LI on Music Theory Print

Lied

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

Terminology#

For German speakers, the term “Lied” has a long history ranging from twelfth-century troubadour songs () via folk songs () and church hymns () to twentieth-century workers’ songs () or protest songs (). The German word Lied for “song” (cognate with the English dialectal leed) first came into general use in German during the early fifteenth century, largely displacing the earlier word gesang.

Late Middle Ages or Early Renaissance#

The poet and composer Oswald von Wolkenstein is sometimes claimed to be the creator of the lied because of his innovations in combining words and music. The late-fourteenth-century composer known as the Monk of Salzburg wrote six two-part lieder which are older still, but Oswald’s songs (about half of which actually borrow their music from other composers) far surpass the Monk of Salzburg in both number (about 120 lieder) and quality.

Light music

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

Origins#

Before Late Romantic orchestral trends of length and scope separated the trajectory of lighter orchestral works from the Western Classical canon, classical composers such as Mozart and Haydn won as much fame for writing lighter pieces such as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as for their symphonies and operas. Later examples of early European light music include the operettas of composers such as Franz von Suppé or Sir Arthur Sullivan; the Continental salon and parlour music genres; and the waltzes and marches of Johann Strauss II and his family. The Straussian waltz became a common light music composition (note for example Charles Ancliffe’s “Nights of Gladness” or Felix Godin’s “Valse Septembre”). These influenced the foundation of a “lighter” tradition of classical music in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the UK, the light-music genre has its origin in the seaside and theatrical orchestras that flourished in Britain during the 19th and early 20th century. These played a wide repertoire of music, from classical music to arrangements of popular songs and ballads of the time. From this tradition came many specially written shorter orchestral pieces designed to appeal to a wider audience. Composers such as Sir Edward Elgar wrote a number of popular works in this medium, such as the “Salut d’Amour”, the Nursery Suite, and Chanson de Matin. Influenced by the earlier “promenade concerts” held in London pleasure gardens, a similar spirit embued many of Henry Wood’s early Queen’s Hall Proms concerts, especially the “Last Night of the Proms”. With the introduction of radio broadcasting by the BBC in the 1920s the style found an ideal outlet. This increased after the launch of the BBC Light Programme in 1945, featuring programmes such as Friday Night is Music Night and Music While You Work. In the United States, “pops orchestra” such as the famous Boston Pops Orchestra began to emerge in the 19th century. The Boston Pops was founded in 1885 as a second, popular identity of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), founded four years earlier. They commissioned light pieces by composers such as Leroy Anderson, Ferde Grofé, and George Gershwin to write original works, along with theatre music, film music and arrangements of popular music and show tunes.

Lilting

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

Features#

Lilting often accompanies dancing. Features such as rhythm and tone dominate in lilting and in the case of Irish lilting in particular, is intended to evoke the characteristic ’lilt’ of traditional Irish music and specific instruments such as the Celtic harp. The lyrics thus are often meaningless or nonsensical.

History#

The origins of lilting are unclear. It might have resulted in part from the unavailability of instruments, whether because they were seen as too expensive or were banned. However, similar use of non-lexical syllables also feature in various traditional musical styles worldwide, including tralling or trallning in Sweden and Norway. According to modern folk musician Rowan Piggott, there is an unverified legend about lilting that claims it originates from the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland from 1649–1653 where bans on musical instruments required old songs to be passed down orally via singing or lilting. At the turn of the 20th century lilting found increased popularity in local dance events known as “house dances” and “crossroads dances”. Beginning the mid-1900s, lilting was increasingly performed as a recital or stand alone performance instead of accompaniment for dancing. Recital lilting is currently one of the multiple events performed at the annual traditional Irish musical festival, , held by the non-profit organization (CCE).

