WE on Music Theory Print

Wedding music

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

Prelude#

A prelude often precedes the wedding. During the prelude, guests arrive to the gathering place while ambiance music is being played. Calm and light music is usually performed at that time, setting the mood for the ceremony while not being too distracting for the guests. Popular prelude music includes Air on the G string and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Entrance#

Music can be used to announce the arrival of the participants of the wedding (such as a bride’s processional), and in many western cultures, this takes the form of a wedding march. For more than a century, the Bridal Chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin (1850), often called “Here Comes The Bride”, has been the most popular processional, and is traditionally played on a pipe organ. Some couples may consider traditional wedding marches clichéd and choose a more modern piece of music or an alternative such as Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel. Since the televised wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, there has been an upsurge in popularity of Jeremiah Clarke’s “Prince of Denmark’s March” for use as processional music; the piece was formerly (and incorrectly) attributed to Henry Purcell as Trumpet Voluntary. At Jewish weddings, the entrance of the groom is accompanied by the tune Baruch Haba. Traditional Burmese weddings incorporate songs from the Mahāgīta corpus. A bwe song called “Aura of Immeasurable Auspiciousness” (, Ataing Mathi Mingala Awba Bwe) is used as a wedding processional song in traditional Burmese weddings. The style of Mahāgīta songs has also been adapted in more modern compositions, such as “Auspicious Song” (, Mingala Tei) composed by Twante Thein Tan, and “Akadaw Pei” () by Waing Lamin Aung, both of which are commonly played at traditional Burmese weddings. In Egyptian culture, the zaffa ( / ALA-LC: zaffah), or wedding march, is a musical procession of bendir drums, bagpipes, horns, belly dancers and men carrying flaming swords. This is an ancient Egyptian tradition that predates Islam. Interfaith marriage ceremonies have benefited by the efforts of several modern composers, many of whom have written processional marches to honor the religious traditions of both the bride and the groom. Included in this group are John Serry Sr. (1968).

Weird SoundCloud

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

Origins#

In a January 2014 interview, DJ Kevin Wang suggested that the Weird SoundCloud has “been around in the last one to two years”, but started to gain much more popularity the previous year through electronic dance music internet blogs. Weird SoundCloud producer Ideaot suggested that some in the phenomenon came from the YouTube poop scene. Another producer in the community, DJ @@ (AT-AT), reasoned that producers joining the scene “want to express their musicality, see it as a more mature form of YouTube Poop,” or are “just looking for recognition on social media sites.” AT-AT said that it was “a fun thing to do, and after I stopped making proper music I felt I needed a bit of an outlet for my creativity. The fact that people enjoyed it and/or treated it as a travesty (Direct quote from one of my tracks) spurs me on.”

Welsh bardic music

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

General features of musical style#

Hallmarks of Welsh bardic music included the use of cerdd dant (“the craft of the string”), which is vocalization over a melody played on a harp or crwth alongside a datgeiniad, the narrator or specialized singer of the bardic verse. These performances pulled from social frameworks and were primarily oral in nature.

Examples of Welsh bardic works#

Y Gododdin
Book of Aneirin
Book of Taliesin
Canu Llywarch Hen
Y Llafurwr

External links#

Music of the Robert ap Huw Manuscript
1 and 0 a compositional basis on Bragod website
Medieval Welsh Bardic Music, Interpreting the Robert ap Huw MS. by William Taylor

Welsh folk music

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

Traditions and history#

Early musical traditions during the 17th and 18th centuries saw the emergence of more complex carols, away from the repetitive ceremonial songs. These carols featured complex poetry based on cynghanedd. Some were sung to English tunes, but many used Welsh melodies such as ‘Ffarwel Ned Puw’. The most common type of Welsh folk song is the love song, with lyrics pertaining to the sorrow of parting or in praise of the girl. A few employ sexual metaphor and mention the act of bundling. After love songs, the ballad was a very popular form of song, with its tales of manual labour, agriculture and everyday life. Popular themes in the 19th century included murder, emigration and colliery disasters; they were sung to popular melodies from Ireland or North America. into longer songs, for example Ar Lan y Môr and Marwnad yr Ehedydd.

Welsh hip-hop

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

History#

Early hip-hop culture was a feature of the popular culture of South Wales by the early 1980s, with Breakdancing “battles” featuring crews from Barry, Cardiff, Cwmbran, Newport and Port Talbot.

