AM on Music Theory Print

Amanes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The term amanes derives from the interjection aman, an exclamation used in both Greek and Turkish expressing pain, sorrow, or supplication. The frequent occurrence of the word aman in the lyrics gave the genre its name.

Characteristics#

Amanes is typically: * Slow and mournful * Heavily melismatic (ornamented) * Based on makam (modal) structures * Non-metric or featuring free rhythm * Focused on themes of pain, exile, love, and nostalgia The genre is considered a vocal form of lament or spiritual improvisation, comparable to the Arabic mawwal and Turkish gazel.

Amapiano

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

There is no single “true founder” of amapiano. As a result, there is ambiguity and debate concerning its origin, with various accounts of the musical styles in the Johannesburg townships. Because it has some similarities with bacardi house, some people assert the genre began in Pretoria but it remains uncertain. Various accounts of who formed the popular genre make it impossible to accurately pinpoint its origin. The word amapiano is a Zulu word that can be loosely translated to “pianos.” The genre is mostly sung in eleven of South Africa’s 12 official languages such as IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SiSwati, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, English, Xitsonga, Tshivenda, Afrikaans, or IsiNdebele.

Ambasse bey

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

References#

Chrispin, Pettang, directeur, Cameroun: Guide touristique. Paris: Les Éditions Wala.
DeLancey, Mark W., and Mark Dike DeLancey (2000): Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon (3rd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.
Mbaku, John Mukum (2005). Culture and Customs of Cameroon. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Ambient house

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Genre#

AllMusic describes “ambient house” as an “early categorical marker” for music “appropriating certain primary elements of acid house music – midtempo, four-on-the-floor beats; synth pads and strings; soaring vocal samples – used in a dreamier, more atmospheric fashion”. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World noted common elements: repeated synthesizer arpeggios that are gradually modulated; reverbed snippets of dialogue from film, radio, or relaxation tapes; and samples of other musical works drifting in and out of the mix. and AllMusic acknowledges that the term “ambient house” is now rarely used, replaced by a morass of more specific genres and terms.

Ambient music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

As an early 20th-century French composer, Erik Satie used such Dadaist-inspired explorations to create an early form of ambient/background music that he labeled “furniture music” (Musique d’ameublement). This he described as being the sort of music that could be played during a dinner to create a background atmosphere for that activity, rather than serving as the focus of attention. In his own words, Satie sought to create “a music…which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration. I think of it as melodious, softening the noises of the knives and forks at dinner, not dominating them, not imposing itself. It would fill up those heavy silences that sometime fall between friends dining together. It would spare them the trouble of paying attention to their own banal remarks. And at the same time it would neutralize the street noises which so indiscreetly enter into the play of conversation. To make such music would be to respond to a need.” In 1948, French composer & engineer, Pierre Schaeffer coined the term musique concrète. This experimental style of music used recordings of natural sounds that were then modified, manipulated or effected to create a composition. Schaeffer’s techniques of using tape loops and splicing are considered to be the precursor to modern day sampling. In 1952, John Cage released his famous three-movement composition 4'33 which is a performance of complete silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piece is intended to capture the ambient sounds of the venue/location of the performance and have that be the music played. Cage has been cited by seminal artists such as Brian Eno as influence.

Ambient techno

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics and influences#

AllMusic states that ambient techno, building off the ambient house scene, blended the “soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient” with techno’s “well-produced, thin-sounding electronics.” Ambient techno artists returned to the instruments of the Detroit techno and Chicago house scenes, including analogue synthesizers, the Roland TB-303 bass machine, and the TR-909 drum machine. The Orb’s 1991 album Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld would inspire dub-influenced ambient techno.

