Curious.

Listening: Teaching Texture

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:52:36 GMT

There are three basic types of musical texture: monophony, homophony, and polyphony.Texture, in this case, refers to the number of voices (musical lines) present within a piece of music, and how those voices are used.

Monophony, as the name implies, is the use of only one musical line in a piece. This line is the melody, and it is not accompanied by any other music, rhythmic or harmonic. There may be more than one instrument or voice, but they all move together with the same rhythmic and pitch. An example of this can be found in Pete Seeger’s rendition of “Barbara Allen,” and in the performance of “Taps” by one trumpet at a military funeral.

When several voices move together in the same rhythm, they are homophonic. Generally, one voice carries the melody while the other voices create new chords with every pitch change. Because the voices, in this case, are using the same rhythm, a piece with this texture would also be considered homorhythmic. Excellent examples of this texture can be found in Barbershop music. “Sweet Adeline,” by the Way Back When quartet, demonstrates the prevailing use of homophonic texture.

Polyphony occurs when a piece consists of two or more independently moving voices. These voices may work together within the same harmonic structure—i.e., they work together to create chords—but they are not homorhythmic. An example of this can be found in the C Major fugue from J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and in Claudia Gomez’s “Solterlo.”

These three terms—monophony, homophony, and polyphony—can be used to describe any sort of Western music; a piece may use one or more of these textures within its structure. For example, in Chanticleer’s recording of Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” each section of the piece begins with a monophonic chant, and then moves into a polyphonic setting.

mh

Here is some information to help you locate the pieces listed above, if you are interested in hearing them:

Pete Seeger’s “Barbara Allen” – check out www.smithsonianglobalsound.org and do a “Quick Search” for “Barbara Allen.” Click on Pete Seeger’s album American Ballads and then sample the “Barbara Allen” track.

“Taps” – also on www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, search for “taps.” The second CD that comes up is Sounds for Camps, and it carries a “Taps” track.

“Sweet Adeline” by the Way Back When quartet – this can be downloaded as an mp3 from the album 2005 International Barbershop Quartet Contest - First Round - Volume 6 on Amazon.com.

J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier can be found almost anywhere, but the C Major fugue is the second piece of this collection.

Claudia Gomez’s “Solterlo” is on Putemaya’s Music of the Coffee Lands CD (which is, by the way, an absolutely excellent collection of creative "Latin" music). This CD is available on Amazon.com (but not for mp3 download).

Chanticleer’s performance of Biebl’s “Ave Maria” is on their Our Heart’s Joy Christmas album. It’s a beautiful piece (it often makes me cry), so I recommend it if you have not heard it. The CD is available on Amazon.com. (The whole CD is good, but it is expensive.)

Listening: Teaching with Schumann's Novellette in F Major

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:57:37 GMT

I don’t know how often most people think about musical form—after all, it is a structural aspect of music that most of us take for granted—but it is actually an important aspect of music from an historical and sociological viewpoint. The first movements of Classical period symphonies (by Haydn and Mozart, for example) are usually in what we call “sonata form,” and popular song is often “strophic.”

Usually, these forms are conventions that are meant to provide a foundation that the listener—whether he or she notices that he/she is doing so—can rely upon to structure the music in a way their mind can understand. For example, on some unconscious level, even if a listener is unfamiliar with the aspects of sonata form, they will recognize that the piece has a beginning, a middle and an end, based on the repetition of melody and harmony that they hear.

On the other hand, form does sometimes relate to cultural issues. It does sometimes have a meaning beyond the structure it provides. An excellent piece through which to study this is Robert Schumann’s Novellette in F Major, No. 1, Op. 21.

Robert Schumann had more than a passing interest in the works of the literary giant Jean Paul Richter. The composer read and reread Jean Paul’s works throughout his life, and in Schumann’s first Novellette from op. 21, the author’s influence on the composer’s style is certainly present. Several qualities of Richter’s writing are evident in Schumann’s work, and among these are the use of forms within forms and fragmented reprises.

The first op. 21 Novellette is an excellent piece through which to discuss both of these conventions in the creation of musical form, and also through which to study the influence of non-musical art and philosophy on the creation of music.

