps in Africa into three types.

The various notational means of signifying and conveying the composer's decisions and specifications to the various media for the electronic production of musical sound are probably temporary both in their exact nature and variety. But this should not be construed as a basis for concluding that these notational practices are, therefore, of consequence only to the historian of the ephemeral, or to the operators and designers of such media. The characteristics of these notations and, indeed, the very fact of their probable ephemerality embody implications of far more than mere “historical” interest, implications which extend significantly beyond the nature of the current means and even the structures of the particular media.

In January of this year, on the occasion of the first electronic music concert held at the University of Toronto, I composed a work for voice and electronic sounds in which different tunings provided the basis of three different octave species. Whereas the voice part was based on the diatonic tempered scale, the two accompanying parts were each in a different system of tuning. One part was based on a scale of twelve tones in which there was a difference of 63 cents between the successive steps; the second part employed tones separated by 172 cents. The results were sufficiently encouraging to attempt a generalization and organization of a comprehensive system of tuning for further experimentation.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to some aspects of this tuning method. It is offered as a suggestion to electronic music composers who are interested in tone-row techniques as one direction in which experimental music might grow.

The problems of transcription and transnotation in ethnomusicology are especially important in Israel today because the concentration of so many different ethnic groups has led to increased research in their various folk musics. Within the traditional system of musical notation only pitch and duration of a sound can be reflected, while colour and dynamic level must be conveyed by other means. Obviously, such notation is insufficient for the ethnomusicologist who needs an objective, impersonal account of all the musical qualities of that which is actually performed.

Various solutions to this problem have been proposed. Analytical transcription incorporates all elements of the music and its performance—i.e., not only the pitches sung, but the artistic nuances of the performer as well. The problems which arise here are mainly those of accuracy within the framework of our standard notation. Even with the addition of special symbols, truly accurate results remain impossible to attain.