Music

My appreciation for the topic of this thesis manifested initially as an interest in the music of sixteenth-century Spain, particularly the culture in which didactic works were published for the vihuela, the Spanish version of the Western European lute. As curiosity led me into subfields of early Spanish music, the guitar music in particular began to exhibit historically pertinent connections to renaissance humanism. I chose to focus on these connections, but faced the problem of limiting and reflecting intelligently upon this exciting yet seemingly infinite subject. After much contemplation, I settled into a methodological approach: to locate traces of humanism in the 1674 method book of Aragonese guitarist Gaspar Sanz, Instrvccion de Mvsica sobre la Gvitarra Española (Musical Instruction for the Spanish Guitar). Building connections from Sanz back through the history of Spanish humanism, this text aims to present a unique interpretation of the early Spanish guitar, an instrument inseparable from the liberation and secularization of the Western European intellect.

Since the first Portuguese conquests in 1500 (Monteiro, 1),  the music of Brazil’s tribal peoples has been adapted to foreign tastes in a number of ways. Accustomed to a learned written tradition developed in the Church, colonizers were disgusted with music of the Natives. Accounts of the culture shock include harshly pejorative, animalizing descriptions of native South American tribes and their lifestyle. In more recent times, musicians from outside these tribal cultures have assimilated slightly more honest, egalitarian research of Brazil’s pre-colonial musical traditions. Innovative treatments of native melodies are not uncommon, but no adaptation does a complete enough job of portraying the material clearly. In fact, I propose that the only effective way to teach the world about pre-colonial music from Brazil would be that an individual (or group) offer knowledge from within his or her own indigenous community. Having researched the multicultural development of Brazilian music, as well as the modern state of tribal life, I suggest the following solution: an effort must be made by indigenous peoples to reach out through a universally comprehensible interface with the intention of conveying the music as it is made in an authentic context. In this essay, I expand on instances of contact between tribal and modern civilizations. My hope is that the reader will arrive at an understanding of not only indigenous music as it is employed by non-indigenous musicians, but also the complex social dynamic at work.

The purpose of this thesis is to locate traces of humanism in the 1674 method book of Aragonese guitarist Gaspar Sanz, Instruction de Mvsica sobre la Gvitarra Espanola (Musical instruction for the Spanish guitar). Building connections from Sanz back through the history of Spanish humanism, this text presents a unique interpretation of the early Spanish guitar, an instrument inseparable from the liberation and secularization of the Western European intellect. Beginning with background on the guitar and humanism separately, this thesis links the two subjects through an analysis of Instruction in nine chapters dedicated to the front matter of Sanz’s method book, its didactic guidelines, and its music. The impact of language and writing on the sociological image of the guitar comprises one of the most prominent recurring ideas.

The purpose of this thesis is to locate traces of humanism in the 1674 method book of Aragonese guitarist Gaspar Sanz, Instruction de Mvsica sobre la Gvitarra Espanola (Musical instruction for the Spanish guitar). Building connections from Sanz back through the history of Spanish humanism, this text presents a unique interpretation of the early Spanish guitar, an instrument inseparable from the liberation and secularization of the Western European intellect. Beginning with background on the guitar and humanism separately, this thesis links the two subjects through an analysis of Instruction in nine chapters dedicated to the front matter of Sanz’s method book, its didactic guidelines, and its music. The impact of language and writing on the sociological image of the guitar comprises one of the most prominent recurring ideas.

The last years of the musical Renaissance and the first appearance of what is generally termed Baroque was a time of transformation for instrumental music and instrumental musicians. Pieces written specifically for instruments were being composed and notated. For anybody even vaguely familiar with music in the twenty-first century, the idea of music designated for instrumental interpretation is commonplace, but, beginning in the sixteenth century, such a concept was revolutionary and at times controversial. Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance, instrumentalists enjoyed little praise. Their subordinate position is evident in manuscripts preserved over time (musicians who played instruments rather than sung were in essence a way to fill in for vocalists, always supportive and almost never of primary focus) as well as documentation of their being relegated in society. As time went on, and instruments were allowed into the Church, value placed on non-vocal music was raised. Much of the instrumental idiom grew out of vocal tradition, but improvisation rooted in techniques for the instruments themselves was crucial. Instrumental music was becoming different from vocal music, and with this change came the prevalence of standard instrumental formulas for improvisation and composition: grounds. A ground, or ground bass, is a repeated phrase played most often by a bass instrument, over which chords and/or melody are added by an improviser or composer. Henry Purcell employs ground-bass technique in three arias from «Dido and Aeneas»,

A brief essay on how problems central to modern-day moral philosophy might find their way into music education. Early-childhood, adolescent, and adult phases are considered in terms of how language can guide a sociologically profound understanding and command of music as a creative yet universal language.

In response to a general disconnect between the transmission of popular guitar music and its origins in the strummed styles of Early Modern Spain, this paper seeks to contextualize Arab musical importation into the Iberian Peninsula through an examination of the following aspects of the Renaissance-to-Baroque guitar: overall shape, rose and decoration, strings, frets, and peg head. The study offers due examination of some musical and cultural aesthetics represented by these physical components of the guitar, a primary goal of which is to remind a modern audience that, in spite of perceived differences, guitar-driven popular music in the West—and therefore much of what is exported globally—is an outgrowth of poetic style influenced by cultural pluralism on the early-Renaissance Iberian Peninsula. A certain reinterpretation of world history by Peter Frankopan (2015) urges the discourse of the paper toward reconciliation in the face of modern tensions that have surfaced in the form of numerous and ongoing violent conflicts in the Middle East and the greater Muslim world, not to mention xenophobic manifestations in the US and elsewhere. The domain of the research in a thorough sense is quite broad; the hope is to summarize a multifaceted line of inquiry. One primary musical conclusion to be drawn from the research is that modal monophony largely associated with Middle Eastern and Indian traditions has much to offer a popular guitar tradition linked most often to Western tonal theory.

By introducing a consort of instrumentalists representing musical traditions from Iran to the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Japan, Korea and the Americas, the author presents a paradoxical compost approach of defining while disintegrating musical cultural elements, thus conveying the transformative nature of self and society. Improvisation informs the author's chromodal concept, illustrated in the article with a collapsing pyramid model, thereby illuminating co-existence as a shared creative source that ultimately expands human potential through the extinction of the formal.

Improvisation, by definition, fuelled by the same creative energies that move life, and as a fluid variance on and constant trickster of form, embodies the subversive. As sound, this paradoxical force gives rise to the metaphoric renaming of the harmonic series as "Makam X," thereby coiling such intervallic gravity with musical and extra-musical messages: here, speculation on a "cradle-mode" leads to implications of the tetrachordal, and subsequently, the appreciation of shared principles among African American, Persian, Andalucian, and Filipino musical traditions. This inspired me, through several personal encounters that included masters Mahmoud Zoufonoun, Danongan Kalanduyan, and Ornette Coleman, to pursue the eventual convergence and consequent disintegration of such systems, seeking not only a drive towards shared source, but also the liberation from formal restraints that suppress shared empowerment. In consideration of all this, and in light of recent shape-shifting movements throughout the world, I present an omnivorous model for improvisation used towards the proposal of a Convergence Liberation Principle.