Regarding forms within forms, Schumann creates a rondo within a rondo. A rondo, to be clear, is a piece in which the sections of the piece are set up like so:

A B A C A .... (etc.)

In a rondo, the first section of the piece, though separated by sections of contrasting mood and melody, returns repeatedly throughout the piece.

In this case of this piece, which has the form:

A B A C A B A (coda)

the first A section is also a rondo, and is thereby an example of Schumann’s use of Richer’s idea of forms within forms.

The A section, in other words, is in the following form:

a b a b a

Several times in this piece, however, the return of the A section is truncated, with only a short “aba” section or a simple “a” section standing in for the entire A section rondo. Again, through this, the Novellette exemplifies Schumann’s adoption of Richter’s fragmented reprise.

This piece, because it is rather short, is useful because its rondo form can be made obvious even to listeners unused to listening for form, and because it is a simple matter to relate Richter’s literary style to Schumann’s compositional style.

On top of this, the Novellette is a rather spunky piano piece, moving between the forceful, militaristic A sections and the soothing B and cascading C sections. I quite enjoy it. If you’ve never heard this piece, take a listen to it and see if you enjoy it. While you’re at it, see if you can hear its “rondo within a rondo” form.

mh

PS – If you read this and would like more info on musical form, let me know. Some people have had a lot of experience with figuring out musical form, and others haven’t. This is the first time I’ve really discuss form in my LJ, so I’m happy to clarify anything that was confusing. (And I’d be glad to know what was confusing so that I can be more effective next time.)

For a good recording of this piece, try Vladimir Horowitz’s performance from the Great Pianists Of The 20th Century series. You can find it on iTunes and Amazon.

Listening: Teaching with Haydn's Farewell Symphony

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:09:34 GMT

At the end of this piece, Haydn indicates that the orchestra should leave the stage, one by one, until only two muted violins remain. At the time, he was making a subtle statement to Prince Esterhazy that his court wanted to return to Eisenstadt from the prince's summer home in order to see their families. This is an interesting backstory through which to teach students about agenda and meaning in music.

It is also a good piece through which to teach the basics of the Classical symphony, its orchestration, and the ideas behind the Sturm und Drung movement (which led toward minor keys and agitated lines--i.e. more emotional writing--in music).

(Though, if I were to teach about orchestra instruments, I might use something a little more obvious such as Peter and the Wolf, in which several of the instruments are given extensive solos.)

mh

(BTW - these "listening" posts are actually for my graduate pedagogy course, if you haven't guessed. I'm simply posting them on LJ so that my classmates can see them. I've enjoyed the feedback so far, though, so don't feel like commenting is taboo, though. Discussion is a good thing.)

Listening: Teaching with Berstein's Kaddish Symphony

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:03:37 GMT

I am deeply attached to this piece.

It's sad to think that, as a musician, listening to music rarely moves me anymore. When I was a girl, I went to our local library and rented Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I was a clarinetist, and we'd played a very simple version of the last part of it (the part with the canons) in my fourth-grade band class. I grabbed that LP and the Peter and the Wolf LP.

And I sat in my parent's room--where the LP player was situated--and I just listened. I was drawn to the music on a level that I still can't understand.

As I started studying music in college, it became less about the ineffable pull of the music, and more about the sterile study of the music. Yes, it's sad. It was disappointingly all too easy to ignore my deep yearning for the beauty of music once I started digging into its various parts...when listening, I began to analyze instead of enjoy.

But Kaddish, which I first heard when I was 20, touched me at a deep level. It wasn't just about music--it was about a relationship with God expressed through the music. As a Christian, this piece freed something in me; the narrator was arguing with God, was being completely honest and vulnerable and angry, and I yearned for that. It was an irreverence that took me to a deeper place in my relationship with God. Could I be as open and vulnerable with him as this person on the CD? Could God value that?

I found that in my heart, I longed for what I heard in the Kaddish Symphony. By moving me on a incredibly personal and spiritual level, this piece had restored that connection to music that I had lost over the years.

I think that Kaddish would be excellent as part of a unit on Religion and Music. This is not only because it is a deeply spiritual piece, but because a) the religion it dialogs with is not the Christian religion, but the Jewish religion (the Kaddish is the prayer for the dead), and Intro to Music classes have in the past tended to focus on the Western Christian tradition; and b) it has some really interesting musical points, such as the inclusion of the narrator and several 20th-century scoring techniques.

