A Historical Perspective of Mangalavattiyam

From the earliest days of the Tamil music tradition, music was considered to be a combination of vocal music, instrumental music and dance. Each of these musical genres is closely intertwined. Knowledge of one helps to know about the other. Instrumental music has been interpreted as accompaniment to solo music and dance and as a solo specialty. In Bharata's book 'Natyashasthram', musical instruments are generally divided into four categories as nerve (tata) hole (kasira) ¸ skin (avanatta) ¸ kana (kanja). In this context, it is a research paper on the history and use of the Nagaswaram and thavil instruments, which are referred to today as the Mangala Vaathyam, which the Tamils ​​have merged with their culture. This article also examines in detail the ideological changes that have taken place over time in the use of these two musical instruments. At the same time, the use of these instruments in the sociological context is taken into account. Finally, this article is a historical study of the lineage of musicians who have mastered these instruments.

Carrying the organ - the thing on the portative, part 2

The present article is the continuation of the text published in issue 12 of “Notes Muzyczny” from December 2019. This paper is devoted to discussing technical issues connected with designing and constructing Opus 1 Portative built by the author; it also touches on practical performance aspects of portative music. The instrument fully designed and constructed by the author is a one-octave portative with stoppedwoodenpipesanditssoundrangeisc1-c2withanoptiontoretunecs1intobandb 1 into cs2 or d2. The default tuning pitch is a=440Hz but it can be altered within 415-465Hz; the temperament may also be freely changed. One wedge bellow placed at the back of the instrument is used for bellow treading. A leather belt worn over the shoulder and the low weight of the construction allow for playing the instrument not only while sitting but also in a standing position. As compared to similar instruments, this portative has more extended case which fully covers the ends of pipes. Opus 1 Portative was built thanks to a few years of research studies and technical work of the author covering the construction of organ components and independent attempts to miniaturise them for the purpose of construction of this specific instrument. Thanks to that, in order to build Opus 1 the author used a few original solutions – e.g. the way of gluing top corners of the bellow, the way of regulating the airflow through the foot of the pipe or the technique of attaching the handle to the stopper of a stopped pipe, with the limited space above its body. The majority of experimental solutions brought satisfactory results and for the remaining ones Piotr Dziewiecki managed to find ways to overcome the difficulties which arose. The author uses the instrument in his own performance practice both for solo music and for playing in ensembles. The portative is very useful for both fields, ensuring wide dynamics and articulation-related capacities. They are connected with an option to very precisely control the pressure of air powering the pipes and with their way of blowing. Its characteristic sound, warm and full of depth, brings associations with human voice. Thanks to that, vocal-and- instrumental music performed on it, with the portative player rendering the singer’s part, sounds good.

Pierre Boulez and Heinz Holliger: on the problem of transformation of a musical language

The article focuses on the problem of transformation of a musical language, the correlation between an esthetic guideline, an invention, a composition technique and a language. The author describes the two strategies of life and work of Pierre Boulez which allowed him to gain significant cultural authority, and enumerates the persons who had influenced Boulez’s esthetics. In a broad esthetic and philosophical context, the author shows the turn from the technique to the language in esthetical and theoretical texts of Pierre Boulez; describes the three concepts of the language, the period of synthesis following the period of rejection, and Boulez’s concerns about the problems of music perception. In the context of Boulez’s thesis about the unity of an invention, a technique and a language, the author considers the piece for viola “Trema” (1981) by Heinz Holliger, Boulez’s adherent. The author uses a comprehensive approach as a combination of elements of comparative analysis, musical phenomenology (focusing of mind on music structures), and hermeneutics (the process of understanding, interpreting). The research material is of a methodical importance for modern educational courses of theory and history of music. The author arrives at the conclusion that Boulez, as well as Kant, directs the concept of art towards Aristotle's category of “poiesis” as “craft and creation”; focuses on the overcoming of the esthetics of rejection (preceding the classic-romantic tradition) in Boulez’s turn to the period of “synthesis” which includes not only the turn from a technique to a language, but also electroacoustic “sound manufacturing”.  The following aspects of Hollinger’s “Trema” are considered for the first time: the idea, the principles of new solo music, the new technique. The author arrives at the conclusion about “Trema” belonging to the “multilayered music epoch” and that radical rethinking of a musical language sharpens communication.   

