Semiotics
of Music and Mediation, June 10-14. 6. 2006. Organizer: Music and media
research group. Academy of
Finland & University of Helsinki. Co-organizer: International Summer School for Semiotic and
Structural Studies. Imatra, Valtionhotelli.
Directors: Erkki Pekkilä (Helsinki), Rick Littlefield (Michigan) Invited
speakers: David Neumeyer (Texas-Austin.), Leslie C. Gay Jr. (Tennessee),
and Rimantas Astrauskas (Vilnius).
PROGRAM
Saturday,
June 10
18.00
Opening of the International Summer School for Semiotic and Structural
Studies
Imatra
Cultural Centre, Karelia Hall . Garden
Party after the Opening. Bus leaves from front of Valtionhotelli to
Cultural Cetre at 17.30
Sunday , June 11
Chair:
Erkki
Pekkilä
9.00-9.15 Opening
9.15-9.45
Rimantas Astrauskas (Vilnius): Music in Mass Media:
From Ideology to Advertising.
9.45-10.30 Richard Littlefield (Michigan): New Media Coercion: A
Semiotics of Musical Athmospheres.
10.30-11.00 Coffee
11.00-11.45 Henry
Bacon (Helsinki): How Music Adapts to Soundtrack
11.45-12.30
Andrew L. Kaye (Pensylvania): The Foley Stage and the
Science Fiction Musical Motif in World Cinema
12.30-14.00 Lunch
Chair:
David
Neumeyer
14.00-14.45
Gershon Stern (Jerusalem): A possible signature in
Bartók's "Music for Strings, Celesta, and Percussion"
14.45-15.30
Yves Senden (Antwerp): The Use of Representation in
Frederic Rzewki's Oratorio "Triumph of Death"
15.30-16.00 Coffee
16.00-16.30 Eila Tarasti (Helsinki): Juha by Nyrki Tapiovaara and Helvi
Leiviskä
16.30-17.00
Lina Navickeite (Helsinki): Mediating Musical
Performance: Styles, Identities, Reproduction
17.00-17.15 Break
17.15-18.15 Plenary Lecture: Gianfranco Marrone
(Palermo, Bologna): L'invention du texte (In Imatra Hall)
18.15 Dinner
19.30 Imatra Rapids surge
20.30 Film Evening: Aki
Kaurismäki: Lights in the Dusk. Imatra Cultural
Centre, Karelia Hall
Bus
leaves from front of Valtionhotelli to Cultural Centre at 20.00.
Monday,
June 12
Chair:
Andrew
Kaye
9.00-9.45
Gianfranco Marrone (Palermo, Bologna): Music and Drugs:
A Clockwork Orange as a 'Reference Myth'"
9.45-10.30
David Neumeyer: Music and Mediation with Images in
Motion: Priorities and Method in the Study of Film Music
10.30-11.00 Coffee
11.00-11.45
Leslie C. Gay (Knoxville, Tennesee): Technocultural Mediations
of Place.
11.45-12.30
Ano Sirppiniemi (Helsinki): Home Studio Aesthetics:
Technologically Oriented Practices of Popular Music Production as Cultural
Semiotics Constructs.
12.30-14.00 Lunch
Chair:
Richard
Littlefield
14.00-14.45 Nicolai Joergensgaard Graakjaer (Aahlborg): Commercial
Music and
Transmutations in Musical Meaning Potentials
14.45
-15.30 Erkki Pekkilä: Music Videos and Television Commercials:
Some Similarities and Differences
15.30-16.00 Coffee
16.00-16.45
John Richardson (Jyväskylä): "Pane Maija
Vilkkumaan": cultural dialogics and identity politics in contemporary
Finnish rock
16.45-17.15 Break
17.15-18.
15 Plenary
lecture: Jørgen Dines Johansen (Odense): Aesthetics, Semiotic, and Evolution
(In Imatra Hall)
17.15-18.15 Yleisöluento: Pirjo Kukkonen: Hiljaisuuden
monet merkit
(Koski-salissa)
18.15
Dinner or Sauna Evening
Bus leaves to Sauna Evening from front of
Valtionhotelli at 18.15.
Tuesday,
June 13
Chair:
Rimantas
Astrauskas
9.00-9.45 Alla
Ablova (Helsinki): On Reflecting the Soundscape in Saam Mythology (Based on
Myths Dedicated to the Theme of Turning into Stone)
9.45-10.30
Matthew Dorman (Santa Barbara): Urbanism and expressions
of
change in Finnish
popular music.