I don't think that I'd share my "Kaddish" story with my students--these personal anecdotes don't always go over well (I might even have upset some LJers with this post, though I hope they can see that the only judgement here is about my own religious experience, and no-one else's)--but I would definitely discuss the tone of religious dissention found within the piece. In a unit like this, it's useful to present different approaches to religion and music, and not just the one approach that deals with music as a positive portrayal/practice of religion. After all, not all experiences of religion are positive. (Even in religions that minimize the negative.)

I could go on, but my points here are that Kaddish really touched me when I was younger, and that I think that, for various reasons, it would be useful in teaching about the connection between religion and music.

mh

PS - the version of the Kaddish Symphony I'm fond of comes from the "Bernstein Conducts Bernstein" LP (and then CD) collection--the CD that has both the Kaddish Symphony and the Chichester Psalms (which are likewise wonderful--the "Adonai" section has also moved me to tears). I believe that Bernstein's wife is the narrator--her performance is absolutely stunning. If you've never heard it, please go listen to it. It's gorgeous.

Listening: Teaching Song Form

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:04:47 GMT

"Yesterday" by Paul McCartney, and "Solterlo" by Claudia Gomez, are two popular songs that could be easily used to teach form. "Yesterday" is in 32-bar form (AABA), though Paul mixes it up a bit by truncating the second occurrance of the AABA form, simply tagging BA onto the end of the song.

The song is simple, though, and it's easy to tell the different sections apart.

Claudia's "Solterlo" (acapella version found on the Putamaya Coffee Lands CD) also provides an simple analysis of form, and it uses transitions, which are an important part of song form that non-musical students can easily miss.

In any case, I was going to use these as examples in a lesson, but I threw them out. Talking about form is boring. Talking about form and meaning is much more interesting. What songs could I use to discuss the intersection between form and meaning? Is that a viable approach when discussing most contemporary popular songs? I'm sure that form has a meaning in some songs, but I'm also sure that in many, form is simply a tool for presenting the text, with very little meaning beyond that.

These are some interesting thoughts that I plan to...think about.

Listening: Teaching with "Hallelujah"

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:32:07 GMT

I recently taught a class for a few minutes on the concept of "Harmony," and I used Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" to do so. It has a simple harmony that is easy to follow, and the song's presentation is uncomplicated (just a voice and a guitar). In any case, while working on it, I actually paid attention to the lyrics for once (besides "Hallelujah, etc."). The first verse would be perfect for teaching the relationship between music and lyrics:

When David played before the Lord
I heard he had a special chord
But you don't really care for music do ya?
Well, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composed his hallelujah.
Hallelujah, etc.

Oddly enough, when Jeff sings "the fourth, the fifth," the chords he plays are, in fact, the fourth and the fifth (in C major, that would be F and G). When he sings "minor fall," he plays an A minor chord, and when he sings "major lift," he plays an F major chord. Leonard Cohen, who originally wrote and performed this song, was enjoying himself a little when he wrote this.

To be fair, text painting can be exercised on many levels besides just harmonic structure, but this explanation would be a simple and literal introduction to the idea for a basic Music Appreciation class.

Greek and Musicology

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:02:02 GMT

So I was talking to some M friends today about the fact that "queer" musicology is pretty much the most well known branch of musicology out there.

(Disclaimer: I don't like the term "queer" musicology, but it's what the crew is using nowadays. I've ranted long and hard against it...but I'm a lowly grad student. I suppose I could call it gay/lesbian/gender/sexual studies musicology. Doesn't have the same ring, though.)

In any case, last week's episode of Greek actually referenced "queer" musicology in passing, as part of a joke. It floored me. Musicology doesn't get much popular press. I felt...like someone knew we existed. Or something.

You know you've made a mark in the world when someone makes fun of you.

Well, I'm watching this week's Greek right now, and one of the frat houses on the show used music to "torture" their pledges. This is a) a bad thing to do. Music can actually be VERY harmful to the psyche if played loudly and for a long time. (Unfortunately, it has been used against POWs recently.) And b) is relevant to this conversation because the musicological world has recently made a big stink against using music for torture (yay, musicology!). It's a little bit humorous that two references to controversial musicological topics have occured on this show...which has nothing to do with musicology.

