Beni2 -> Flamenco Theory Track For BEGINNERS: in a logical sequence (Nov. 20 2019 16:47:09)
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Flamenco, in a form that we would probably recognize, has been around since 1880. Of course it extends back in time and I would day 1820 is a plausible date for the earliest hints of flamenco song. These dates are not randomly chosen. They are dates that show up in the neo-flamencological (scholarly version of flamencology with theory and method) literature including Hurtado Torres and Castro Buendia. By flamenco song I mean two main branches: the cante jondo, which many gitanos prefer to call the "cante gitano Andaluz," and the Cante Flamenco Andaluz, which includes mostly regional Fandango derivatives. Why 1820? 1820 is arbitrary but it is also the date given for the birth of the Fado of Portugal. What does flamenco have to do with Fado? The Industrial revolution and the near-conquest of Europe by Napoleon made people uneasy. A European melancholy spread over Europe (Enrique Baltanas) and many European countries developed songs of sadness or yearning in the early eighteenth century. The "Romantic" literature is filled with implicit and explicit melancholy as well. The Iberian peninsula was no exception. But if melancholy and nostalgia were having an important moment in the early nineteenth century, lament songs can also be traced back to the Baroque. Now, wait for it...the descending tetrachord became a signifier of lament in the Baroque. There is no direct evidence that it occurred in Spanish guitar treatisers first but most of the evidence points toward a Judeo-Arabic and Spanish origin. 17th century Italian writers complained of a woeful way of singing, foreign to Europe and introduced from Spain [Fuchs: Maurophilia]. Meanwhile, the descending tetrachord, very often used to signify lament, is also a trait of some early passacagli. The Mexican chacona gets imported to Spain where it gains in popularity and gets picked up, along with the passacaglio, by "refined" composers. The passacagli is not a genre at this time. The passacagli is a gesture used to introduce a dance, give the singer his tone, allow time for the singer and or dancers to prepare, allow respiration for the singer, etc. Sound familiar? I will include some history for each post and will try to begin the morning with the post So, passacagli and falsetas as structural-functional gestures have common ancestry in the Baroque guitar. Let's begin with mode and scale and then move on to falsetas, key, and tonality. "Scale," "mode," and many other terms are loaded. Spain was/is a contact zone of multiple cultures and every culture has/had multiple conceptions that might roughly be translated as "mode" or "scale." Very roughly, mode ("Western"), raga (Hindi), and maqam (Arabic) map onto each other. A mode in this sense, in its nominal form, means a series of notes of a scale with particular norms, turns of phrase, gestures, and practices that give the mode its "color" or character. A scale is an abstraction, a step-wise representation of the notes to be used and given a name. In Hindustani music thaat Bhairavi is not the same as raga Bhairavi. Thaat bhairavi is spelled e-f-g-a-b-c-d in a "movable do" system. quote:
You can already sense the difficulties in translating or analogizing from culture to culture Raga Malkauns is based on thaat Bhairav but omits the second "scale" degree. It is in this sense of mode that I base my sense of mode. Note that mode in this sense has nothing to do with harmony. In progress Falseta 1: Montoya Falseta 2: Ricardo Falseta 3: Sabicas Falseta 4: Paco To bring this intro to mode and scale to a close, a scale is an abstraction while a mode is a specific way of using the mode, including the addition of chromatic tones or omission of some notes. I would argue that the Montoya example is not in the phrygian mode. It is in flamenco octatonic with the raised third omitted until the final measure: it is implied. Others might insist it is in the phrygian mode. No problem. The other three examples are clearly flamenco octatonic. Ricardo, Sabicas, and Paco all omit one or the other third (natural or raised) according to whim. In the Sabicas I spell the third but in the paco I use the enharmonic equivalent. Tomorrow: Fretboard Knowledge and Learning the Flamenco Octatonic In Practice and Theory.
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