Modelling music with grammars: formal language representation in the Bol Processor. In A. Marsden & A. Pople (eds.): Computer Representations and Models in Music, London, Academic Press, 1992, p. 207-238.
Abstract
Improvisation in North Indian tabla drumming is similar to speech insofar as it is bound to anunderlying system of rules determining correct sequences. The parallel is further reinforced by the fact that tabla music may be represented with an oral notation system used for its transmission and, occasionally, performance. Yet the rules are implicit and available only through the musicians’ ability to play correct sequences and recognise incorrect ones. A linguistic model of tabla improvisation and evaluation derived from pattern languages and formal grammars has been implemented in the Bol Processor, a software system used in interactive fieldwork with expert musicians. The paper demonstrates the ability of the model to handle complex structures by taking real examples from the repertoire. It also questions the relevance of attempting to model irregularities encountered in actual performance.
Pattern grammars in formal representations of musical structures. 11th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Workshop on AI & Music, 20 August 1989, pp.113-42
Abstract
This paper introduces several formal models of pattern representation in music. Polyvalent multimodal grammars describe partially overlapping sound events as found in polyphonic structures. Bol Processor grammars are characterisations of sequential events in terms of substring repetitions, homomorphisms, etc. Parsing techniques, stochastic production and recent developments of BP grammars are briefly described.
Time-setting of sound-objects: a constraint-satisfaction approach. Invited paper, Workshop on Sonic Representations and Transforms. INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED STUDIES (ISAS), Trieste, 26-30 October 1992.
Abstract
This paper deals with the scheduling of “sound-objects”, hereby meaning predefined sequences of elementary tasks in a sound processor, with each task mapped to a time-point. Given a structure of sound-objects completely ordered in a phase diagram, an “instance” of the structure may be obtained by computing the dates at which each task should be executed. Time-setting the structure amounts to solving a system of constraints depending on (1) metric and topological properties of sound-objects, (2) contexts in which they are found, and (3) parameters related to the performance itself (“smooth” or “striated” time, speed, etc.). This may require relocating/truncating objects or delaying part of the sound-object structure. A constraint-satisfaction algorithm is introduced, the time complexity of which is O(n.k) in most cases, where n is the number of sequences and k the maximum length of a sequence. In the worst case it remains better than O(n2.k3). Other fields of applications are proposed, including multimedia performance and computer-aided video editing.
The following is the complete set of preludes and fugues by J.S. Bach known as The Well-tempered Clavier, books II and II published circa 1722 and 1742 respectively.
The matching algorithm selected the tuning scheme(s) most compliant with definitions of “consonant” and “dissonant” melodic and harmonic intervals. Two sets of definitions have been enlisted: “standard” and “alternate”. Evidently, each hypothesis renders some tuning schemes more eligible than others for achieving the composer’s presumed perception of “consonance”. Therefore, the following sound productions of preludes and fugues with their “best” tuning schemes should not be taken as a definitive answer to the issue of temperament discussed by Bach’s pupils and followers. Nonetheless it might be closest to what the composer had in mind, within the limits of ear’s discrimination of tonal intervals.
Note that when several tuning schemes ranked first for their compliance with a piece, only one of them was used for the demo. It is possible that a different one sounds better.
Settings of an audio unit for the post-processing
All pieces have been played and recorded on a Csound instrument resembling a harpsichord, thereby allowing a clear appreciation of tonal intervals. This kind of “magnifying glass” of tonal intervals produced harsh sounding versions available in folders Standard (raw) and Alternate (raw). These have been post-processed with a little bit of reverberation yielding softer attacks. Post-processed sound files are the ones accessed in tables below. Readers conversant with sound processing are invited to download the raw files and suggest better options of post-processing.
The last two columns of each table contain the recordings of human interpretations of the same musical works by outstanding harpsichord players. These explore dimensions of musicality which the mechanical interpretation of the score with perfect tonal intervals could not reach. It remains that the challenge of accurate tonality was of prior importance for this corpus, as evidenced by the title “well-tempered” assigned by its composer.
Book I sound examples
These Bol Processor + Csound recordings may be reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. Attribution includes links to the present page, Csound and the author/editor of its MusicXML score (listed on page Bach Well-tempered tonal analysis).
➡ Listen with earphones or a very good sound system!
As explained on page Bach Well-tempered tonal analysis, D’Alambert-Rousseau temperament rated equivalent to H.A. Kellner’s BACH in terms of scale intervals.
➡ Listen to the synthesis of Goldberg Variations with Sauveur’s meantone temperament. ➡ Listen to the synthesis of Goldberg Variations with D’Alembert-Rousseau temperament. ➡ Listen to the Aria on a harpsichord tuned with Werckmeister III meantone temperament.
At the same epoch (1730), French musician François Couperin composed Les Ombres Errantes for which our tonal analysis suggests a Rameau en sib temperament:
François Couperin’s “Les Ombres Errantes” interpreted by the Bol Processor + Csound with a “Rameau en sib” temperament ➡ Image Source: MusicXML score by Vinckenbosch in theMuseScore community
Conclusive remarks
The title of this corpus, The Well-tempered Clavier, suggests that its composer intended to demonstrate the adequacy of temperament(s) for the performance of musical works in every tonality. As earlier suggested, this does not imply that all of them should match the same unique solution, although one is tempted to believe that the same instrument and the same tuning scheme have been used for the whole set. This has led to speculations by J.S. Bach’s disciples who had not been instructed how to proceed. Part of the reputation of great artists, in those days, relied on things kept secret…
It would not make sense in “real life” (human musicians and physical instruments) to play a prelude on a certain tuning and retune the instrument just to play the fugue… Therefore, these sound examples do not aim at mimicking a real performance. They may only help evaluating the tunefulness of a presumably favourite tuning scheme for each musical work.
A “deaf musicologist’s” way of appreciating tonality lies on measuring melodic and harmonic intervals in terms of frequency ratios. Results depend on values (weights) assigned a priori to certain ratios. We have shown that equally meaningful sets of hypotheses lead to utterly different findings which only trained ears might differentiate. Piling up hypotheses may not clarify the situation: an apparent “preference” for a tuning scheme might be the outcome of a numeric artefact rather than a proof of its validity.
Carefully listening to the set of recordings — and ignoring inelegant renderings of fast trills in the lower octave — highlights a musical dimension that may not be reduced to “intervals”. Each piece is like a precious stone displaying an amazing regularity in its structure. The listener is driven by the artist to exploring all sides of the crystal and appreciate its purity: a “tonal landscape”. In this approach, the slightest defect — maybe a few cents up/down — is amplified by the structure. In short, the most relevant feature may be less the choice of a structure than its consistency for the rendering of each musical phrase.
If J.S. Bach had a specific unique musical temperament in mind when composing The Well-tempered Clavier, this might not even be one rating highest in terms of intervals. This question remains open (to art historians and music experts). The only point made clear by sound examples is that playing this repertoire on improperly tuned instruments amounts — in terms of consonance — to exposing plastic imitations of diamonds!
Musicians interested in continuing this research and related development may use Bol Processor BP3’s beta version to process musical works and implement more tuning procedures. Follow instructions on page Bol Processor ‘BP3’ and its PHP interface to install BP3 and learn its basic operation. Download and install Csound from its distribution page.
Harpsichord jacks in a completed harpsichord Source: Material Matters
The following is a “computational” tonal analysis of musical works by J.S. Bach known as The Well-tempered Clavier, books II and II, published circa 1722 and 1742 respectively, and Goldberg Variations (1741).
The aim of this exercise was to match each musical work against a set of tuning schemes described and implemented on the Bol Processor. These comprise all temperaments documented by Pierre-Yves Asselin ([1985], 2000) and “natural” scales constructed systematically — read Creation of just-intonation scales.
It was assumed that the best match for a scale points at the tuning scheme fit for the interpretation of a musical work. This assumption is based on the hypotheses that (1) musicians and composers of the Baroque period aimed at achieving optimum “consonance”, and that (2) this notion implied a preference for certain intervals expressed as integer ratios. These statements are discussed on this page. Accurately tuned sound examples are proposed for an auditive assessment of results.
The interest of this tonal analysis goes beyond the comprehension of music theory and practice. Its epistemological dimension is the trustworthiness of mathematical “predictive models” in vogue today. We show that, given a set of hypotheses, the solution of an optimisation problem — finding the best tuning scheme for all musical works in a repertoire — is not unique as it depends on initial conditions. Further, the same initial conditions may produce a cloud of seemingly identical solutions, even though each of them points at utterly different procedures for its realisation in the “real world” — here, tuning a harpsichord.
The giveaway message is that scientists should not be impressed by the accuracy and apparent consistency of solutions produced by machines. They need to critically examine initial conditions and the computational process itself.
In the end, listening to the audio rendering of results is the only acceptable way to (in)validate a compositional model.
“Standard” analysis
The Well-tempered Clavier comprises two books, each enlisting 24 preludes and 24 fugues in all conventional key signatures. In sum, this analysis covered 96 musical works (presumably) composed by the same composer in (presumably) similar conditions.
Our first analysis relies on the following settings of intervals estimated consonant or dissonant:
Settings for “standard” analysis
The analysis of ascending and descending melodic intervals checks for common frequency ratios close to 3/2 (Pythagorean fifths) and 5/4 (harmonic major thirds) which are widely estimated “consonant”. It also includes ratios 6/5 (harmonic minor thirds) and 9/8 (Pythagorean major seconds) which may be considered optimal. Other ratios are often rated “dissonant”: 40/27 (wolf fifth), 320/243 (wolf fourth) and 81/64 (Pythagorean major third). These dissonant intervals are 1 comma (ratio 81/80) higher or lower than their “consonant” neighbours — read page Just intonation: a general framework.
Consonant intervals have been assigned positive weights, for instance ‘1’ for a harmonic major third and ‘2′ for a Pythagorean fifth. Dissonant intervals are assigned negative weights, for instance ‘-2′ for wolf intervals and ‘-1’ for Pythagorean major thirds. These weights can be modified; indeed, the modification will in turn alter the ratings of tuning schemes.
Each melodic interval found in the musical work will be sized as per the same interval in the tonal scale assessed for compatibility. For instance, when trying to match the D’Alambert-Rousseau tuning scheme (see image), a note sequence ‘C’ - ‘Eb’ will be sized 290 cents, which is close to 294 cents or ratio 32/27 (Pythagorean minor third). Should this ratio appear in the settings, the score of the scale will be incremented by the weight of the ratio multiplied by the (symbolic) duration of the interval — read Tonal analysis of musical works for details of this procedure.
The same method is applied to harmonic intervals, here assigned the same weights as melodic intervals, except ratio 9/8 which is ignored.
Scores for ascending and descending melodic intervals are then added with the score for harmonic intervals, with respective weights 1, 1, and 2. This weighing can also be modified if “consonance” is more expected on melodic versus harmonic intervals, or if ascending and descending melodic intervals are not estimated of equal importance.
Every tonal scale is gratified with a mark when found the best match for a musical item. Counting these marks over the whole repertoire indicates the best tuning scheme(s) for this repertoire.
Results are stored in tables that can be downloaded in both HTML and CSV formats. The initial settings are reminded at the bottom of the “all results” HTML page.
Each cell in the “all results” table indicates the rank of a given tuning scheme (scale) matched against a given musical work. For instance, in the fugues of book I, Corette’s temperament (column corrette) ranked 6th for the 5th fugue, and the best match for this piece was Sauveur’s temperament (column sauveur).
The line labelled Ranked first (times) displays the number of times each tuning scheme ranked first in the classification of this corpus. The line labelled Average score displays the average global (melodic + harmonic) score computed for this tuning scheme, as explained on our page Tonal analysis.
Abstract tables display the list of tuning schemes ranking first for each musical work.
➡ The complete set of scale images is available on this page.
Discussion of the standard analysis
The scale of Sauveur’s temperament
Out of these 96 musical works, 56 opted for ‘sauveur’ as their favourite tuning scheme, plus 9 as next to favourite. This temperament strikingly dominates the classification because of its proficiency in almost perfect Pythagorean fifths (ratio 3/2), harmonic major thirds (ratio 5/4) and harmonic minor thirds (ratio 6/5).
Note that it also contains a wolf fourth ‘Eb’ - ‘G#’ close to 477 cents (or ratio 320/243) perceived as a dissonant interval. The guess is that these two notes are never (or rarely) found in melodic or harmonic intervals on this repertoire. This illustrates the fact that there no one-fits-all solution to the problem of tuning an instrument for this type of music. In a “reverse engineering” turn of mind, we may say that the composer explored melodic and harmonic pleasant effects to build this repertoire: playing on the instrument before notating on sheets of musical scores.
As suggested in our tutorial, there is no evidence of J.S. Bach’s awareness of the theoretical work by French physician Joseph Sauveur, but the theoretical framework of this temperament — a single sequence of fifths diminished by 1/5 comma (see image and read Asselin, 2000 p. 80) — suggests that any composer might figure it out independently. This process has been recorded as follows on Bol Processor’s Scale page:
Created meantone downward notes “do,fa,sib,mib” fraction 3/2 adjusted -1/5 comma Created meantone upward notes “do,sol,re,la,mi,si,fa#,do#,sol#” fraction 3/2 adjusted -1/5 comma
Interestingly, “natural scales” with names equating the key — for instance Abmin (i.e. G#min) for the Fugue 18 in G♯ minor, book II (BWV 887) — often came on top of the favourite tuning schemes, yet in most cases outraced by several temperaments. Read our page Creation of just-intonation scales for more details on these scales.
In all cases, the scoring of equal-temperament (see image) was among the lowest due to its use of major and minor thirds close to Pythagorean. This contradicts the popular belief that Bach’s series of preludes and fugues aimed at equating “well-tempered” with “equal-tempered”…
This first result also suggests that temperaments often provide a better tonal structure for achieving maximum consonance than the so-called just intonation scales.
Temperaments are based on empirical tuning procedures guided by perceived intervals (read Asselin, 2000) whereas “just intonation” is the outcome of speculations on number ratios — a deductive process. This takes us back to a discussion of the ancient Indian approach of tonality, read page The two-vina experiment.
“Alternate” analysis
At this stage, it is tempting to conclude that J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier was meant to be performed on instruments tuned as per Sauveur’s temperament. However, the result of an analysis always need to be examined for biases in its hypotheses. In the present case, we need to revise the choice of certain frequency ratios as criteria for evaluating the “consonance” of melodic and harmonic intervals.
The minor third — either harmonic (6/5) or Pythagorean (32/27) — is at stake because the Pythagorean minor third appears in some temperaments. For instance, the Cmaj natural scale (see image) uses 32/27 for its interval ‘C’ - ‘Eb’. Therefore, it makes sense to ignore all minor thirds in the evaluation of harmonic intervals and accept both ratios 6/5 and 32/27 with equal positive weights in melodic intervals. This option will be illustrated by sound examples, read further. A meaningful variant would be different ratios in ascending and descending harmonic intervals.
Same remark regarding major thirds: even though ratio 5/4 (harmonic) sounds certainly better than 81/64 (Pythagorean) in harmonic intervals, there is no strong reason to prefer the former in melodic intervals — again with a possible distinction between ascending and descending movements.
Let us start again the entire analysis with these modified settings:
Results contradict the conclusion of the “standard” analysis: Sauveur’s temperament might not be such a good choice, given the alternate choice of ratios for consonant/dissonant melodic and harmonic intervals.
According to these settings, the best tuning schemes might be D’Alambert-Rousseau temperament (see image and read Asselin, 2000 p. 119) and H.A. Kellner’s BACH temperament (see image and read Asselin, 2000 p. 101). Both have been designed after J.S. Bach’s death, but similar or identical tuning procedures could be figured out by the composer.