I wonder if one of the writers is married to a musicologist or something....

Listening: Teaching With Hip Hop

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:38:57 GMT

(or some other popular musical genre)

I was walking this afternoon from the graduate library to a meeting I had with a professor of mine in the bell tower, when I passed a huge DJ setup on the lawn. I'm not sure what the gathering was about, but they were playing some loud and bass-y hip hop in an attempt to gather some attention.

I thought, while I was passing, "Hmmm. That bass line is really pleasing. Loud is good." (I actually did think this...I had heard it inside the library and was being rebellious.)

And then I thought, "How could I use a piece like this in teaching music to students?" (Because I'm a geek.)

I'm hugely in favor of teaching people in a manner that starts with what they already know. It's hard to teach someone how to drive down the street when they don't yet know how to distinguish red from green. The same goes with asking them to clap out a rhythm when they don't know how to pick out the musical line from which they're supposed to copy said rhythm. But most everyone nowadays listens to hip hop, at least sometimes, and its highly repetitive nature can be useful in teaching students--students who have yet to really learn to listen to music and articulate what they hear.

Using a hip hop piece (or for that matter, any contemporary popular genre) could be useful in teaching new students to identify melodies, countermelodies, bass lines and rhythms. The right choice of musical example could provide a simple exercise for identifying each of these musical elements in a manner that is familiar and non-threatening. Most young people can, at least, pick out the bass line and the most prominent driving rhythm.

I imagine that this would leave a better taste in students' mouths than if I asked them to do the same for, say, Stravinsky.

On a related note, I ran into a blog post that discussed using podcasts in teaching music to high schoolers. It's a great idea--it at least encourages them to comment intelligently and creatively on the music they hear.

Redundant. Predictable.

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:40:22 GMT

So, I was reading through a chapter in John Fiske's Introduction to Communication Studies, when I ran into the following quote:

"The more popular and widely accessible a work of art is, the more it will contain redundancies in form and content."

The term "redundancy" in this usage does not necessarily refer to the degree of repetition (as in, it's redundant to tell someone your name fifteen times in one hour), but to the degree of predictability in a work of art. The film score for Pirates of the Carribean, for example, was pretty darn redundant. John Williams introduced the currently used form for film music with his score, many years ago, to Star Wars IV. Composers in this genre make use of the entire orchestra with Romantically-inspired orchestration and use various types of musical themes to alert the audience to the return of characters or ideas. Zimmer of the Pirates soundtrack used this archetype when composing his version of a soundtrack.

And while there needs to be a good degree of redundancy in any art in order for us, as the audience, to comprehend it, it is the strategic presence of unpredictability (or entropy, to use Fiske's term) that really catches us. When we listen to a soundtrack, we're especially aware of what is different about this particular one, and we deliberate about whether we like it.

When I was pondering this, I came back to my question: Why don't musicologists seem especially interested in strict musical parody? Well, it's because the music itself is pretty much 100% redundant. Why study something if it's completely predictable?

There isn't any way, though, for the music to be completely redundant. Even when someone is singing new words to a recorded back-up track, the timbre and intonation of their voice changes the music. And, in fact, the fun in the musical side of parody is making small changes that have some effect on the listener.

My favorite filk so far--and I'll use it as an example here--is the Acts of Parody piece found on the Roundworm CD. (I think I've mentioned this before.) The artists didn't just sing new words to the original music--they actually modified the their presentation of the music. It is only fitting that a song about filk should not be sung solo, as in the original Acts of Creation, but as a group with full harmony and with more complex instrumentation. The addition of solo verses occurs as each member of the group gets to add his or her own twenty-five cents to the topic. This is a highly meaningful and effective musical change, and one that I'm pretty sure the group intended. After all, in the bardic circle, each person in turn gets to sing their own piece.

I suppose that my point here is that strict parody song, and especially popular parody song, can be frustrating to study from a musicological standpoint because of the extremely high degree of musical redundancy. What we have to do is dial up our sensitivity to whatever is musically unpredictable, no matter how small, because that's where we'll find the truly interesting material.

