# Non-Western Classical listening.



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

As there doesn’t appear to be anywhere to put this exquisite music I’ve started a thread. I’ll start. 

Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) - the album is Master Musician of India, Connoisseur Series. The track is Raag Gauri Manjari.


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## UniversalTuringMachine (Jul 4, 2020)

Shanker's Symphony and Concerto for Sitar are very enjoyable, especially if you like Raga.

I am a big fan of Takemitsu, his November Steps is amazing.

The French-Chinese composer Qigang Chen, a student of Messian, is a delightful recent discorvery. His music contains many Chinese elements. I am impressed by his novel and atmospheric Iris Dévoilée.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I've been listening to Kala Ramnath a lot lately:


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat: Genetic









New music for Gamelan by contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Pandit Nikhil Banerjee - Raga Sindhu Kamaj. Glorious stuff.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Are we talking about non-Western composers who are still writing in the parameters of Western Art Music, or the classical traditions of other cultures or both? I remember someone started a thread a while back asking about where the latter was because it was hard to find, leading me to believe that a well-organized, notated, extensive written and developed theory etc. etc. all the qualities of WAM are not present in other cultural traditions. Am I wrong here?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

You are not wrong. Little non-Western music is notated unless via a copycat "tradition." Much is improvisatory within varying limits.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Are we talking about non-Western composers who are still writing in the parameters of Western Art Music, or the classical traditions of other cultures or both? I remember someone started a thread a while back asking about where the latter was because it was hard to find, leading me to believe that a well-organized, notated, extensive written and developed theory etc. etc. all the qualities of WAM are not present in other cultural traditions. Am I wrong here?


I was referring to the classical traditions of other cultures.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Are we talking about non-Western composers who are still writing in the parameters of Western Art Music, or the classical traditions of other cultures or both? I remember someone started a thread a while back asking about where the latter was because it was hard to find, leading me to believe that a *well-organized, notated, extensive written and developed theory etc. etc. all the qualities of WAM* are not present in other cultural traditions. Am I wrong here?


Why should they be? Those are the defining attributes of Western Classical Music - but those attributes do not define "art music."

I welcome this thread.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

Some of my favorite singers of all time do turkish classical music.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

There's a whole WORLD out there beyond Western classical tradition. Beware: it's addictive!


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

A couple of years ago I bought this book with the best of intentions of reading it and listening to the recommendations.

The Other Classical Musics, Fifteen Great Traditions, ed. by Michael Church









Introduction - Michael Church

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam - Terry E. Miller
Java - Neil Sorrell
Japan - David Hughes
China - the guqin zither - Frank Kouwenhoven
Chinese opera - Terry E. Miller and Michael Church
North India - Richard Widdess
South India - Jonathan Katz
Mande jaliyaa - Roderic Knight
North American jazz - Scott DeVeaux
Europe - Ivan Hewett
North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean: Andalusian music - Dwight Reynolds
The eastern Arab world - Scott Marcus
Turkey - Robert Labaree
Iran - Ameneh Youssefzadeh
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - Will Sumits

I thought I would bring this to your attention. I first saw this in my local library and checked it out. After perusing it for a month, I knew it would take years for me to absorb everything in this book so I bought it. At the end of each chapter is a recommended listening guide. I find Javanese, Indian, and the music of Mali really intriguing.

I will try in the future to read it, or parts of it in the future. One problem is that the book itself is rather heavy and it's hard to hold, especially reading in bed.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

senza sordino said:


> A couple of years ago I bought this book with the best of intentions of reading it and listening to the recommendations.
> 
> The Other Classical Musics, Fifteen Great Traditions, ed. by Michael Church
> 
> ...


Great looking book - definitely will be one I will get. Perfect for this thread.


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## Comity (Nov 8, 2020)

The label Ocora is great for this sort of stuff. I'd list some that I've enjoyed, but much of it was stuff I found at the library and in Arabic script (which I can't read).


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I used to listen to this Indian music Internet radio a lot.

https://mio.to/Classical

They have a whole section on Indian Classical Music.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Comity said:


> The label Ocora is great for this sort of stuff. I'd list some that I've enjoyed, but much of it was stuff I found at the library and in Arabic script (which I can't read).


This link has their entire catalog with free listening.

https://en.cezame-fle.com/liste_albums.php?id_catalogue=121600


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Why should they be? Those are the defining attributes of Western Classical Music - but those attributes do not define "art music."
> 
> I welcome this thread.