Ambrosian chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The history of Milan as a centre for religious music goes back to St. Ambrose, who is not known to have composed any of the Ambrosian chant repertory, much as Gregory the Great is not known to have composed any Gregorian chant. However, during his 4th-century tenure as bishop of Milan, he is credited with introducing hymnody from the Eastern Church to the West. Ambrose composed original hymns as well, four of which still survive, along with music that may not have changed too much from the original melodies. Two methods of singing psalms or other chants are responsorial and antiphonal. In responsorial singing, the soloist (or choir) sings a series of verses, each one followed by a response from the choir (or congregation). In antiphonal singing, the verses are sung alternately by soloist and choir, or by choir and congregation. In the Western Church, formerly the responsorial method seems to have first been used alone, the antiphonal method was introduced by St. Ambrose. Over time, the Milanese liturgy developed into the Ambrosian rite, which shares more in common with the Gallican and Mozarabic rites than with the Roman. Ambrosian chant developed to meet the particular needs of the Ambrosian liturgy. Although the Ambrosian rite is liturgically related to other rites and Ambrosian chant is musically related to other plainchant traditions, different categories of chant, different chant texts, and different musical styles make Ambrosian chant a distinct musical repertory. By the 8th century, this chant was attested to be normative across northern Italy, perhaps reaching into southern Italy as well. Between the 8th and 13th centuries, however, the Carolingian chant commissioned by Charlemagne developed into what we now know as Gregorian chant, which began to influence and eventually replace most of the other Western plainchant traditions. By the 12th century, the Mozarabic, Gallican, Celtic, Old Roman, and Beneventan chant traditions had all been effectively superseded by Gregorian chant. Ambrosian chant alone survived, despite the efforts of several Popes over a period of several centuries to establish Gregorian hegemony. A chronicle by the Milanese historian Landolphus from around the year 1000 recounts a legend that two Sacramentaries, one Gregorian and one Ambrosian, were placed on an altar to see which chant had divine acceptance; miraculously, both books opened simultaneously, showing both were equally acceptable. Ambrosian chant did not wholly escape Gregorian influence. The earliest 8th-century fragments, and the more complete chantbooks from the 11th and 12th centuries that preserve the first recorded musical notation, show marked differences between the Gregorian and Ambrosian repertories. Later additions to the Ambrosian repertory, whose style differs from the earlier chants, may reflect Gregorian influence. Although St. Charles Borromeo fought to keep the Ambrosian rite intact during Spanish occupation, a contemporary edition of Ambrosian chant, published by Perego in 1622, attempts to categorize the Ambrosian chants into the eight Gregorian modes, which is not generally accepted as an accurate reflection of the actual musical practice of the time. Ambrosian chant has survived to the present day, although its use is now limited primarily to the greater part of the Archdiocese of Milan and environs, parts of Lombardy, and parts of the Swiss Diocese of Lugano. Most recently, it survived the changes to the liturgy established by Vatican II, in part due to the prior tenure of Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Milan.

American art song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

18th-century American art song#

Francis Hopkinson (1737–1791), Philadelphia native and signer of the Declaration of Independence, is usually considered the first important American song composer. His most famous song is “My Days Have been so Wondrous Free”, and his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord were composed in 1788 and dedicated to George Washington. Other 18th-century American song composers * Peter Von Hagen (1750–1803), Dutch born * Alexander Reinagle (1756–1809) * Benjamin Carr (1768–1831), English born * Gottlieb Graupner (1767–1836), German born, arrived in the U.S. in 1795 * Oliver Shaw (1779–1848)

American classical guitar music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In the 19th century, the classical guitar entered American middle-class culture as an accessible alternative to the piano. Early method books and arrangements by pioneering musicians helped disseminate European techniques while incorporating local popular melodies and elements of American folk music. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the instrument evolved from a domestic salon favorite to a concert instrument, aided by community clubs and later formal academic programs. This evolution was driven not only by technical innovation but also by changing social dynamics such as European immigration and the growth of educational institutions.

American fiddle

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fiddle playing distinguished from violin playing#

Some folk fiddlers distinguish “fiddle” from “violin”, though this is far from universal - many classical violinists refer to their “fiddle”. Nevertheless, a few common differences may be observed;

Instrument#

Generally, the setup of the instruments is different: * Fiddle bridge top may be slightly flatter * String action height may be lower * Strings more often steel than synthetic or gut * Fiddle more commonly set up with pickup * Fiddle more commonly set up with four fine tuners; violinists more likely to use a single tailpiece E tuner

American folk music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early American folk music#