Lining out

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

History#

Lining out first appears in 17th-century Britain when literacy rates were low and books were expensive. Precenting the line was characterised by a slow, drawn-out heterophonic and often profusely ornamented melody, while a clerk or precentor (song leader) chanted the text line by line before it was sung by the congregation. It was outlined for use by the Westminster Assembly for English churches in 1644, and it has persisted longest in Britain in the Scottish Hebrides. The tide turned against lining out in England and New England in the first quarter of the 18th century, with greater literacy, improved availability of texts such as New Version of the Psalms of David (1696) by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, and more widely available and better-printed tune collections. Influential clerics in England and America disliked the ragged nature of the singing that resulted as the congregation struggled to remember both the tune and the words from the lining out, but it continued to be practiced in most rural churches and still survives today in a form that likely would have been familiar to the original English and Ulster-Scots colonists in isolated communities in the Appalachian Mountains. Lining out was in most places replaced by “regular singing”, in which either the congregation knew a small number of tunes like Old 100th that could be fitted to many different texts in standard meters such as long meter, or a tunebook was used along with a word book. There began to be “singing societies” of young men who met one evening a week to rehearse. As time went on, a section of the church was allocated for these trained voices to sit together as a choir, and churches voted to end the lining out system (although there was often a transitional phase that had the entire congregation singing from tunebooks like the still-popular The Sacred Harp and others, before this was taken over by using trained choirs; this gave birth to the still vibrant tradition of “Sacred harp singing” ). A vivid picture of the transition comes from Worcester, Massachusetts:

Liquid drum and bass

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

Origins#

In 1999, Fabio alongside Sarah Sandy began championing a new form of drum and bass they called “liquid funk”, with a compilation release of the same name on their Creative Source label. This was characterized by influences from ambient, funk, disco, house and trance music, and widespread use of vocals. Although slow to catch on at first, the style grew massively in popularity around 2003–2004, and by 2005 it was established as one of the biggest-selling subgenres in drum and bass, with labels like Good Looking Records (although this label is strongly cross-genred with atmospheric drum and bass), Hospital Records, Liquid V, Creative Source, Shogun Limited, Fokuz Recordings, and artists like Calibre, Netsky, LTJ Bukem, High Contrast, Logistics, London Elektricity, Nu:Tone, Shapeshifter, DJ Marky, Makoto, and Solid State among its main proponents. Liquid drum and bass is very similar to intelligent drum and bass and atmospheric drum and bass, but has subtle differences. Liquid drum and bass has stronger influences from soca, Latin, jazz, disco, breakbeat, and funk music, while intelligent D’n’B or atmospheric D’n’B creates a calmer yet more synthetic sound, using smooth synth lines, deep bass and samples in place of the organic element achieved by use of real instruments.

Liscio

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

Ballo liscio in Romagna#

In Romagna, the phenomenon of the public and popular dance called “liscio” has created a unique universe and it has revolutionised the approaches to social, community and festive contexts, because it managed to blend different social strata and to allow a broad and inclusive identification process for higher but also more humble social classes. Nowadays, this universe is home to many different protagonists: it gives employment to a huge number of musicians, singers, dancers, dance halls, record companies and media (TV, radio, local magazines). They form part of a rich cultural industry, held together by a powerful territorial and traditional binding force which is typical of Romagna’s folklore. In its essence, “liscio” is a combination of music and dance: its style is easily recognisable because it is rousing, with a cadenced rhythmic style and full of technical virtuosities. Nowadays, even if liscio performances have decreased in favour of more contaminated and mixed songs, many music bands maintain this genre in their musical repertoire. This tradition of Romagna, besides being a varied enterprise, is a fundamental tool for the valorisation of the immaterial cultural heritage of the territory.

List song

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

List of list songs#

Examples of list songs, and their composers/performers, include the following.

Patter songs#

Many patter songs fall into this genre such as: * KoKo’s Little list song from The Mikado (see “As Some Day It May Happen” above) * “Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)” (Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin) (see “Tschaikowsky” above) * “The Major-General’s Song” (Gilbert and Sullivan) * “If You Want a Receipt” from Patience (Gilbert and Sullivan)

Literal music video

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

Conception#

The first known example of this meme, a redub of A-ha’s “Take on Me”, was posted on YouTube by Dustin McLean in his now-defunct channel Dusto McNeato, in October 2008. McLean, who worked on the animated SuperNews! show on Current TV, stated that the idea for literal videos came about from an inside joke with his fellow workers, In the two months after “Take On Me” was posted, ten other YouTube users began making literal versions of their own. The most popular of these initial non-McLean videos was a redub of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”, by copyrighthater, which went on to receive over two million views in its first year online. The new lyrics give a nod to “Rickrolling”, a previous internet meme that involved tricking people into watching the original video of the same song.