Popular Parody Phobia

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:25:07 GMT

Popular Parody Phobia

(It's not a proper alliteration...but I like it nonetheless.)

Greetings, all.

Before I get to blogging, I'd like to apologize for my lengthy absence. I had accepted both a full-time job and an extra online job for the month of August, and while I'd fully planned to continue posting filk-inspired ideas on this page, it turned out that my personal time had been reduced to nearly nothing. Before that, it did seem that everyone had been enjoying sharing arguments regarding the nature of filk, and I hope that my behavior has not disappointed you so much that you won't be interested in continuing the discourse. I've certainly been enjoying this, and am of course indebted to you for your input.

And now, on to the show. Er...blog.

One of the questions I had to ask myself when working on 18th-century parody song (vaudeville) in France was why more work on the topic hadn't been attempted by musicologists. The practice was so pervasive in that particular culture that it permeated anything that had to do with the written word—stacks of vaudeville collections were compiled, and anyone taking a stroll down the market streets would have heard hawkers bellowing them to the crowds. They were even the basis of the beginning of French comic opera (opéra comique)…and musical theater as we know it, actually, with The Beggar's Opera in England.

Despite its popularity in its time, few scholars have devoted published words to this genre. Over the past two hundred years, there are only a handful of individuals who have attached their name to it on paper. None of these were scholars of music; they were usually literature or communication historians. Only recently has the musical world taken notice of this practice, with two collections of essays coming out of Europe. In our current general music history textbooks, vaudeville is usually only given one sentence in the 1.5 pages devoted to French comic opera.

I was equally surprised to find that I can locate no writings on filk (a modern folk practice that includes strict musical parody as one of its tools) by musicologists and ethnomusicologists. This is not to say that I feel that only writings on music by musicologists matter; on the contrary, I'm adamant that any topic should be studied from as many different angles as possible. I'm simply bothered by the fact that contemporary popular parody song in general has been neglected by a field of study that should take the topic under its wing as a matter of course. It has received some serious treatment by Henry Jenkins and several others, as we know, but it has not been a topic on which music scholars have published.

And I have yet to find a book that deals specifically with popular parody song as a musical form.

I'd be silly if I didn't rejoice a little at the fact that my current interest has been largely untouched, and is almost completely unknown by, the musicological world. Every scholar does a little happy dance when they find such a neglected source of scholarly fun. But the question still remains: Why has (ethno)musicology tended towards ignoring popular parody song?

The answer may be that parody song is, in a large way, mostly a literary form. The music is not new, and it is not usually complex. So the main interest in specimens of this type seems to lie in the following: a) The new text that is being shared, b) the relationship between the old and new texts, and c) the relationship between the old music and the new text. Until recently (somewhere in the last century, with the emergence of ethnomusicology), musicology was not very interested in the study of music in culture, so even this last point wasn't of much interest to musicologists.

This is a decent answer to my question, but it's a "surface" answer. There must be more to it, right?

Perhaps (ethno)musicologists are not frequent attendees of SF and Fantasy conventions, and because filk has not become widely known outside of this community, word of the practice has not made it into any semi-interested musicological circles. Regarding the historical practice, it's possible that, because vaudeville collections were only sometimes published with music, scholars simply viewed it as more of a literary practice than a musical one. Perhaps these scholars would simply rather spend their time pursuing thoughts of Monteverdi and Stravinsky—or of the Indian Diaspora and the Balinese gamelan—all of which are perfectly pleasant and interesting tracks of scholarship. And, of course, we can wonder whether a lack of imagination—of being able to creatively question just how uses music uniquely—has contributed to its barely-sideline status in musical scholarship.

I hope that I don't sound accusatory; that's certainly not my intention. Every scholar must choose what he/she wants to spend a lifetime pursuing. I simply believe that the reasons for this phenomenon run deeper than a simple lack of interest, and I'm curious as to what those reasons may be.

In any case, I do feel that popular parody song has been underrepresented in the (ethno)musicological world, whether as a historical or contemporary practice.