Most songs of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods originated in England, Scotland and Ireland and were brought over by early settlers. According to ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, American folk music is notable because it “At its roots is an English folk song tradition that has been modified to suit the specific requirements of America.” Therefore, many American folk songs, such as those documented by the American folklorist Francis James Child in his catalogue of ballads known as the Child Ballads, can be traced back to their pre-colonial origins in the British Isles. For example, “Barbara Allen” remains a popular traditional ballad originating in England and Scotland, which immigrants introduced to the United States. The murder ballad “Pretty Polly”, indexed by another scholar of American folk music, George Malcolm Laws, is an American version of an earlier British song, “The Gosport Tragedy”. The oldest surviving folk song of local Anglo-American origin is the ballad “Springfield Mountain” dating back to 1761 in Connecticut. The typical instruments played in early American folk music were the fiddle, the guitar, the mandolin, the mouth organ, the fife, and the dulcimer, although guitars went through a significant change as the previously popular English guitar was replaced around the 1830s by the Spanish guitar. In addition to ballads, American colonials also imported numerous English country dance tunes, mainly jigs, reels, and hornpipes, which were played during community dances or contra dances. Some dance tunes as well as dances themselves were also adapted from Irish and Scottish sources. The musical collections Howe’s 1000 Jigs and Reels, Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, and 1000 Fiddle Tunes contain many of the dance tunes Americans and their colonial predecessors danced to for nearly two centuries. Popular dances that rose to prominence in America in the nineteenth century, which could be set to traditional dance tunes, were quadrilles, mazurkas, barn dances, redowas, marches, and polkas. Unlike the Northeast and New England, the Southeast had significant influence from African-American music and as a result instruments such as the banjo were widely adopted. However, English traditional music was still present in the Southeast with older Child ballads such as “Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor”, “The Maid Freed from the Gallows”, “Fair Margaret and Sweet William”, “The Wife of Usher’s Well”, “The Two Sisters”, and “Matty Groves” surviving alongside some English ballads also played in the Northeast like “Barbara Allen”. Popular broadside ballads in the Southeast were “Pretty Polly”, “Pretty Little Miss in the Garden”, “Knoxville Girl”, “Jack Monroe”, “The Sailor Boy”, “Awake, Awake You Drowsy Sleeper”, “Rich Irish Lady”, “The Nightingale”, “The Girl I Left Behind”, and “The Miller’s Will”. Notable songs written in Appalachia include “Little Mohea”, “John Hardy”, and “Omie Wise”. Unlike in the Northeast, Southeastern ballads of English origins tend to be appreciably altered with their lyrics shortened and smoothed out, reducing the number of stresses per stanza. Folk songs in the Midwest largely reflected the tastes of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. However, there were some ballads uniquely popular to the Midwest such as the broadside ballad “Mary of the Wild Moor” and the locally produced ballads namely “The Little Brown Bulls”, “Fuller and Warren”, “Charles Guiteau”, “Canady-I-O”, and “Paul Jones”. Many folk songs were also produced that were unique specifically to the Great Lakes region, evoking the area’s nautical culture. These include “It’s me for the Inland Lakes”, “Loss of the Persian”, and “The Buffalo Whore”. Farther west in states like Iowa, Kansas, the Dakotas, and Nebraska regional songs included “The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim”, “The Lane County Bachelor”, “Comin’ Back to Kansas”, “The Dreary Black Hills”, and “Dakota Land”. The famous “Ballad of Jesse James”, which celebrated the titular bank robber’s life, first appeared in Springfield, Missouri. Few Child or broadside ballads have been found in the Northwestern United States as the documented folk songs in the area are usually work songs connected to relatively recent folk experiences within the mining, lumber, and other industries of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Similar to the Northwest, older traditional ballads were far less common in the Southwest, with only “Barbara Allen” and “Lord Randal” being regional favorites. Popular local songs and ballads were, among others, “Texas Rangers”, “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, “Joe Bowers”, “Sweet Betsy from Pike”, “Ho for California!”, and “Buffalo Skinners”. Some songs entered the folk tradition through the flourishing American popular music industry. One such popular song that became a folk tune was “Old Dan Tucker” written by Dan Emmett.

American gamelan

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Harrison and Colvig#

Harrison worked with John Cage in the 40s on percussion compositions with found metal objects, resulting in alternate scaled music. Lou Harrison and William Colvig, who met in 1967 in San Francisco, built a set of tuned percussion instruments that they called “an American gamelan” in order to differentiate it from Indonesian ensembles. It was first used in Harrison’s work La Koro Sutro in 1972. These are now referred to as “Old Granddad”, and Harrison wrote some pieces that can only be played on this set, including La Koro Sutro. Lou Harrison spent some time with a Javanese gamelan in 1976 (when Kyai Udan Mas, now at the University of California, Berkeley, was in residence at San Jose State University). This inspired him and his partner William Colvig to build a gamelan modelled specifically on Udan Mas (in instrumentation, although not in tuning). For this he used aluminum primarily, although the “great gong” was eventually fashioned out of iron. Colvig and Harrison built two large “double” gamelan (meaning that there were instruments in both the pelog and slendro tunings). The first was Si Betty, named for the financial benefactor Betty Freeman. Si Betty was bequeathed to Jody Diamond, and was in residence at Harvard University from 2007 to 2017; in 2018, Si Betty moved to Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. The second was named “Si Darius/Si Madeleine” after Darius Milhaud and his wife, because it was while holding the Milhaud chair at Mills College (where the gamelan still resides) that Harrison and Colvig had the support for its construction; a group there (as of 2008) is directed by Daniel Schmidt. Lou Harrison was well known for his compositions for gamelan; he was particularly adept at combining western instruments with his Javanese-style gamelan ensemble. (The scores for all of his gamelan works are published by the American Gamelan Institute).