Literaturoper

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

Current definition#

According to a seminal publication by Peter Petersen, the term means “a special form of music theater in which the libretto is based on a literary work whose linguistic, semantic and aesthetic structure remains recognizable in the musical-dramatic work as a structural layer.”

History#

The tradition of literaturoper only became established in European opera culture when, with Richard Wagner and the “through-composed dramatic form” he developed, the conventions of verse metrics for the opera libretto had faded. At the same time, the personal union of libretto poet and composer appeared as the new norm of opera production. Especially in the area of the Romance languages, the alliterating verse in Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen was perceived as prose text, since the use of alliteration as basis for the poetry in the Ancient Germanic languages had always been alien the syllable-counting verse systems in the French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetic tradition. Since the production of literaturopern possessed the potential to make the function of the opera librettist redundant, the genre was first able to assert itself in those opera cultures in which professional libretto-writing had not been able to develop a centuries-long tradition (Russia, Germany). The first examples of this dramaturgical process can be found in the history of French and Russian music in the second half of the 19th century. Early Russian literaturopern include Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera The Stone Guest (after Alexander Pushkin) and Modest Mussorgsky’s opera fragment The Marriage and his Boris Godunov (also after Pushkin). In French and Italian opera, which had possessed an established libretto tradition for centuries, the introduction of the literaturoper took place parallel to the discussions about the possibility of writing opera libretti in prose. Since the Italian tradition of operatic verse proved to be particularly resistant to the introduction of prose libretti, the first Italian literaturopern were created on the basis of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s verse dramas (Alberto Franchetti, La figlia di Iorio (1906), Pietro Mascagni, Parisina (1913), Riccardo Zandonai, Francesca da Rimini (1914), Ildebrando Pizzetti, Fedra (1915). The first composers to directly set plays include Charles Gounod, Pietro Mascagni, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss and Alban Berg. After the Second World War, the genre flourished, especially in Germany, and composers often resorted to setting plays from previous centuries or from Greek Antiquity. The production of literary operas continues to this day.

Lithuanian folk music

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

Vocal music#

There are three ancient styles of singing in Lithuania connected with ethnographical regions: monophony, multi-voiced homophony, heterophony and polyphony. Monophony mostly occurs in southern (Dzūkija), southwest (Suvalkija) and eastern (Aukštaitija) parts of Lithuania. Multi-voiced homophony, widespread in entire Lithuania, is the most archaic in Samogitia. Traditional vocal music is held in high esteem on a world scale: Lithuanian song fests and sutartinės multipart songs are on the UNESCO’s representative list of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Little Band scene

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

History#

In 1978, members of Primitive Calculators, an experimental post-punk group from Melbourne, formed a short-lived side band, the Leapfrogs. Using it as their own opening act, they decided to form other “little bands” with friends, Ollie Olsen and other members of Whirlywirld who lived next door to the group in Fitzroy North, with rehearsal spaces in each house. The little bands grew in number, sharing instruments and equipment, and the term “North Fitzroy Beat” was coined to describe their sound. Soon they started staging “Little Band Nights” at various inner city venues, notably the Champion Hotel in Fitzroy, the Crystal Ballroom in St Kilda and the Exford in Chinatown, with occasional appearances in Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond. At first, strict rules were imposed: no little band was allowed to play more than twice and could have no more than fifteen minutes worth of material. Many of the little bands were composed of painters, poets, filmmakers, performance artists, and other non-musicians who enjoyed the opportunity to realise their naive musical ideas. Little band member John Murphy explained that “a lot of the original participants were artists who applied the Dada sort of approach of their painting”. One journalist described the little bands’ output as “sloppy, clangy and discordant. By turns, they could sound equally fantastic: a mixture of epileptic drum machine rhythms, stabbing synth lines and creepy/witty lyrics making for oddly compelling results.” Some members of the scene had received proper training in electronic music and composition, including Whirlywirld’s Ollie Olsen, who studied under Melbourne-based composer Felix Werder. Little band member and radio announcer Alan Bamford began recording Little Band Nights using a TEAC reel-to-reel tape recorder and a Shure microphone. Immediately following each gig, he caught a tram to 3RRR’s Fitzroy premises, where he broadcast the tapes on his midnight show. After the Calculators and Whirlywirld left Melbourne for Europe and London in early 1980, the Little Band scene centred on the shared spaces of Use No Hooks and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies. The scene had effectively ended by early 1981.