Comparing the images and cent positions (equal within ± 7 cents) explains why these two temperaments produced identical matches despite their utterly different tuning procedures. Look at the procedures (traced by the algorithm) and listen to short note sequences produced with these scales:
D'Alembert-Rousseau temperament Created meantone upward notes “do,sol,re,la,mi” fraction 3/2 adjusted -1/4 comma Created meantone downward notes “do,fa,sib,mib,sol#” fraction 3/2 adjusted 1/12 comma Equalized intervals over series “sol#,do#,fa#,si,mi” approx fraction 2/3 adjusted 2.2 cents to ratio = 0.668
Sequence of notes according to D’Alembert-Rousseau temperament
Sequence of notes according to Kellner’s BACH temperament
As a reminder, the same sequence of notes with an equal-tempered scale:
Sequence of notes according to equal temperament
D’Alembert-Rousseau tuning scheme (Asselin, 2000 p. 119)
These tuning procedures do not reproduce precisely the ones described by Asselin (2000 p. 120 and 102) but they yield the same tonal positions.
In these temperaments, intervals such as ‘C’ - ‘Eb’ are rendered as Pythagorean minor thirds (32/27), and many Pythagorean major thirds (ratio 81/64) are encountered. This justifies their choice, given the new conditions of analysis.
Again, these temperaments dominate the classification, ranking 65 times in first position and 15 times in second position, whereas equal-temperament ranked first only 21 times despite its proficiency in Pythagorean major thirds. Compared with Sauveur’s temperament in the standard analysis (56 first positions and 9 second positions) these tuning schemes look “better”, yet this comparison is irrelevant since the two analyses focussed on different ratios.
The 33 preludes and fugues uncompliant with these temperaments often preferred a just-intonation scale in the same key, for instance Prelude 8 in E♭ minor of book I (BWV 853) selects the Ebmin scale, and Prelude 9 in E major of book I (BWV 854) selects the Emaj scale. However, this matching is less frequent in “dissident” fugues.
More advanced analyses are required. Keep in mind that changing the weights of intervals or weights in the summing of melodic and harmonic scores may radically modify the classification.
In this discussion, we only examined tuning schemes at the top of the classification. Other schemes may be preferable when looking separately at melodic or harmonic scores — read our tutorial Tonal analysis.
Sound examples
The automatic tonal analysis of a large repertoire matched against the whole set of tuning schemes implemented in the Bol Processor did not solve the problem of finding “the best tuning scheme” for this repertoire, as it depends on initial conditions: frequency ratios estimated “consonant” or “dissonant”, plus the composer’s presumed focus on optimal consonance. Nonetheless, two analyses selected 2 (or 3) tuning schemes as dominant in the classification. More analyses would be required to refine this result, if of any significance.
All sound examples are found, compared with human interpretations playing (not so well-tempered ?) physical instruments, on page The Well-tempered clavier.
These sound examples are useful to hear the difference between tuning schemes selected on the basis of the “standard” and “alternate” settings. For example, Fugue 8 of book I may sound more tuneful with a Dmin tuning (see image) than with Marpurg (see image). The difference might reside in the choice of convenient ratios for minor thirds.
Is this method reliable?
As suggested by results displayed in the 4 tables for each book (see above), a few preludes and fugues ranked several tuning schemes as their favourite ones: number ‘1′ coloured red in “all results” tables. Despite this, we produced recordings for only one of the winners. How far does this matter?
Take for example Prelude 12 of book I. In “alternate” settings, five scales ranked first: Emin, Cmaj, BACH, d_alembert_rousseau, bethisy. We already showed that BACH and d_alembert_rousseau are almost identical despite differences in their tuning procedures. Emin and Cmaj are strictly identical. This leaves us with the following choice:
Three scales ranking 1st for Prelude 12 of book 1 as per “alternate” settings
Tonal positions only differ by a few cents, which may not be noticed in melodic and harmonic intervals. Below are recordings using these three scales:
Prelude 12 of book I, Emin tuning schemePrelude 12 of book I, Bethisy temperamentPrelude 12 of book I, Kellner’s BACH temperament
This example suggests that differences in scales ranking first may be inaudible if the widths of acceptable melodic and harmonic intervals have been set small enough to provide a well-focussed solution set.
Listen to minor thirds
Appreciating by ear the sizes of common minor thirds may clarify the point of deciding which one is more “consonant”. Lucky users of Bol Processor BP3 only need to create the following data file:
-cs.tryTunings
// Harmonic minor third _scale(2_cycles_of_fifths,0) DO3 RE#3 DO3 RE#3 DO3 RE#3 {4,DO3,RE#3}
//Pythagorean minor third _scale(2_cycles_of_fifths,0) DO3 MIb=RE#-c3 DO3 MIb=RE#-c3 DO3 MIb=RE#-c3 {4,DO3,MIb=RE#-c3}
These items produce sequences of ‘C’ - ‘D#’ melodic and harmonic intervals using harmonic (6/5) and Pythagorean (32/27) minor thirds:
Harmonic minor thirds in sequence then superposedPythagorean minor thirds in sequence then superposedAlternance of harmonic then Pythagorean minor thirds
Listening to these examples suggests that both 6/5 and 32/27 are eligible ratios for minor thirds as “consonant” melodic intervals, whereas 6/5 sounds “softer” than 32/27 as a harmonic interval.
The names of notes (inspired by the book, ibid.) sound bizarre but they make positions explicit. For instance, “Mib=RE#-c” indicates a position that is usually called mi bémol (E flat) and identical to ré dièse (D sharp) minus one comma.
This scale — and the even more complicated “3_cycles_of_fifths” — is not practical to write music… It is used to visualise (and hear) tonal positions created by various tuning schemes compliant with the just intonation paradigm.
Listen to tempered fifths
Readers unfamiliar with tuning procedures may need to appreciate tiny differences in intervals produced by temperaments created with the methods introduced on page Microtonality and fully described in Asselin (2000).
Let us listen to Pythagorean fifths in three forms: pure (frequency ratio 3/2 = 702 cents), equal-tempered (700 cents), diminished by 1/5 comma (697.3 cents) and diminished by 1/4 comma (696.2 cents).
Pure fifth (702 cents)Equal-tempered fifth (700 cents)Fifth diminished by 1/5 comma (697.3 cents)Fifth diminished by 1/4 comma (696.2 cents)Sequence of fifths: pure, then equal-tempered, then diminished by 1/5 comma, then diminished by 1/4 comma
The same exercise has been tried on J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (1741). The aria and its thirty variations were performed in a single sequence, obviously with the same instrument/tuning. For this reason, we checked a unique MusicXML score containing all variations.
With the “standard” hypothesis of consonance, the result is the following:
(As expected) Sauveur’s meantone temperament won the game, followed with Kellner’s BACH. The equal-tempered scale ranked 28th on this classification… (Note that the computation of this table took 3 1/2 hours on an old MacBook Pro…).
Listen to the synthesis of Goldberg Variations with Sauveur’s meantone temperament:
The “alternate” model of consonance yields the following classification:
Favourite tuning schemes, according to this model, would be D’Alembert-Rousseau (see image) and Kellner’s BACH (see image) meantone temperaments, both with equal ratings since their tonal intervals are almost identical.
Listen to the synthesis of Goldberg Variations with D’Alembert-Rousseau temperament:
These favourite tunings are the same ones best fit to the set of preludes and fugues in The Well-tempered Clavier.
These sound examples may be compared with human performances, for example the Aria on a harpsichord tuned with Werckmeister III meantone temperament — listen to this recording. Indeed, musicians display a more flexible timing compared with Bol Processor sticking to parameters of the MusicXML score. Nonetheless, a comparison focussing on tonal intervals remains possible.
The fact that Werckmeister III (see image) ranked low in the automatic tonal analysis does not suggest an improper choice. This tuning scheme might rank higher against a specific model of “consonance”.
Let us figure out with calculations its main difference with D’Alembert-Rousseau and Kellner’s BACH. We may restrict the analysis to measures #1 to #32 (the Aria) exposing most melodic/harmonic intervals; this Aria works similar to the initial section (ālāp) in North Indian classical music… We notice that neither D - F# (397 cents) nor G - B (398 cents) in Werckmeister III are accurate harmonic major thirds (390 cents), intervals with high occurrence as shown on the table of interval frequencies:
Interval frequencies in the Aria of Goldberg Variations
The following is a comparison of scales Werckmeister III and D’Alembert-Rousseau in terms of matching melodic intervals (in the “alternate” model of consonance) over the 32 first measures of Goldberg Variations:
Matching two scales with the melodic intervals of the Aria in Goldberg Variations: Werckmeister III (left) and D’Alembert-Rousseau (right)
The widths of yellow lines are proportional to the occurrence/durations of melodic intervals in this part of the corpus. The picture confirms the absence of an accurate harmonic major third D - F# in the Werckmeister III scale, and the same mismatch of major third G - B. Another mismatch is on minor third E - G, here aiming at ratio 6/5 (315 cents) or 32/27 (294 cents).
Sources of MusicXML scores
Links point at MusicXML scores used for this analysis. These links must be mentioned in the attribution part of Creative Commons licences. Upgraded versions are welcome.
Our thanks to editors of these scores in the MuseScore community!
Musical works encoded on the Bol Processor (using “simple notes” as per English, Italian/Spanish/French and Indian conventions) can be analysed in terms of harmonic or melodic intervals.
Musical aspects are discussed after a description of the process.
In the final section, we present a single-click method for evaluating the adequacy of all documented tuning systems to a given musical work. A demo of this analysis is on page Bach well-tempered tonal analysis.
Basic process
This computation is launched by button ANALYZE INTERVALS at the bottom of the ‘Data’ window:
The machine found a ‘-cs.tryTunigs’ declaration on top of the data content, indicating that it should pick up definitions of tonal scales contained in that Csound resource. These definitions are only accessible if ‘-cs.tryTunigs’ has been opened less than 24 hours ago: these files are stored in the ‘temp_bolprocessor’ folder automatically cleaned up of old storage. Click the ‘open’ link if necessary.
The analytical process will be demonstrated with a single phrase of François Couperin’s Les Ombres Errantes imported from a MusicXML score — read page Importing MusicXML scores. This example is small enough for a visual check of the technical process, although too short to derive any meaningful musical interpretation of the result.
The musical item reads as follows in Bol Processor notation (English convention) — read page Polymetric structures.
Sound production made use of the Csound resource file ‘-cs.tryTunings’ in which the tonal scale ‘rameau_en_sib’ is found — read page Comparing temperaments. This scale presumably provides the best tuning for this piece when performed on a “harpsichord-like” Csound instrument.
The machine picked up a definition of the tonal scale in a temporary copy of ‘-cs.tryTunings’. The significant content of this definition is the set of tonal positions in the scale shown on the picture — read page Microtonality.
Clicking the ANALYZE INTERVALS button yields the following display:
Analysis of melodic and harmonic intervals in a brief fragment of “Les Ombres errantes”
The table above contains a summary of matching intervals: pairs of notes played in sequence (melodic) or superposed (harmonic), with a distinction between ascending and descending melodic intervals. These matchings may be verified on the graphic display of this item:
Intervals are listed in decreasing order of relevance. Thus, melodic interval ‘C’ down to ‘B’ occured during 20.3 beats, scored highest. Ascending melodic intervals ‘B’ to ‘F’ and ‘D’ to ‘B’ are the least frequent ones. Scores below 5% of the maximum one in the column will be ignored in the graphic display.
Harmonic (left) and melodic (right) intervals
Interestingly, the highest scores of harmonic intervals in this musical phrase are minor thirds such as ‘D’/‘B’ and ‘C’/‘Eb’. The fifth ‘C’/‘G’ is scored only 1.6 beats, which is 18% of the highest score.
The detection of a “harmonic interval” is based on comparisons of their start and end dates with options that can be modified. Let us call $start1, $end1, $start2 and $end2 the timings of two notes. We assume $start2 >= $start1 owing to a preliminary chronological sorting of the list of notes. Function matching_intervals() does the following to assess harmonic intervals:
This function eliminates brief overlaps of time intervals, as created for instance by slurs interpreted as _legato() performance controls when importing MusicXML scores — read details. It also eliminates notes with durations less than $min_dur optionaly set to 500 milliseconds. Thus, for instance, brief notes such as ‘C5’, ‘B4’, ‘Eb5’ etc. will be discarded. Finally, it checks that $overlap is greater than a fraction of the smallest duration, with $ratio set to 0.25 by default. Another option which is not shown here is the maximum tonal distance berween two notes, set to 11 semitones by default.
The conditions for matching melodic intervals are similar:
Parameter $max_gap (typically 300 milliseconds) is the maximum delay between the end of the first note and the beginning of the next one.
All parameters can be modified before launching again the process. These settings will be discussed later:
Default settings for tonal analysis
Calculations
Detailed tonal analysis
To check the sequence of time intervals in great detail it is possible to activate the “Display all dates” option yielding a detailed analysis.
All matching intervals are listed. It is not practical to use this option on large musical items…
Dates are in seconds, rounded to 0.1 s, although more accurate values are taken into account. In fact, all time calculations are performed on integer ratios, just as in Bol Processor’s console.
The result is always arguable. For instance, some melodic or harmonic intervals may appear “accidental” rather than significant.
For this and other reasons, it may be necessary to figure out more options associated with musical and performance styles.
Graphic display
Melodic and harmonic tonal intervals are displayed with the background of the tonal scale used for the performance. Here it would be ‘rameau_en_sib’, although an equal-tempered scale would be used by default.
Clicking the links to harmonic interval images (see above picture) yields the following three graphs — in separate and resizable windows:
Display of harmonic intervals. The ‘rameau_en_sib’ scale is in the middle.
Intervals are shown as gold highlightings with widths proportional to their relative scores. On the leftmost picture, these golden segments are drawn behind fifths, major and minor thirds marked on the scale. For this reason the yellow highlighting of link between Eb and G, behind the green link of a harmonic major third, is less visible on the full picture.
Minor thirds (ratio 6/5) have been added in the settings. For this reason, the ones available on this scale are displayed as black segments. These additional ratios are listed on the top right of each picture.
Restricted analysis
If a MusicXML file has been imported along with measure numbers (notated [—1—], [—2—] etc.), these can be used to restrict the analysis to a subset of the score.
Below is the setting of measures #1 to #32 (the Aria) in J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations:
Restricting the tonal analysis to the Aria in Goldberg Variations makes sense because other variations, due to their high speed, do not display harmonic intervals longer than the minimum duration fixed in the settings (500 ms).
Musical discussion
Tonal analysis with the help of Bol Processor aims at supporting the choice of a tuning system best fitting a musical piece — a temperament as figured out by Baroque musicians. This issue is addressed on page Comparing temperaments.
We first describe a visual method for estimating (rather than measuring) the adequacy of a tuning system for the performance of musical works imported from MusicXML scores — read the page on this subject. In the next section, we will show how to compare all candidate scales in an automatic way, taking into account relevant parameters revealed in this section.
Take for instance J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major for which some historical information (reported by Asselin, 2000 p. 142) suggested the choice of a Kirnberger temperament. Which one?
Harmonic tonal intervals of Bach’s 1st prelude versus Kirnberger II and Kirnberger III tuning systems
The full representation of harmonic tonal intervals is shown above and matched against two different scales described by Kirnberger (Asselin, 2000 p. 90, 93). The matching looks better on the right one (Kirnberger III). For instance, interval ‘D’ - ‘A’ is closer to a “pure” fifth (702 cents) on Kirnberger III (697) than on Kirnberger II (691). Another significant matching is the harmonic major third ‘F’ - ‘A’. Other intervals are similar with respect to these scales.
A careful listening to both versions might confirm this mechanical analysis:
Kirnberger IIKirnberger III
The same crude analysis does not yield a noticeable result for François Couperin’s Les Ombres Errantes. Harmonic interval analysis may be of less relevance because this item is globally more perceived as sequences of melodic intervals, including minor thirds and major seconds. This is visible on the graph of melodic intervals:
Melodic intervals of “Les Ombres Errantes” (full performance)
Matching this graph with the ‘rameau_en_sib’ scale does not reveal interesting patterns for the simple reason that neither minor thirds nor major seconds have been taken into account on this scale in terms of “just intonation” — read page Just intonation: a general framework. Even though we may assume that a Pythagorean major second (ratio 9/8) sounds more “consonant” than a harmonic one (ratio 10/9), there is no reason for systematically asserting that the harmonic minor third (ratio 6/5) is “better” than the Pythagorean one (ratio 32/27).
