日本の音楽とらんま１・２

日本のアニメの音楽はおもしろいです。らんまの音楽が私は本とに好きです。

印地語，文字，古琴

我想這個博客的文字更豐富起來也倒是件有意思的事情。不過上一篇文章變成了印地語（HINDU)純屬意外。不知為什么我的博客上有這幾種輸入的選項， 印地語，馬來語，泰米爾語等。

最近學習古琴，覺得其實演奏樂器與音樂悟性本沒有直接關聯。人的身體動作之協調其實獨立于大腦對音樂的感知能力。另外，動作的規范與演奏樂器本身的傳統有很大關系，所以必須有人為的約束，而非像對音樂領悟的天成。不過古琴的音樂是很有意思的。

榮先生的香港老師，蔡德允先生，活了106歲，到前兩年才過世，看照片顯得精神矍鑠，聰明過人。她家祖居浙江，家譜可追溯到東周或春秋時期，到她是第28代，真是奇人。

लिटिल स्टार

इ दोन' क्नोव वही अल ऑफ़ ठेस तुर्नेद इन्तो सम कंद ऑफ़ इंडियन स्क्रिप्ट। आईटी'स इन्तेरेस्तिंग। इ'म व्रितिंग अबाउट थे एर्हू स्टुडेंट ठाट इ जुस्त हद फॉर अ मोंठ, पेपे। व्हेन इ गावे हिम अ कॉपी ऑफ़ थे कद ठाट माय फाठेर प्लायेद, हे लिस्तेनेद तो आईटी एंड व्हेन हे रेतुर्नेद तो में तवो वीक्स लेटर, हे सैद हे वास "सुर्प्रिसेद"। हे एंड हिस विफे अरे बोथ फ्रॉम मेक्सिको एंड व्हेन हे हेअर्द थिस मेक्सिकां पीस "लिटिल स्टार", हिस विफे अल्मोस्त क्रय। इ जुस्त नेवर थौघ्त सोमेथिंग कैन तौच अ सोल सो दीपली इन अ मोमेंट व्हेन इ, व्हो मेड थिस कद फॉर हिम, दीद नोट क्नोव अ थिंग अबाउट आईटी.

King's Noyse Celebrates R&B 40th Birthday

Olde, Newe, Borrow'd, Blue--if this makes you think you're at an old English wedding, you'd probably not be surprised to come in and hear some old Irish tunes. Well, if you didn't happen to see a violin that is played rested on someone's left arm and a lute that has a bent neck.

Relax, now, this is not some kind of avant-guard innovations--on the contrary, these are old fashions. Last Saturday, a group of eager audiences--some of whom may not know what they are expecting--spent their two evening hours in the intimate space of Synod Hall in Oakland, being surprised, amazed, and pleased at a special concert of the Renaissance & Baroque Society's 40th anniversary.

One of the most celebrated early music groups in the country, King's Noyse is indeed an all-star band. Founded by David Douglass in 1988, the group mostly performs violin consort repertoires from 16th and 17th century, with its members among the leading musicians in their fields, such as Robert Mealy and Shira Kammen. Their Saturday concert was joined by the world renowned lute player Paul O'Dette and vocalist Ellen Hargis.

Dividing the concert program into four parts with the title "Olde, Newe, Borrow'd, Blue" may sound corny but at the same time the repertoire turns out to be incredibly creative and refreshing, presenting a wide variety of different musical styles. Many were especially entertained by the last part, "Blue", which features arrangements of modern great hits, such as Gershwin's "Summertime", Beatles' "Michele", and Thelonius Monk's "'Round Midnight'.

The whole concert was elaborately designed in terms of instrumentation, alternating among ensemble playing to solo vocal accompanied by the lute.

Many audience new to King's Noyse were particularly impressed by the authentic instruments they play on. The violins, played rested on the arm instead of the shoulder, delivers a very soft but clean sound, sometimes with rich timbre variation and little vibrato. The deep sound of the bass violin reminds one of the excellent acoustics in the Synod Hall. Frequently, O'Dette had to play louder to maintain the balance with the fiddles, due to the soft volume of the lute.

Hargis demonstrated her versatility with the traditional voice of "Barbara Allen", more modern voice of Monk's "'Round Midnight", and the expressive narrating voice in the lively piece "The Battel".