Liturgical music

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

Roman Catholic church music#

The interest taken by the Catholic Church in music is shown not only by practitioners, but also by numerous enactments and regulations calculated to foster music worthy of Divine service. Contemporary Catholic official church policy is expressed in the documents of the Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963 (items 112–121); and most particularly Musicam sacram, the Instruction on Music In The Liturgy from the Sacred Congregation for Rites, on March 5, 1967. While there have been historic disputes within the church where elaborate music has been under criticism, there are many period works by Orlandus de Lassus, Allegri, Vittoria, where the most elaborate means of expression are employed in liturgical music, but which, nevertheless, are spontaneous outpourings of adoring hearts (cf. contrapuntal or polyphonic music). Besides plain chant and the polyphonic style, the Catholic Church also permits homophonic or figured compositions with or without instrumental accompaniment, written either in ecclesiastical modes, or the modern major or minor keys. Gregorian chant is warmly recommended by the Catholic Church, as both polyphonic music and modern unison music for the assembly. In 1963, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) of the Second Vatican Council directed that “bishops and other pastors of souls must be at pains to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs, as laid down in Art. 28 and 30”, which articles say: “To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs”. Full and active participation of the people is a recurring theme in the Vatican II document. To achieve this fulsome congregational participation, great restraint in introducing new hymns has proven most helpful.

Liuqiang

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

History#

Liuqiang originated in the western part of Jimo during the mid-Qing Dynasty. In 1748, floods and pest outbreaks made people’s lives miserable, and many fled to other areas begging while singing about their experiences using tunes from their hometowns. Their performing style was given the name of zhouguzi (, “elbow drum”, or ) or benzhougu. When this style arrived in Jimo, it integrated with local folk music and yangge dance and gradually evolved into an early form of liuqiang. Places where it was particularly well-received included Liujiazhuang (, in today’s Duanbolan), Lügezhuang (, in today’s Yifengdian), Nuocheng (, in today’s Lancun Subdistrict), and Fengxiangzhuang (, in Yifengdian). In the beginning, the only instruments were gong and hand drums, but enthusiasts later used the sihu to accompany the singing. As the singing and accompaniment did not always match, higher and higher went their pitches, which gave rise to the name liuqiang (, later the better-sounding , “willowy tune”). Early liuqiang performances were held during festivals and slack farming seasons, with three or five performers and little regard of costumes, role types, face painting, and music. Sometimes, an actor needed to play several roles in one play. In the ensuing decades, performances became more complicated and professional. Around 1900, five professional troupes were established in Liujiazhuang, Qiji (, in Yifengdian), Yifeng (, also in Yifengdian), and Nanquan (, in Lancun) which performed not just locally, but also in more urban places like Pingdu, Ye County (now Laizhou), and Laiyang. After the 1911 Revolution, performers like Jiang Wenxing (), Jiang Wenlong (), Dong Qiansan (), Fan Youshan (), Lan Dexian (), Liu Zuolian (), and Yang Lida () went to Qingdao and performed in theaters in Dongzhen (, in today’s Shibei District), Shinan, Sifang, and Cangkou. Many of them traveled regularly between rural and urban areas. After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Japanese invaders forbade rural performances. Liu Zuolian and others returned to Qingdao where they expanded their troupes and established a base for regular performances. During this period, liuqiang actors often performed together with actors of Hebei bangzi, Ping opera, maoqiang and Peking opera on the same stage, sometimes in the same play. In the process, liuqiang was able to absorb many elements from other Chinese operas. In 1950, the Venus Liuqiang Opera Troupe () was established in Qingdao. It was renamed the Qingdao Liuqiang Opera Troupe in 1959 and went to Beijing to perform traditional repertoire to national leaders. During the Cultural Revolution professional troupes were disbanded and performances banned until 1976. In 1976, Qingdao’s Cultural Affairs Bureau had former professional actors mentor a young generation of actors for two years, and only after that did performances resume. In January 1989, Jimo Liuqiang Opera Troupe again performed in Beijing.

