Manifesta och latenta ideologier om lärande inom svensk spelmansrörelse under 1920-talet

The purpose of this article was to illuminate existing educational ideologies in the Swedish fiddler movement (Spelmansrörelsen) 1923-1927. This period was characterized by the organization and to some extent institutionalization of Swedish folk music. Furthermore, the purpose was to discuss the results in relation to the folk music education of today. The empirical data was taken from the journal Hembygden, which was a magazine for scholars, enthusiasts and practitioners of folk music. Theoretically, the study was based on a concept of ideology developed by Sven-Eric Liedman: in every time there are two basic forms of identifiable ideology, manifest and latent. From the empirical material as a whole (around 900 articles), a selection was made to find articles dealing with aspects of learning among the fiddlers (33 articles). After content analysis the following themes were generated: Fiddlers’ repertoire, Fiddlers’ masters, Rooms for learning, Learning formation. The writers in Hembygden often emphasized the autodidactic aspects of learning and especially the importance of learning by ear. This manifest ideology of authenticity presumed that learning directly from another fiddler by playing together was to prefer to formal schooling. In spite of a tendency towards more ensemble playing, the folk music education of today in Sweden is characterized by a similar retrospective ideology as in the 1920s.

Legends as music: new composition in the traditional Irish idiom

Engaging Ireland’s rich heritages of traditional music, story-telling, song, dance, and language, this doctoral composition project is a unique undertaking in the amalgamation of native art forms and the narrative realisation of Irish legends. The centrepiece of the project comprises of two collections of compositions inspired by the legends Oidhe Chloinne Lir (the tragic fate of the children of Lir) and Loinges Mac nUislenn (the exile of the sons of Uisliu). An interdisciplinary approach of traditional research and creative practice was employed in the development of this project, which informed and supported the formulation of personal and distinctive recensions of the chosen narratives, and the composition of over three hundred new works. Grounded in Irish traditional music, the compositional voice speaks in the familiar styles and structures of the idiom, and also resonates in contemporary and singular spaces. The Irish harping tradition is continued and extended in this research through the composition and recording of new music which is particularly suited to the instrument. Outputs include contextual, critical, and creative writings, recordings, video materials, musical scores, and storyboard and performance design artwork.

Learning English is Fun! Incidental vocabulary acquisition of music and traditional class ninth graders via listening to pop songs

Finnish youth are constantly exposed to music and lyrics in English in their free time. It is likely that this has a positive effect on vocabulary learning. Learning vocabulary while simultaneously accompanied with melodies is likely to result in better learning outcomes. The present thesis covers a study on the vocabulary learning of traditional and music class ninth graders in a south-western upper comprehensive school in Finland, mainly concentrating on vocabulary learning as a by-product of listening to pop music and learning vocabulary through semantic priming. The theoretical background presents viable linguistic arguments and theories, which provide clarity for why it would be possible to learn English vocabulary via listening to pop songs. There is conflicting evidence on the benefits of music on vocabulary learning, and this thesis sets out to shed light on the situation. Additionally, incorporating pop music in English classes could assist in decreasing the gap between real world English and school English. The thesis is a mixed method research study consisting of both quantitative and qualitative research materials. The methodology comprises vocabulary tests both before and after pop music samples and a background questionnaire filled by students. According to the results, all students reported liking listening to music and they clearly listened to English pop music the most. A statistically significant difference was found when analysing the results of the differences in pre- and post-vocabulary tests. However, the traditional class appeared to listen to mainstream pop music more than the students in the music class, and thus it seems likely that the traditional class benefited more from vocabulary learning occurring via listening to pop songs. In conclusion, it can be established that it is possible to learn English vocabulary via listening to pop songs and that students wish their English lectures would involve more music-related vocabulary exercises in the future. Thus, when it comes to school learning, pop songs should be utilised in vocabulary learning, which could also in turn result in more diverse learning and the students could, more easily than before, relate to the themes and topics of the lectures. Furthermore, with the help of pop songs it would be possible to decrease the gap between school English and real-world English.

Articles on Irish music and musicians

Various items on Irish traditional music commissioned by the editor, totalling 7,000 words, including profiles of a number of individuals and institutions and more significant essays on the subjects Composers and Composition, Standards, Arrangement, and Migration.