Thoughts? Do you think that I've missed an important idea in this ramble? I'm certain that you guys would know if an (ethno)musicological survey of filk (or popular parody song) has actually been undertaken in the last several decades. Certainly do ~~flame~~ call me on it, if that's the case.

Cheers!

Write Through the Wall

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:28:29 GMT

This post (http://musicology.typepad.com/dialm/2008/08/the-writer-in-t.html), by Jonathan Bellman (a pretty darn prominent musicologist) was just too good not to share. If you're into writing and into blogging and have ever looked back on your past work in dismayed shock, you might just relate.

(By the way, I have not forgotten my musings on filk. I'm simply in a place right now, just before I move to attend a new graduate program, where it's difficult for me to sit down and intellectually sift through facts and come to a good conclusion. Give me a couple of weeks this time.)

Cheers, all!
mh

Filk as Folk

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:27:38 GMT

This is the first installment of the "ethno/musicological" discussion of filk that I promised everyone several days ago. I have to tell you that I was incredibly encouraged by the number of responses to that post, the insightfulness of these comments, and by the depth of passion displayed for this genre (or "movement," as I've been corrected). Please keep the ideas and the criticisms coming, friends!

I figured that I would start out my musings on filk with a discussion of folk music influenced by Simon Frith's 1981 article in Popular Music, "'The Magic That Can Set You Free': The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community." I'll also be drawing from the chapter, "'Strangers No More, We Sing': Filk Music, Folk Culture, and the Fan Community," from Henry Jenkins's book, Textual Poachers (1992). Jenkins, as many of us know, is one of the few scholars to have devoted considerable time and pen space to filk as a genre--work that has been published in several important books on fan culture.

The purpose of Frith's article is to debunk rock's status as a folk art and at the same time to discuss how rock is, despite this, "used by its listeners as a folk music." In spinning out his argument, Frith gives several definitions of filk from figures such as Jon Landau (the Rolling Stone), Sir Hubert Parry (a late-19th-century English composer), and A.L. Lloyd (an early 20th-century English folk singer and folk song collector). When considered together, these definitions highlight several important aspects of folk music that, when compared to what we (the collective "we" that really means "I") know about filk, fully endorse Jenkins's assertion that filk is a true folk art.

Jenkins spends a good portion of his article on filk discussing its folk status, giving several qualities, endorsed by scholars, common to all folk music: "oral circulation rather than fixed written texts, continuity within musical tradition, variation in performance, and selection by a community that determines which songs are preserved, which discarded." He also explores the practice of communities' refashioning and recreating of folk music to continually serve the current identity of each community. He very clearly and effectively presents filk as an authentic folk music based on these qualifications.

Moving beyond Jenkins's discussion of folk music, though, we find presented in Frith's article several other ideological qualities of this art. As part of his argument, Frith intimates that folk music should rise from the creativity of folk who are related by experiences other than music. Frith frowns on rock's status as a folk genre because the "community" it serves is not tied together by anything other than the music it claims. While we might argue with this claim, it does not preclude filk as a folk music.

According to all the accounts I have read on the emergence of filk from the midnight creativity of fan cons, it is music made by a community that is already tied together by their dedication to their fan interests. Jenkins affirms that filk pulls together this group, "resolving the differences separating them, providing a common basis for interaction." The SF&F community is not built on its music making--its music making reinforces its existing foundation.

More important than folk music's role as a tool for already-built communities is the fact that, within it, there is no elite. The lines between performer and audience are minimal or nonexistent. A.L. Lloyd stated that "the main thing [in folk music] is that the songs are made and sung by men [sic] who are identical with their audience in standing, in occupation, in attitude to life, and in daily experience." While within rock, the audience is encouraged to believe that their stars have risen from their ranks and have remained there in some small fashion, in filk the audience is the performer, and the performer is a member of the audience. They share attitudes, interests, and a dedication to media culture. Filk celebrates the in-references found in SF&F fandom, the sense of ownership that the fans feel over their preferred media, and the right of the fans to comment upon and critique these texts. Elitism is minimized within this community.

By far the most striking requirement for folk music, as related by Frith, is its "authenticity." According to Landau, authentic music "articulates an attitude, style or feeling that is the genuine reflection of the performers' experience…." In a "true" folk music, emotions are not faked and the situations of the community are sincerely (if sometimes farcically) related. In acting as the voice of the fans, filk distinguishes itself as a music that authentically expresses the attitudes and desires of those fans.

