Original Compositions
As a composer, I am very interested in bringing different musical cultures together--and have gone about it in many different ways. Here are two examples. First, a duet for pipa and erhu entitled Zhou. The instrumentation is purely Chinese, but the musical form is quite Western: a strict set of variations.
Second, a movement from my Sextet for Alto Saxophone and Brass--the second movement. Here, the instrumentation in entirely Western, and the form is as well, since it's a fugue. (A bit of a "jazz" fugue, at that). But the underlying meter is Arabic: a 10/8 cycle in the form 2+3+3+2 beats. My experience has been that when cultures talk to each other--musically and otherwise--good things happen!
Article on World Music:
"Aesthetic Realism: A New Foundation for Interdisciplinary Musicology"
by Edward Green and Arnold Perey, Ph.D.
Published in In: R. Parncutt, A. Kessler & F. Zimmer (Eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM04) Graz/Austria, 15-18 April, 2004 http://gewi.uni-graz.at/~cim04/.
Gamelan Gong Kebyar: the Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music, by Michael Tenzer.
(Chicago and London: the University of Chicago Press, 2000. xxv, 492 pp.)
"In this innovative, carefully reasoned book, Michael Tenzer provides a comprehensive, technical account of modern Balinese music. Surprisingly, he approaches the task in a boldly syncretic manner, making coordinated use of indigenous Balinese musical concepts as well as Western analytic tools....The central fact about this book is that it is thrilling, ear-opening, mind-enhancing: a magisterial work". (To read more, click here.)
|