The picture on the left side reveals that frequent melodic intervals of major thirds do highlight harmonic major thirds (ratio 5/4) of this scale.
We need to check intervals smaller than major thirds on tonal scales. If we instruct the machine to check intervals close (within ± 10 cents) to the harmonic minor third (ratio 6/5), the preceding graphs are displayed as follows:
Melodic intervals of “Les Ombres Errantes” (full performance) with black markings of “good” minor thirds (6/5) on a ‘rameau_en_sib’ temperament
The picture on the left side reveals that all minor thirds used in this performance coincide within ± 10 cents with harmonic minor thirds (ratio 6/5) of the scale, which is an incentive to admit that the ‘rameau_en_sib’ scale would be a fair (if not the best) tuning option for Les Ombres Errantes.
A counter-example is the matching of Les Ombres Errantes with a pure-minor-thirdstemperament designed during the 16th century (Asselin 2000 p. 82, see image). Below are the graphs of matching melodic (left) and harmonic (right) intervals, along with black lines marking harmonic minor thirds (ratio 6/5):
Melodic (left) and harmonic (right) intervals of “Les Ombres Errantes” against a pure-minor-thirds temperament
“Les Ombres Errantes” with a pure minor thirds temperament (16th century)
The main drawback of this ‘pure_minor_thirds’ temperament is the very low position of ‘Ab’ meant to produce a consonant sequence of minor thirds: ‘Ab’ - ‘B’ - ‘D’ - ‘F’. Yet ‘Ab’ - ‘B’ is not a melodic interval found in this piece, nor ‘Db’ - ‘E’ and ‘E’ - ‘G’ which are well rendered by the ‘pure_minor_thirds’ temperament. Mismatches are also visible on harmonic intervals — and easy to detect by listening. We may conclude that the pure minor thirds temperament is neither the best not the worst tuning system for this musical work, although comparing sound productions suggests that it is significantly less good than the ‘rameau_en_sib’ scale.
➡ Comparing graphs is easy with the detached resizable pictures produced by the Bol Processor.
A “deaf musicologist’s” approach
The analysis shown so far replaced a comparison of sound rendering — read page Comparing temperaments — with a visual pattern-matching issue. We made it clear that musicians and instrument tuners of the Baroque period were trying to achieve consonance in terms of simple frequency ratios for fifths (close to 3/2) and harmonic major thirds (close to 5/4). This approach and its underlying assumptions are discussed on page Just intonation: a general framework.
Further, one might be tempted to assert that a “just-intonation” minor third should be harmonic (ratio close to 6/5), yet the decision should stay open. To this effect, it is possible to enter an additional set of melodic and harmonic intervals which the analyst estimates significant for the evaluation of tonal scales. Each interval is set by an integer ratio — which may be as complex as necessary.
A comparative pattern matching will assign a numeric score to every scale assessed for its fitting with the musical work. This makes it possible to sort candidate scales. Still, two separate scores are required, one for melodic and the next one for harmonic intervals. A weighed sum of scores is therefore used for sorting the list of scales.
This method has been implemented in the Tonal analysis process. We compared all scales defined in ‘-cs.tryTunings’ — containing notably all temperaments documented by Pierre-Yves Asselin — in terms of their adequacy for the rendering of melodic and tonal intervals in François Couperin’s Les Ombres Errantes:
Matching scales for “Les Ombres Errantes”
Great result! The machine confirms that scale ‘rameau_en_sib’ is the best candidate for the interpretation of Les Ombres Errantes. Its scores are significantly better for both melodic and harmonic intervals. (Altogether, 45 tuning schemes have been tried.)
By default, the scoring of melodic and harmonic intervals only takes into account perfect fifths (3/2) and harmonic major thirds (5/4) as “good” intervals, with respective weights of 2 and 1, and wolf fifths (40/27), wolf fourths (320/243) and Pythagorean major thirds (81/64) rated as “bad” intervals weighing respectively -2, -2 and -1. All these weights can be modified as shown on the above picture.
We repeat the comparison with the additional option of harmonic minor thirds (6/5) as melodic intervals:
Matching scales, including harmonic minor thirds (ratio close to 6/5) for melodic intervals
Expectedly, all melodic scores increased but the winner remained. If we add the Pythagorean major second (ratio close to 9/8) we get the following:
Matching scales, including ratios 6/5 and 9/8 for melodic intervals
The ‘rameau_en_sib’ scale is now challenged by ‘sauveur’ for melodic intervals, but its harmonic score remains lower.
Note that scales Abmaj and Cmin are identical, which explains their equal scores.
A visual comparison of scales with melodic interval highlightings shows that there is little difference between these temperaments with respect to the performance of Les Ombres Errantes. Since ‘sauveur’ temperament had been designed in 1701 by the (hearing impaired?) French mathematician Joseph Sauveur, it is not unlikely that it could be used for the composition of Les Ombres Errantes in 1730.
Comparison of ‘rameau_en_sib’ and ‘sauveur’ temperaments for melodic intervals in “Les Ombres Errantes”, with additional ratios 6/5 and 9/8 displayed as black lines.
Scale ‘rameau_en_sib’ again scores as good as ‘sauveur’ if the Pythagorean minor third (ratio close to 32/27) is tried as a melodic interval (both ascending and descending) in replacement of ratio 6/5… This is due to the usage of ‘F’ - ‘Ab’ rendered as a Pythagorean minor third by ‘rameau_en_sib’, yet not by ‘sauveur’.
Many more checks can be done by changing the weights assigned to occurrences of melodic and harmonic ratios. Finding the best settings requires a thorough study of the musical score — this is where human musicologists come back to the scene!
Ears (plus expertise of the score) might make a final decision:
The analytical process we are following is a kind of reverse engineering… Evidently, composers did not look for a suitable temperament after creating a musical work. It is more realistic that they composed works on existing instruments, with the effect that sets of pieces produced by the same composer (using the same instrument) at a given period obeyed implicit melodic and harmonic constraints best fitting the tuning of their instrument(s).
Comparative study
Let us examin again J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major for which Kirnberger III had (visually) been elected as a better match than Kirnberger II. Including ratios 6/5 and 9/8 in eligible melodic up/down intervals, and 6/5 as a harmonic interval, yields the following classification of tuning schemes:
Classification of scales for the interpretation of J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major
The winner is undoubtedly ‘sauveur’ although the harmonic score is identical for six temperaments, yet ‘kirnberger_3′ rates much less.
Keep in mind that this has been obtained by declaring ratios close to 6/5 as eligible consonant melodic and harmonic intervals. Read page Bach well-tempered tonal analysis for a discussion of this hypothesis.
Sauveur’s temperament is the best fit because of its high proficiency in harmonic minor thirds (6/5) and Pythagorean major seconds (9/8). It also has a complete set of perfect fourths and fifths (3/2) except for the wolf fourth ‘D#’ - ‘G#’ which is close to 477 cents (instead of 498). Fortunately, this interval is never used in Bach’s piece:
Matching melodic intervals of J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major against Sauveur’s temperament J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major performed by Bol Processor + Csound with Sauveur’s temperament
This rendering can be compared (in terms of tunefulness) with a human performance on a real harpsichord:
J.S. Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major played on the copy of an instrument built by Hans Moerman in Antwerpen (1584). Source: Wikipedia licence CC BY-SA.
Unsurprizingly, J.S. Bach’s Fugue 1 in C major shares the same preference for ‘sauveur’, with other tuning schemes following in a different order. All fugues in this series of works (books I and II) have been associated with preludes of the same key.
The tonal analysis of J.S. Bach’s Prelude 2 in C minor again selects ‘sauveur’ under the same evaluation criteria — including ratios 6/5 (melodic and harmonic) and 9/8 (melodic up/down). The classification is utterly different but the winner is unchanged, even though it is challenged by ‘rameau_en_sib’ for its harmonic score.
J.S. Bach’s Prelude 2 in C minor performed by Bol Processor + Csound with Sauveur’s temperament
Note that the Cmin scale has a bad rate due to melodic intervals. It beats Sauveur’s temperament with respect to harmonic intervals, but these are relatively less frequent in this prelude. This classification might be quite different if some ratios (such as 9/8) are ignored for evaluating melodic intervals. Even ratios close to Pythagorean thirds (81/64) might sound acceptable in quick melodic movements — read page Bach well-tempered tonal analysis.
J.S. Bach’s Fugue 2 in C minor again selects ‘sauveur’.
We get the same result with J.S. Bach’s Prelude 6 in D minor (random choice). Note the strikingly high melodic scores of ‘sauveur’:
J.S. Bach’s Prelude 6 in D minor performed by Bol Processor + Csound with Sauveur’s temperament
J.S. Bach once claimed that he could play his entire repertoire on the instrument he had tuned by himself. This sounds like squaring the circle, and many hypotheses have been advocated to solve this problem for das Wohltemperierte Clavier.
These examples suggest that Sauveur’s temperament could be Bach’s choice. Although there is little chance that the German composer (1685-1750) had heard about research work of the French physician (1653-1716), the systematic construction of this temperament — a single sequence of fifths diminished by 1/5 comma (see image and read Asselin, 2000 p. 80) — suggests that any composer might figure it out independently.
In order to check (and challenge) this hypothesis we completed the tonal analysis of 24 preludes and fugues in books I and II of The Well-Tempered Clavier using the same settings. Read page Bach Well-tempered tonal analysis. This large-spectrum analysis requires a device for batch processing which we describe now.
Batch processing
In order to analyse the tonality of a large number of musical works we need to create a Data page containing the names of all pages containing the Bol Processor scores of these items. For instance, page “-da.index_preludes_book_I” reads as follows:
When reading this page, the Tonal analysis procedure opens each data file and picks up the Bol Processor score it contains. To facilitate this, option Batch processing may be checked in the settings.
In the batch-processing mode, the machine will not display the whole set of tonal scales for each analysed musical work. If the score contains a specification for a tonal scale — a _scale(some_scale, 0) instruction — the list of prefered scales is displayed down to the specified one. If the specified scale comes first in the classification, the following next 2 following scales are listed. If no scale is specified, only the 10 best-matching scales are listed:
Batch processing of “-da.index_preludes_book_I” Items #2 and #3 contain the specifications of tonal scales sauveur and Dbmaj respectively. This preference is confirmed by the analysis of item #2 but it is not the case with item #3.
At the bottom of the page, a button SHOW RESULTS displays a HTML file — which can be downloaded — containing all results:
End of batch processing. Clicking SHOW RESULTS displays the entire result set.
The HTML page also displays the settings of the analysis and it can be downloaded, along with a CVS file of the same figures which lends itself to statistical graphic display.
Results for the analysis of all preludes and fugues of The Well-tempered Clavier are published and discussed on page Bach well-tempered tonal analysis.
Does it apply to western classical music?
The analysis of tonal intervals and of matchings with documented tuning systems (temperaments) makes sense with respect to Baroque music, taking for granted that composers and instrument tuners were trying to achieve a maximum consonance in the performance of their musical repertoire. The question remains open whether it produces an equally reliable (and useful) analysis of musical works in more recent periods.
Indeed, launching the analytical process is technically possible once the score has been imported to the Bol Processor. Let us try Beethoven’s Fugue in B flat major (circa 1830). We may set up harmonic major thirds (6/5) and Pyhagorean major seconds (9/8) as significant melodic intervals for the evaluation. This yields the following:
The best score — once again — is that of Sauveur’s temperament, notably owing to ascending melodic intervals. In case performers do attempt to achieve ratios 9/8, 6/5, 5/4 and 3/2, then ‘sauveur’ might be the best representation of the “tuning scheme” they have in mind.
The equal-tempered scale comes last with scores of 3529, 1680 and 240 for ascending melodic, descending melodic and harmonic intervals respectively. Part of the explanation lies in the comparison of both scales as backgrounds of harmonic intervals:
Comparing the equal-tempered scale (left) and Sauveur’s temperament (right) for the performance of Beethoven’s Fugue in B flat major
The most visible difference is the usage of almost perfect harmonic major thirds (ratio 5/4) on Sauveur’s scale (see image) instead of Pythagorean major thirds (approx. ratio 81/64) on the equal-tempered scale (see image). The former have been assigned weighs (+1) and the latter (-1). Background yellow lines indicate that these intervals are used quite often.
Melodic intervals in Beethoven’s Fugue in B flat major
A drawback of Sauveur’s scale is the wolf fourth ‘D#’ - ‘G#’ (approx. 477 cents), yet this interval is not frequent on the score.
Many other remarks could be done comparing the scores of melodic intervals, and the entire process (which took almost 8 minutes) could be launched again with different settings of weighs assigning more or less importance to particular intervals. After all, we do not know whether an expert player of a stringed instrument would perform minor thirds at intervals 6/5, 32/27, tempered, or any other value, and even more whether these values depend on the harmonic/melodic context of each musical phrase.
This suggests that we shouldn’t be too enthusiastic of a (still primitive) tonal analysis tool when it comes to sophisticated tonal material…
Reference
Asselin, P.-Y. Musique et tempérament. Paris, 1985, republished in 2000: Jobert. Soon available in English.
➡ Musicians interested in continuing this research and related development may use Bol Processor BP3’s beta version to process musical works and implement moretuning procedures. Follow instructions on page Bol Processor ‘BP3’ and its PHP interface to install BP3 and learn its basic operation. Download and install Csound from its distribution page.
These parameters are saved in ‘-se’ settings files associated with grammars and data. They are expressed in milliseconds.
Time resolution is the minimum difference of dates between two events sent to a MIDI device or written on a Csound score. By default is is set to 10 ms but in some cases it may be necessary to diminish this value. This is already a type of quantization because several events occuring with time offsets lower than the resolution will be sent or written with identical dates.
Time quantization is an option allowing the polymetric expansion algorithm to reduce the size of the phase diagram constructed to frame out the symbolic timing of events — in fact, relations of precedence or simultaneity. Read page Complex ratios in polymetric expressions for a detailed explanation. In brief, it is a method for saving memory space and speeding up the computation.
In many cases, the production of a piece would simply be impossible with a quantization reduced to the time resolution. This is due to the fact that all Bol Processor time calculations are performed with integer ratios to reach the best accuracy compatible with limitations of the machine. However, for instance, storing two notes distant by a few milliseconds requires two distinct columns on the phase diagram although (in general) this differnce is not audible.
Even though it is possible to set the time quantization to a value lower than the time resolution, it would increase the size of the phase diagram (i.e. memory and computation time) with no effect on the output because the time resolution is the lowest value of the actual quantization. This inconsistency is signaled on the Data or Grammar window:
Randomisation of dates
The Bol Processor has a performance tool notated “_rndtime(x)” for randomizing the dates of events, in which ‘x’ is half the range in milliseconds. For instance, following “_rndtime(100)”, all dates will be recalculated within a ± 100 ms range.
Randomisation is often used by poor composition devices to “humanize” computer-made pieces. This is a ridiculous approach based on the belief that human interpreters must be willingly imprecise in their performance… or that music is implicitly a “fuzzy” construction.
The _rndtime tool may otherwise be used to compensate unwanted effects when several digitally synthesized sounds are superposed, as explained on page Importing MusicXML scores. In this case, the range is very small and the value of the time resolution may need to be adjusted accordingly. For instance, “_rndtime(20)” should be associated with a time resolution of 1 millisecond so that 40 different values will be randomly picked up in a ± 20 ms range. Note that this has no incidence on the time quantization.
The effect of a ± 20 ms time randomisation can be noticed by carefully listening to the following two examples:
Non-randomized beginning of “Les Ombres Errantes”20 millisecond randomized beginning of “Les Ombres Errantes”
Flags may be used in grammars to activate/deactivate rules according to simple numeric and logic evaluations.