1980s and 1990s: Early success and decline#

The Earliest Welsh hip-hop groups soon appeared with Cardiff’s DJ Jaffa and rappers MC Eric, Dike and 4Dee. Hip-hop productions were also pioneered with LSD Productions in Cwmbran, Mortal Danger in Swansea and 2Sharp in the South Wales valleys. However, the first Welsh hip-hop releases came from North Wales acts with “Dyddiau Braf (Rap Cymreag)” by the duo Llwybr Llaethog being cited as the first release of Welsh hip-hop music. Llwybr Llaethog were inspired to change direction from their experimental, post-punk origins following a 1984 trip to The Roxy nightclub in New York City. Band member John Griffiths had been inspired by the sounds of DJ Red Alert and the enthusiastic breakdancing. On his return to Wales, Griffiths decided to integrate the new music with Welsh language culture and socialist politics. While early Welsh hip-hop had been dominated by Welsh language acts from north Wales, south Wales groups had become more prominent by 1990, with Welsh-Jamaicans introducing reggae influences and developing the sound systems culture. New acts continued to emerge such as Steffan Cravos’ Carmarthenshire hip-hop group Tystion in 1991 and Benji Webbe’s Rap metal outfit Dub War who formed in Newport in 1993. Cravos would also establish his own label, Fitamin Un in 1996 as a response to what he saw as the era’s proliferation of “dull guitar bands”. Despite this, Welsh pop and rock music continued to dominate the decade and hip-hop became far less prominent both in Welsh culture and as part of the emerging Cool Cymru movement.

West Coast hip-hop

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

History#

African American communities of the Bay Area and southern California emerged as new bases of hip-hop culture in the 1980s. Hispanics in the Los Angeles area have played a significant role in West Coast hip-hop culture.

Early years#

Several events laid the foundations for West Coast hip-hop, long before the emergence of West Coast rappers such as Ice-T, Mellow Man Ace, Too Short, Kid Frost and Eazy-E—or even before the emergence of rap itself. According to Syd Caesar, “a cataclysmic event helped give rise to it out West: the Watts riots of 1965.” In 1967, Budd Schulberg founded a creative space in Los Angeles entitled Watts Writers Workshop, intended to help the people of the Watts neighborhood and provide a place for them to express themselves freely; one group to emerge from the workshop was the proto-rap group The Watts Prophets. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, political and social justice movements in the San Francisco Bay Area inspired the emergence and growth of hip-hop culture in the region. The Bay Area developed a unique style of break dancing, and graffiti art sprayed along city streets and buildings, similar to what was expressed in The Bronx on subway cars and abandoned structures. From the inspiration of funk music, to the political and social movements that were energized by the Black Panther Party (founded in Oakland), hip-hop music had strong roots in the Bay. In the late 1970s in Los Angeles, Alonzo Williams, a young disc jockey from Compton, California formed a partnership with another DJ named Rodger Clayton from Los Angeles, California who created a promotion company called Unique Dreams that would hire Williams to DJ at local events. The two eventually went their separate ways: Williams started a group called the World Class Wreckin’ Cru and became the house DJs at a local nightclub called Eve’s After Dark while Clayton launched what would perhaps be the foremost successful mobile DJ crew in the region by the name of Uncle Jamm’s Army that would host parties by top DJs for thousands of people at large venues. Other smaller DJ and party crews emerged around this time, hoping to establish themselves in the area. This could be largely credited to the fact that the local West Coast hip-hop scene revolved more around DJing than rapping. Clayton’s group, Uncle Jamm’s Army, released their first single, “Dial-a-Freak”, and in 1984 Egyptian Lover released his On the Nile album, which includes the popular 12" single “Egypt Egypt”. Members of Uncle Jamm’s Army and the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, including Dr. Dre, The Unknown DJ, Egyptian Lover, Ice-T and Kid Frost would later go on to help define the early West Coast hip-hop sound throughout the 1980s. During this period, one of the most significant factors in the spread of West Coast hip-hop was the radio station 1580 KDAY AM, which was the first radio station in the world to play rap/hip-hop music 24 hours a day because of Assistant Program Director/Music Director and Radio Personality Greg “Mack Attack” Mack. In the 1980s to mid-1990s, inspired both by the region’s history of activism and by funk music, Bay Area artists popularized the “pimp rap” subgenre, focused on rhythmic, funky beats that cut across genres. Artists like Too Short emerged from this dance-oriented hip-hop movement, a predecessor to the hyphy movement of the 2000s.

West Coast jazz

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

Background#

Before World War II, the west coast of the U.S. hosted a bustling music scene, though its activity remained largely localized. In 1917, Jelly Roll Morton moved to California and remained in Los Angeles until 1922, when he left for Chicago. Kid Ory formed a band in Los Angeles after moving to California in 1919. In 1944, Norman Granz began staging Jazz at the Philharmonic shows at Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a thriving jazz scene had appeared along Los Angeles’s Central Avenue, featuring Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Teddy Edwards, Charles Mingus, and Buddy Collette. Central Avenue’s activity rivaled that of the earlier Kansas City jazz scene, but at the time it was little-known outside Los Angeles.

