Music

Recently, during a research project in northwest Thailand one of the members of our team made a mistake that greatly upset a Thai music teacher. At the conclusion of a music lesson Peter stepped over a khong wong yai while walking to the door (a khong wong yai is a set of gong chimes set low to the ground that is c-shaped around the player). This resulted in instant anger from the teacher. Even though there were some locals who spoke both Thai and English in the room, the reason as to why the teacher was upset was left unclear. The teacher seemed to forgive Peter after a few minutes and both parties went their separate ways. We were aware that in many Southeast Asian cultures the showing of the bottoms of one's foot can be offensive. However, we had been spending our time with the Karen (Kuh-rin), a hill tribe that reside in northern Thailand and southeast Burma/Myanmar, and these particular Karen did not observe that practice. The Karen have a population close to 9 million (depending on who you ask) and much diversity within such a large population. We asked several of the Karen in our residence and they said it probably had something to do with a spiritual matter.

A semiminim is typically defined as a note value worth half a minim, usually drawn as a flagged or colored minim. That definition is one according to which generations of scholars have constructed chronologies and provenances for fourteenth- and fifteenth-century music and the people who created it. `Semiminims' that do not match this definition are often portrayed in modern scholarship as anomalous, or early prototypes, or evidence of poor education, or as peculiarities of individual preference. My intensive survey of the extant theoretical literature from the earliest days of the Ars Nova through c. 1440 reveals how the conceptualization and codification of notation occurred in different places according to different fundamental principles, resulting not in one semiminim but a plethora of related small note values. These phenomena were dynamic and unstable, and a close study of them helps to clarify a range of historical issues. Localized traditions have often been strictly bounded in scholarly literature; references to French, Italian, and English notation are commonplace. I explain notational preferences in Italy, England, central Europe, and the rest of western Europe with regard to these small note values but demonstrate that theorists educated in each of these places routinely incorporated portions of other traditions. This process began long before the `ars subtilior,' dating at least to the time of Franco of Cologne. Rarely were regional traditions truly isolated; the various aspects of semiminim-family note values were debated and adapted for decades across these cultural and geographical boundaries. The central theme of my research is to show how and why the theoretical conceptualization of these myriad small note values is key to understanding the continual merging of these local preferences into a more amalgamated style of notation by the mid-fifteenth century.

The Choir of the Cappella Pontificia has played an integral role in the canonization of sacred music and provided employment for many early composers. However, the Choir also provides insight into the broader economic and social system of patronage. The papacy provided a fairly consistent opportunity for patronage, but the early sixteenth-century Popes Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII and Paul III (all of whom came from powerful, well-educated, and culturally aware families) were particular supporters of the Choir. The prestige and security granted to Choir members virtually ensured their lifelong loyalty, so it is surprising to find that a small few chose to seek employment elsewhere. Of the approximate one hundred and eleven men in the Choir between 1503 and 1545, only twelve can be traced that are known to have voluntarily left for reasons other than retirement. An inspection of this minority reveals a variety of payment and reward systems in practice throughout both Rome and Europe, and a flexible understanding of duties and obligations to one’s employer, demonstrating that in the early Modern period, there were much more subtle and ephemeral notions of both patronage and product.

“The Cosby Show,” one of the highest-rated sitcoms of the 1980s and indeed of all time, is now considered to be ground-breaking and revolutionary in its depiction of African-Americans on television. However, questions still linger over whether this portrayal is “real” or “authentic,” and whether in the long run the show was beneficial to the African-American community. In these debates, authors and critics point to a diverse array of factors, such as economic status, education and career choices, clothing, manners of speech, and interactions with the community, in their attempts to place the Huxtables on the spectrum of “typical” middle-class African-American families. Yet while cultural references such as art and African-American history have played a part in these discussions, the myriad roles that music played on the show remain largely absent. Music is an integral part of almost every episode of the show, whether aurally, visually, through cameo appearances from the musical community, or through spoken dialogue. The purpose of this paper is not to enter a value judgment in the debates over ethnic or cultural authenticity, but instead to explore the use of music in “The Cosby Show,” and in particular the first season, as a means of constructing both broadly American and uniquely African-American identities.

Sid Meier's popular PC game series, Civilization, is one of the best-selling turn-based strategy games of all time. Its latest expansion version, Civilization IV, has sold over 3 million copies since its release three years ago. In each of its installments, music has played a role, but in none so much as Civilization IV. In this version, music is used not just as a background to the game's action, but as a way to categorize both individual cultures and chronological eras. This project will analyze the specific musical selections and aural cues which characterize cultural interactions and achievements during game play, and in so doing, will attempt a preliminary exploration of the game designers' presentation of culture and history.