Let us look at the ‘-gr.tryFlags’ grammar:
-ho.abc // First create string of ‘a’ gram#1[1] S --> X /Num_total = 20/ gram#1[2] /Num_total - 1/ X --> a X -------- // Create flags counting 'a' and 'b' gram#2[1] X --> lambda /Num_a = 20/ /Num_b = 0/ -------- // Now replace 'a' with 'b' until they are in equal numbers gram#3[1] /Num_a > Num_b/ a --> b /Num_b + 1/ /Num_a - 1/
This grammar creates a string of 20 terminal symbols (Num_total) containing an equal number of (randomly positioned) ‘a’ and ‘b’, for instance:
b b a a a b a a b a b a b b b a b b a a
In a grammar rule, flags are surrounded with ‘/’. The first occurrence of a flag normally sets its initial value (an integer number), for instance /Num_total = 20/.
Additive/substractive operations (on integers) can then be performed to decrease or decrease the values of flags, e.g. /Num_b + 1/ or /Num_a - 1/.
Flags appearing before the left argument of a rule are evaluated and used to control the rule. For instance,
/myflag/ X --> Y
will only be a candidate rule if ‘myflag’ is strictly positive. This evaluation may also be a control of the values of two flags. For instance, rule:
/flag1 > flag2/ /flag3 = flag2/ /flag4 = 50/ X --> Y
will only stay candidate as long as the three conditions are met.
This technique may be combined with other control procedures, such as (positive/negative, proximate/remote, left/right) contexts, rule weights etc. An example of using flags is found in “-gr.trial.mohanam”, combined with rule weights and pattern contexts. Read page Computing ‘ideas’.
➡ Note that operators ‘≤’, ‘≥’ and ‘≠’ are not yet accepted in the current version of BP3 as it does not handle multibyte Unicode characters.
James Kippen est un des spécialistes incontournables de la musique hindoustanie. Sa rencontre en 1981 avec Afaq Hussain, alors doyen d’une des grandes lignées de joueur de tablā, est le point de départ d’importantes recherches sur cet instrument et sur les rythmes indiens. Il a occupé de 1990 à 2019 la chaire d’ethnomusicologie de la Faculty of Music de l’Université de Toronto (Canada). Formé à l’école de John Blacking et de John Baily, il acquiert parallèlement au cours de ses recherches la maîtrise de certaines langues indo-persanes. Cette habilité lui permet l’analyse de première main de nombreuses sources (traités de musique, manuscrits de musiciens, généalogies, iconographies…) et d’appréhender les différents contextes socio-culturels indiens et leurs mutations depuis le XVIIIe siècle (cours indo-persanes, empire colonial britannique, montée du nationalisme, post-colonialisme). Son travail (voir la liste de ses publications en fin d’entretien) s’impose comme une contribution majeure à la compréhension des pratiques relatives au rythme et au mètre en Inde. J’ai commencé à correspondre avec James Kippen lors de mes propres recherches sur le tablā à la fin des années 1990. Toujours prompt à partager ses connaissances et son expérience avec enthousiasme, il me donna de nombreux conseils et encouragements et ce fût un grand honneur de le compter parmi les membres de mon jury de thèse lors de ma soutenance en 2004. C’est avec la même envie de transmettre qu’il a répondu favorablement à ma proposition d’entretien. Réalisé à distance entre juillet et décembre 2020, cet échange, à l’origine en anglais, relate près de quarante années de recherches ethnomusicologiques.
Traduction : Olivia Levingston et Antoine Bourgeau – Octobre 2021.
Comment en es-tu venu à t’intéresser aux musiques de l’Inde et au tablā en particulier ?
J’ai grandi à Londres, et déjà enfant j’étais fasciné par les différentes langues et cultures qui étaient introduites progressivement en Grande-Bretagne par les immigrants. J’étais particulièrement séduit par les petites épiceries regorgeant de produits exotiques et par les restaurants indiens qui dégageaient des arômes épicés alléchants. Mon père me parlait souvent de ses aventures pendant les sept années qu’il avait passées en Inde en tant que jeune soldat, et j’ai donc développé une image très attrayante, bien qu’orientaliste, du sous-continent indien. Pendant ma licence de musique à l’Université de York (1975-78), mon ami et camarade Francis Silkstone m’a fait connaître le sitār. J’ai également eu la chance de suivre un cours intensif de musique hindoustanie avec le conférencier Neil Sorrell, qui avait étudié la sāraṅgī avec le renommé Ram Narayan. La littérature disponible à cette époque était relativement rare, mais deux textes en particulier étaient tout de même très influents : « Tabla in Perspective » de Rebecca Stewart (UCLA, 1974), qui a nourri en moi un intérêt musicologique pour les variétés et les complexités du rythme et le jeu des percussions et « The Cultural Structure and Social Organization of Musicians in India : the Perspective from Delhi » de Daniel Neuman (Université de l’Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1974), un aperçu socio-anthropologique du monde des musiciens traditionnels et héréditaires indiens et de leurs points de vue.
J’ai donc commencé à apprendre le tablā à partir des disques 33 tours et des livrets de Robert Gottlieb appelés « 42 Lessons for Tabla », et après quelques mois, j’avais appris suffisamment de techniques de base pour accompagner F. Silkstone lors d’un récital. J’ai ensuite été l’élève de Manikrao Popatkar, un excellent joueur de tablā professionnel qui venait d’immigrer en Grande-Bretagne. J’étais « accro » ! De plus, la pensée que je pourrais entrer dans ce monde socio-musical du tablā en Inde en qualité de participant-observateur m’a motivée à chercher des programmes d’études supérieures où je pourrais développer mes connaissances et compétences tout en combinant les approches musicologiques et anthropologiques de R. Stewart et D. Neuman. Sur les conseils de N. Sorrell, j’ai donc écrit à John Blacking au sujet de la possibilité d’étudier à l’Université Queen’s de Belfast, et John a été très encourageant, en m’offrant une entrée directe au programme de doctorat. Il a également souligné que son collègue John Baily avait récemment écrit un texte : « Krishna Govinda’s Rudiments of Tabla Playing ». J’avais trouvé le programme d’études supérieures idéal et des guides parfaits.
Approches méthodologiques
« How Musical Is Man » de J. Blacking est un texte fondamental paru en 1973, à contre-courant de la pensée de l’époque, refusant les frontières entre musicologie et ethnomusicologie ainsi que les oppositions stériles entre les traditions musicales. J. Blacking avance également l’idée essentielle que la musique, même si ce mot n’existe pas partout, est présente à travers toutes les cultures humaines, en ce qu’elle résulte du « son humainement organisé ». Sais-tu s’il connaissait les propos d’E. Varèse ? Voulant lui aussi se démarquer de la signification occidentale du concept de « musique », bien que pour d’autres raisons, il avait avancé en 1941 l’expression de « son organisé ».
Je ne me souviens pas que J. Blacking ait mentionné Varèse ou ses réflexions sur la nature de la musique. John était par contre un excellent musicien et pianiste qui avait sans doute rencontré et étudié beaucoup de musique d’art occidental, et il est donc possible qu’il ait connu la définition de Varèse. Cependant, alors que la philosophie de Varèse est née de la conviction que les machines et les technologies seraient capables d’organiser le son, J. Blacking a voulu porter l’attention sur la musique comme fait social : une activité où la multitude des façons dont les êtres humains produisent leurs sons, à la fois comme interprètes et surtout comme auditeurs, permettrait de révéler beaucoup de choses sur leur structure sociale.
En quoi tes études universitaires ont-elles orienté tes recherches ?
J’ai eu la chance d’avoir non pas un mais deux mentors : J. Blacking et J. Baily, tous deux très différents. J. Blacking regorgeait d’idées, grandes et inspirantes, qui ont défié et révolutionné la façon dont on pense la musique et la société, tandis que J. Baily a mis l’accent sur une approche plus méthodique et empirique fondée sur la performance musicale et sur la gestion scrupuleuse de l’acquisition et la documentation des données.
Il ne faut pas oublier que j’étais jeune et inexpérimenté lorsque j’ai entrepris ce travail de terrain, et donc l’exemple de J. Baily, axé sur la musique et la collecte de données, m’a servi de guide pratique dans ma vie quotidienne pendant mes années en Inde. Et lorsque j’avais en ma possession un énorme corpus de données, j’ai pu prendre du recul et, inspiré par J. Blacking, j’ai pu identifier certains des grands modèles que ces données mettaient en lumière. J’ai donc été frappé par le récit cohérent du déclin culturel lié à la nostalgie d’un passé glorieux et artistiquement abondant, et la tradition musicale du tablā de Lucknow était l’un des derniers liens vivants avec ce monde perdu. Cela est devenu l’un des thèmes clés de ma thèse de doctorat et de certains des autres travaux qui ont suivi. Quant à ma carrière d’enseignant, j’ai essayé au fil des ans de combiner les meilleures qualités de mes deux maîtres, tout en promouvant toujours l’idée que, dans les recherches portant sur la musique et la vie musicale, la théorie devrait naître à partir de données solides et ne jamais ignorer le dialogue avec la réalité ethnographique afin de préserver ainsi sa valeur heuristique.
Dans « Working with the Masters » (2008), tu décris avec détails et franchise (ce qui est assez rare dans la profession !…) ton expérience de terrain dans les années 1980 avec Afaq Hussain. Cette expérience, et le récit que tu en fais, apparaissent comme un modèle pour toute recherche en ethnologie et en ethnomusicologie avec la particularité de l’apprentissage musical. Tu rends compte ainsi des phases d’approche, de rencontre, de test et, enfin (et heureusement dans ton cas) d’acceptation au sein de l’environnement étudié et de la confiance accordée permettant de déployer pleinement ses intentions de recherche et d’apprentissage musical. Tu abordes aussi les réflexions éthiques et déontologiques indispensables au chercheur : relation aux autres, conflits de loyauté résultant des possibles dissonances entre le rapport à l’informateur et les objectifs ethnographique, responsabilités vis à vis du savoir récolté et place du chercheur-musicien dans la réalité musicale de la tradition étudiée. Au-delà des particularités du contexte musical, y a-t-il des spécificités indiennes que les chercheurs occidentaux doivent avoir en tête pour entreprendre (et espérer réussir) une étude ethnologique en Inde ?
La société sud-asiatique a énormément changé au cours des 40 années qui se sont écoulées, c’est une évidence, et ce depuis que j’ai commencé à mener des recherches ethnographiques. Mais certains principes, ceux qui devraient guider le processus d’enquête, demeurent inébranlables. C’est le cas du profond respect pour la dimension de l’ancienneté, qu’elle soit sociale ou culturelle. Naturellement, l’accès à une communauté est la clef de voute, et il n’y a pas de meilleur « gatekeeper » ou « sponsor » (pour utiliser les termes anthropologiques) qu’une figure d’autorité au sein de la sous-culture que l’on étudie, puisque la permission que l’on reçoit se répercute sur la hiérarchie sociale et familiale. Le danger, dans une société fortement patriarcale comme celle de l’Inde, est que l’on se retrouve avec une vision hiérarchique descendante de la vie musicale. Si j’avais l’occasion de reprendre mes recherches dans ce domaine, j’accorderais une plus grande attention à ceux qui se trouvent à différents niveaux de cette hiérarchie, en particulier aux femmes et à la musicalité quotidienne de la vie dans la sphère domestique. En se concentrant uniquement sur les aspects les plus raffinés de la production culturelle, on peut passer à côté de ce qui a de la valeur dans la formation des idées, de l’esthétique et des mécanismes de soutien nécessaires à la survie et à l’épanouissement d’une tradition artistique.
Sur une note plus pragmatique (et qui concerne plus souvent il me semble les aspects relatifs au travail sur le terrain), j’ai trouvé que les entretiens formels enregistrés étaient rarement très fructueux parce qu’ils étaient ressentis comme intimidants et étaient accompagnés d’attentes élevées. En outre, une sensibilité accrue aux ramifications politiques – micro et macro – nous engageant à parler selon nos convictions, représentait souvent un obstacle à la collecte d’informations. En vérité, officieusement et dans des circonstances détendues, moins je demandais et plus j’écoutais, plus l’information que je recevais était utile et intéressante. La mise en garde est que pour fonctionner de cette manière, il faut développer un niveau de patience que la plupart des Occidentaux auraient du mal à accepter.
Fig. 1 : Séance d’enregistrement d’Afaq Hussain chez James Kippen, Lucknow, 1982, photo de James Kippen
Tu adoptes dans les années 1980 l’« approche dialectique » enseignée par J. Blacking en y associant l’informatique et un programme d’IA. Le but était d’analyser les fondements du jeu improvisé des joueurs de tablā. Peux-tu revenir sur la genèse et l’évolution de cette approche ?
J. Blacking était particulièrement intéressé par le travail de Noam Chomsky sur les grammaires transformationnelles. Il théorisait sur le fait que l’on pouvait créer des ensembles de règles pour la musique – une grammaire – avec plusieurs « couches » ; la première décrirait comment ces structures sonores de surface étaient organisées. Les autres plus profondes, comprendraient des règles abordant des principes de plus en plus généraux sur l’organisation musicale et, au niveau le plus profond, la grammaire formaliserait les règles régissant les principes de l’organisation sociale. Si le but ultime d’un ethnomusicologue est de relier la structure sociale à la structure sonore, ou vice versa, alors c’était cette idée que J. Blacking défendait pour atteindre cet objectif.
L’été 1981, j’ai fui la chaleur intense des plaines du nord de l’Inde et me suis réfugié près de Mussoorie dans les contreforts de l’Himalaya. J’avais convenu de retrouver mon ami F. Silkstone, qui à l’époque étudiait le sitār avec Imrat Khan et le dhrupad avec Fahimuddin Dagar à Calcutta. Francis est arrivé avec Fahimuddin et l’un des étudiants américains de Fahim, Jim Arnold. Jim et Bernard Bel (un informaticien et mathématicien qui vivait à l’époque à New Delhi) travaillaient ensemble pour un projet expérimental sur l’intonation dans le rāga. Bernard est alors arrivé à Mussoorie, également pour échapper à la chaleur, et pendant environ un mois nous avons tous vécu ensemble dans un environnement riche et fertile de musique et d’idées. C’est là que Bernard et moi avons discuté pour la première fois de la notion des grammaires socio-musicales de J. Blacking, ainsi que de ma fascination pour un type de composition des joueurs de tablā, avec une structure offrant un thème et des variations, connues sous le nom de qāida. J’étais très curieux d’apprendre que Bernard pouvait concevoir un programme informatique capable de modéliser le processus de création de variations à partir d’un thème donné.
L’année suivante, Bernard et moi nous sommes rencontrés à plusieurs reprises : il en a appris beaucoup plus sur le fonctionnement du tablā et j’ai beaucoup appris sur la linguistique mathématique. Ensemble, nous avons créé des ensembles de règles – des grammaires transformationnelles – qui ont généré des variations à partir d’un thème de qāida et traité des variations existantes pour déterminer si nos règles pouvaient en tenir compte. Mais il était évident que les connaissances modélisées étaient les miennes et non celles de musiciens experts. Alors nous avons développé une stratégie pour impliquer ces experts en tant que « collaborateurs et analystes » (une expression souvent utilisée par J. Blacking) dans un échange dialectique. Après tout, un « système expert » était destiné à modéliser les connaissances d’experts, et il n’y avait pas de meilleur expert qu’Afaq Hussain.
Avais-tu connaissance d’autres types de démarches interactives comme celle du re-recording développée un peu plus tôt par S. Arom ?
J’étais au courant des méthodes interactives de S. Arom pour obtenir les propres perspectives des musiciens sur ce qui se passait dans leur musique, tout comme j’étais au courant des travaux en anthropologie cognitive visant à déterminer les catégories cognitives significatives pour les personnes que nous étudiions. La thèse de S. Arom selon laquelle les données culturelles devaient être validées par nos interlocuteurs a certainement été très influente. Je ne connaissais pas d’autres approches. Les exigences de notre situation expérimentale particulière nous ont obligés à inventer notre propre méthodologie unique pour ce processus d’interaction homme-machine.