My post wasn't prescriptive or elitist in that way. I was just wondering if those attributes were present in other classical traditions to any extent.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Traditional or classical music from other cultures requires some adjustments, for the Western listener. Most don't use the 12-tone chromatic scale, and so require a little exposure before this stops sounding "dissonant." There's also a profound difference in the sense of time, particularly in Indian and other SE Asian music. They can go on for a half hour in one simple progression.

African and a lot of Caribbean music (and Jamaican) emphasize different beats that we're used to, the 2 and 4 instead of the 1 and 3. Time signatures can be wildly complex and hard to follow, especially since our counting techniques no longer work.

Not all world music is complex. I find Native American and Vietnamese and Filipino music to be pretty repetitive, while Chinese and Balinese and Eastern European music can put Western music to shame in terms of complexity and depth. Of course Western music varies in complexity a lot too, with "ornamental music" like Mozart being pretty formulaic.

Just MHO.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> My post wasn't prescriptive or elitist in that way. I was just wondering if those attributes were present in other classical traditions to any extent.


In response to your line of questioning, the two forms of art music that come to mind are Chinese, specifically for the guqin, and north and south Indian, generally.

There are thousands of years of documentation of music theory and playing techniques surrounding the guqin. I know this is a little tangential since you asked about theory specifically, but there is extremely detailed guqin tablature describing performances of specific pieces dating back to the 7th century - and when I say detailed, I mean, for example, specifying which of literally dozens of forms of vibrato were applied to the beginning, middle, and end of each note. So at least from the point of view of engaging in a productive dialogue with a documented history, or understanding contemporary performance in the context of historical developments, guqin music is far ahead of WAM, where we still have debates about fairly fundamental aspects of performance practice only a few hundred years ago. I don't know as much about the 'pure theory' of Chinese art music, except that in the absence of sophisticated harmonic systems, monophonic melody has been invested with an almost inconceivable degree of nuance and complexity.

Indian music theory maybe is more what you're looking for, because it consists of a huge body of written literature, also dating back millennia, which is indeed purely theoretical rather than emphasizing the performance practice of this or that instrument. The Indian understanding of pitch classification and interrelationship, grounded in the subcontinent's much earlier development of mathematical and scientific approahces to music, is, from a certain point of view, much more sophisticated than that of WAM. To be a little reductive, we can say that in order to make way for ideas around harmonic motion, WAM sacrifices a certain amount of nuance with regard to the near-infinite complexity of actual pitch consonance. Here is some more information if you are curious: https://sama66.github.io/q3/articles/2016/05/01/fundamental-concepts-of-dhrupad/

Apart from these, to my very limited knowledge, other music theories I can name only fall into the well-organized and extensively developed categories, rather than notated or written.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)




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## Celine (Dec 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Why should they be? Those are the defining attributes of Western Classical Music - but those attributes do not define "art music."
> 
> I welcome this thread.


I mean a basis in Craft of the Western tradition when I say Art Music. Classical to me means the period. I don't care for the music of other cultures, so I leave ya all to your interests.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

I am very fond of the Iranian-American composer, Shahrdad Rohani.

Check out the below, he is performing his "Ozra Dance" on piano himself with the Orion Symph Orchestra in London.
He has some other nice compositions for Piano and Orchestra too.

Not sure whether that qualifies as non-western music but there are certain rhythmic elements of Persian classical music in this I believe....


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Persian classical music:


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Saibara is a genre of measured Japanese court song that developed at the Japanese court in the 9th and 10th centuries. It is one of the 3 main bodies of music and dance covered by the term _gagaku_. Instruments accompanying saibara are divided up into three choirs:

Woodwind instruments: ryūteki, hichiriki, shō without harmony
String instruments: biwa and koto
Percussion instrument: shakūbyōshi

All of the pitched instruments play the same melody, but with frequent octave changes and other embellishments. The koto, which can play multiple pitches at once, typically plays the melody in two or more octaves at once. The clappers play an ostinato (the same rhythm over and over again); there are two patterns, one in four counts and one in eight.

Minoyama (Mountain of Deep Beauty) is an anonymous piece from the 12th century.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Saibara is a genre of measured Japanese court song that developed at the Japanese court in the 9th and 10th centuries.


How much Western classical music from the 9th and 10th Centuries still exists?


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Persian classical music:


Very soothing sound. Sounds similar to Baroque music. I believe Persian classical music is very ancient and old, so maybe thats why the similarities...