10.30-11.00
Coffee
11.00-11.45
Dario Martinelli (Helsinki): Authenticity and Inauthenticity in popular
music: The Music and Media Part.
11.45-12.30
Laura Ahonen (Helsinki): Anonymous Identities and
Imaginary Histories – the Disguised Author Image of Daft Punk.
12.30-14.00 Lunch
Chair:
Leslie
Gay
14.00-14.45
Franco Fabbri (Torino): Sound the Trumpet: Media and
Intertextuality across Music Genres
14.45-15.30
Arto Vilkko (Helsinki): Similarity and Repetition within
Leading Radio Music Formats in Finland. An Introduction to Playlist Theory
15.30-16.00 Coffee
16.00-16.45
Henry Broms (Nice): The semiotics of jazz.
16.45-17.00 Closure
17.00-17.15 Break
17.15-18.15
Plenary Lecture: Jacques Fontanille (Limoges) Les valeurs semiotiques, entre
esthetique et ethique (In Imatra Hall)
18.15 Dinner
20.30 Concert
Imatra
Cultural Centre, Karelia Hall
Bus
leaves from front of Valtionhotelli to Cultural Centre at 20.00.
Wednesday,
June 14
Return
to Helsinki
ABSTRACTS
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ALLA ABLOVA
ON
REFLECTING THE SOUNDSCAPE IN SAAM MYTHOLOGY (BASED ON MYTHS DEDICATED TO THE THEME
OF TURNING INTO STONE)
The
research is dedicated to the problem of soundscape that is understood in a
semiotic sense. This topic is becoming more and more relevant today. The term
soundscape is taken from the R. Murray Schafer's book The Tuning of the World
(1977). In this research the world model sound code will be discussed,
especially its transposition into the verbal level. The sources for the work
are Saam myths dedicated to turning into stone topic. The problem that I have selected and
underlined in Saam myths is not incidental. It is associated with sieidi cult,
which is spread among this nation. The complexity of the world model is very
much seen in these myths. In my work there were created dictionaries of objects
and predicates that have been acquired from Saam myths and that are describing
the sound nature of myths. To be more precise, we speak about those objects and
predicates, to which the world model attributes sound faculties.
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LAURA AHONEN
ANONYMOUS
IDENTITIES AND IMAGINARY HISTORIES – THE DISGUISED AUTHOR IMAGE OF DAFT PUNK
In
my paper, I deal with the question of the visual author image – or rather its
rejection – and the role of the visuality in the making and marketing of
popular music. The focus of the examination lies especially in the visual
promotion of popular music, even though it is clear that the visual imagery is
only one element – together with the musical works, reviews, interviews, and so
on – of which the artist’s public image consists. What seems to also be clear
is that in addition to artists whose authorship reminds that of a traditional
pop star, there are artists whose author images are rather based on the sense
of anonymity. However, even though the visual appearance of such artists remains a mystery, the visual imagery that is built
around the artist’s public visibility must be replaced by another set of
images. Usually, the visual image of such artists is a fairly scattered one as
the artist’s face is substituted for logos, symbols, masks and disguises. As an example of such artist, I examine the
authorship of the French duo Daft Punk and its way of creating an alternative
author image in comparison with the more familiar and more visible way of
authoring popular music. What, thus, seems to be common to the artists with
faceless images is the idea of the author-subject as a variable and a
fragmented category. Instead of focusing on the
construction of one specific star persona, it is typical of an artist of
electronic dance music either to stay anonymous or to adopt a number of
different identities. The anonymity or the plurality of the images further
calls into question the way of seeing the artist’s persona as a unified whole,
and moreover, connects the anonymous aesthetics to the postmodern theory.
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RIMANTAS ASTRAUSKAS
MUSIC
IN MASS MEDIA: FROM IDEOLOGY TO ADVERTISING
John
Fiske in his “Introduction to Communication Studies” (2nd ed.,
London & New York: Routledge, 1997) pointed out two main aspects in
communication – processual and signifying constructions. If signifying results
or creative works are main concern of semiotics, the processual aspects of
investigation mainly falls into domain of psychology and sociology. An urgent
reality is that processual and mediative aspects of musical
communication becomes more and more important in nowadays world. With
increasing roles of mass means of communication, especially television and
internet, we face significant changes happening in music-society relationship.