On connaît la crainte des maîtres indiens d’une diffusion de leurs savoirs au-delà de leur gharānā, et en particulier certaines techniques et compositions. Quelles étaient l’attitude et l’implication d’Afaq Hussain dans cette démarche qui mettait à jour les structures des qāida ?
Afaq Hussain n’était pas du tout préoccupé par les révélations concernant le qāida puisque l’art de les jouer dépendait de sa capacité à improviser. En d’autres termes, il s’agissait d’une activité axée sur les processus et donc en constante évolution. A l’inverse, les compositions fixes, en particulier celles transmises de génération en génération au sein de la famille, ne changeaient pas. Celles-ci étaient considérées comme des atouts précieux et étaient soigneusement gardées.
Lorsque je repense aux expériences scientifiques, je m’étonne que Bernard ait pu créer une grammaire générative aussi puissante pour un ordinateur (d’abord un Apple II avec 64k RAM, puis le portable 128k Apple IIc) avec une puissance de traitement et un espace aussi limité. Afaq Hussain s’est également étonné qu’une machine « puisse penser », pour reprendre son expression. Nous avons commencé par une grammaire de base pour un qāida donné, puis généré quelques variations, et je les ai ensuite lues à voix haute en utilisant la langue syllabique, les bols pour tablā. De nombreux résultats étaient prévisibles, certains étaient inhabituels mais néanmoins acceptables, et d’autres ont été jugés erronés – techniquement et esthétiquement. Nous avons ensuite demandé à Afaq Hussain de proposer ses propres variations ; celles-ci ont été introduites dans l’ordinateur (j’ai effectué la saisie en utilisant un système de corrélation de clés pour gagner en rapidité) et « analysées » pour déterminer si les règles de notre grammaire pouvaient en tenir compte. De simples ajustements aux règles étaient possibles in situ, mais lorsqu’une reprogrammation plus complexe était nécessaire, nous passions à un deuxième exemple et revenions à l’exemple d’origine dans une session ultérieure.
Fig. 2 : James Kippen, Afaq Hussain et son fils Ilmas Hussain, Lucknow, 1982, photo de James Kippen
Est-ce que ces recherches ont concerné d’autres types de composition comme les gat ou les tukra ?
Non. L’avantage d’observer une structure de thème et de variations comme celle des qāida est fondé sur le fait que chaque composition est un système fermé où les variations (vistār) sont limitées aux éléments présentés dans le thème. Le but est donc de comprendre les règles non écrites pour créer des variations. Les compositions fixes comme les gat, ṭukṛā, paran, etc., comprennent une variété d’éléments beaucoup plus large et plus imprévisible, et seraient ainsi très difficiles à modéliser. Cependant, nous avons pu expérimenter sur le type de composition appelé tihāī : la phrase répétée trois fois qui agit comme une cadence rythmique finale. Cette dernière peut être modélisée mathématiquement afin d’obtenir une formule arithmétique dans laquelle on peut proposer des phrases rythmiques, puis être appliquée soit à un qāida (un fragment de son thème ou l’une de ses variations), soit à des compositions fixes comme par exemple le ṭukṛā.
Est-ce que certaines phrases rythmiques générées par l’ordinateur et validées par Afaq Hussain ont intégré le répertoire du gharānā de Lucknow ?
C’est une question difficile. Lorsque nous étions au milieu d’une période intensive d’expérimentation avec le « Bol Processor », une sorte de dialogue se mettait en branle où Afaq Hussain alternait des phrases rythmiques générées par ordinateur avec des ensembles de variations qui lui étaient propres. Tant de compositions ont été générées et alternées de cette manière qu’il était souvent difficile de savoir si le répertoire qu’il jouait en concert provenait de l’ordinateur ou pas. Pourtant, alors que certains enseignants et interprètes développent un répertoire de variations fixes provenant d’un thème, Afaq Hussain lui l’a rarement fait, s’appuyant plutôt sur son imagination « dans l’instant ». C’est aussi l’approche qu’il a encouragée en nous. Par conséquent, je doute que le matériel généré par ordinateur soit devenu une partie permanente du répertoire.
Est-ce que ce type d’approche spécifique utilisant l’IA en ethnomusicologie a été poursuivi par d’autres ?
Le terme « Intelligence Artificielle » a fait l’objet d’un changement radical dans les années 1980-1990 grâce au développement de l’approche « connexionniste » (les neurones artificiels) et de techniques d’apprentissage à partir d’exemples capables de traiter une grande masse de données. Avec le Bol Processor (BP) nous étions au stade de la modélisation symbolique-numérique de décisions humaines représentées par des grammaires formelles, ce qui exigeait une connaissance approfondie, bien qu’intuitive, des mécanismes de décision.
Pour cette raison, les approches symboliques-numériques n’ont pas été reprises par d’autres équipes à ma connaissance. Par contre, nous avions aussi abordé l’apprentissage automatique (de grammaires formelles) à l’aide du logiciel QAVAID écrit sous Prolog II. Nous avons ainsi montré que la machine devait collecter des informations en dialoguant avec le musicien pour effectuer une segmentation correcte des phrases musicales et amorcer un travail de généralisation par inférence inductive. Mais ce travail n’a pas été poursuivi car les machines étaient trop lentes et nous ne disposions pas de corpus assez grands pour construire un modèle couvrant une grande variété de modèles d’improvisation.
Il se peut que des chercheurs indiens fassent appel à de l’apprentissage à partir d’exemples – qu’on appelle aujourd’hui « Intelligence Artificielle » – pour traiter de grandes masses de données produites par des percussionnistes. Cette approche « big data » a le défaut de manquer de précision dans un domaine où la précision est un marqueur d’expertise musicale, et de ne pas produire des algorithmes compréhensibles qui constitueraient une « grammaire générale » de l’improvisation sur un instrument de percussion. Notre ambition initiale était de contribuer à la construction de cette grammaire, mais nous avons seulement prouvé, avec la technologie de l’époque, que ce serait réalisable.
Fig. 3 : Bhupal Ray Chowdhury (disciple de Wajid Hussain et son fils Afaq Hussain) et J. Kippen en séance d’expérimentation avec le Bol Processor, Calcutta, 1984, photo de James Kippen
Dans les versions ultérieures, ce logiciel a pu procurer également de la matière et des outils pour le travail de composition en musique et en danse au-delà du contexte indien. On fêtera en 2021 les 40 ans de ce logiciel avec une nouvelle version. Quels sont les artistes qui ont utilisé le logiciel ?
Des compositions rythmiques programmées sur BP2 et interprétées sur un synthétiseur Roland D50 ont été utilisées pour l’œuvre chorégraphique CRONOS dirigée par Andréine Bel et produite en 1994 au NCPA de Bombay. Voir par exemple https://bolprocessor.org/shapes-in-rhythm/.
A la fin des années 1990, le compositeur néerlandais H. Visser a utilisé BP2 pour contribuer au développement d’opérateurs permettant la composition de musique sérielle. Voir par exemple https://bolprocessor.org/harm-vissers-examples/.
Nous avons eu des retours et demandes d’universitaires européens et américains qui utilisent BP2 comme outil pédagogique pour l’enseignement de la composition musicale. Mais nous n’avons jamais fait de campagne « publicitaire » à grande échelle pour agrandir la communauté d’utilisateurs, étant intéressés en priorité par le développement du système et la recherche musicologique qui lui est associée.
La principale limite de BP2 était son fonctionnement exclusif dans l’environnement Mac. C’est pourquoi la version BP3 en cours de développement est multiplateforme. Elle sera vraisemblablement mise en service en version « Cloud » rendu possible par son interaction étroite avec le logiciel Csound. Ce logiciel permet de programmer des algorithmes performants de production sonore et de travailler avec des modèles d’intonation microtonale que nous avons développés, aussi bien pour la musique harmonique que pour le raga indien – voir https://bolprocessor.org/category/related/musicology/.
Etudes de la notation, du mètre, du rythme et de leurs évolutions
Au fil de ton travail, la question de la notation musicale occupe une place importante autant sur le plan de la méthodologie que sur celui de la réflexion à propos de son usage. Tu as mis en place ton propre système afin de représenter le plus rigoureusement possible tes analyses des compositions de tablā et de pakhāvaj. Peux-tu nous parler de cet aspect de ton travail ?
Toutes les notations écrites sont des approximations incomplètes et leur contribution au processus de transmission est limité. Les représentations orales, comme les suites de syllabes énoncées (bols) représentant des frappes de percussion, transmettent souvent des informations plus précises sur la musicalité inhérente aux modèles, tels que l’accentuation, l’inflexion, le phrasé et la variabilité micro-rythmique. De même, une fois intériorisées, ces syllabes sont indélébiles. Nous savons que les systèmes oraux favorisent une bonne mémoire musicale, ce qui est particulièrement important dans le contexte de la performance musicale en Inde où les interprètes ne commencent qu’avec une feuille de route très générale, mais prennent ensuite toutes sortes de détours inattendus. Dans cette perspective, on pourrait se demander pourquoi écrire quoi que ce soit ?
À partir des années 1860, il y a eu un essor des notations musicales en Inde, inspiré il me semble par la prise de conscience que la musique occidentale possédait un système de notation efficace, et suscité aussi par l’augmentation constante de l’apprentissage institutionnalisé et d’un besoin apparent de textes pédagogiques et de répertoires. Pourtant, il n’y a jamais eu de consensus sur la façon de noter, et chaque nouveau système différait grandement des autres. La notation conçue en 1903 par Gurudev Patwardhan était sans doute la plus détaillée et la plus précise jamais créée pour les percussions comme le tablā et le pakhāvaj, mais elle était sûrement trop compliquée pour que les étudiants la lisent comme une partition. Son objectif premier était donc davantage d’être un ouvrage de référence qui préservait le répertoire et fournissait un programme pour un apprentissage structuré.
Nous vivons dans un monde de l’écrit et les musiciens reconnaissent que leurs élèves ne consacrent plus leurs journées entières à la pratique. Comme d’autres professeurs, Afaq Hussain nous a tous encouragés à écrire le répertoire qu’il enseignait pour qu’il ne soit pas oublié. Pour moi, il était particulièrement important de saisir deux aspects dans mes propres cahiers : la précision rythmique et les doigtés précis. En ce qui concerne ce dernier, par exemple, face à la phrase keṛenaga tirakiṭa takataka tirakiṭa, je m’assurais de noter correctement le doigté précis dans la douzaine de techniques possibles pour takataka, sans parler des variétés de keṛenaga, et j’indiquais également que les deux versions de tirakiṭa avaient été jouées légèrement différemment.
Afaq Hussain a gardé ses propres cahiers rangés en toute sécurité dans une armoire verrouillée. Il les consultait parfois. Je pense qu’il avait conscience du fait que le répertoire disparaissait effectivement avec la tradition orale. Après tout, il y a des centaines, voire des milliers de morceaux de musique. Son grand-père, Abid Hussain (1867-1936) fut le premier professeur de tablā au Bhatkhande Music College de Lucknow. Lui aussi a noté des compositions de tablā, et j’ai en ma possession des centaines de pages qu’il a écrites sans aucun doute pour être publiées sous forme de texte pédagogique. Cependant, il n’a pas indiqué de rythmes ou de doigtés précis, et l’interprétation de sa musique est donc problématique, même pour le fils d’Afaq Hussain, Ilmas Hussain, avec qui j’ai passé tout son répertoire au peigne fin. Une notation précise a donc de la valeur, si elle est accompagnée d’une tradition orale qui peut ajouter toutes les informations nécessaires pour donner vie à la musique.
Avec tes recherches récentes sur de nombreux textes indo-persans des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, tu mets en évidence l’évolution de la représentation de la métrique en Inde. Ces recherches illustrent l’importance de l’approche historique et mettent en évidence pleinement les mécanismes d’évolution des faits culturels. Quels sont les concepts que tu utilises pour décrire ces phénomènes ?
Une facette importante de notre formation anthropologique était d’apprendre à fonctionner dans la langue de ceux avec qui nous nous sommes engagés dans nos recherches, non seulement pour gérer la vie au quotidien, mais aussi pour avoir accès à des concepts qui sont significatifs dans la culture étudiée. Deux termes sont importants à cet égard, l’un dont l’importance est à mon avis exagérée, l’autre sous-estimée. Premièrement, gharānā, qui depuis sa première apparition dans les années 1860 signifiait « famille » mais qui, au fil du temps, en est venu à englober toute personne qui croit partager certains éléments de technique, de style ou de répertoire avec une personne dominante du passé. Deuxièmement, silsila, un terme commun dans le soufisme qui signifie « chaîne, connexion ou succession », et qui a une pertinence spécifique dans le cas de l’enseignement dans une lignée de musiciens. C’est cette silsila plus précise qui détient, selon moi, la clé de la transmission de la culture musicale, et pourtant le paradoxe est que la chaîne porte en elle une directive implicite pour explorer l’individualité créatrice. C’est pourquoi, par exemple, lorsque l’on examine la lignée des joueurs de tablā de Delhi à partir du milieu du XIXe siècle, on constate des différences majeures de technique, de style et de répertoire d’une génération à l’autre. Il en va de même pour mon professeur Afaq Hussain, dont le jeu différait grandement de celui de son père et enseignant Wajid Hussain. Chaque individu hérite d’une certaine essence musicale dans la silsila, bien sûr, mais il doit s’engager et opérer dans un monde en constante évolution où la survie artistique nécessite une adaptation. Il est donc d’une importance vitale lors de l’étude de toute époque musicale de recueillir autant d’informations que possible sur le milieu socioculturel observé.
Comme je viens de le démontrer, il est impératif de s’engager avec des concepts de la culture, de les expliquer et de les utiliser sans recourir à la traduction. Un autre excellent exemple est celui du terme tāla, qui est le plus souvent traduit par mètre ou cycle métrique. Et pourtant, il y a une différence fondamentale entre les deux. Le mètre est implicite : c’est un motif qui est dérivé des rythmes de surface d’une pièce, et se compose d’une impulsion sous-jacente qui est organisée en une séquence hiérarchique récurrente de battements forts et faibles. Mais, par contraste, tāla est explicite : c’est un motif récurrent de battements non hiérarchiques se manifestant par des gestes de la main consistant en des claps, des mouvements silencieux de la main et des comptes sur les doigts, ou comme une séquence relativement fixe de frappes de percussion. Utiliser le terme « mètre » dans le contexte indien est donc trompeur, et j’encourage donc l’utilisation de terme tāla avec une explication mais sans traduction.
Tu travailles actuellement sur un ouvrage concernant les sources du XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, quel est ton objectif ?
Mon objectif est de retracer les origines et l’évolution du système du tāla actuellement utilisé dans la musique hindoustanie en rassemblant autant d’informations que possible à partir de sources contemporaines de la fin du XVIIe siècle jusqu’au début du XXe siècle et de l’ère de l’enregistrement. Le problème est que les informations disponibles sont fragmentaires et souvent rédigées dans un langage obscur : la tâche s’apparente à un puzzle où la plupart des pièces manquent. De plus, les sources que l’on trouve ne sont pas nécessairement directement connectées, et donc j’ai plutôt l’impression de travailler avec deux ou plusieurs puzzles à la fois. En bref, après une analyse minutieuse, des déductions et des hypothèses, je pense qu’il y a eu une convergence des systèmes rythmiques au XVIIIe siècle qui a donné naissance au système du tāla d’aujourd’hui.
Les pratiques musicales et les contextes sociaux des diverses communautés (les Kalāwant qui chantaient le dhrupad, les Qawwāl qui chantaient le khayāl, le tarāna et le qaul, ainsi que la communauté des Ḍhāḍhī qui accompagnaient tous ces genres musicaux), doivent impérativement être pris en compte pour comprendre comment et pourquoi la musique et le rythme en particulier, ont évolués comme ils l’ont fait. Pourtant, il y a tant d’autres aspects importants dans cette histoire : le rôle des femmes instrumentistes dans les espaces privés de la vie moghole au XVIIIe siècle, et leur disparition progressive au XIXe siècle, le colonialisme, le statut et l’influence des textes anciens, les techniques d’impression et la diffusion de nouveaux textes pédagogiques à la fin du XIXe siècle, pour n’en citer que quelques-uns.