Live electronic music

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

Early electronic instruments#

Early electronic instruments intended for live performance, such as Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium (1897) and instruments developed between the two world wars, such as the Theremin (1919), Spharophon (1924), ondes Martenot (1928), and the Trautonium (1929), may be cited as antecedents, but were intended simply as new means of sound production, and did nothing to change the nature of musical composition or performance. Many early compositions included these electronic instruments, though the instruments were typically used as substitutes for standard classical instruments. An example includes composer Joseph Schillinger, who in 1929 composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra, which premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist. Percy Grainger, used ensembles of four or six theremins (in preference to a string quartet) for his two earliest experimental Free Music compositions (1935–37) because of the instrument’s complete ‘gliding’ freedom of pitch.( The ondes Martenot was also used as a featured instrument in the 1930s, and composer Olivier Messiaen used it in the Fête des belles eaux for six ondes, written for the 1937 International World’s Fair in Paris. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) was among the earliest compositions to include an innovative use of live electronic material; it featured two variable-speed phonograph turntables and sine-tone recordings. Cage’s interest in live electronics continued through the 1940s and 1950s, providing inspiration for the formation of a number of live-electronic groups in America who came to regard themselves as the pioneers of a new art form. The earliest use of live electronics together with acoustic instruments is in all likelihood Daphne Oram’s Still Point (1948), a work for turntable, double orchestra and five microphones. The work was unperformed until 2016.

Liwa (music)

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

References#

https://web.archive.org/web/20080203142429/http://www.arab.net/uae/ue_music.htm
http://www.alshindagah.com/may/dances.htm
Africans in the Persian Gulf
Video of Liwa in Kuwait
(en) Poul Rovsing Olsen, “La Musique Africaine dans le Golfe Persique”, Journal of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 19, (1967), pp. 28–36
(fr) Maho Sebiane, « Le statut socio-économique de la pratique musicale aux Émirats arabes unis : la tradition du leiwah à Dubai », Chroniques yéménites, 14, Numéro 14, 2007 .
(fr) Maho Sebiane, “Entre l’Afrique et l’Arabie : les esprits de possession sawahili et leurs frontières”, Journal des africanistes, 84-2 2014, 48-79.
(en) Maho Sebiane, Beyond the leiwah of Eastern Arabia Structure of a possession rite in the longue durée, Música em Contexto, Brasília Nº. 1 (2017): 13-44
(fr) Maho Sebiane “Nuisances et chaos des Vents. Expressions de l’agressivité dans un rite de possession en Arabie orientale”, Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie 33, 2020: 113-131
Liwa and Tanbura from Africa to Bahrain, Part 2, Al Waqt newspaper, 21 Feb 2009

LI on Music Theory Print

Lied

Terminology#

Late Middle Ages or Early Renaissance#

Light music

Origins#

Lilting

Features#

History#

Lining out

History#

Liquid drum and bass

Origins#

Liscio

Ballo liscio in Romagna#

List song

List of list songs#

Patter songs#

Literal music video

Conception#

Literaturoper

Current definition#

History#

Lithuanian folk music

Vocal music#

Little Band scene

History#

Liturgical music

Roman Catholic church music#

Liuqiang

History#

Live electronic music

Early electronic instruments#

Liwa (music)

See also#

References#