Mass media systems has always been much more influenced by politics and
economics and this influence now is also extended to music, literature and
other arts as well as to various intermedia and multimedia works. Recent
Lithuanian history could provide an account of empirically rich ethnographic
studies materials to illustrate attempts by ruling power to influence music creative
process and dissemination through political instruments and ideology. Mass
media is powerful political instrument and it is not exception that the main
fights during our independence were for the control of television, radio and
transmitters. After regaining of independence political control of the soviet
ideology seased to exist but a new economical realities have come. Mass media
have become totally commercialized and rating system of commercial evaluation
of broadcasts took under control music translations even in the state
companies. Professional and traditional music now is nearly distinct from the
TV programs as usually they have low rating. Although it is rarely used in
marketing and advertisements with aim to catch attention, bind consumers’ emotions
and need to buy a specific product or engage in a particular activity.
Denotative messages never supposed to be economically efficient. Connotative
ability of music is often used in advertisements and video clips and ensures a
good commercial results. J.Friske’s suggested ethnographic approach to media
studies close to that of fieldwork techniques used by ethnomusicologists could
be the best possible for research in communication processes.
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HENRY BACON
HOW
MUSIC ADAPTS TO SOUNDTRACK
It
the course of film history most types and trends of music have found their way
into soundtracks. But different kinds of music are amenable to dramatic
treatment in very different ways. The presentation will provide a brief survey
into the musical, social and economic factors that have influenced the way
music of various sorts has been used in films
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MATHEW JOHN DORMAN
URBANISM AND EXPRESSIONS
OF CHANGE IN FINNISH POPULAR MUSIC.
Musicians’ exploration of the modern city has informed
popular music in distinct ways. The connection is often evoked in general by
way of sentiments associated with ideas of heterogeneity, density, distance,
movement and size. This is ostensibly evident in lyrics, sounds, and videos.
But what is less evident is what this entails in terms of spatial practice and
conceptions of space. Drawing on recent fieldwork in Finland, as well as
spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre and others, I examine the implications
urbanism in relation to Finnish popular music and culture, exploring
contrastive notions of rural/urban, local/translocal, distance/closeness, and
nature/city.
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FRANCO FABBRI
SOUND THE TRUMPET. MEDIA AND INTERTEXTUALITY ACROSS MUSIC
GENRES
Fabrizio
De André (1940-1999) is probably the best known Italian 'cantautore'
(singer-songwriter). 'La canzone di Marinella' (1964) is the song who made him
famous, and one of the classics of the genre. An analysis of this and other
songs reveals a widespread network of intertextual relations, and shows a
contradiction between the ideology of the 'canzone d'autore' (as the genre of
individual authors, of 'poets') and real songwriting and performing practices
in popular music. It also shows how meanings are suggested, codified,
transformed into clichés, in the continuous flow of musical code from genre to
genre, from medium to medium. Examples
are drawn from classical music, film music, jazz, pop songs, singer-songwriter
genre. In some cases, it will be shown how the same (or a very similar) piece
of musical code is interpreted in the framework of different genres, and is
associated to different meanings.
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LESLIE C. GAY JR.
TECHNOCULTURAL MEDIATIONS OF PLACE
This
paper examines social configurations shaped by alignments of music, technology,
and place. Through an analysis of three music places, the Mississippi Delta,
Tin Pan Alley, and a Central Park concert in New York, I question distinctions
between technology and culture, specifically, the often-held notion that
technologies are neutral, a kind of colorless
background to our lives. Rather, drawing upon a sense of “mediation” as a means
to reconcile interdependent states or conditions, I argue that technologies
today exist squarely in the middle of expressive culture, that is, as
technoculture, informing and infusing aspects of our lives and musical
experience.
Mediations
between technologies and human behavior, however, are rarely thoroughly traced
in music scholarship, a bias examined further in this paper. Yet, technologies
are increasingly difficult to ignore in this new century — tied to all forms of
musical practice — making such bias detrimental to our work as scholars.
Finally then, I argue that understanding the relationships among musical
practices, human behavior, and technologies have emerged as paramount for
musicological research today.
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NICOLAI JOERGENSGAARD GRAAKJAER
COMMERCIAL
MUSIC AND TRANSMUTATIONS IN MUSICAL MEANING POTENTIALS
This
presentation examines the mediations of a pre-existing song in a series of TV
commercials for JYSK (a Danish based supplier of articles of bedding).
