First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music

University of Massachusetts Amherst: 19–21 February 2010

Website: http://www.analysisworldmusic.com/

This conference, sponsored by the University of Massachusetts and Yale University, arose from interest among music theorists and ethnomusicologists in the development of analytical approaches to music from beyond the Western classical canon. It was an innovative and stimulating encounter between two groups of scholars of differing orientation that too rarely interact.

Keynote addresses were given by Michael Tenzer and Kofi Agawu. Tenzer set the tone of the event with his paper “On the nature of cyclic time in music”, in which he proposed a general theory of cyclic rhythm, arguing against Kramer’s equation of cyclic time with stasis. He illustrated his thesis with analyses of Balinese gamelan, Aka song and jazz, showing complex structural relationships within and between cycles; discussion raised issues over the definition of cyclic time that remain to be resolved. Agawu’s paper “Against ethnotheory” challenged the presumption that analysis of African music should be limited to the terms of an indigenous music-theoretical discourse that, in his view, does not exist as such, and asserted the validity of cross-cultural analytical engagement with all musics—an argument perhapsalready familiar to the ethnomusicologists present.

Discussion of these and related issues occupied three plenary sessions, in the course of which special guest Simha Arom stressed the urgent need for a neutral terminology for cross-culturally observable musical stuctures, and defended his view that explicit knowledge of musical structure is articulated in indigenous Aka nomenclature; and Arom and Tenzer jointly proposed a typology of time organization in music. Formal responses came from Richard Widdess, Richard Cohn, Jay Rahn and Godfried Toussaint, and the informal debates were lively.

Papers addressed a variety of themes in two parallel sessions and a poster display. There was strong regional interest African, South Asian and gamelan musics, with individual contributions on jazz, Cuban music, Hebrew, Greek and Koranic cantillation of sacred texts, and Iranian and Chinese art-musics. Methodologies included information theory, set theory, cognition, cantometrics, computer analysis, phenomenology, phylogenetics and mathematical modelling.

Papers included innovative and revealing applications of specific analytical tools to specific pieces or performances, such as Panagiotis Mavromatis’ application of schema theory and finite state grammar to Greek Orthodox chant; John Roeder’s quasi-real time parsing of a Chinese Silk-and-Bamboo melody; Leslie Tilley’s application of information theory to gamelan and Beethoven (with surprisingly similar results!); and Stephen Larson’s application of Schenker to (Ravi) Shankar. Ethnomusicologists gave more culturally based accounts, including Chloe Zadeh’s analysis of thumri performance in relation to social history, and Marc Perlman’s paper on the history of gamelan notation from postcolonial and cognitive perspectives. In a more philosophical reflection, Nicholas Cook noted the problems of universal models of musical analysis, and advocated instead a “relational musicology” in which cross-cultural analysis would be viewed as a “dynamic transaction between cultures”.

Plans for a second conference in two years’ time, and for a new on-line journal, are under discussion.

Frp, Richard Widdess, Department of Music, SOAS