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Chasing the Phantom
Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2018-03-01 , DOI: 10.30535/mto.24.1.7
Michael Tenzer 1
Affiliation  

Balinese composer Dewa Alit (b. 1973) splits his time between home and abroad, absorbing many kinds of music. His latest gamelan work (2016) is Ngejuk Memedi, from the Balinese ngejuk, to chase, and memedi, a feared phantom of the Balinese unseen world that takes human form. It animates his evolving desire for a “broader conception of what gamelan is, one based on its relationship to other cultures” (Alit in Tenzer 2011, 134), while submi ing to the phantom-like elusiveness of the goal. In analyzing part of Ngejuk Memedi, this article argues for an emergent musical supra-culturalism embedded in innovative rhythmic practices. In Alit’s case, three strata of metrically dissonant parts are superposed in a continually changing relationship. His procedures are suggestive of those of other contemporary musicians from around the globe, whose kinship with Alit comes into focus once one delimits the intellectual and aesthetic desiderata they have challenged themselves to explore. Often notated by composers but transmi ed and performed orally, such music is highly conceptual but deeply embodied in felt groove. Its signature element is the juxtaposition or layering of complex, asymmetrical periodicities that are rare or unknown in source traditions, but trace to ideas circulating from African, Indian, Western and other art musics that have become common currency. In these intersecting senses, they comprise a new phenomenon. Volume 24, Number 1, March 2018 Copyright © 2018 Society for Music Theory [1] In 1992, Perspectives of New Music published John Rahn’s interview with sitar maestro Imrat Khan, who said: We are living in a very beautiful world today. These cultures developed in the West and the East. . .in such a beautiful way—in a closed environment, with the knowledge accumulated like matured wine. . .So it is very nice that like this mature wine that has been cultivated and matured for such a long time in one environment, suddenly it is available! And it is beautiful. It is available because of television and radio and planes —which were not there before—and recording, especially. . .We are living in a world where all this fantastic contribution of thousands of years and the work of masters is available to us (Rahn and Khan 1992, 127). [2] From a 2017 perspective, Khan comes off as both passionate and quaint, since he was speaking before the internet, before a lot of things. 1992 was a long time ago. In terms of cultural interaction, 2017 maps to 1992 as 1992 maps to 1950, or maybe 1850 or 1750. Khan also sounds magnanimous, but what resonates now is how instinctively he, an Asian traditional musician, asserts his own agency in the process of cultural mixing. Wine is an import to India just as raga is to the West, so his choice of that metaphor slyly highlights how free he feels to access the world of music. Today it is common to celebrate how musics mingle, although the recent increase in both depth and intensity of exchange of which Khan spoke is not to be taken for granted. The idea that agency has always been multidirectional, though, is, I think, like all cultural diversity issues, something that is still sinking in. [3] Consider the life and musical mind of someone younger than Imrat Khan, the Balinese composer Dewa Ketut Alit (Example 1). Born in 1973, Alit came to musical maturity around twenty years ago and hence has had some decades to drink the wine Khan extolled. Intensely self-aware, he has been around the block as much as any musician today, listening raptly to everything, travelling, teaching, and performing abroad. He works in a small, vibrant community of other Balinese composers and their expanding international connections. Alit completed a commission for Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern in 2015 but, though now experienced with Western instrumentation and notation, his medium remains the gamelan just as the piano was Chopin’s.(1) Some musical consequences of Alit’s agency are evident in the following discussion of tuning system and rhythm in a composition from 2016. [4] Later, I generalize the analysis to argue that Alit’s music, while exemplary in Bali, shares the effects of Imrat Khan’s wine with other new musics elsewhere in the world. He composes textures both new and conspecific to others produced by musicians of his ilk at work today in many countries. Not via quote or allusion, as it might have been in an earlier era, but with ideas based in different traditions and now circulating widely, that are transformed in the warp and weft of the structure such that analysis is needed to isolate and describe the sensations produced. In its quest for new structures and aesthetics, there is nothing wrong with calling such music art music. But the fusions I describe crucially rely on oral tradition, where musical action coalesces around the shared aural experience of performance interaction and groove. A key achievement of such art music is to synchronize bodies and stretch their capacities in new kinds of groove.

