Ricardo -> RE: Western art music is to Scale/mode as Flamenco, Arab, Hindustan are to...? (Jan. 28 2021 3:36:02)
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Both you and Ricardo appeared to suggest that this observation lacked hard evidence and thus could not be taken seriously. (Your response was: "Yes, but who influenced what?") Admittedly, it is an anecdotal generalization and in itself would not be acceptable in a dissertation on the topic. But as a musicologist specializing in flamenco, I would be interested in your thoughts on it? Well, as mentioned, and if you watch me “learning” about makkam of Turkey on that other topic I linked to, you can see right away the micro tone distinctions are no small detail. The way I see it...if the Arabic/Greek/Indian modal systems managed to get filtered through Equal Tempermant and tonal system resulting in western music, but managed to sneak in the back door of flamenco cante, then this tuning issue would have made the cantaores reject the guitar outright. Singing an E note vs an E half flat is a BRICK WALL right off the bat, musicologists don’t seem to get that. Where as if the cante had already been filtered through equal tempered church and western music systems, baroque, classical, finally romantic period harmonies and melodies, then the guitar is GREAT, and any connection to the old world modal system has long ago already turned into different species of being. The tonos of the guitar are already in the minds of the cantaores as the cante we know today was being created. The main forms prove this by their adherence to a harmonic structure. There were/are no “tonos” in Greek Arabic or indian music, not now nor a thousand years ago. The concept of “tonos” or chords and progressions, are an equal tempered one...equal tempermant was an organization of ALL modal systems into a SINGLE framework called “tonality”, to be distinguished from the various “modalities” and it was finally achieved by deliberately and knowingly screwing up the beautiful tuning of the modal systems. Think of it as a VIOLENT twisting and forcing into a new form, not a minor musical detail. All links get severed at that junction...unless they bypassed it totally (traditional modal music of today which easily preserves the forms and terminology). One can argue Turkish pop music is a fusion of the old modal singing and western harmony and like wise that is what cante flamenco is. This could also mean the cante could be the thing imposing on some GUITAR form, a nice neat baroque structure that gets the pseudo middle eastern vocal treatment, think Gipsy kings meets frank sinatra. Sure, and likewise all music is a fusion of Greek math ideas of music with whichever modern aesthetic interprets it. Al Dimeola’s “Egyptian Danza” is certainly an ancient Egyptian dance that has since evolved, through the filter of western music, but retains that important African element which is???? What is this style of music, more Pythagorean or more Bach? We can trace flamenco back to the first wax cylinder then stop...from there we must extrapolate, guess, or look at written scores that might be relevant. The further back you go the fuzzier the connection gets. We can see the song form “fandango” of Scarlatti, while related most likely, is NOT the same FORM that flamenco uses today. Where did it change and why? There IS an answer hiding in that small time period of 1800’s and Arabs probably don’t have much to do with it specifically.
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