Quelles sont les sources intéressantes à considérer pour comprendre l’évolution des pratiques et des représentations rythmiques de la musique hindoustanie ?
Le nord de l’Inde a toujours été ouvert aux échanges culturels, et cela était particulièrement le cas sous les Moghols. Il est impératif de comprendre qui se rendait dans ces cours, d’où ils venaient et ce qu’ils jouaient. Il est tout aussi important de comprendre les documents écrits disponibles ainsi que les discours intellectuels de l’époque, car la connaissance de la musique était cruciale pour l’étiquette moghole. Ainsi, quand on sait que le traité de musique très influent Kitāb al-adwār, du théoricien du XIIIe siècle Safi al-Din al-Urmawi al-Baghdadi, était largement disponible en Inde en arabe et en traduction persane, et que des exemplaires se trouvaient dans la collection des nobles de Delhi à partir du XVIIe siècle, on comprend mieux pourquoi le rythme indien était expliqué en utilisant les principes de la prosodie arabe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Mon argument est que la prosodie arabe, appliquée à la musique, était un outil plus puissant que les méthodes traditionnelles de prosodie sanskrite, et qu’elle était donc plus efficace pour décrire les changements qui se produisaient dans la pensée et la pratique rythmique à cette époque.
Ces recherches ethno-historiques bousculent parfois les croyances de certains musiciens et chercheurs, notamment sur les questions d’ancienneté et d’« authenticité » des traditions. Penses-tu que les musiciens d’aujourd’hui sont davantage enclins à accepter les évidences de la nature complexe des traditions musicales, formées de multiples apports et en perpétuelles transformations ?
Certains le sont, mais certains ne le sont pas. Il y a toujours eu un petit nombre de chercheurs en Inde qui menaient des recherches précieuses et factuelles sur la musique. Pourtant, je suis déçu de constater qu’il y en a beaucoup d’autres qui reposent sur le rabâchage et la diffusion d’opinions non fondées et non savantes. Ce qui me surprend peut-être le plus, c’est le manque de formation scientifique rigoureuse dans les universités de musique en Inde et la persistance d’idées et d’informations réfutées ou discréditées en dépit de tant d’excellentes recherches publiées indiquant le contraire.
Fig. 4 : J. Kippen, 2017, Université de Toronto. Photo de James Kippen
Depuis les années 1990, on constate le renforcement d’un nationalisme hindou au sein de la société indienne. Notes-tu un impact particulier sur le monde de la musique hindoustanie et sur celui de la recherche ?
Il s’agit là d’un sujet complexe et sensible. Le nationalisme hindou n’est pas nouveau, loin de là, et comme je l’ai démontré dans mon livre sur Gurudev Patwardhan, il a constitué une partie importante de la raison d’être de la vie et de l’œuvre de Vishnu Digambar Paluskar au début du XXe siècle. Comme de nombreux chercheurs l’ont souligné, ce nationalisme avait ses racines dans le colonialisme et s’est développé en tant que mouvement anticolonial axé sur la politique identitaire hindoue. Ce récit, basé sur des notions inventées d’un passé hindou glorieux, a minimisé les contributions de la culture moghole et des grandes lignées de musiciens musulmans (sans parler des femmes). Depuis ce temps, l’identité musulmane indienne dans le domaine de la musique a connu un certain déclin. Les chercheurs ont pris note de cette chute et ont tenté de retracer certains des contre-récits qui ont jusqu’à présent été ignorés, comme l’excellent livre de Max Katz Lineage of Loss (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) sur une grande famille de musiciens-savants musulmans, nommée Shahjahanpur-Lucknow gharānā. Je pense que dans de nombreuses études actuelles qui portent sur la musique en Inde se trouve une forte motivation de ne pas omettre ces récits culturels importants, de les réanimer et de les replacer dans le grand récit de l’histoire de l’Asie du Sud.
A la suite de R. Stewart, tu as mis en évidence l’intrication complexe des approches rythmiques et métriques dans le jeu des joueurs de tablā en montrant qu’il résulte de divers apports culturels qui se sont succédés dans le temps. Avec l’intensification des échanges culturels mondiaux depuis la fin du XXe siècle, as-tu observé une ou des tendances évolutives dans le jeu des joueurs de tablā ?
Depuis l’inclusion du tablā dans la musique pop des années 1960, l’exaltante fusion jazz du groupe Shakti de John McLaughlin dans les années 1970 et l’omniprésence aujourd’hui du tablā dans la musique sous toutes ses formes, il semble tout naturel que les joueurs de tablā du monde entier aient envie d’explorer et d’expérimenter ses sons magiques. Zakir Hussain a montré la voie en démontrant la flexibilité et l’adaptabilité de cet instrument, ainsi que la vélocité viscérale et palpitante de ses motifs rythmiques.
Quant au tablā, dans le contexte de la musique de concert hindoustanie, j’ai remarqué que nombreux sont ceux qui tentent d’injecter ce même sentiment d’exaltation, renforcé de plus en plus, semble-t-il, par une amplification si forte qu’elle déforme le son et heurte les tympans du public jusqu’à la soumission. J’irais jusqu’à dire que c’est malheureusement devenu la norme. À cet égard, je me considère comme une sorte de puriste qui aspire à un retour à une pratique où le joueur de tablā maintient un rôle subtil, discret mais de soutien, et complète la ligne du soliste, en restant modeste et sans dominer la scène lorsqu’il est invité à faire une petite apparition ou un court solo. De la même manière, je désire un retour aux soli de tablā qui regorgent de contenu plutôt que d’« effets sonores ». Par « contenu », j’entends des compositions traditionnelles de caractère, dotées de techniques spécialisées, dont les compositeurs sont nommés et ainsi honorés. Et pourtant, il est douloureusement évident qu’un tel « contenu » n’atteint pas beaucoup de jeunes joueurs de nos jours.
Ethnomusicologie
Comme évoqué, tes recherches mettent en avant l’importance des sources historiques aussi bien que la prise en compte des phénomènes plus large comme l’orientalisme ou le nationalisme pour comprendre le présent des pratiques musicales indiennes. En même temps tu es très attentif aux intenses phénomènes transculturels actuels et à la nécessité de les appréhender. Dans la profession, le concept d’« ethnomusicologie » ne fait pas toujours consensus. Quelle est ta position par rapport à cette appellation et à l’objet de cette discipline en ce début du XXIe siècle ?
Je n’ai jamais été particulièrement à l’aise avec l’étiquette d’« ethnomusicologie ». Comme disait J. Blacking, toute musique est de la « musique ethnique », et par conséquent, il ne devrait pas y avoir de distinction entre les études sur le tablā, le gamelan, le hip-hop et celles sur Bach, Beethoven ou Brahms. Nous nous engageons tous dans un « discours sur la musique », une « musicologie ». L’avantage de termes comme « anthropologie » ou « sociologie » de la musique est qu’ils impliquent une gamme plus large d’approches théoriques et méthodologiques qui nous rappellent que la musique est un fait social. Pourtant, nous devons reconnaître que le champ des études ethnomusicologiques a évolué et que, de nos jours, une attention bien plus grande est accordée à des phénomènes comme le bruit ou les sons de la vie quotidienne. Par conséquent (sans vouloir paraître trop cynique) bien que dans certains milieux les « sound studies » soient traitées avec un certain mépris, ce terme très général est peut-être la définition la plus honnête et la plus précise de ce que nous (nous tous) faisons. Je reconnais toutefois qu’il serait dommage de rejeter complètement le terme « musique », et donc j’aime concevoir l’ethnomusicologie, la musicologie et la théorie musicale se réunissant sous la rubrique « musique et sound studies ».
Enseignement
Après une courte période à Belfast, tu as enseigné à Toronto, peux tu nous parler de ton expérience d’enseignement ?
Toronto est une ville merveilleuse et, selon la plupart des témoignages, c’est la ville la plus multiculturelle de la planète. Elle offre un environnement musical très riche et stimulant.
Miecyzslaw Kolinski a enseigné à l’Université de Toronto de 1966 à 1978. Ses intérêts ethnomusicologiques ont été façonnés par sa formation auprès de Hornbostel et Sachs, et par la vision d’un monde, partagée par tant de géants de notre discipline. Ses publications portent sur les bases scientifiques de l’harmonie et de la mélodie et il a développé des méthodes d’analyse interculturelle. Son approche a été catégoriquement rejetée dans ma propre formation avec John Blacking qui a toujours défendu avec véhémence le relativisme culturel, tout comme cela était en contradiction avec la formation de Tim Rice à l’Université de Washington. Tim a été embauché en 1974 et est parti pour l’UCLA en 1987. Comme moi à mes débuts, Tim a eu du mal à convaincre ses collègues de l’importance de l’approche ethnomusicologique et de la nécessité de traiter notre discipline avec le respect qu’elle mérite et les ressources qu’elle nécessite. Nous avons tous les deux beaucoup lutté. Tim a créé un programme qui est devenu connu sous ma direction sous le nom « The World Music Ensembles », et pour ma part j’ai acquis un gamelan balinais en 1993, aidé par mon épouse, l’ethnomusicologue Annette Sanger, ancienne collègue de J. Blacking. De plus, Tim et moi avons réussi à intégrer davantage les cours d’ethnomusicologie au cœur du programme pour nous assurer que tous les étudiants en musique, quels que soient leurs intérêts, soient exposés à notre approche et comprennent la valeur et l’importance d’une vision socialement fondée de toute musique. J’ai créé un cours d’introduction d’un an intitulé Music as Culture que j’ai co-enseigné pendant quelques années avec un collègue de musicologie : nous avons alterné nos cours, illustrant et croisant notre corpus et nos observations sur nos canons occidentaux et le vaste monde de la musique au-delà. Mon cours Introduction to Music & Society est devenu emblématique. Mon approche étant essentiellement modulaire, les thèmes choisis ont changé et se sont adaptés au fil du temps pour refléter des préoccupations plus contemporaines, notamment la musique et l’identité, l’expérience religieuse, la migration, le genre, la guérison et les sound studies.
Dans mes fonctions d’enseignant, j’ai conçu et enseigné une variété de cours : Hindustani music, Music & Islam, Theory & Method in Ethnomusicology, The Beatles, Anthropology of Music, Fieldwork, Music, Colonialism & Postcolonialism, Rhythm & Metre in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Transcription, Notation & Analysis, etc. J’ai travaillé avec la communauté sud-asiatique de Toronto pour organiser des concerts du chanteur Pandit Jasraj. Ils ont attiré des sponsors générant des bourses d’études fiables pour des étudiants dont les recherches portaient sur la musique hindoustanie. J’ai aidé à mettre en place un programme d’artiste en résidence, invitant des musiciens du monde entier à passer un trimestre avec nous à enseigner et à jouer. J’ai contribué à la refonte de nos programmes d’études supérieures axés sur la musicologie et j’ai introduit dans le programme d’étude une maîtrise et un doctorat en ethnomusicologie. Mais les deux réalisations dont je suis sans doute le plus fier sont premièrement les nombreux et merveilleux doctorants que j’ai encadrés, dont beaucoup ont eux-mêmes poursuivi une carrière dans le milieu universitaire, et deuxièmement le succès de mon initiative d’élargissement de notre représentation : nous sommes passés d’un seul poste de professeur à quatre titulaires à plein-temps en ethnomusicologie.
Quelle est ta place au sein du gharānā de Lucknow ?
J’ai beaucoup apprécié apprendre et jouer du tablā dans ma vie et je me considère extrêmement chanceux d’avoir eu un lien aussi étroit et productif avec l’un des joueurs de tablā les plus remarquables de l’histoire : Afaq Hussain. J’ai la chance d’avoir une bonne mémoire et j’ai donc encore dans ma tête un vaste répertoire de compositions merveilleuses remontant aux premiers membres de la lignée Lucknow qui ont prospéré à la fin du XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle. Je suis particulièrement intéressé par la technique et j’ai passé beaucoup de temps à étudier les mécanismes du jeu. Cependant, je suis avant tout un érudit et, en pratique, je ne me fais aucune illusion d’être guère plus qu’un amateur. En effet, mon intérêt pour le jeu m’a fourni des aperçus extraordinaires de l’instrument et de son histoire.
Quant à ma place ou mon rôle au sein du gharānā de Lucknow, je dirais deux choses. Tout d’abord, je continue à faire partie de l’échange d’idées et de répertoire avec mes pairs aux côtés desquels j’ai étudié le tablā et qui font partie maintenant, comme moi, des grandes figures de la silsila, la lignée directe de l’enseignement d’Afaq Hussain. Ils me considèrent comme un professionnel avisé, une autorité dans mon domaine. Parfois, on me demande si je me souviens d’une composition rare sur laquelle il y a eu débat, et parfois j’introduis dans notre dialogue des informations et des questions issues de mes recherches qui suscitent un vif intérêt. Par exemple, le fils d’Afaq Hussain, Ilmas Hussain, et moi-même avons travaillé ensemble pour ressusciter les cahiers de son arrière-grand-père Abid Hussain et les placer dans leur contexte, non seulement celui de leur tradition mais aussi celui de la fin des années 1920 et du début des années 1930, années durant lesquelles Abid Hussain incarnait le tout premier professeur de tablā au Bhatkhande College de Lucknow. Enfin, je pense que mes travaux ont su attirer une plus grande attention sur la lignée de Lucknow. Quand je suis arrivé à la porte d’Afaq Hussain en janvier 1981, il était affaibli – psychologiquement et financièrement – et son avenir était incertain. D’autres étudiants étrangers ont suivi mon exemple et ont rejoint un nombre toujours croissant de disciples indiens venus pour apprendre. Mon livre, The Tabla of Lucknow, ainsi que d’autres facettes de mes recherches ont donc bien contribué à attirer l’attention nationale et internationale sur Afaq Hussain, son fils Ilmas et toute leur tradition.
Liste des publications
Ouvrages
2006 Gurudev’s Drumming Legacy : Music, Theory and Nationalism in the Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati of Gurudev Patwardhan. Aldershot : Ashgate (SOAS Musicology Series).
2005 The Tabla of Lucknow : A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. New Delhi : Manohar (Nouvelle édition avec nouvelle préface).
1988 The Tabla of Lucknow : A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology).
Direction d’ouvrage
2013 avec Frank Kouwenhoven, Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction. Delft : Eburon Academic Publishers.
Direction de revue
1994-1996Bansuri (A yearly journal devoted to the music and dance of India, published by Raga Mala Performing Arts of Canada). Volume 13, 1996 (60 pp), volume 12, 1995 (60 pp), volume 11, 1994 (64 pp).
Articles, chapitres d’ouvrages
À paraître « Weighing ‘The Assets of Pleasure’: Interpreting the Theory and Practice of Rhythm and Drumming in the Sarmāya-i ‘Ishrat, a Pivotal 19th Century Text. », in Katherine Schofield, dir. : Hindustani Music Between Empires : Alternative Histories, 1748-1887. Éditeur à préciser.
À paraître « An Extremely Nice, Fine and Unique Drum : A Reading of Late Mughal and Early Colonial Texts and Images on Hindustani Rhythm and Drumming. », in Katherine Schofield, Julia Byl et David Lunn, dir. : Paracolonial Soundworlds : Music and Colonial Transitions in South and Southeast Asia. Éditeur à préciser.
2021 « Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. » MUSICultures (Journal of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music). Vol. 48.
2020 « Rhythmic Thought and Practice in the Indian Subcontinent. » in Russell Hartenberger & Ryan McClelland, dir. : The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm. Cambridge University Press : 241-60.
2019 « Mapping a Rhythmic Revolution Through Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Sources on Rhythm and Drumming in North India. » In Wolf, Richard K., Stephen Blum, & Christopher Hasty, dir. : Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives. Oxford University Press : 253-72.