中文翻译:

追逐幻影

巴厘岛作曲家 Dewa Alit (b. 1973) 游走于国内外,吸收了多种音乐。他最新的甘美兰作品(2016 年)是来自巴厘岛 ngejuk 的 Ngejuk Memedi 和 memedi,这是巴厘岛看不见的世界的可怕幻影,具有人形。它激发了他对“加麦兰是什么的更广泛概念的不断发展的渴望,一种基于其与其他文化的关系的概念”(Alit in Tenzer 2011, 134),同时屈服于目标的幻影般难以捉摸。在分析 Ngejuk Memedi 的部分内容时,本文主张一种嵌入在创新节奏实践中的新兴音乐超文化主义。在 Alit 的案例中,三个韵律不和谐部分以不断变化的关系叠加。他的程序暗示了来自世界各地的其他当代音乐家的程序,一旦界定了他们挑战自己探索的智力和审美需求,他们与 Alit 的亲缘关系就会成为焦点。通常由作曲家记谱但通过口头传播和表演,这种音乐高度概念化,但深深体现在感觉槽中。它的标志性元素是复杂的、不对称的周期性的并列或分层,这些周期性在来源传统中很少见或未知,但可以追溯到非洲、印度、西方和其他艺术音乐中流传的思想,这些思想已经成为通用货币。在这些交叉的意义上,它们构成了一种新现象。Volume 24, Number 1, March 2018 版权所有 © 2018 Society for Music Theory [1] 1992 年,Perspectives of New Music 发表了 John Rahn 对锡塔琴大师 Imrat Khan 的采访,他说:我们今天生活在一个非常美丽的世界。这些文化在西方和东方发展起来。. .以这样一种美妙的方式——在封闭的环境中,积累的知识就像成熟的葡萄酒。. .所以很高兴像这种在一个环境中培养和成熟这么长时间的成熟酒,突然可用!它很漂亮。它之所以可用,是因为电视、广播和飞机——以前没有——尤其是录音。. .我们生活在一个千百年来所有这些奇妙的贡献和大师的作品可供我们使用的世界(Rahn and Khan 1992, 127)。[2] 从 2017 年的角度来看,汗既热情又古怪,因为他是在互联网前讲话,在很多事情之前。1992年是很久以前的事了。在文化互动方面,2017年映射到1992年,1992年映射到1950年,或者可能是 1850 年或 1750 年。Khan 听起来也很坦荡,但现在引起共鸣的是他作为一名亚洲传统音乐家,在文化融合的过程中如何本能地坚持自己的代理权。葡萄酒对印度来说是一种进口,就像拉加对西方一样,所以他选择的这个比喻狡猾地突出了他进入音乐世界的感觉。今天庆祝音乐如何融合是很常见的,尽管最近可汗所说的交流深度和强度的增加并不是理所当然的。然而,我认为代理一直是多方向的,就像所有文化多样性问题一样,这种想法仍在深入研究。 [3] 想想比伊姆拉特汗年轻的人的生活和音乐思想,巴厘岛作曲家德瓦克图阿里特(示例 1)。1973年出生,阿利特大约在二十年前在音乐上成熟,因此有几十年的时间喝可汗称赞的酒。强烈的自我意识,他和今天的任何音乐家一样在街区周围,全神贯注地聆听一切,在国外旅行、教学和表演。他在一个由其他巴厘岛作曲家和他们不断扩大的国际联系组成的小而充满活力的社区工作。阿利特于 2015 年完成了法兰克福现代合奏团的委托,但尽管他现在在西方乐器和符号方面经验丰富,但他的媒介仍然是甘美兰,就像钢琴是肖邦的一样。(1) 在以下关于调音的讨论中,阿利特代理的一些音乐影响是显而易见的2016 年的一首作品中的系统和节奏。 [4] 后来,我概括了分析,认为 Alit 的音乐虽然在巴厘岛堪称典范,与世界其他地方的其他新音乐分享 Imrat Khan 葡萄酒的影响。他为当今在许多国家工作的同类音乐家创作的其他人创作的纹理既新颖又独特。不是通过引用或典故,因为它可能在更早的时代,而是基于不同传统的思想现在广泛流传,这些思想在结构的经线和纬线中发生了变化,因此需要分析来隔离和描述感觉产生。在追求新的结构和美学的过程中,将这种音乐艺术称为音乐并没有错。但我所描述的融合主要依赖于口头传统,其中音乐动作围绕表演互动和律动的共享听觉体验融合。
更新日期:2018-03-01
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