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Saibara is a genre of measured Japanese court song that developed at the Japanese court in the 9th and 10th centuries. It is one of the 3 main bodies of music and dance covered by the term _gagaku_. Instruments accompanying saibara are divided up into three choirs:


Thank you for posting this, I really enjoyed it! I have listened to a fair amount of gagaku but never to this subgenre(??), and I am typically drawn more towards small-ensemble / chamber-music textures anyway so I will have to dig deeper. I was also surprised to find that the singing reminded me of India's dhrupad singing in its emphasis on and attention to controlled overtones alongside the fundamental.



Axter said:


> Very soothing sound. Sounds similar to Baroque music. I believe Persian classical music is very ancient and old, so maybe thats why the similarities...


I agree that this is a very soothing sound, but I am fairly confident that actually the reason this sounds similar to Western art music is that this artist is playing in an extremely Western-influenced and nontraditional way, thinking in terms of chords and harmonic movement which is historically foreign to Persian classical music. There's nothing wrong with that, of course - I just think it's important to note.

Anyway, lately I've been enjoying recordings of China's sizhu chamber music, which first developed around the 1870s in southern urban areas and features a rather extremely developed sense of heterophony:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Two traditional musics of Morocco are Gharnati and Malhun, somewhat similar. Here is Rym Hakiki with an example of Gharnati. Gharnati songs begin slowly but build in in tempo and animation as the song progresses.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Saibara is a genre of measured Japanese court song that developed at the Japanese court in the 9th and 10th centuries. It is one of the 3 main bodies of music and dance covered by the term _gagaku_.


This is really cool! There has to be so many interesting overtones and rich harmonies that inevitably get lost in the recording, I feel like you have to hear this live to really hear what its about. My ear had to adjust to the 'dissonance' which first registered as being out of tune and once it did I thought it sounded really cool. The atmosphere is meditative and sort of surreal.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Axter said:


> Very soothing sound. Sounds similar to Baroque music. I believe Persian classical music is very ancient and old, so maybe thats why the similarities...


I hear the Baroque comparison as well. For starters that dulcimer is very reminiscent of the harpsichord and there's a lush dense texture with elements of counterpoint. It's also has that sense of less emphasis being placed on linearality (is that a word? Lol) like Baroque is too.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

NoCoPilot said:


> How much Western classical music from the 9th and 10th Centuries still exists?


A lot. The repertory of the various types of plainchant (Gregorian, Ambrosian, Byzantine, Visigothic) is large and much of it dates from well before the 9th century. And organa, examples of early polyphony, date from the 10th century.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)




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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Also here's some interesting reading about the scale system of traditional Arabic music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_maqam

Here's an example of some instrumental music in the Bayati بياتي mode:


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Also here's some interesting reading about the scale system of traditional Arabic music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_maqam
> 
> Here's an example of some instrumental music in the Bayati بياتي mode:


This is awesome! I love that rolling/grooving sense of rhythm in Arabic/Ottoman classical musics. It occurs to me that no other self-styled art music has that - I'm thinking of India and Korea as the other art musics which put a lot of emphasis on drumming, but even in both of those traditions drums don't exactly 'groove' like this...


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

This makes me addicted, sooo beautiful


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## juliante (Jun 7, 2013)

Love this!

Reminds me of an album i have always loved - Turkuler Sevdamiz from 1997 - not sure it is classical, but seems to have been inspired by this classical arabic sound to me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*Thai Classical Music*
The Prasit Thawon Ensemble









Never heard this before; interesting.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> *Thai Classical Music*
> The Prasit Thawon Ensemble
> 
> View attachment 148532
> ...


This sounds like free jazz :lol:
I really dig it.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

This is pretty blatantly off-topic, but SanAntone posting about Thai music jogged my memory that the Thai Elephant Orhcestra exists, an elephant conservation refuge in Thailand that...well, it's pretty self-explanatory:


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

I have a small (6 discs) SACD collection of traditional korean music.

(all on the Akdang label; a korean audiophile SACD label) => http://akdang.co.kr/?page_id=86

In this piece a gayageum is heard (a zither-like instrument) =>





In the next clip the "gagok" style of singing can be heard. (The first "gagok" songs date from the early 15th century.) =>


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> I have a small (6 discs) SACD collection of traditional korean music.
> 
> (all on the Akdang label; a korean audiophile SACD label)


WOW! this is an amazing resource! I will be exploring this label's recordings.



GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> This is pretty blatantly off-topic, but SanAntone posting about Thai music jogged my memory that the Thai Elephant Orhcestra exists


I got a kick out of this



SanAntone said:


> *Thai Classical Music*
> The Prasit Thawon Ensemble
> 
> View attachment 148532
> ...


This reminds me of (and I'm sure is related to) what is possibly my favorite world classical music tradition, that of Burma/Myanmar, half of which sounds like this:






and half of which consists of extremely delicate harp/flute/vocal chamber ensembles...


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## open (Jan 8, 2021)

One type of African music I really enjoy is the tchinkoumé. It's actually a sort of folk music in the form of epic poetry with amazing polyrhythms from Benin.










I also wonder whether Moroccan gnawa counts  This is a simpler, more hypnotic type. I guess it is akin to Western sacred music?


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I'm aware it's not good forum etiquette, but I thought this was worth bumping. It's a good thread to have around and enough people are clearly interested in it.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

juliante said:


> Love this!
> 
> Reminds me of an album i have always loved - Turkuler Sevdamiz from 1997 - not sure it is classical, but seems to have been inspired by this classical arabic sound to me.


Türkü is a turkish folk song.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I'm aware it's not good forum etiquette, but I thought this was worth bumping. It's a good thread to have around and enough people are clearly interested in it.


I completely agree!

Recently I've been really excited about the Ethiopian harp, the bagana, which is mythologically connected to the harp of king david. It uses similar technology to the Indian tanpura to give each note a kind of buzzy, complex, overtone-rich sound. It's traditionally been played for meditation and self-cultivation among the upper classes. These videos are pretty good but don't fully capture just how bassy and rich the sound is:











I've also been delving recently into non-western approaches to 'harmoniousness' and pitch hierarchy - gamelan's embrace of auditory 'beating' is pretty mindblowing to me.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Another little thread bump for a thread that’s easy to forget!
Amjad Ali Khan (Sarod) - Raga Darbari. Label - Odeon ECSD 2824 (vinyl)


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Re my previous post I should have said that it is a stunning piece of playing by Amjad Ali Khan. I always had huge regard for Ali Akbar Khan but Amjad is up there.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

^^^ I listened to that back a while ago when you posted it. The range of expression in that sitar music is really incredible. It's like sitting down and listening to someone bear their soul to you in an intimate conversation. The vast spectrum of tones they have at their disposal compared to western music gives the expressive range a ton of depth too.

I've been listening to some of the Egyptian icon Umm Kuthluum. I'm really love the complexity and thick harmonies of the orchestration s and this is the closest thing I've heard to non-Western music using vertical harmony and complex arrangements. The composers are partially European influenced, I'm fairly sure, which would explain the extensive use of vertical harmony. Umm Kuthluum's rich contralto is something truly special.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I was into "World Music" even before it was called "World Music"; back when it was filed under "Ethnic". I like all kinds of non-Western music traditions: Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Iranian, Gamelan, African, Native American, Hawaiian, etc. Ravi Shankar is a favorite of mine, as well as Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble that I saw in concert at Tanglewood a few years back. Even so, I'm reluctant to talk about World Music because I don't want to speak out of ignorance. Sampling just a handful of CDs from the vast and culturally diverse landscape of India or China; let alone both of them, is just scratching the surface; like trying to understand the whole of European classical music by way of that old set they used to advertise on TV back in the 1970s/80s:


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I've been listening to some of the Egyptian icon Umm Kuthluum. I'm really love the complexity and thick harmonies of the orchestration s and this is the closest thing I've heard to non-Western music using vertical harmony and complex arrangements. The composers are partially European influenced, I'm fairly sure, which would explain the extensive use of vertical harmony. Umm Kuthluum's rich contralto is something truly special.


Thanks for posting this, I'm really enjoying it, and have been meaning to explore Umm Kulthum for a while... as for the orchestration, I remember reading that the history of Egyptian music in the 20th century begins with the traditional Arabic heterophonic / semi-improvisatory 'takht' ensemble of 2-5 musicians, and then through a series of rather 'top-down' state decisions and conferences in Egypt the takht is expanded gradually into the contemporary 'firqa' orchestra, with no improvisation, heavily western-influenced arrangements, and obviously a preponderance of string players... I too love this sound and want to hear more of it, but it's also kind of a shame that, as far as I know, the heterophonic pseudo-group-improv version of the takht is basically an extinct tradition. As for vertical harmonies and complex arrangements, probably the closest thing that comes to mind for me is certain varieties of gamelan which I'm sure you've heard...