2013 « Introduction. » In Frank Kouwenhoven & James Kippen, dir. : Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction. Delft : Eburon Academic Publishers : i-xix.
2012 « On the contributions of Pt. Sudhir V. Mainkar to our understanding of the tabla.” Souvenir Volume in Honour of Sudhir Vishnu Mainkar. Sharda Sangeet Vidyalaya : Mumbai.
2010 « The History of Tabla. » In Joep Bor, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, Jane Harvey and Emmie te Nijenhuis, dir. : Hindustani Music, Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries. New Delhi : Manohar : 459-78.
2008 « Working with the Masters. » In Gregory Barz and Timothy Cooley, dir. :Shadows in the Field : New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (2nd Edition révisée). Oxford University Press : 125–40.
2008 « Hindustani Tala : An Introduction. » Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. New York : Garland [version condensée de la publication de 2000].
2007 « The Tal Paddhati of 1888 : An Early Source for Tabla. » Journal of the Indian MusicologicalSociety, 38 : 151–239.
2005 « Lucknow » Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Part 2, Vol. 5, Locations: Asia & Oceania. London : Continuum : 109–110.
2003 « Le rythme: Vitalité de l’Inde. » In Gloire des princes, louange des dieux: Patrimoine musical de l’Hindoustan du XIVe au XXe siècle. Paris : Cité de la musique et Réunion des Musées Nationaux 2003 :152–73.
2002 « Wajid Revisited : A Reassessment of Robert Gottlieb’s Tabla Study, and a new Transcription of the Solo of Wajid Hussain Khan of Lucknow. » Asian Music, 33, 2 : 111–74.
2001 « Asian Music [in Ontario]. » Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3, The United States and Canada. New York : Garland Publishing : 1215–17.
1992 « Tabla Drumming and the Human-Computer Interaction. » The World of Music, 34, 3 : 72–98.
1992 « Music and the Computer : Some Anthropological Considerations. » Interface, 21, 3-4 : 257–62.
1992 « Where Does The End Begin ? Problems in Musico-Cognitive Modelling. » Minds & Machines, 2, 4 : 329–44.
1992 « Identifying Improvisation Schemata with QAVAID. » In Walter B. Hewlett & Eleanor Selfridge-Field, dir. : Computing in Musicology : An International Directory of Applications, Volume 8. Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities :115–19.
1992 avec Bernard Bel « Modelling Music with Grammars : Formal Language Representation in the Bol Processor. » In A. Marsden & A. Pople, dir. : Computer Representations and Models in Music. London, Academic Press : 207–38. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004506
1991 avec Bernard Bel « From Word-Processing to Automatic Knowledge Acquisition : A Pragmatic Application for Computers in Experimental Ethnomusicology. » in Ian Lancashire, dir. : Research in Humanities Computing I : Papers from the 1989 ACH-ALLC Conference, Oxford University Press : 238–53.
1991 « Changes in the Social Status of Tabla Players. » Bansuri, 8 : 16–27, 1991. (réédition de la publication de JIMS, 1989)
1990 « Music and the Computer: Some Anthropological Considerations. » In B. Vecchione & B. Bel, dir. : Le Fait Musical — Sciences, Technologies, Pratiques, préfiguration des actes du colloque Musique et Assistance Informatique, CRSM-MIM, Marseille, France, 3-6 Octobre : 41–50.
1989 « Changes in the Social Status of Tabla Players. » Journal of the Indian Musicological Society, 20, 1 & 2 : 37–46.
1989 Avec Bernard Bel « The Identification and Modelling of a Percussion ‘Language’, and the Emergence of Musical Concepts in a Machine-Learning Experimental Set-Up. » Computers and the Humanities, 23, 3 : 199–214. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004505
1989 « Computers, Fieldwork, and the Analysis of Cultural Systems. » Bulletin of Information on Computing and Anthropology, 7, 1989 : 1–7. En ligne : http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/bicaweb/b7/kippen.html
1988 « Computers, Fieldwork, and the Problem of Ethnomusicological Analysis. » International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 20 : 20–35.
1988 Avec Bernard Bel « Un modèle d’inférence grammaticale appliquée à l’apprentissage à partir d’exemples musicaux. » Neurosciences et Sciences de l’Ingénieur, 4e Journées CIRM, Luminy, 3–6 Mai 1988.
1988 « On the Uses of Computers in Anthropological Research. » Current Anthropology, 29, 2 : 317–20.
1987 « An Ethnomusicological Approach to the Analysis of Musical Cognition. » Music Perception 5, 2 : 173–95.
1987 Avec Annette Sanger « Applied Ethnomusicology : the Use of Balinese Gamelan in Recreational and Educational Music Therapy. » British Journal of Music Education 4, 1 : 5–16.
1986 Avec Annette Sanger « Applied Ethnomusicology : the Use of Balinese Gamelan in Music Therapy. » International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 15 : 25–28.
1986 « Computational Techniques in Musical Analysis. » Bulletin of Information on Computing and Anthropology (University of Kent at Canterbury), 4 : 1–5.
1985 « The Dialectical Approach : a Methodology for the Analysis of Tabla Music. » International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 12 : 4–12.
1984 « Linguistic Study of Rhythm: Computer Models of Tabla Language. » International Society for Traditional Arts Research Newsletter, 2 : 28–33.
1984 « Listen Out for the Tabla. » International Society for Traditional Arts Research Newsletter, 1 : 13–14.
Comptes rendus
2012 Elliott, Robin and Gordon E. Smith, dir. : Music Traditions, Cultures and Contexts, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, in « Letters in Canada 2010 », University of Toronto Quarterly, 81: 3 :779–80.
2006 McNeil, Adrian Inventing the Sarod : A Cultural History. Calcutta : Seagull Press, 2004. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 38 : 133–35.
1999 Myers, Helen, Music of Hindu Trinidad : Songs from the India Diaspora. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998. Notes : 427–29.
1999Marshall, Wolf, The Beatles Bass. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1998. Beatlology, 5.
1997 Widdess, Richard, The Ragas of Early Indian Music: Music, Modes, Melodies, and Musical Notations from the Gupta Period to c.1250. Oxford Monographs on Music. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1995. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117, 3 : 587.
1994 Rowell, Lewis, Music and Musical Thought in Early India. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl. Chicago and London : The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 114, 2 : 313.
1992 Compte rendu CD : « Bengal : chants des ‘fous’ », par Georges Luneau & Bhaskar Bhattacharyya, and « Inde du sud : musiques rituelles et théâtre du Kerala », par Pribislav Pitoëff. Asian Music 23, 2 :181–84.
1992 Witmer, Robert, dir. : “Ethnomusicology in Canada : Proceedings of the First Conference on Ethnomusicology in Canada.” (CanMus Documents, 5) Toronto, Institute for Canadian Music, 1990. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 24 : 170–71.
1992Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 1 : 171.
1988 Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. Sufi Music of India and Pakistan : Sound, Context and Meaning in the Qawwali. Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Cambridge : CUP, 1986. International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 20 : 40–45.
1986Wade, Bonnie C. Khyal : Creativity within North India’s Classical Music Tradition. Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Cambridge : CUP. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society : 144–46.
Enregistrements
1999 HonouringPandit Jasraj at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto. 2 CD set. Foundation for the Indian Performing Arts, FIPA002.
1995Pandit Jasraj Live at the University of Toronto. 2 CD set. Foundation for the Indian Performing Arts, FIPA001.
Livrets d’album musical
2009 Liner notes for Mohan Shyam Sharma (pakhavaj): Solos in Chautal and Dhammar. India Archive Music CD, New York.
2007 Liner notes for Anand Badamikar (tabla): Tabla Solo in Tintal. India Archive Music (IAM•CD 1084), New York.
2002 Pandit Shankar Ghosh : Tabla Solos in Nasruk Tal and Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1054), New York.
2001 Shujaat Khan, Sitar : Raga Bilaskhani Todi & Raga Bhairavi. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1046), New York.
1998 Pandit Bhai Gaitonde : Tabla Solo in Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1034), New York.
1995Ustad Amjad Ali Khan : Rag Bhimpalasi & Rag “Tribute to America”. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1019), New York.
1994 Ustad Nizamuddin Khan : Tabla Solo in Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1014), New York.
1992 Rag Bageshri & Rag Zila Kafi, played by Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod) and Pandit Kumar Bose (tabla). CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD 1008), New York.
1990 « In Memoriam : John Blacking (1928-1990). » Ethnomusicology 34, 2 : 263–6.
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James Kippen is one of the key figures in the study of Hindustani music. His encounter in 1981 with Afaq Hussain, at the time the doyen of one of the great tablā-playing lineages, was the starting point for major research into both the instrument and Indian rhythm. From 1990 to 2019 he was the head of ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music in the University of Toronto in Canada. Trained under John Blacking and John Baily, he also acquired over the course of his research a mastery of several Indo-Persian languages. This ability has allowed him to analyse first-hand numerous sources (treatises on music, musicians’ own writings, genealogies, iconographic materials…) and to understand the changing sociocultural contexts in which they were produced (the Indo-Persian courts, the colonial British Empire, the rise of Indian Nationalism, and the post-colonial state). His work (see the select list of publications at the end of this interview) stands out as a major contribution to the understanding of the theory and practice of rhythm and metre in India.
I began corresponding with James Kippen during my own research on tablā at the end of the 1990s. Always quick to share his knowledge and his experience with enthusiasm, he gave me a lot of advice and encouragement, and it was a great honour to count him among the members of my thesis jury during my defence in 2004. It was with that same willingness to share that he responded favourably to my proposal to interview him. Carried out remotely between July and December 2020, this exchange covers nearly 40 years of ethnomusicological research.
– How did you become interested in the musics of India, and in the tablā in particular?
As a child growing up in London, I was fascinated by the different languages and cultures that were increasingly being introduced by immigrants to Britain. I was particularly enchanted by the little Indian corner shops brimming with exotic goods and the Indian restaurants that emitted alluring, spicy aromas. My father regularly regaled me with stories of his adventures from the seven years he spent in India as a young soldier, and I developed an entirely favourable though admittedly Orientalist impression of the subcontinent. During my music degree at the University of York (1975-78), I was introduced by my friend and fellow student Francis Silkstone to the sitār. I also had the good fortune to take an intensive course in Hindustani music with lecturer Neil Sorrell, who had studied sāraṅgī with the great Ram Narayan. The available literature at that time was relatively sparse, but two texts in particular were highly influential: Rebecca Stewart’s Tablā in Perspective (UCLA, 1974), which nurtured in me a musicological interest in the varieties and complexities of rhythm and drumming, and Daniel Neuman’s The Cultural Structure and Social Organization of Musicians in India: the Perspective from Delhi (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1974), which offered social-anthropological insights into both the worlds and the worldviews of traditional, hereditary musicians.
Thus, I began learning tablā from Robert Gottlieb’s LP recordings and booklets called 42 Lessons for Tabla, and after a few months I had learnt enough basic material to accompany Francis Silkstone in a recital. I later studied in person under Manikrao Popatkar, an excellent professional tablā player who had recently immigrated to Britain. I was hooked. Moreover, the thought that I might enter that socio-musical world of tablā in India and become a participant-observer motivated me to look at graduate programs where I would be able to develop the knowledge and skills to combine the musicological and anthropological approaches of Stewart and Neuman. On Neil Sorrell’s advice I wrote to John Blacking about the possibility of studying at The Queen’s University of Belfast, and John was most encouraging, offering me entry directly to the doctoral program. He also pointed out that his colleague John Baily had recently written a text: Krishna Govinda’s Rudiments of Tabla Playing. It seemed I had found the ideal graduate program and the perfect mentors.
Methodological approaches
– The book How Musical Is Man? by John Blacking is a fundamental text that appeared in 1973 that ran counter to the thinking of the time and refused to recognise the barriers between musicology and ethnomusicology, as well as the fruitless differences between musical traditions. Blacking also put forward the essential idea that music, even if that word does not exist everywhere, is present in all human cultures, resulting in his definition of “humanly organised sound.” Do you know if he knew of Edgar Varèse’s expression “organised sound,” which Varèse put forward in 1941 in an attempt to distance himself from the Western concept of “music,” albeit for other reasons?
I have no personal recollection of Blacking ever mentioning Varèse or his thoughts on the nature of music. Nonetheless, Blacking was an excellent musician and pianist who had doubtless encountered and studied a great deal of Western Art Music, and so it is possible he knew of Varèse’s definition. However, whereas Varèse’s philosophy was born out of a conviction that machines and technologies would be capable of organising sound, Blacking wanted to re-centre music as a social fact: an activity where the myriad ways in which human beings organised sound both as performers and, importantly, as listeners promised to reveal a great deal about their social structure.
– How did your studies at university guide your research?
I was lucky enough to have not one but two mentors in John Blacking and John Baily, and they were very different from one another. Blacking was full of grand and inspiring ideas that challenged and revolutionized the way one thinks about music and society, whereas Baily emphasized a more methodical and empirically-based approach grounded in performance and the careful acquisition and documentation of data. One should remember that I was young and inexperienced when I undertook fieldwork, and so Baily’s example, focussed on doing music and on gathering data, served as a practical guide in my daily life during my years in India; yet once I was armed with a huge corpus of information I was able to stand back and, hopefully like Blacking, see some of the grand patterns which that data spelled out. I was struck therefore by the consistent narrative of cultural decline linked to a nostalgia for a glorious and artistically-abundant past, and the tablā music of Lucknow was one of the last living links to that lost world. This became one of the key themes in my doctoral dissertation, and in some of the other work that followed. As for my career as a teacher, I have tried over the years to combine the best qualities of both my mentors, always promoting the idea that theory should grow out of solid data about music and musical lives so that it does not lose its heuristic value by abandoning its dialogue with ethnographic reality.
– In Working with the Masters (2008), you describe in detail and with frankness (something that is fairly rare in the profession!) your fieldwork experience with Afaq Hussain in the 1980s. This experience, and your account of it, appear to be a model for any research in ethnology and ethnomusicology, particularly as it applies to learning music. Thus, you account for the phases of approaching, meeting, being tested and, finally (and fortunately in your case), acceptance within the research context; the trust you were granted allowed you to pursue in full your research and music-learning goals. You also tackle the ethical and deontological considerations essential to any researcher: one’s relationship to others, conflicts of loyalty resulting from possible inconsistencies between that relationship and one’s ethnographic objectives, responsibility to the gathered knowledge, and the place of the researcher-musician within the musical reality of the tradition studied. Beyond the particularities of the musical context, are there any specific features of Indian culture that Western researchers need to bear in mind in order to undertake (and hopefully succeed with) an ethnological study in India?
It goes without saying that South Asian society has changed enormously in the 40 years since I first began conducting ethnographic research, but certain principles steadfastly remain that should guide the investigative process, such as a deeply ingrained respect for social and cultural seniority. Naturally, access to a community is key, and there is no better “gatekeeper” or “sponsor” (to use the anthropological terms) than an authority figure within the subculture one is studying, since the permission one receives trickles down through the social and familial hierarchy. The danger, in a heavily patriarchal society like India’s, is that one ends up with a top-down view of musical life. If I had an opportunity to revisit my field I would pay greater attention to those at different levels within that hierarchy, especially to women and to the everyday musicality of life in the domestic sphere. By focussing only on the most refined aspects of cultural production, one may miss much that is of value in the formation of ideas, of aesthetics, and in the support mechanisms necessary for an artistic tradition to survive and thrive.
Fig.1: Recording session with Afaq Hussain at the home of James Kippen. Lucknow, 1982. Photo by James Kippen.
On a more practical note – something that applies I think rather more generally in the fieldwork endeavour – I found that formal, recorded interviews were rarely very insightful because they were felt to be intimidating and were accompanied by lofty expectations. Furthermore, a heightened sensitivity to the political ramifications – micro and macro – of speaking one’s mind on record was also often an impediment to gathering information. In truth, the less I asked and the more I listened – off the record and in relaxed circumstances – the more useful and insightful the information I received. The caveat is that to operate in that way one must develop a level of patience that would be difficult for most Westerners to accept.