In 2005, Firaxis Games released Sid Meier's Civilization IV, the fourth installment in the critically acclaimed Civilization series. This video game, like its predecessors in the series, is a turn-based strategy game in which the player, assuming the role of one of twenty-six possible leaders, develops a civilization over the course of six thousand years. Like most video games, Civilization IV makes considerable use of music during game play. However, given that the game is one of strategy, and therefore requiring patience and time rather than instantaneous reaction, the ways in which music is used in this game are different than in other types of video games. Here, music is not just a mood enhancer or ambient effect during gameplay, nor does it signify that an immediate response to something happening on-screen is required. Instead, it acts as a means of differentiating between the individual civilizations and chronological eras that constitute the heart of the game. This peculiar use of music merits critical attention. In this presentation, I propose that the different soundtracks at work in the game are intended to indicate cultural progress by aurally embodying particular historical moments.  My paper focuses both on the game's earliest periods (the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance) and on the themes of the different cultures present, which both betray a particularly Western teleology.

Over the course of the fourteenth century, rhythmic durations that were shorter than a minim's length gradually became incorporated into the musical landscape, sometimes with little fuss, and sometimes with a great deal of consternation.  However, their physical representation – their actual graphic presence on the page – was not codified for decades, if not centuries.  Prior to the early fifteenth century, when black notation was the norm, theorists and scribes had a variety of note shapes and colors at their service to represent these small note values as well as a number of other proportional figures.  But as void notation became more widespread, the options available to scribes with regard to the notation of proportions and smaller durations were limited.  Out of the earlier stock of shapes for semiminims, to focus on one specific category, only two found themselves routinely used in the majority of early fifteenth-century manuscripts and treatises; out of these two, one particular shape became the most commonly used version of the semiminim by the end of the fifteenth century.  Scholars often describe these different physical depictions of semiminims as being of equal value and therefore being interchangeable with one another.  However, to do so without further context, I think, is to ignore the rich history of notational paleography.  In this paper, I will look at a series of scribal emendations of semiminims found in the manuscript Oxford, Canonici 213 and in several of its concordant manuscripts, and use them to explore not only some of this history but also some of the possible reasons for why one particular note shape became preferred above all others.

Throughout the fourteenth century, rhythmic durations smaller than a minim gradually became incorporated into mensural theory, though not without debate.  However, the codification of what a semiminim was took decades, if not centuries.  Contemporary scholars often describe the different visual depictions of semiminims as semantically equivalent or refer to ″the semiminim″ as though it has had only one definition.  However, the extant fourteenth-century treatises create quite the opposite picture: a wealth of opinions existed, often conflicting or heavily nuanced, about what a semiminim was – if it were even possible. I will explain the theoretical options for the semiminim with regard to its name, duration, visual representation, and philosophical substance.  The overarching pattern that emerges is that there were two geographically distinct schools of thought about the substance of the semiminim: it was either a discrete mensural note value or it was an extra-mensural proportional figure.  Only four treatises contain apparently anomalous explanations of the semiminim: the De minimis notulis, the Tractatus figurarum, the second Berkeley treatise, and the Ars cantus mensurabilis mensurata per modos iuris; yet I shall show that these anomalies end up largely proving the pattern.  In conclusion, I speculate about the relationship between the theoretical and practical semiminim with these geographical boundaries in mind.

The manuscript Seville 5.2.25 contains numerous familiar treatises such as Marchetto’s Lucidarium, the Libellus, and Tractatus figurarum. The treatise De arte cantus, accredited to one Johannes Pipudi, has received much less scholarly attention, partially because the first folio is damaged. Maria del Carmen Gómez completed the only study of this treatise in 1976, but her transcription contains nonsensical descriptions of the semiminim. It has apparently gone unnoticed that Seville 5.2.25 contains a second copy of this treatise, labeled Pro introduccione cognicionis habende de valoribus … in RISM. This second copy is invaluable for providing the text lost from the torn folio, and it clarifies the transcriptions of the semiminim in the first copy. The two copies disagree on the semiminim in small but revealing ways. A comparison of the two passages reveals a potential relationship between the copies and also on possible points of origin for both the scribes and Pipudi. I will speculate on the likelihood of an Italian provenance or education for Pipudi and demonstrate that this treatise is yet another witness to the gradual Italian absorption of French theory in the fourteenth century. The two different passages on semiminims thus provide insight into traditionally Italian practice as well as the increasing dominance of Muris-inspired theory across greater Europe.