The song in question, composed in 1846, was originally intended to help
strengthen regional identity and was supposed to appear as a community song at
a particular meeting for people in Jytland (a region in western Denmark). Due
to poor attendance the meeting was cancelled but subsequently the song has
found widespread use and is known to most Danes. Nowadays the first seven notes
of the song appear as a jingle in commercials for JYSK, and commercials
including this jingle have been broadcasted in radio and TV since April, 2004
both nationally (Denmark) and internationally (Finland, Sweden, Norway,
Polen). Mediated through both time and
space - and being subjected to structural changes - the songs meaning
potentials are exposed to transmutations in several ways. These transmutations
involve processes of both extraction and insertion of meaning
potentials. It shall be discussed how
the song has changed from expressing a socially exclusive statement to
expressing a socially inclusive appeal or interpellation (to
paraphrase the concept offered by Althusser). This has to do with the specific
audiovisual framing of the jingle, in that it, among other things and very
unusual for jingles more generally, appears diegetic with determining narrative
significance.
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ANDREW L. KAYE
THE FOLEY STAGE AND THE SCIENCE FICTION MUSICAL MOTIF IN WORLD
CINEMA
The
typologies of the cinematic soundtrack are an unexplored problem in world
musicology. It would seem that there are
four leading candidates for the typologies that have generally characterized
film scoring to the present time: 1) a
programmatic orchestral style largely based on 19th century European musical
praxis; 2) a lieder or song-story type, adjusted for national language and
local stylistic preference; 3) a dramatic use of outsider motifs to indicate
foreign or dramatic intervention; and finally 4) the use of abstracted and
modernist tonalities, often attached to the "Foley Stage" system, to
amplify action, or to convey a mysterious presence that no other musical type
allows. In this paper, I shall address
the development of this last type, from hints in the silent era (1890s-1920),
through the development of monster and mystery films of the early sound period
(late 1920s - 1930s) down to Slither (2006), Samurai 7 (2005)-a Japanese
science-fiction anime version of Kurosawa's samurai classic, and Africa's
Nollywoodian contribution to this genre, 31st Night.
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RICHARD LITTLEFIELD
NEW
MEDIA COERCION: A SEMIOTIC OF MUSICAL
ATMOSPHERICS
A
communications model is proposed, based on a theological re-interpretation of
the Peircean triad: Object (logos,
THE sender) -- Sign (rhema, univocal message) -- Interpretant (pistis,
knowledge acted on). That model is shown
to have been corrupted for coercive means; for example, as constructed by
existential models such as Object (noema, ANY sender) -- Sign (ikona,
polysemous message) -- Interpretant (gnosis, knowledge not acted on).
Various examples of music from web-games and other new media are used to
exemplify my "theo-semiotic," and the advantages it might have over
other models of communication.
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GIANFRANCO MARRONE
MUSIC
AND DRUGS: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AS A 'REFERENCE MYTH'
The
aim of my paper is to discuss the relationship between experiences with drugs
and musical/visual experiences from a socio-semiotic perspective. I show the
first results of a collective research on ‘altered senses’, where this topic is
explored in many directions; (i) showing how sensorial alterations caused by
drugs are ‘translated’ into different texts of pop culture; (ii) reconstructing
the reasons of all those subcultures
which originated on the basis of an alteration of the senses, achieved
through the simultaneous use of music and drugs (iii) proposing some formal
similarities – and the possible shifts – between music and drug
experiences. In particular, I'll
propose a comparative analysis of some texts, that
describe different processes of alteration, by referring to different drugs: A
Clockwork Orange by Burgess and Kubrick; hashish in Uccelli da gabbia e
da voliera by De Carlo; cocaine in Bright Lights, Big City by
McInerney; alcohol in Tratado sobre la resaca by Bas. What matters in
this comparison is that although they talk about different substances, all
these texts end up proposing, each one in a different way, types of
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations between substances that transcend the
substantialistic and traditionalistic distinction between these drugs.
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DARIO MARTINELLI
AUTHENTICITY AND INAUTHENTICITY IN POPULAR MUSIC I: THE MUSIC
AND MEDIA PART
The issue of authenticity is amazingly common in scholarly
and everyday talk about popular music. Normally, possibly always, the label
“authentic”, as applied to songs, authors, styles or else, has a clearly
positive connotation, as if it was a feature to pursue almost systematically,
when producing a piece of music. Apparently, the qualities associated to
authenticity are most of the times of ethical type: authentic popular music is
perceived as honest, simple-but-real, even loyal towards the audience: : “Funderburgh's economical guitar style is
precise, refined to make every note count — no over-the-top guitar pyrotechnics
here. The music is authentic, slow-burning blues drenched in a last-call,
late-night, one-more-for-the-road vibe”; or “If the music is authentic, the
message will be authentic.”