West gallery music

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

History#

By the 1700s, many church goers were unsatisfied by the state of congregational singing, which resulted in the formation of amateur choirs, which were initially male. In rural English churches, congregations often lacked an organ, but still needed support in order to maintain pitch in complex music. Some of these works have remained in use in shape note traditions, for example in the Sacred Harp repertoire. The 4-part, tenor-led harmony, fuguing tunes and anthems and other aspects strongly helped influence the shape note musical tradition, and in many ways the American music style is directly evolved from the older one. Use of west gallery music in the Church dwindled in part due to the rise of urbanization and also due to the desire for a more polite, more formal style of worship. Another possible reason for this is that when the Methodists split from the Anglican church, many of these bands would have been split apart, or even leaving en masse. In 1893, the Reverend Francis William Galpin described the church band at Winterbourne Abbas, which he believed was the last surviving example in England; however, two years later, a survey of parishes in Cornwall found that 18 out of 219 churches still had a band.

Western music (North America)

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

Characteristics#

Western music covers an array of styles and experiences that reflect the various communities that were present along the 19th century U.S frontier. Some songs were developed by cowboys working on isolated cattle ranches. The mundane, lonely life on the ranches gave way to musical expression and cowboys would often make use of repurposed folk and popular songs to further convey their lifestyle through music. In addition to portraying life on the cattle ranches and trails, the genre of western music also encompasses songs about Texas Rangers, pioneers, outlaws, Native Americans, nature, Mexican/American experiences, and miners rushing for gold. Otto Gray, an early cowboy band leader, stated authentic western music had only three rhythms, all coming from the gaits of the cow pony: walk, trot, and lope. Gray also noted the uniqueness of this spontaneous American song product, and the freedom of expression of the singers. The choruses of cowboy songs often contained various cries, whoops, and yells that were infused with lyrics. The more waltz-like nature of these songs differs from the actual rhythms found in cowboy life, and instead, works to embellish the sentimental, humorous, and mythologized nature of popular frontier stories. Oftentimes, such influences derived from older European folk songs and traditions. Accordions brought to North America by German and Bohemian immigrants were utilized by Mexican musicians to adapt waltzes and polkas into a style of dance music associated with the Old West. Other instruments that would have been used on the frontier and incorporated into western music include the fiddle, harmonica, banjo, guitar, and mandolin.

Western opera in Chinese

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

List of works#

The following includes some operas which are considered closer to the Chinese opera traditional model than geju or western opera.

Experimental period, 1945-1956#

1945 - Ma Ke et al. White-Haired Girl at Yan’an Lu Xun Art Academy After founding of the PRC, 1949:
1954 - Chen Zi, Mao Yuan and Ge Guangrui: Liu Hulan 《刘胡兰》 Central Experimental Xin-geju Academy, Beijing
- Ma Ke: Xiao’erhei jiehun
1955 - Luo Zongxian: Caoyuan zhi ge 《草原之歌》 “Song of the Prairies”

Second wave, 1956-1966#

A second wave followed National Music Week, 1956, which lasted till the last geju Ayiguli in 1966 on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. * 1956 - Chen Zi and Liang Kexiang: Spring Blossoms Yingchunhua kaile (libretto by Lu Cang, Wang Lie) * 1956 - Du Yu: Mongolian themed folk opera The Gada plum blossoms based on the Mongolian folk song Gada meilin * 1958 - Zhang Rui: Rosy Clouds Hong xia (libretto by Shi Han) * 1958 - Shu Tiemin and Ceng Fangke: The Red-cloud Cliff Hongyun ya (libretto by Liang Shangquan, Lu Peng, Jiang Shengtao, Su Mei) * 1958 - Zhang Dinghe: The Tale of Huai Yin Huai Yin ji (libretto by Lu Su, Huang Cengjiu, Guan Taiping) * 1959 - Zhang Jing’an: Honghu Chiweidui “Red Guards of Lake Hong Hu”, Wuhan * 1959 - Shi Lemeng: Two Women of the Red Army Liangge nv hongjun (libretto by Chen Qitong) * 1959 - Zhuang Ying and Lu Ming: Keshan hong ri “Red Sun over Mount Ke” PLA Opera Troupe * 1960 - Wang Xiren and Hu Shiping: Hong Shanhu “Red Coral” libretto by Zhao Zhong, PLA Opera Troupe - also filmed by Wang Shaoyan director of the film Red Coral (1961) * 1960 - Chen Zi and Du Yu: Dou E Yuan based on the play The Grievances of Dou E, also known as “Snow in Summer” * 1960 - Zhang Dinghe and Du Yu: Doushi Ting “The Poem Contest Pavilion” * 1961 - Chen Zi and Du Yu: Chun Lei “Spring Thunder” * 1962 - Zheng Lücheng: Longing for Husband Cloud (libretto by Xu Jiarui) * 1962 - Collective work: Liu Sanjie, filmed as “Third Sister Liu” the same year. * 1964 - Ge Guangrui: Zi you houlai ren “We have our own successors” * 1964 - Zhang Yu: Red Plum-Blossom Ridge Hongmei Ling, film version 1965 * 1964 - Chen Zi: Chunfeng yangliu “Willows in the spring breeze” * 1964 - Yang Ming and Jiang Chunyang: Jiang Jie “Sister Jiang” - libretto by Yan Su * 1965 - Du Yu: Ren huan ma jiao “A busy country scene” * 1966 - Shi Fu and Wusi Manjiang: Ayiguli * 1966 - Mao Yuan and Ma Fei: Nanhai Changcheng “The Great Wall of the South Seas”