Sir Hubert Parry presents a lovely, somewhat idyllic view of folk music: it "grew in the heart of the people...because it pleased them to make it, and what they made pleased them; and that is the only good way music is ever made." This is another, admittedly optimistic, view of music making that makes the requirement of "authenticity" nearly impossible to reach. The motives of the music must be pure--the music must be made simply for the joy of making it.

And, incredibly, filk seems to meet this difficult requirement. Filk is made because fans enjoy it. It was not created--and still is not created--to make a significant income or to gain significant fame, but for its specific community's pleasure.

As I mentioned, Jenkins provides a more exhaustive discussion of filk as folk. In Frith's article, however, we have found several more requirements of folk music that identify filk even more securely as a denizen of folk culture. At its heart, filk's authentic nature, its edification of an already-existing community , and the equality it celebrates between performer and audience have identified it as a folk music in a society and time in which true folk music is rare.

The discussion of the classification of filk as folk could fill a book, and this poor blog would bend under the weight of all that info, but lets discuss this. Criticism and commentary are welcome!

And in the meantime, happy TTOs to all!
mh

(This entry has been cross-posted at my Wordpress site.)

Filk Studies

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:05:41 GMT

This summer starts my descent into fandom, or more specifically, filkdom. As a bit of background, I’m a musicologist who has done some work on parody song (contrafacta) in the French eighteenth century, a practice dubbed vaudeville. At the time, it was a common hobby to match self-written lyrics with folk songs or especially catchy dance tunes by well-known composers (such as Lully). This diversion spanned all social classes and was an important part of the establishment of French comic opera—opéra comique. Opéra Comique was a very distant forerunner of what we now call American Vaudeville.

Spending so much time studying historical parodic practices piqued my interest in contemporary contrafacta, and as I started to google “musical parody,” the term “filk” caught my eye.

Filk is a genre of music in which lyrics celebrating Science Fiction and Fantasy fan culture are set to existing tunes. It is the musical folk practice of creative fandom, parallel in many ways to fan fiction and fan art, birthed half a century ago at science fiction conventions around the US. For a clear, basic introduction to this art, see M.A.S.S.F.I.L.C.’s definition.

So here I am, delighted to begin a new branch of study on my neverending quest to enjoy music making and to become a more knowledgeable musicologist. I hope that the writings that I post in the future, whether directly related to filk, or to music and musicology in general, find use in both the fan
community and the musical community.

My musicological shorts will be cross-posted at my Wordpress site and my LiveJournal site.

Look for my first thoughts in the next few days.

Best to all,
musicahumana

Dangling Filk

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:45:51 GMT

So, I've been doing research lately into filk. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's a cross between folk music, parody song and SF/Fantasy fandom. I ran into it randomly about half a year ago while doing some research into parody song online...my master's thesis was on parody song in eighteenth-century France. (Geeky, huh?)

Anyway, it looked like so much fun, and like so much fun to study, that as soon as I finished the semester, I started digging into it. And I figure the only way to really dig into it is to do it!!!

So here is my first filk. Enjoy!

Dangling Conversations
(To the tune of "Dangling Conversation" by Simon & Garfunkel)

It's a silent midnight watch
Before our terminals.
Imagination flourishes
When sundown fully falls.
And we fix at our computers
All the open pairings,
And all the seasons' ends.
They grow beneath our hands
Inthe dangling conversations
And th elong unuttered sighs
In the pages of their lives.

And we write of things that matter
Of things that must be said.
Could Sam and Jack be worthwhile?
Is Starbuck really dead?
And could someone kindly answer
Can the Doctor feel love?
Teyla's child become a man?
The answers to these questions
Lie in the dangling conversations
And the worried inner sighs
In the pages of their lives.

As we delve into these matters
The writers stretch their heads.
The fanon must be fashioned
The fanon must be read.
It grows beyond the Cable.
It grasps at all the paths,
And all the many ends,
In sycopated lines,
Of the danging conversations,
And the quiet, anxious sighs,
In the pages of their lives.

If I were a musical instrument....