Stress in Music Managers and Artists: Pilot study on Czech and Slovak Students

The aim of the presented study was to do a pilot research on the comparison of the incidence of stress in a group of students of music management and art of music. We examined whether artists and music managers differ in the perception of the intensity of stress when playing (working) solo from the intensity when playing (working) in group. Furthermore, we focused on the most common stressors and main stress symptoms among music managers and artists. Total 63 students of music, cultural or art management (average age 28.6 years; 69.8 % were women) and 75 students of art of music (average age 26.7 years; 64 % were women) filled out an online questionnaire in the spring of 2016. The results show that while artists reported higher stress levels when playing solo, music managers reported higher stress levels when working in a group. A closer look showed that while only a few music managers (4,8 %) are intensely stressed when working in a team, a considerable group of artists (26 %) stated that they were most stressed out when playing solo. As their main work stressors artists mentioned blackouts, unpreparedness, and audience, music managers listed flaws in the human factor, time pressure and financial problems. Stress symptoms among artists are mainly physiological and short-term but at the same time intensive, while stress symptoms among music managers are rather long-term and related to psyche, and relationships with others.

SOLO MUSIC DENGAN PENERAPAN SISTEM AKUSTIK

<p><em>Solo’s music world is not yet well accousticly contained because Solo does not have any buliding that specifically used for musical activities. The purpose of this design is to create a container of music activities with a good accoustic quality. The problem that emerge is how to design a building to contain music activities with a good accoustic quality. The planned building apply an accoustical system which able to accomodate every music genre with amplified sound. The accoustic room uses many sound absorber for amplified music. The result is music performance building design, music school design, recording studio design, and music studio design with a good accoustic quality.</em></p><p class="Keywords"><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: Music Performance Building, Music School, Recording Studio, Music Studio, Accoustic System</em><em></em></p>

Investigating rater accuracy in the context of secondary-level solo instrumental music performance

In any performance-based musical assessment context, construct-irrelevant variability attributed to raters is a cause of concern when constructing a validity argument. Therefore, evidence of rater quality is a necessary criterion for psychometrically sound (i.e., valid, reliable, and fair) rater-mediated music performance assessments. Rater accuracy is a type of rater quality index that measures the distance between raters’ operational ratings and an expert’s criterion ratings on a set of benchmark, exemplar, or anchor musical performances. The purpose of this study was to examine the quality of ratings in the context of a secondary-level solo music performance assessment using a Multifaceted Rasch Rater Accuracy (MFR-RA) measurement model. This study was guided by the following research questions: (a) overall, how accurate were the rater judgments in the assessment context? (b) how accurate were the rater judgments across each of the items of the rubric?, and (c) how accurate were the rater judgments across each of the domains of the rubric? Results indicated that accuracy scores generally matched the expectations of the MFR-RA model, with rater locations higher than the average student performance, item, and domain locations, indicating that the student performances, items, and domains were relatively easy to rate accurately for the sample of raters examined in this study. Overall, rater accuracy ranged from 0.54 logits ( SE = 0.05) for the most accurate rater to 0.24 logits ( SE = 0.04) for the least accurate rater. Difficulty of rater accuracy across items indicated a range of 0.91 logits ( SE = 0.08) to -1.83 logits ( SE = 0.17). Difficulty of rater accuracy across domains ranged from 0.25 logits ( SE = 0.08) to -0.68 logits ( SE = 0.17). Implications for the improvement of music performance assessments with specific regard to rater training are discussed.