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I've been exploring a good bit of Indian music lately. (I've been absent from TC lately because I've found I'd rather just listen to music rather than talk about it, which removes the immediacy and creates abstraction). It's really clicked with me lately and I'm fascinated by the idea of how the subtlety, complexity, and expression is contained within the horizontal, the melody. What Indian classical lacks in vertical harmony and polyphony they more than make up for the in the mountainous altitudes and valleys that the melodic lines traverse in a way that western music doesn't quite achieve, at least from my experience. However, I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with it sometimes. Improvisation over a single drone for 20min can sound really stale and unenjoyable to me.

I discovered a cellist Saskia-Rao de Haas who incorporated the cello into Indian classical and even had a luthier created a special cello for her that is tailor made to the Indian style. Her playing is absolutely mesmerizing and it blew the door to a whole different dimension wide open for me I don't know existed.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

cheregi said:


> Thanks for posting this, I'm really enjoying it, and have been meaning to explore Umm Kulthum for a while... as for the orchestration, I remember reading that the history of Egyptian music in the 20th century begins with the traditional Arabic heterophonic / semi-improvisatory 'takht' ensemble of 2-5 musicians, and then through a series of rather 'top-down' state decisions and conferences in Egypt the takht is expanded gradually into the contemporary 'firqa' orchestra, with no improvisation, heavily western-influenced arrangements, and obviously a preponderance of string players... I too love this sound and want to hear more of it, but it's also kind of a shame that, as far as I know, the heterophonic pseudo-group-improv version of the takht is basically an extinct tradition. As for vertical harmonies and complex arrangements, probably the closest thing that comes to mind for me is certain varieties of gamelan which I'm sure you've heard...


Something that's crossed my mind when listening to Umm Kulthuum: how did the composers notate these arrangements? How'd they account for the microtones and make sure all the musicians were on the same page?

I love the sound of it too. To a Western listener such as myself, the constant heterophony and homophony of the orchestra can sound sort of bland to me though.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I discovered a cellist Saskia-Rao de Haas who incorporated the cello into Indian classical and even had a luthier created a special cello for her that is tailor made to the Indian style. Her playing is absolutely mesmerizing and it blew the door to a whole different dimension wide open for me I don't know existed.


I love the sound of this cello! Do you have a sense of what it is about this performance that strikes you so differently from other Indian classical performances? To me the main difference seems to be how much lower-pitched it is, haha.



GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Something that's crossed my mind when listening to Umm Kulthuum: how did the composers notate these arrangements? How'd they account for the microtones and make sure all the musicians were on the same page?
> 
> I love the sound of it too. To a Western listener such as myself, the constant heterophony and homophony of the orchestra can sound sort of bland to me though.


Great question about notation, I have absolutely no idea.

I agree about the blandness, that's what interests me about the smaller takht ensemble - as far as I understand it's everybody independently being as improvisatory as the drums are in the firqa style, and of course the drums are the most dynamic exciting part of the mix, right?


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

cheregi said:


> I love the sound of this cello! Do you have a sense of what it is about this performance that strikes you so differently from other Indian classical performances? To me the main difference seems to be how much lower-pitched it is, haha.


I think you're right. One would be hard pressed to find another equivalent in Indian music to Saskia's cello's lower register. It adds a whole different dimension of sonic possibilities. I also think the natural growl of the cello suits the music really well.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

On the North American Guqin Association website, they recommended an anthology of 8 volumes that offer an overview of 9 different guqin schools: Guangling, Yushan, Fanchuan, Jiuyi, Xinzhe, Zhucheng, Meian, Huaiyang, and Lingnan. The album was originally recorded in the 1950s and feature 22 different musicians. I was able to find it on Tidal, but the 2nd volume was missing. 

There are also have different series of different instruments, but I'm trying this first.

Here is the 1st track of the 1st volume on YouTube.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> On the North American Guqin Association website, they recommended an anthology of 8 volumes that offer an overview of 9 different guqin schools: Guangling, Yushan, Fanchuan, Jiuyi, Xinzhe, Zhucheng, Meian, Huaiyang, and Lingnan. The album was originally recorded in the 1950s and feature 22 different musicians. I was able to find it on Tidal, but the 2nd volume was missing.
> 
> There are also have different series of different instruments, but I'm trying this first.
> 
> Here is the 1st track of the 1st volume on YouTube.