Dynamic response: Real-time adaptation for music emotion

Music plays an enormous role in today's computer games; it serves to elicit emotion, generate interest and convey important information. Traditional gaming music is fixed at the event level, where tracks loop until a state change is triggered. This behaviour however does not reflect musically the in-game state between these events. We propose a dynamic music environment, where music tracks adjust in real-time to the emotion of the in-game state. We are looking to improve the affective response to symbolic music through the modification of structural and performative characteristics through the application of rule-based techniques. In this paper we undertake a multidiscipline approach, and present a series of primary music-emotion structural rules for implementation. The validity of these rules was tested in small study involving eleven participants, each listening to six permutations from two musical works. Preliminary results indicate that the environment was generally successful in influencing the emotion of the musical works for three of the intended four directions (happier, sadder & content/dreamier). Our secondary aim of establishing that the use of music-emotion rules, sourced predominantly from Western classical music, could be applied with comparable results to modern computer gaming music was also largely successfully.

L’élaboration d’un langage musical basé sur la musique traditionnelle québécoise et influencé par les musiques savantes

La version intégrale de ce mémoire est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU).

Música na escola: um desafio à luz da cultura da infância. -

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

A question of a voice: with what voice will I cry my sad fado?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Traditional patterns and textures as values for meaningful automatization in music

This contribution focuses on the accelerated loss of traditional sound patterning in music, parallel to the exponential loss of linguistic and cultural variety in a world increasingly 'globalized' by market policies and economic liberalization, in which scientific or technical justification plays a crucial role. As a suggestion to an alternative trend, composers and music theorists are invited to explore the world of design and patterning by grammar rules from non-dominant cultures, and to make an effort to understand their contextual usage and its transformation, in order to appreciate their symbolism and aesthetic depth. Practical examples are provided.

Towards a regional understanding of Irish traditional music

The geography of Irish traditional music is a complex, popular and largely unexplored element of the narrative of the tradition. Geographical concepts such as the region are recurrent in the discourse of Irish traditional music but regions and their processes are, for the most part, blurred or misunderstood. This thesis explores the geographical approach to the study of Irish traditional music focusing on the concept of the region and, in particular, the role of memory in the construction and diffusion of regional identities. This is a tripartite study considering people, place and music. Each of these elements impacts on our experience of the other. All societies have created music. Music is often associated with or derived from places. Some places construct or reinforce their identity through the music and musicians through which they are associated. The thesis challenges conventional discourse on regional styles that construct an imagined pattern of regions based on subtle musical differences that may, though are not always, shared by people in that region and focuses on the social networks through which the music is disseminated. The thesis also challenges the abandonment of regional styles and the concept of regions in understanding the complex geographies of Irish traditional music (Morton, 2001). It seeks to find a middle ground between discourse analysis, musical analysis, the experience of music and place, and the representation of music and place. The dissertation is divided into three parts. Part one considers the development of music geography, noting and critiquing the abandonment of useful paradigms in both geography and ethnomusicology in search of new ways of understanding. Of particular interest is the concept of the region but it also considers the study of landscape and the humanist approach in cultural geography. The second part focuses on the discourse and study of regions in Irish traditional music and the various agents and processes that shape the concept of the region in Irish traditional music. The final part presents a case study of the Sliabh Luachra region combining and applying the various perspectives and paradigms drawn from geographical, ethnomusicological and anthropological sources. It attempts to generate an understanding of Sliabh Luachra as a region in the Irish traditional music narrative that is based on a combination of musical, socio-cultural and locational/environmental factors.

Rambling in the Field of Modern Identity: Some Speculations on Irish Traditional Music

This article argues that Irish “traditional” music is modern in its form and history, and explores the ramifications of this thesis for understanding of the peculiarities of Irish modernity and identity. The article exhaustively surveys the historiography of Irish traditional music and uniquely interprets this literature in relation to competing conceptions of identity and modernity articulated by Taylor, Appiah and Žižek. It also interprets Irish traditional music in relation to conceptions of Irish modernity articulated in a wide range of disciplines within Irish studies. Reflecting on the author’s lifelong engagement with traditional music performance, the article argues that the resilience of traditional music within the broader culture is connected to the peculiar character of Irish modernity, and that it suffers from problems of aesthetic exhaustion shared by much modern art in the contemporary conjuncture.

Fiddling for Outcomes: Traditional Music, Social Capital, and Arts Policy in Northern Ireland

Arts development policies increasingly tie funding to the potential of arts organisations to effectively deliver an array of extra-artistic social outcomes. This paper reports on the difficulties of this work in Northern Ireland, where the arts sector, and in particular the so-called 'traditional arts', have been drawn into a politically ambiguous discourse centered on the concepts of 'mutual understanding' and, more recently, 'social capital.' The paper traces the recent history of these policies and the difficulties in evaluating the social outcomes of arts programs. The use of the term 'social capital' in the work of Putnam and Bourdieu is considered. The paper argues, through a rereading of Bourdieu's articulation of the 'forms' of capital and Eagleton's 'ideology of the aesthetic,' the concept of social capital can be released from its current neoliberal trappings by imagining a reconnection of the concepts of 'capital' and 'the aesthetic.'