I am amazed by the power of a five-people string ensemble like King's Noyse to deliver radically different sounds. There is the smooth flow of the Renaissance sound; there are also the vivid sounds depicting scenes in a battle, such as "March of the horseman", "Bagpipe and Drone", and "Burying the Dead"; in Leonard Berstein's "Some Other Time", one hears the sound comparable to a string orchestra. Needless to say, Mr.Douglass's arrangement and improvisational creations for the violin band is no doubt glittering from the beginning to the end.

May the Pittsburgh audience continues to find the music from R&B surprising, amazing, and pleasing in their 50th,60th, and 70th anniversary.

Silk screen meets Blue Pipa in Pittsburgh

MUSIC REVIEW; Silk Screen meets Blue Pipa in Pittsburgh

by Shuo Zhang

10/03/08

 

Pittsburgh has been blessed by the music of pipa—an ancient Chinese lute, since the ‘Music on the Edge’ project presented a concert featuring collaboration between Pitt composition professor Eric Moe and pipa soloist Wu Man in 2005.  Three years later, last Saturday night, at the opening concert of Silk Screen Film Festive 2009, another pipa virtuoso, Min Xiao-Fen, brought her Blue Pipa to the curious audiences in the packed concert hall of Pittsburgh CAPA High School.

 

Min, an internationally acclaimed pipa soloist and composer, moved to the United States in 1992 from China, where she has established herself as an accomplished musician. She has since worked with numerous prominent composers, including Carl Stone, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Philip Glass, and Tan Dun, among others, to perform pipa music ranging from traditional Chinese to Western classical and jazz. A featured jazz artist at Lincoln Center for the Arts, New York City, Min founded the Blue Pipa Trio in 2003, whose current member also includes guitarist Steve Salerno and bassist Dean Johnson.

 

Their Saturday performance was the most inspiring in the unfolding of the music throughout the concert, which reminds one of the ancient Chinese philosophy of Tai-Chi—a process moving between the two poles of “yin” and “yang”, rest and motion.

 

Starting from “lyrical” style traditional repertoire for solo pipa, the first half of the concert culminated when the sound from battlefields of ancient China swept the concert hall with the “martial” style piece “Shi Mian Mai Fu” (Ambush from All Sides). A piece called by New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn as “energetic, rolled strumming similar to the technique guitarists call rasgueado; rapid solo figuration; and clear-textured counterpoint”, Min, with her virtuoso mastery of the complicated right-hand skills, demonstrated the power of a relatively small instrument over the large space of the concert hall. It may come as more astonishing than what Franz Liszt did to show the power of piano as comparable to a symphony orchestra back in the 19^th century, considering the size of the instrument.

 

The last piece before the intermission, Written On the Wind, a commissioned piece by New York based Chinese composer Huang Ruo, presents an experimental approach that combines vocal and pipa, both played by Min, with the two unfolding in a linear fashion rather than vertically structured.  Interestingly, the lyrics for the vocal part in this piece are not in any language in existence—rather, they are non-sense syllabus, supposed to be “personal words, feelings, stories”, “that meant to kept to her [the performer] own”. A not uncommon design seen in modern Western compositions, Min’s presentation was full of contrast and affection, on top of which a special flavor cast both musically and phonetically, showing her background in Mandarin Chinese oral delivery.

 

 

The second half featured the whole crew of Blue Pipa Trio performing their most classic pieces such as “Chinese Take-out”, “Red Haired boy Dancing with Golden Snake”, and “Fortune Cookie”. The concert reached its climax when the trio played the last piece, “Fascinating New Year”, another work that features Min’s singing. As a matter of fact, there is more than singing—but really was singing and dancing and mumbling—the voice, the bodily motion, and the instruments all came together to the most exciting state, just as the audience were heated up to the top of their fervor.  

 

As a trend, the collaboration among Chinese instrumentalists and jazz musicians has been proved to be fruitful in the States in recent years, in which a Chinese instrument usually leads with a Chinese flavored melody and other Western instruments follow and explore with their potentiality where the music is going. I have heard American audiences speaking of it as “inspiring” and “most refreshing”, and the Blue Pipa is no exception.  Throughout each piece, the potential of all three instruments are fully explored and the exposition of their individual parts by Salerno and Johnson are proved to be full of inspiration.

 

Overall, the Chineseness and the spirit of jazz gave the music a fresh liveliness. Although one might argue that there can be more variety for Blue Pipa Trio in terms of timbre—indeed, the tone quality of three plucked stringed instruments may run the risk of sounding homogenous. On the other hand, Min’s vocal performance and some of the double bass part played by Johnson using the bow do add to the diverse layers of the music’s tone color.