(retrieved from the Internet, at
www.thereader.com/createpage.asp?ContentID=1442m and
orgs.l3.drake.edu/times_d/01_02/sept/9_25/band.html).
The
present paper will classify the issue and apply it on the visual dimension of
popular music (videoclips, covers, etc.)
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LINA NAVICKAITE
MEDIATING
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: STYLES, IDENTITIES, REPRODUCTION
“Our
fine arts were developed, their types and uses were
established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of
action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing
growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained,
the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound
changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful” (Paul Valery). As this beautiful excerpt presupposes, and,
more relevantly, as the organizers of the Semiotics of Music and Mediation seminar
suggest, music nowadays has indeed become a global phenomena, where pieces or
styles either travel, “migrate” from one country to another, or appear
everywhere at once, through various means of reproduction and dissemination.
Taking these circumstances as a point of departure and applying them mostly to
the field of classical music performance, this paper will discuss the phenomenon
of mediating musical performance, as profoundly and diversely interdependent
with the processes of cultural migration. The main concern here is the gradual
assimilation of individual styles, and identities in the art of musical
performance that started with the invention of the gramophone and is relevant
especially nowadays in the age of the internet and cultural globalisation. Can
we still make any reasonable distinctions between the individual or, even, the collective styles in this context where national
and cultural diversities tend to interrelate and overlap? It is surely more
difficult to talk about the notion of the ‘school’, when an access to any kind
of information has so significantly increased in comparison with the times when
the only means of absorbing someone else’s knowledge, or getting acquainted
with a certain tradition, was a live interaction. Nowadays, the favourable conditions for the
traditionality of the musical performance art are provided not only by sound
recordings, but by all kinds of multiplied information. A significant
penetration of the media to musical life helps to create the stereotypes in the
minds of the listeners and potential performers. However, the
industrialization, commercialization of classical music through the records
will not be discussed in detail. More attention will be paid here to the
various aspects of how the mediating of music has influenced the world of
performing music. Provisionally, these could be defined as: 1) “The imaginary
museum of music” (Lydia Goehr); 2) market; 3) boundaries of the “national
school” tradition; 4) recording technologies.
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DAVID NEUMEYER
MUSIC
AND MEDIATION WITH IMAGES IN MOTION: PRIORITIES AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF FILM MUSIC
It is a commonplace
that the visual challenged the written for priority in the arts over the past
century, while recorded or reproduced sound also challenged live performance of
both speech and music. Thus, one can comfortably assert that the truly
characteristic aesthetic medium (the “high art”) of the recent past is the
sound feature film. The study of music
in film sound is still young (barely twenty years old in its modern
incarnation), but three strands can be readily identified: archival and
stylistic studies in musicology; critical and interpretive studies in
musicology, film studies, and literature studies; and sound studies, or study
of music as an element of the film soundtrack (and the soundtrack as one
instance of phenomena in a wider field of reproduced sound). Film music offers
a great deal of resistance to the traditional methods of music studies; it is
exactly this resistance that interests me. In addition, I think that the
traditional modes of reading – of both description and interpretation – in film
studies (grounded in semiotics, narratology, and critical theory) have much to
teach us about what happens to music when it becomes part of another text. The paper is structured around a set of
claims about film music and sound in the form of aphorisms and commentary.
Illustrations will be drawn from several feature films, including Sunset boulevard (1950), Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Rouge
(1994), and Godard’s Prénom Carmen (1982).
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ERKKI PEKKILÄ
MUSIC VIDEOS AND TELEVISION COMMERCIALS: SOME SIMILARITIES
AND DIFFERENCES
Television commercials are audiovisual texts that are both
related to films and music videos. Like films, music videos operate
simultaneously on several planes. Music, if there is any, interrelates with
song lyrics, speech (dialogue and voice over), visuals and graphics (written
text on the screen). Television commercials are persuasive communication and
created with a special goal in mind.
Much of the information in the commercials is there to evoke different
kinds of connotative meanings, these based on ideologies and myths. However,
the commercials might still be regarded as "producerly texts" (Fiske)
in that they often consists of fragmentary information on the basis of which
the viewer has to produce his or her own reading of the text. The reading is often based on the seeking of
pleasure, this being a typical characteristics of popular aesthetics and
popular culture in general. I shall exemplify my points with a Michelob beer
commercial that was based on a Steve Winwood's earlier music video.