American Indian opera

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Significance#

Unlike the “American Indianist” attempts to create operas with American Indian themes (see selected list below), with librettos written and music composed by non-Indians, The Sun Dance (1913) was a collaboration in which Zitkala-Sa contributed some of the music and libretto. For years, she received no credit. She had studied classical music. After teaching music and studying violin at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, Bonnin worked with Hanson in Utah to compose an American Indian opera. Bonnin performed and transcribed “Sioux melodies”, to which she and Hanson added harmonies and lyrics. Because American Indian melodies had been an oral tradition, trying to adapt them to use in an opera was, according to Warburton, “like forcing a proverbial square peg into a round hole.” Bonnin and Hanson successfully managed the transition. Ute singers and dancers performed in the opera, although the major roles were performed by European-American singers with opera training. But Hanson is generally credited as composer for the opera, and Tara Browner describes Zitkala-Sa as a contributor.

American march music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The true “march music era” succeeded in the United States from the 1850s to the 1920s, and persisted through the 1940s as it slowly became shadowed by the coming of jazz in the U.S. Earlier marches by Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven tended to be parts of symphonies or movements in suites. Despite its age and history and its popular performance in the U.S., European march music generally is not thought of as typically American music.

American patriotic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Colonial Era#

Written by Founding Father John Dickinson in 1768 to the music of William Boyce’s “Heart of Oak”, “The Liberty Song” is perhaps the first patriotic song ever written in America. It contains the line “by uniting we stand, by dividing we fall”, which was an overture to the feelings of common blood and origin the Americans had while fighting the French and Indian War, and also the first recorded use of the sentiment. Additional songs gained prominence in keeping with British and American unity, namely “The British Grenadiers” and “God Save the King”. However, with the War of Independence, the tunes of the last two were combined with new lyrics while “Yankee Doodle”, long a tune and lyric addressed to the unique American population descended from the British, became widely popular. Political and cultural links between the colony and Great Britain perhaps explains the ongoing popularity of the two former tunes, despite the war for independence. “Hail Columbia” was written for George Washington’s inauguration. It served as an unofficial national anthem until 1931. It is still the vice presidential anthem today.

American primitive guitar

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Development#

John Fahey used the term “American primitive guitar” to describe the style of composition he developed in his releases from the 1950s onwards. Fahey employed traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to accompany vocals, on solo guitar, in combination with nontraditional harmonic and melodic material. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, other musicians would become associated with the genre, including Leo Kottke. The style is similar to some forms of 20th-century classical music (particularly Minimalism), and the classical music of India. Besides Fahey, other notable representatives of this genre include Kottke, Robbie Basho, Bob Hadley, and Peter Lang, who released recordings on Fahey’s Takoma Records label. In the 1970s and 80s, some of the musicians of the genre have integrated new-age guitar techniques and have come to be broadly categorized into the New Acoustic genre. Potentially because the new age guitarist William Ackerman cited Fahey, Basho, and Kottke as influences, critics began to associate Fahey with new-age music. Fahey himself rejected any influence upon or responsibility for the genre, referring to it derisively as “hot tub music” and feeling that any association with New Age meant that he had failed as an artist. Peter Lang, a guitarist associated with the genre, described American primitive guitar, writing: “. . . The New Age people call it Folk; the Folk people call it New Age, but it is really neither. It’s transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string band music of the ’20s and ’30s, however much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as ‘American Primitive’ after the ‘French Primitive’ painters, meaning untutored.”

American rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

The foundations of American rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; in addition to country and western. In 1951, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase “rock and roll” to describe the music. There is much debate as to what should be considered the first rock and roll record. One contender is “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in Memphis in 1951. It has been argued that “That’s All Right (Mama)” (1954), Elvis Presley’s first major single for Sun Records was the first rock and roll record, but, at the same time, Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll”, later covered by Bill Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales and crooners, such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.

Americana music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

The term “Americana music” was defined by the Americana Music Association (AMA) in 2020 as “…the rich threads of country, folk, blues, soul, bluegrass, gospel, and rock in our tapestry.” A previous 2016 AMA definition of the genre included rhythm and blues, with additional comments that Americana music results “in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. While acoustic instruments are often present and vital, Americana also often uses a full electric band.”