I'm a huge fan of this anthology, and I hope you enjoy it too!

A couple important things to note: this was recorded as kind of an ethnomusicological project, with recordists using government funding to travel the countryside seeking out guqin players, at a time when guqin playing was a dying (not yet revived) art form. Most of the musicians recorded were very old and often out of practice, but enthusiastically prepared in advance of the recording sessions. Another important thing is that these recordings feature guqins with silk strings, producing a more overtone-rich sound which I prefer over the steel-string sound you hear almost universally today.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

cheregi said:


> I'm a huge fan of this anthology, and I hope you enjoy it too!
> 
> A couple important things to note: this was recorded as kind of an ethnomusicological project, with recordists using government funding to travel the countryside seeking out guqin players, at a time when guqin playing was a dying (not yet revived) art form. Most of the musicians recorded were very old and often out of practice, but enthusiastically prepared in advance of the recording sessions. Another important thing is that these recordings feature guqins with silk strings, producing a more overtone-rich sound which I prefer over the steel-string sound you hear almost universally today.


So far, I'm really digging into the anthology. I'm currently listening to the 4th volume.

While listening to it, I did notice there is a difference of the tone of the guqin that is played than what I would normally hear, as you said. To me, the silk string guqin's notes sound more "sharper" than the steal string one. I also notice that the playing style feature on the anthology is slower paced and full of nuance compared to other performance, where nowaday version tend to be more rushed to build "drama".

I have listened to your recommendation for the guqin, where you recommended Tsar Teh-yun's disciples, and I really like it for the variation and tension in their music.

One thing, does puzzle me. There is a "swoosh" sound, that I think the musician create on the guqin which add a "horizontal" tension alongside the melody for me. Is this an example of extended technique, and what is the purpose behind it?

For a reference to what I'm referring to, at 0:35 to 0:45 on this track, you can faintly make out the shoosh sound alongside the string notes.






I really enjoyed my journey in Classical Chinese Music, and thank you for your guidance on a prior thread. I'm thinking of listening to the pipa instrument after this. The anthology has a series of the instrument. Have you listened to that series yet, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> So far, I'm really digging into the anthology. I'm currently listening to the 4th volume.
> 
> While listening to it, I did notice there is a difference of the tone of the guqin that is played than what I would normally hear, as you said. To me, the silk string guqin's notes sound more "sharper" than the steal string one. I also notice that the playing style feature on the anthology is slower paced and full of nuance compared to other performance, where nowaday version tend to be more rushed to build "drama".
> 
> ...


I'd forgotten about that post - I'm glad you found it useful!

The swoosh sound you describe is one of my favorite elements of guqin technique. Basically, as far as I know, it is the sound of the fingers sliding along the strings themselves, which have a rough texture. More than that, though, it is regarded as the _qi_ (life force) of the instrument, and in many instances the player is expected to continue performing certain slides even when the sound of the plucked string has already died out, so that the only audible sound is the 'swoosh' - ideally the audience sees the guqin player do this and mentally fills in the implied sounds, but obviously it also has an impact as a purely auditory experience. There is something more powerful, or differently powerful, about musical sound being implied in this way rather than actually produced...

As for the pipa compilation, I have yet to listen, but I am curious what you think! My only way into framing and thinking about pipa music is via this one rather cryptic youtube comment embedded in a discussion of string gauges: "In the past, it was not uncommon for pipa players to also play the guqin (I guess representing the Dionysian and Apollonian sides of China's musical culture)" - i.e., in the Nietzschean sense. Another thing worth noting is that the pipa is a Chinese adaptation of middle eastern oud-like instruments arriving via the silk road, and certain aspects of its playing style also derive from that source.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

I been listening to another recording that feature Zeng Chengwei and Yu Shaoze, guqin musicians belonging to the Shu school. The track of "Running Water" was different from other rendition as it sounds more turbulent.






This is from Wikipedia, concerning the Shu sxhool's style:



> Historically, the Shu style is described in literature as "restlessly fast and unrestrained, with magnificence of momentum" (躁急奔放、氣勢宏偉). This is due to the nature of the environment which Sichuan is, with high mountains, deep valleys and fast flowing rivers, which are the main influences for the players and composers of the music.


I'm currently listening to the 1st volume of the pipa compilation.


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