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JOHN RICHARDSON
INTERTEXTUALITY AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN
CONTEMPORARY FINNISH ROCK: MAIJA VILKKUMAA AND
THE CRASH
Maija
Vilkkumaa's music has been called "intertextual" (Gargano &
Vilkkumaa 2004, 218). But what does it mean to say that a piece of music is
intertextual? Far from transparent, this is one of the most contested terms in
recent theory, describing a range of practices from overt allusion and parody
to general stylistic indebtedness. This paper inclines towards the dialogical
view of intertextuality espoused in recent popular music studies. Vilkkumaa's
music is well suited for testing such an apparatus. Appropriations and
transformations of "global" and "dominant" forms, including
the Renaissance dance 'Branle de l'Officiel' (better known as the carol 'Ding
Dong Merrily on High'), the novels and television series Anne of Green
Gables and Little House on the Prairie, and riffing from Led
Zeppelin's 'Kashmir', intersect in Vilkkumaa's music with a heightened sense of
the local that is always "double voiced". The paper's second section
is an analysis of the Crash's music video 'Still Alive' (dir. Pietiläinen), in
which a send up of conventions from musicals and the cop show Hill Street
Blues is enacted in an interplay of music, lyrics, and moving images that
points towards a heightened camp aesthetic. In their domestication of a range
of subjects and styles (Bakhtinian "speech genres"), both artists
have in different ways expanded the palette of practices available to rock
musicians in Finland in a manner that raises questions concerning identity
politics at the start of the new millennium.
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YVES SENDEN
THE USE OF REPRESENTATION IN FREDERIC RZEWSKI’S ORATORIO
“TRIUMPH OF DEATH”
The
semiotics of Peirce are used as a frame when
approaching Rzewski’s oratorio. The ontological and phenomenological dimensions
of the Peircean trichotomy not only offer the possibility to place this
oratorio in a postmodern perspective, but also provide methodic tools to
generate useful insights in the complex and multi-layered meaning of the work. Both genesis and elaboration of the musical
setting of Peter Weiss’ Holocaust play “die Ermittlung” first are analysed from
the composer’s point of view. The musical tools used to enhance meaning
initially are of an indexical or a common metaphorical nature and represent the
text in a conventional depicting way. However, from the moment the composer
begins to insert musical representational elements which deliberately alienate
from textual meaning, a remarkable new level of signification emerges. Though intended to enforce meaning, this
alienating approach is not generally accepted nor by critics nor by the
audience (cf. the composer’s comment: “people don’t want to hear this”). On
this second level of analysis is dealt with the influence of this oratorio as a
sign on the perceiver: hereby is focused on the interaction between acquired
beliefs and the blatant doubts that arise while listening to the oratorio. A third level of analysis deals with the
semiosis generated by the performer. For not only the perception by the audience
is controversial: also to the performers the abundance of ‘wrongly’ used
representation leads to the arousal of ethical objections. At a final level the attention is drawn to
the question to which extent the writing and performing of a musical work like
“Triumph of Death” can be accepted, tolerated or rejected.
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JULIA SHPINITSKAYA
CULTURAL MIGRANTS ACROSS THE MODERN BARDIC SUBCULTURES
Mediation
discloses the main channel of transportation of cultural information. It
certainly provides mixing procedures and brings up proliferation of the new
multicultural formations, the main subject of my study. This paper proceeds
from the case of bardic movements of the modern musical cultures and adjacent
musical currents. Though being deeply national phenomena, isolated and quite
closed by way of existence and functioning, these analogical subcultures
dissipated in the wide world discover a paradoxical situation in free
circulation of the elements and devices of genres-predecessors, contemporary
sources and genres-links. The bardic
subcultures, as I put them, are new-born in the XX-century, bard-related
movements. I am going to introduce the bard’s song, which is a very important
and leading art-layer in Russian culture for the last half-century. By the name
of the bardic subcultures I tend to unify musical-cultural analogies but also
similar and related tendencies of other countries. The paper will be concentrated
on the Russian bardic reality, on analyzing its system and infrastructure,
which absolutely incoherently and confusingly correspondence to multiple genres
and musical production of other subcultures and raise a complicated problem of
sources and genres’ relationship.