 

“I needed a harmonic instrument that can provide the chords for my music”, said Min in an after-concert discussion about her thoughts on the instrumentation. “But piano is definitely not the one that I’m looking for. It has to go well with the flavor and timbre of pipa”.

 

 

Mr. Shuo Zhang is a Ph.D student of Music at University of Pittsburgh.

 

Why do we study music

Charles Seeger has made us seen how the study of musicology can fit into a large inquiry of human to the world, with all other disciplines of study, from natural sciences to humanities. This is an exciting picture, making musicology worthwhile.

I'm thinking about a different picture though, probably making me more exciting about musicology. Think about the cosmology, theoretical physicist, astronomer, the picture of universe, whether there is a beginning and an end of the universe, etc. All these being said, we could not even start to answer the question behind: why and how are things the way they are in the universe? Scientists often refer to God in this situation, how God has intended it, whether God plays dice, they say.

To me, the most mysterious thing is that our human world is already too rich for us to catch up, to understand. There are so many many many things going on in this world on earth, that one cannot even try to catch a big part of it. Meanwhile, our human world is nothing compared to the universe, both in the amount of time and space. Our existence means and matters nothing to other parts of the universe. We thought our small world is everything, but the it is nothing.

The wonderfulness about our world, compared to that of universe, is not dumb at all though. If the God designed the universe according to the laws, the laws of our human world is equally rich. Every natural biological device seems to be the most elaborate design. Why are they the way they are? Why do we human all have language and music, and they become so rich and complex, that we have to undertake a whole discipline over a long span of time to try to understand it? (Do we begin to?)

If there is God designed the vast universe, why would he care about our tiny world? Why would he bother to set these elaborate laws for something smaller than a H2O molecule in the whole body of ocean that covers the earth? What are those laws? How are they linked to the universe?

It also would be interesting to ask that, if God bothered to set up the laws for our world on earth, might he as well set up them for some other planets? How are the laws different? Does God himself care what we are thinking about these laws, trying to figure out them?

If we set out to answer any of these questions, we find ourselves doing things such as musicology and linguistics. These laws are not studied by natural sciences, yet they are less closely linked to the laws of the universe as it does for the laws of the earth, but that makes them more mysterious. If the earth as a planet and the universe shares some common laws as God created them, why did he create the laws of language and music for human? Many of these laws were not even realized to be existing until recently. Thus, everyone studying music and language, among other humanities/social sciences, are trying to figure out these laws. One day we might try to set foot into the next step to understand the creation of these laws.

Study of musicology is a noble and holy task.

Musical Instrument Collection at Met, New York

Today I went to New York and spent some time again at Met. This is the third time that I went to Met, and I went through the musical instrument collection with more attention to detail this time. I was so much more fascinated also because I recently re-discovered my strong interests in the study of musical instruments. For instance, I spent a lot of time in the European collection, from the long neck lute, course stringed guitars (just like the ones in Latin America), harpsichords, organs, to viola de Gamba, the predecessor of the violin family, etc. I got to see what Bach's Sonata for Viola de Gamba was playing on. It is believed that while the bowed string instruments first appeared around 10th century in middle Asia, the modern violin family did not get its shape until early 16th century. Before that, we have all kinds of shape and sized pre-violin family instruments, including viola de Gamba. They are equally fascinating to me as the violin family. There are some finest violins in the exhibition, by the way.

For the world music collection, I found that their Chinese collection is really old, the instruments are old style that are very different from today. They come from a collection of 1889. Looks very authentic. They believed that the huqin originated from Yuan dynasty, brought in by the Mongolian, rather than dating back to Xiqin in Tang Dynasty. They made a reasonable argument that the bow hair in between the strings reflects the need of the Mongolians who plays while riding their horse. The Gamelan instruments, sadly, has very few of them. I was surprised because Gemelan is so popular here in America. But Rebab they do have. The term Rebab(or rebel, rebec,etc.) is seen across the Islamic world from Egypt to Southeast Asia. Thailand seems to have both rebab-like instrument and huqin-like instrument.

A device called the sympathetic strings is seen both in European and Asian instruments, notably, many instruments of India. Sarangi is certainly very complicated looking. The folk forms of Sarangi seems simpler to play. I look forward to look into all these some day in the future.