Western swing

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

Late 1920s to mid-1930s: Beginnings#

Western swing began in the dance halls of small towns throughout the lower Great Plains in the late 1920s and early 1930s, growing from house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists played for dancers. During its early development, scores of groups from San Antonio to Shreveport to Oklahoma City played different songs with the same basic sound. Prince Albert Hunt’s Texas Ramblers out of Terrell in East Texas, and the East Texas Serenaders in Lindale, Texas both added jazz elements to traditional music in the later half of the 1920s through the early 1930s. Fred “Papa” Calhoun played in a band in Decatur, Texas that played swing music in the style of the Louisiana Five. In the early 1930s, Bob Wills and Milton Brown co-founded the string band that became the Light Crust Doughboys, the first professional Western swing band. The group, with Fred “Papa” Calhoun on piano, played dance halls and was heard on radio. Photographs of the Light Crust Doughboys taken as early as 1931 show two guitars along with fiddle player Wills, although by 1933 they had three guitarists. On February 9, 1932, Brown, his brother Derwood, Bob Wills, and C.G. “Sleepy” Johnson were recorded by Victor Records at the Jefferson Hotel in Dallas, Texas under the name The Fort Worth Doughboys. Derwood Brown played guitar and Johnson played tenor guitar. Both “Sunbonnet Sue” and “Nancy Jane” were recorded that day. The group was credited as “Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies”. When Brown left the Doughboys later in 1932, he took his brother to play rhythm guitar in what became The Musical Brownies. In January 1933, fiddler Cecil Brower, playing harmony, joined Jesse Ashlock to create the first example of harmonizing twin fiddles in a Western swing recording. Brower, a classically trained violinist, was the first to master Joe Venuti’s double shuffle and his improvisational style was a major contribution to the genre. The amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, gave the music its distinctive sound. By the mid-1930s, Fort Worth was a hub for Western swing, particularly at the Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion, a country music dance venue that was popular until the 1950s. Bands like Brown and His Musical Brownies played there, interspersing waltzes and ballads with faster songs. A documented instance of a Western swing group adopting the newer, by then mainstream meter swing jazz style, replacing the style, was when producer Art Satherley required it at a September 1936 Light Crust Doughboy recording session. 1938 session rosters for Wills recordings show both lead guitar and electric guitar in addition to guitar and steel guitar. The “front line” of Wills’ orchestra consisted of either fiddles or guitars after 1944. Wills recalled the early days of Western swing music in a 1949 interview. Speaking of Milton Brown and himself—working with popular songs done by Jimmie Davis, the Skillet Lickers, Jimmie Rodgers, songs he had learned from his father and others—Wills said, “We’d…pull these tunes down an set ’em in a dance category. …They wouldn’t be a runaway…and just lay a real beat behind it an’ the people would began to really like it. …It was nobody intended to start anything in the world. We was just tryin’ to find enough tunes to keep ’em dancin’ to not have to repeat so much.”

Western swing fiddle

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

Distinctives of the style#

One of the characteristics of the genre is that fiddle is the lead instrument, unlike other genres such as Cajun in which the lead instrument varies in different eras. A major characteristic of the style is syncopation and rhythmic drive – it is dance music. It was typically played in bars and in big city Western hotel buildings with large ballrooms; alcohol was served and fights were not unknown. The musicians had to keep the music going until they had fulfilled their contract and could get paid. Twin fiddles and even triple fiddle was another distinctive of Western Swing fiddle.