Meanwhile,
my viewpoint based on the integration of the cultural objects, not obviously
linked to each other, into the net of bardic and bard-related subcultures, may
help to recognize the bard’s song as a combination of many realities. The
bardic subcultures resulted on top of accumulation of different tendencies,
movements, genres, styles and musical systems by the way of forming up,
self-development and later influences and links. There will be shown musical
examples, which surprisingly reveal another cultural reality or demonstrate
appearance of similar, if not the same, cultural information in distant spots
of the world. In addition, I am approaching the musical examples with the
strategy of the Model Reader by Umberto Eco, in order to consider the
question of possible cultural reading.
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ANO SIRPPINIEMI
HOME STUDIO AESTHETICS: TECHNOLOGICALLY ORIENTED PRACTICES OF
POPULAR MUSIC PRODUCTION AS CULTURAL SEMIOTIC CONSTRUCTS
Home
studio technologies have their roots in different sound recording and
reproducing technologies of the 20th century, starting from the
microphone, loudspeaker and tape recorder and leading all the way to the
digital sound technologies of the 1980s and 1990s, such as digital
synthesizers, samplers and home studio software. In this paper I concentrate on
tracking different cultural aspects related to the software-based home studio
and different modes of musical agency facilitated by it. Traditionally, different research models
describing the music industry and popular music production practices have
concentrated on economic and/or technological aspect of these spheres of music
making. One such model has been presented by Leyshon (2001), in which he
describes the music industry as consisting of four spheres of activity
(creativity, production, distribution and consuming) that each have their own network of actors and modes of music related
agency. From a cultural or social
perspective, technologies could be thought of as social processes inscribed
into material artefacts, just as different decision-making processes can be
described as social technologies (Pitt 1990). Paul Théberge (2001) has claimed
that the gradual introduction of different music technologies into the
production practices of popular music during the last 50 years has been
primarily an aesthetic project, driven by changes in cultural concepts related
to music. One such change can be traced in the distinction between producing
and consuming music. These previously distinct modes of music agency
have lately become more and more difficult to tell apart, thanks to different
hybrid music technologies and ways of producing music that are based primarily
on consuming prefabricated sounds and technological artefacts (Théberge,
1997). By focusing on the cultural
processes related to music technology it becomes possible to conceive a model
of technologically oriented music cultures, or technocultures of music,
which would take into account the cultural and social processes
involved in the design and marketing processes as well as different use
practices of music and media technology. Music technologies such as recording
or synthesizer software can be seen as specific ways of making music that have
been inscribed in technological artefacts. For example, as Born (1999) has
noted, the design process of music software can be seen as a collective social process
that results in a textual artefact (the software itself). Similarly, different
music media can be seen as consisting of different technologies, users
and use contexts of technology.
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GERSHON STERN
A POSSIBLE SIGNATURE IN BARTÓK'S “MUSIC FOR STRINGS, CELESTA
AND PERCUSSION”
The
paper aims to highlight an observation made in the framework of a
"semiotic" investigation of the piece, in which several
layers/modalities of signifying were found, reffered to as "semiotic
levels". One of these, an early appearance of the extended fugue theme,
not mentioned in the existing analyses, may be construed to signify both as a
message and as a possible signature of the composer.
The
paper presents:
1)
the circumstances/premises of said investigation
2)
a brief survey os salient structural points as a
background necessary for the understanding of the new information
3)
the semiotic level of message/signature and
4)
prospective evaluations of validity
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EILA TARASTI
JUHA BY NYRKI
TAPIOVAARA AND HELVI LEIVISKÄ:
MUSIC IN THE INTERTEXTUAL SPACE OF MOVIE AND NOVEL
Juhani
Aho's (1861-11) novel Juha 1911, centers on a psychological triple drama: Juha,
the main protagonist, is a Finnish woodsman, a farmer who clears trees and
cultivates the land. Shemeikka, a young, dark-haired handsome man represents
the Russian-Carelian culture beyond the border, especially the tradition of the
East-Carelian peddlers or roving salesmen. He arrives at Juha's house middle in
the desert, forest, just to enjoy the woodman's hospitality, but later seduces
Juha's young spouse Marja. The narrative mode of the work is primally
realistic, while its topics also clearly allude to Kalevala. Thus the novel has
clear connections to the cultural movement called Carelianism which was
prevalent in Finland at the turn of the century. In 1936 the production company Aho &
Soldan decided to make a movie about Juha. To direct the film, they invited the
25 year-old film critic and actor Nyrki Tapiovaara. Thus Juha became the first
film directed by this pioneering Finnish movie-maker, who made only five films
altogether before he fell in the Winter War of 1940 at the age of just 28.
