Category: Lara Jokhadar al-Aro

New article/Dossier: MAT for the VIAMAP – Maqām Analysis Tools for the Video-Animated Music Analysis Project

English

[French translation below]

NEMO-Online is delighted to propose this new article by Amine Beyhom on notational tools and graphical analyses of melody and rythm.

Musical notation has been reputed as disqualified for the analysis of “Foreign” musics since – at least – the experiments of Charles Seeger with the Melograph. It is nevertheless still used as the main analytic – and teaching – tool for these musics in most researches in musicology, and today in the teaching of these musics in autochthonous conservatories. Seeger’s experiments brought at his time cutting-edge solutions – and alternatives – to score notation but, surprisingly enough, these solutions seem to have not worked out very well in the long run.

Beyhom proposes a voluminous dossier including three parts and relying on the pioneering works of Seeger – and other ethnomusicologists – as well as on the improvements of his method that we have witnessed in the last decades. The first part expounds the past, and on-going debates about the (mis-) use of score notation as applied to “Foreign” musics, while the second part offers a retrospective of Maqām music notation. The third part of the dossier describes different tools of pitch and spectrum analysis which help understand – and listen better to the analyzed music while exposing, in fine, the author’s work and propositions for the implementation of video-animated analyses in the teaching of ethnomusicology as one major basis for this teaching. The dossier is accompanied by a short power point show (PPS) and 41 video-animated analyses (total time = 2 h 13 m).

Amine Beyhom: “MAT for the VIAMAP – Maqām Analysis Tools for the Video-Animated Music Analysis Project,” Near Eastern Musicology Online 4 7 |2018-11| p. 145–256.

Français

Nous avons le plaisir à NEMO-Online de publier ce nouvel article par Amine Beyhom sur les outils de notation et d’analyse graphique de la mélodie et du rythme.

La notation musicale est réputée être disqualifiée pour les analyses de musique “étrangères” et ce depuis, au moins, les expériences de Charles Seeger avec le mélographe. Il n’en reste pas moins que la notation classique reste l’outil principal d’analyse de ces musiques dans les recherches musicologiques, et de leur enseignement dans les conservatoires locaux. Les méthodes de Seeger étaient à l’avant-garde de la recherche pour une analyse –  et une notation – alternative des musiques traditionnelles mais, de manière assez surprenante, ne semblent pas avoir pris racine dans l’enseignement de l’ethnomusicologie.

Beyhom propose un dossier volumineux en trois parties, basé sur l’oeuvre pionnière de Seeger – et d’autres ethnomusicologues – ainsi que sur les améliorations de cette méthode apportées au fil des recherches par ses successeurs. La première partie retrace les débats soulevés par l’utilisation (ou non) de la notation musicale classique pour les musique non occidentales – notamment non semi-tonales – tandis que la deuxième partie est consacrée à une courte rétrospective historique de la notation de la musique du maqām. La troisième partie décrit divers outils d’analyse des hauteurs et du spectre d’une mélodie qui sont une aide à l’analyse – et à la compréhension, sinon à une meilleure écoute – de ces musiques. En conclusion l’auteur appelle à implémenter l’enseignement des analyses vidéo-animées de hauteurs dans l’enseignement courant de l’ethnomusicologie, comme outil principal d’analyse des musiques “autres”.

Le dossier est accompagné d’un fichier Power Point contenant quelques exemples d’analyse avec curseur se déplaçant horizontalement sur l’écran, et de 41 analyses vidéo dont le temps total s’élève à 2 heures et 13 minutes.

Amine Beyhom: “MAT for the VIAMAP – Maqām Analysis Tools for the Video-Animated Music Analysis Project,” Near Eastern Musicology Online 4 7 |2018-11| p. 145–256.

FOREDOFICO, CERMAA and ICONEA with the “Friends of the National Museum” foundation to produce a documentary film on the Making of Hurrian Song H.6.

Lyre-reconstructed-by-R.-Dumbrill
A lyre reconstructed by Richard Dumbrill for the Hurrian song H.6. project in Lebanon

In October 2012, ICONEA Director Richard Dumbrill visited Lebanon, initially to attend a conference in Beirut on Rituals in the Ancient Levant. The conference was cancelled following a bombing in the metropolis. Dumbrill seeked help from CERMAA/FOREDOFICO to produce a documentary film on the subject he had intended to give at the National Museum. The documentary, funded by the Friends of the National Museum and CERMAA/FOREDOFICO is about the research work Dumbrill has undertaken for the past 25 years on the translation of the oldest known musical text, written in the Hurrian language, dating from about 1400 years BC, and found at Ugarit in North East Syria in the 1950s. The documentary was shot by Paul Mattar, Founding member of FOREDOFICO, in a renowned archaeological site, and at the headquarters of CERMAA, in the suburbs of Beirut.

Rosy Azar Beyhom and Amine Beyhom, CERMAA founding members contributed to the Orientalisation of Dumbrill’s original rendition of the Hurrian material. The song was recorded at the CALA recording studios, a subdivision of FOREDOFICO specialised in archival recordings. Saad SAAB, President of FOREDOFICO made improvisastions on the Ꜥūd on the theme of the original music. The singing of the melody, and the acting on site was entrusted to a young and promising Lebanese singer, Lara Jokhadar Al-Aro. There, Lara played the role of a young woman afflicted with the curse of being childless, and sang her sorrow to the moon goddess NIKKAL so that she may bear child.

 

Lara Jokhadar al-Aro

 

 

The original score for the Hurrian H.6. song has been published in Richard Dumbrill’s article for NEMO N°1 :

  • Dumbrill, Richard : “Modus Vivendi,” Near Eastern Musicology Online 1 1 |2012-11| p. 89–116.