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:01:42 GMT

If I were a musical instrument, I'd probably be a bassoon. Serious and a little awkward, but with a comedic side that just makes people giggle.

And if I were to go out and do something crazy, it would not be skydiving.

Sometimes I get irritated that I'm the type of girl who prefers to keep the soles of her shoes in somewhat constant contact to the ground. Mind you, I don't often get invitations to bungee jump or cliff dive, so it's not usually an issue. But man, can I tell you that I'm afraid of falling? It isn't the height that gets me. It's the fact that I'd be completely out of control as I made my way down.

That's really my biggest and most annoying fear. I make up for it by working daily to not allow myself to fear falling in other areas of my life.

I'm a musicologist. You know, that type of person who spends their lives in libraries reading about something that we're meant to experience? Actually, us music historians are not all that bad. We do have a tendency to go all Adorno on anyone who will listen, but we work very hard to keep in touch with the reason we're musicians in the first place.

For instance, I'm an oboist (not a bassoonist--long story), and I just finished--alongside my music history work--an MM in Baroque oboe. (If you like to make jokes about shooting oboists, try them with Baroque oboists. It's much more satisfying.) I'm also quite passionate about teaching. After all, music is an art that ties us to our culture; it can tell us, as a people, where we've been, where we are, and where we plan on going. In my opinion, it's one of those GED subjects that gets erroneously overlooked, even though it's a very important window into understanding ourselves and our world.

I enjoy music, all types of it. I like everything from Ancient Greek stuff to Bach to Nortena to Filk. Every form of music has an intricate story to tell, and that intrigues me.  And if you like music, chances are I will like you.

Writing is also a passion. While I have to write for my "job," I'd love to be a fiction writer some day, to be able to create a world that sucks people in and makes them contemplate their own lives that much more clearly. I'd like to be the next Robert Jordan or Koontz, but that might be a stretch given everything else I've got going on in life. Still, fiction writing keeps me sane through all those tedious hours in the vacant, sound-sucking library. Keeps me fresh.

And, as soon as I get my PhD and get settled, I will be opening a coffee shop. I can't think of any other pursuit that would make me happier than building a place where people can get together and be friends. And drink americanos. And have spontaneous jam sessions.

That's where I'm going. Where am I coming from?

California.

I love my California. I grew up in the dull, dreary and desperately hot Mojave Desert, and then moved to the Central Coast for my BA. Eight years on the beaches of San Luis Obispo County, with great friends, great fourwheeling and a great vibe. I can't tell you guys how much I miss that place.  I have been to many countries around this world, and there is nowhere else I'd rather be.

And that's me! A somewhat nutty; un-pithy; coffee-, jeep- and friend-loving musicologist. Cheers, everyone! Can't wait to meet you.

(This post was in response to a brigits_flame prompt for July 2008.)

Choose Happiness

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:52:14 GMT

I've just been reminded that one of the most important freedoms that we have as human beings is the freedom to choose. Anything. The color of our apartment walls or whether we will have a Diet Coke or water with lunch. We make so many choices in life that we often forget that we must make choices, and important ones.

I've specifically got to talk about choosing happiness over anxiety and fear. I'm the type of woman who battles constantly, under the surface, with worries and concerns. Right now, I'm actually worrying whether anyone will read this post and whether they'll like it or not. I make so many decisions out of anxiety and fear that I don't often remember to choose to be happy, to be joyful, and to delight in the world around me.

My life isn't bad. I'm in grad school and I'm getting paid for it. I'm studying music for heaven's sake, and how can that be anything but a delightful experience? But too often, by not choosing to enjoy my life, I just let it happen around me and I let my default anxiety lead the way.

So for me, a person who has so much to be thankful for and hopeful about, I've got to get up every day and remind myself to relish my life, to enjoy every minute of it.

And if you're reading this, I hope you do that, too.

mh

PS - this post was prompted by a post by lacombe on the brigits_flame LJ site.

A Writer/Musicologist

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:23:08 GMT

Greetings to all. I think I'm going to use this journal as a place to post little snippets of my writing, whether it be fictional or historical. Please do feel free to comment on my post and to friend me--I'd love feedback, and I'd be happy to provide it to others as well. Cheers!