Tapiovaara's Juha was significant in yet another sense: it was one of the first Finnish movies with a
soundtrack. Furthermore, amusical score composed just for it by the young
female composer Helvi Leiviskä (1902-1982), who later became well-known as a
symphonist. When it is understood that the majority of the actors were either
beginners or amateurs like Valle Saikko, then the whole enterprise was quite
literally as being of an experimental avant-garde nature. Tapiovaara and his
film group wandered to Kuusamo in Northern Finland. In the movie, the scenes on the river were
filmed in the rapids of Oulankajoki. The
important role of Leiviskä's music is obvious: among the other things, it also
had to reflect the inner monologue of the protagonists of the movie. Leiviskä's
absolute music proved to be an eminently suitable, counterpoint to Tapiovaara's
visual narration - it provided the inner moment that is hard to reach in visual
discourse alone. The music therefore represents a kind of inner narrator and
listener. For instance, according to this principle, the folktune like melody,
which is heard when Shemeikka spends a night at Juha's house, is not merely a vocalize by Marja, but it reflects the atmosphere, the
erotic appeal and nature at the innermost level (diegetic music). Leiviskä also had mastered Hollywood's
'Mickey Mousing' effects, in which music iconically portrays physical and mental
gestures. Tapiovaara did not want
his film to echo of patriotism of 1930's by reflecting ideas of Great
Finland. As a member of Fire Bearers, he belonged to the leftist
intelligentsia. In his filmic narration, particularly in their dramatic climaxes
and in the abrupt shots from down to up, one sees influences from Sergei
Eisenstein (cf. the famous statues of lions in Potemkin). Tapiovaaras modernist filmic narration
tends to avoid such stereotyped topics (Proppian functions), striving instead to
capture as much as possible the physical and psychological content of the
events. One may say that the Juha by Leiviskä and Tapiovaara reflects the
concrete logics of the Finnish culture, which in turn instantiates a
Lévi-Straussian bricolage along with an aesthetics of
sense qualities: fishing, water, baking, sauna, scarf, summer, rapids, the
rhythm of the water, winter, cattle, smoke. And at their side appears a panoply of typically Finnish emotions: seriousness,
primitive eruptions, inner meditation, absoluteness, moral emotions like
goodness, evil, and in contrast to those, the Carelian lightness. Leiviskä's
music portrays precisely these qualities without any kind of operatic
exaggeration, although her music always contains a modicum of typically Finnish
gestures. Even in her later symphonies she was said to remain always on the
Finnish soil.
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ARTO VILKKO
SIMILARITY AND REPETITION WITHIN LEADING FINNISH RADIO
FORMATS
Radiomusic
playlists have a lot of influence and power on which music gets popular over
the world. The playlist consists of a limited amount of songs which are being
played with repetition over a peridod of months and even years. The playlist is
a tool for producing the music format which is designed for commercial reasons.
Typical formats are such as CHR (current hit radio) and AC (adult
contemporary). Mainstream popular music has been heavily influenced by the
music which has survived the playlist treatment. The first playlists appeared
in the American radio business in the late fifties. England started using the
ideology first late in the sixties and properly in the seventies. Finland has been slow in using the method,
because the state owned YLE had a strong policy of turning out many kinds of
songs from outside any music charts. Versatility was the main word for many
years from the early sixties to late nineties. With the commercial stations
gaining more popularity, the playlist climate in Finland has changed radically
in the last few years. Tight radio formats and playlists are now the mainstream
method of producing formats. The are no studies which define how the playlist works in
Finland. We tend to think that the stations play the same songs over and over.
We feel that only some songs get airplay, while many others get no chance at
all. The stations have ideologic and symbolic power over the audience and
popular music culture. I taped the
output of five
major Finnish radio stations in the autumn of
2004. I have analysed the content after listening to all music heard on
the stations. I have coded the content with the help a radio programming tool ( computer software) called Selector. The Finnish radio stations seem to build
their playlist in similar manner, but they do not play the same songs. The
commercial stations use repetition more hevaily than the state owned YLE. It seems that only some songs make it to the
playlist. The number of songs on the playlist appears to range from 160 to 270
songs. Because of the repetition the audience get to
hear mostly the powerplay songs, which can be played even 6 times in the prime
time (6-18). The playlist seems to have 30 artists and 30 titles which cover
over 50% of the total output in music.
The main object of the study is to define the symbolic power of the
music which prohibits other music from being played. The strong songs, winners,
take all the airtime, while others get rejected.
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