– In the 1980s you adopted the “dialectical approach” taught by John Blacking and combined it with computer science and an Artificial Intelligence program. The aim was to analyse the fundamentals of improvisation by tablā players. Can you go over the genesis and evolution of this approach?
John Blacking was particularly interested in Noam Chomsky’s work on transformational grammars. He theorized that one could create sets of rules for music – a grammar – with the topmost layer describing how those surface sound structures were organised. At deeper levels the layers of rules would address increasingly more general principles of musical organisation, and at the very deepest level the grammar would formalise rules governing principles of social organisation. If an ethnomusicologist’s ultimate aim is to relate social structure to sound structure, or vice versa, then this was Blacking’s idea of how one might achieve that goal.
In the summer of 1981, I escaped the intense heat of the North Indian plains and headed to Mussoorie in the foothills of the Himalayas. I had agreed to meet up again with my friend Francis Silkstone, who at the time was studying sitār with Imrat Khan and dhrupad vocal music with Fahimuddin Dagar in Calcutta. Francis arrived with Fahimuddin and one of Fahim’s American students named Jim Arnold. Jim was collaborating on some experimental work on rāga intonation with Bernard Bel, who at that time was living in New Delhi. Bernard then arrived in Mussoorie, also to escape the heat, and for about a month we all lived together in a rich and fertile environment of music and ideas. It was there that Bernard and I first discussed Blacking’s notion of socio-musical grammars as well as my fascination with tablā’s theme-and-variations structures known as qāida. I was intrigued when Bernard suggested that he could design a computer program capable of modelling the process of creating variations from a given theme.
Over the following year, Bernard and I met several times: he learnt much more about how tablā works and I learnt much more about mathematical linguistics. Together we created sets of rules – transformational grammars – that generated variations from a qāida theme and processed existing variations to determine if our rules could account for them. Yet it was also clear that the knowledge being modelled was my own and not that of expert musicians. Therefore, we developed a strategy to involve those experts as “co-workers and analysts” (a phrase Blacking often used) in a dialectical exchange. After all, an “expert system” was intended to model expert knowledge, and there was no better expert than Afaq Hussain.
– Were you aware of other types of interactive approaches, such as Simha Arom’s “re-recording” developed a few years earlier?
I was aware of Simha Arom’s interactive methods of eliciting musicians’ own perspectives on what was happening in their music, much as I was aware of work in cognitive anthropology aimed at determining cognitive categories meaningful to the people we studied. Arom’s insistence that cultural data had to be validated by our interlocutors was certainly very influential. I did not know of other approaches. The exigencies of our particular experimental situation forced us to invent our own unique methodology for this human-computer interaction.
– We know of the fear Indian masters have of their knowledge being spread beyond their own gharānā, in particular, certain techniques and compositions. What was Afaq Hussain’s attitude regarding this, and what was his involvement in this method that updated the software for examining qāida structures?
Afaq Hussain was not remotely concerned about revelations regarding qāida since the art of playing them depended on one’s ability to improvise. In other words, this was a process-oriented and therefore ever-changing endeavour. On the contrary, playing fixed compositions, especially those handed down over generations within the family, were product-oriented, and the pieces did not change. Those were considered precious assets, and were carefully guarded.
Fig.2: James Kippen, Afaq Hussain, and his son Ilmas Hussain. Lucknow, 1982. Photo by James Kippen.
When I reflect on the experiments, I marvel that Bernard Bel was able to create such a powerful generative grammar for a computer (firstly an Apple II with 64k RAM, then the portable 128k Apple IIc) with such limited processing power and space. Afaq Hussain also marvelled that a machine could “think,” as he put it. We began with a basic grammar for a given qāida, generated some variations, and I then read those out loud using the syllabic language, the bols, for tablā. Many results were predictable, some were unusual but nonetheless acceptable, and others were deemed to be wrong – technically, aesthetically. We then asked Afaq Hussain to offer a few variations of his own; these were fed into the computer (I typed using a key-correlation system for rapid entry) and “analysed” to determine if the rules of our grammar could account for them. Simple adjustments to the rules were possible in situ, but when more complex reprogramming was required we would move on to a second example and return to the original example in a later session.
– Did this research ever involve other types of composition such as gat or ṭukṛā?
No. The advantage of looking at a theme-and-variations structure like qāida is that each composition is a closed system where variations (vistār) are restricted to the material presented in the theme. Relā (rapidly-articulated strings of strokes) is another structure that follows similar principles. The aim is therefore to understand the unwritten rules for creating variations. Fixed compositions such as gat, ṭukṛā, paran, etc., comprise a far wider and more unpredictable variety of elements, and would be very hard to model. However, one thing we did experiment with was the tihāī, the thrice-repeated phrase that acts as a final rhythmic cadence. These can be modelled mathematically and applied to a qāida (based on fragments of its theme or one of its variations) or to fixed compositions like, say, ṭukṛā as an arithmetic formula into which one can pour rhythmic phrases.
– Did any of the rhythmic phrases generated by the computer and validated by Afaq Hussain Khan make it into the repertoire of the Lucknow gharānā?
That is a hard question to answer. When we were in the middle of an intensive period of experimentation with the Bol Processor, there would develop a kind of dialogue where Afaq Hussain would play material generated by the computer and then respond with sets of variations of his own. So many were generated and exchanged in this way that it was often hard to tell whether something he played in concert originated in the computer. Yet, whereas some teachers and performers develop a repertoire of fixed variations for a theme, Afaq Hussain rarely did, relying instead on his imagination “in the moment.” This is also the approach he encouraged in us. Therefore, I doubt computer-generated material became a permanent part of the repertoire.
Fig.3: Bhupal Ray Chowdhury (a disciple of Wajid Hussain and his son Afaq Hussain) and James Kippen in an experimental session with the Bol Processor. Calcutta, 1984. Photo by James Kippen.
– Has this specific type of approach using Artificial Intelligence in ethnomusicology been pursued by others?
The term “Artificial Intelligence” underwent a radical change in the years 1980-1990 thanks to the development of the “connectionist” approach (artificial neurons) and learning techniques from examples with the capability of processing a large amount of data. With the Bol Processor (BP) we were at the stage of symbolic-numerical modelling of human decisions represented by formal grammars, which required in-depth, although intuitive, knowledge of decision mechanisms.
For this reason, symbolic-numerical approaches have not to my knowledge been taken up by other teams. On the other hand, we had also tackled machine learning (of formal grammars) using the QAVAID software written in Prolog II. We also showed that the machine had to collect information by dialoguing with the musician in order to carry out a correct segmentation of musical phrases and to begin generalising by inductive inference. But this work was discontinued because the machines were too slow and we did not have a large enough body of data to build a model capable of covering a wide variety of improvisation models.
It is possible that Indian researchers will use learning from examples – now called Artificial Intelligence – to process large amounts of data produced by percussionists. This “big data” approach has the drawback of lacking precision in a field where precision is a marker of musical expertise, and it does not produce understandable algorithms which would constitute a “general grammar” of improvisation on a percussion instrument. Our initial ambition was to contribute to the construction of this grammar, but we only proved, using the technology available at the time, that it would be feasible.
– In later versions, this software was also able to provide material and tools for music and dance composition beyond the Indian context. We will be celebrating 40 years of this software next year with a new version. Who are the artists that have used this software?
Rhythmic compositions programmed on BP2 and performed on a Roland D50 synthesizer were used for the choreographic work CRONOS directed by Andréine Bel and produced in 1994 at the NCPA in Bombay. See, for example, https://bolprocessor.org/shapes-in-rhythm/.
At the end of the 1990s, the Dutch composer Harm Visser used BP2 to help develop operators for serial music composition. See, for example, https://bolprocessor.org/harm-vissers-examples/.
We have had feedback (and requests) from European and American academics who use BP2 as an educational tool for teaching musical composition. However, we have never carried out a large-scale advertising campaign to enlarge the user community because we are primarily interested in the development of the system itself and in the musicological research associated with it.
The main limitation of BP2 was its exclusive operation within the Macintosh environment. This is why the BP3 version under development is cross-platform. It will probably be implemented in a Cloud version made possible by its close interaction with Csound software. This software makes it possible to program high-performance sound production algorithms and to work with microtonal intonation models that we have developed, both for harmonic music and for Indian rāga. See, for example, https://bolprocessor.org/category/related/musicology/.
Studies of notation, metre, rhythm, and their evolution
– Over the course of your work, the question of musical notation has occupied an important place both in terms of methodology and also in considerations of how it is used. Can you speak to this aspect of your work?
All written notations are incomplete approximations, and their contribution to the transmission process is limited. Oral representations, like the spoken strings of syllables representing drum strokes, often convey more accurate information about the musicality inherent in patterns, such as stress, inflection, phrasing, and micro-rhythmic variability. By the same token, once internalised, those spoken strings are indelible. We know that oral systems promote a healthy musical memory, which is particularly important in the context of the performance of music in India where performers begin with only a very general road map but then take all manner of unexpected twists and turns along the way. That being the case, one might ask why write anything down at all?
From the 1860s onwards, there was a burgeoning of musical notations in India inspired, I believe, by an awareness that Western music possessed an efficient notation system, and prompted too by the steady increase in institutionalised learning and the perceived need for pedagogical texts and associated repertoire. Yet there was never any consensus on how to notate, and each new system differed greatly from the others. The notation devised in 1903 by Gurudev Patwardhan was arguably the most detailed and precise ever created for drumming, yet it was surely too complicated for students to read as a score. Therefore, its purpose was more as a reference work that preserved repertoire and provided a syllabus for structured learning.
We live in a literate age, and musicians recognise that their students no longer devote their waking hours to practising. Like other teachers, Afaq Hussain encouraged us all to write down the repertoire he taught so that it would not be forgotten. For me, it was especially important to capture two aspects in my own notebooks: rhythmic accuracy and precise fingering. Regarding the latter, for example, when faced with the phrase – keṛenaga tirakiṭa takataka tirakiṭa – I wanted to ensure that I notated the correct intended fingering from the dozen or so possible techniques for takataka, not to mention the varieties of keṛenaga, and I would also indicate that the two instances of tirakiṭa were played slightly differently.
Afaq Hussain kept his own notebooks safely stored in a locked cupboard. He sometimes consulted them. I think he recognised that repertoire does indeed disappear in the oral tradition – after all, there are many hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of music. His grandfather, Abid Hussain (1867-1936) was the first professor of tablā at the Bhatkhande Music College in Lucknow. He too notated tablā compositions, and I have hundreds of pages he wrote that were almost certainly intended to be published as a pedagogical text. However, he did not indicate precise rhythms or fingerings, and so interpreting his music is problematic, even for Afaq Hussain’s son Ilmas Hussain with whom I combed through the material. A precise notation, then, does have value, but only alongside an oral tradition that can add the necessary layers of information that can bring the music to life.
– In your recent research on numerous Indo-Persian texts from the 18th and 19th centuries, you highlight the evolution of the representation of musical metre in India. This research illustrates the importance of the historical approach and fully demonstrates the mechanisms of the evolution of cultural facts. What concepts do you use to describe these phenomena?
An important facet of our anthropological training was learning to function in the language of those we engaged with in our research, not merely to manage life on a day-to-day basis but rather to have access to concepts that are meaningful within the culture studied. Two terms are significant in this regard, one whose importance is, I think, overstated, the other understated. Firstly, gharānā, which from its first appearance in the 1860s originally meant “family” but which over time has come to encompass anyone who believes they share some elements of technique, style, or repertoire with an apical figure of the past. Secondly, silsila, a term common in Sufism which means chain, connection, or succession, has specific relevance to a direct teaching lineage. It is this more precise silsila that I believe holds the key to the transmission of musical culture, and yet the paradox is that the chain carries within it an implicit directive to explore one’s creative individuality. That is why, for example, when one examines, say, the lineage of Delhi tablā players from the mid 19th century onwards, one finds major differences in technique, style, and repertoire from generation to generation. The same is true for my teacher Afaq Hussain, whose playing differed greatly from that of his father and teacher Wajid Hussain. Each individual inherits some musical essence in the silsila, for sure, but they must engage with and operate in an ever-changing world where artistic survival requires adaptation. It is therefore vitally important when studying any musical era to gather as much information about the socio-cultural milieu as possible.
As I have shown above, it is imperative to engage with native concepts, and to explain and use them without recourse to translation. Another prime example is tāla, which most commonly gets translated as metre or metric cycle. And yet there is a fundamental difference. Metre is implicit: it is a pattern that is abstracted from the surface rhythms of a piece, and consists of an underlying pulse that is organized into a recurring hierarchical sequence of strong and weak beats. On the other hand, tāla is explicit: it is a recurring pattern of non-hierarchical beats manifested as hand gestures consisting of claps, silent waves, and finger counts, or as a relatively fixed sequence of drum strokes. To use metre in the Indian context is therefore misleading, and I therefore encourage the use of tāla with an accompanying explanation but without translation.
– You are currently working on a book about 18th and 19th century sources. What is your goal?
My goal is to trace the origins and evolution of the tāla system currently in use in Hindustani music by gathering as much information as possible from contemporary sources beginning in the late 17th century through to the early 20th century and the era of recorded sound. The problem is that the available information is fragmentary and often couched in obscure language: the task is akin to doing a jigsaw puzzle where most of the pieces are missing. Moreover, the pieces one does find are not necessarily directly connected, and so the task might be better described as working with two or more puzzles. In brief, through careful analysis, inference, and some guesswork, I believe that there was a convergence of rhythmic systems in the 18th century that gave rise to the tāla system of today.
The musical practices and social contexts of the communities of Kalāwants who sang dhrupad and Qawwāls who sang khayāl, tarāna, and qaul, along with the Ḍhāḍhī community that accompanied all these genres, are crucial to understanding how and why music – and rhythm in particular – evolved the way it did. Yet there are so many other important aspects to this story: the role of women instrumentalists in the private spaces of Mughal life in the 18th century, and their gradual disappearance in the 19th century; colonialism; the status and influence of ancient texts; printing technology and the dissemination of new pedagogical texts in the late 19th century – to name but a few.
– What are some of the interesting sources to consider in order to understand the evolution of practices and rhythmic representations of Hindustani music?
Northern India has always been open to cultural exchange, and this was especially true under the Mughals. It is imperative that we understand who travelled to the courts, from where, and what they played. It is equally important to understand the written materials available as well as the intellectual discourses of the time, for knowledge of music was crucial to Mughal etiquette. Thus, to know that the highly influential music treatise Kitāb al-adwār, by the 13th century theorist Safi al-Din al-Urmawi al-Baghdadi was widely available in India both in Arabic and Persian translation, and that copies were in the collection of Delhi nobles from the 17th century onwards, helps us to understand why Indian rhythm was explained using the principles of Arabic prosody in the late 18th century. I have argued that, as applied to music, Arabic prosody was a more powerful tool than the traditional methods of Sanskrit prosody, and thus it was more effective in describing the changes that were occurring in rhythmic thought and practice in that period.
– This ethno-historical research sometimes clashes with the beliefs of certain musicians and researchers, especially on questions of the age and “authenticity” of traditions. Do you think the younger generations are more inclined to accept the obvious facts of the complex nature of musical traditions made up of multiple contributions and in perpetual transformation?
Some are, but some are not. There has always been a small number of scholars in India who conduct valuable, evidence-based research on music. Yet it disappoints me to note there are many more that rely on the regurgitation and propagation of unfounded, unscholarly opinion. What perhaps surprises me most is the lack of rigorous scholarly training in Indian music colleges and the persistence of disproven or discredited ideas and information in spite of so much excellent published research to the contrary.
Fig 4: James Kippen, University of Toronto, 2017. Photo by James Kippen.
– Since the 1990s, one notices the strengthening of a Hindu nationalism within Indian society. Have you noted a particular impact on the world of Hindustani music and on research?
This is a complex and sensitive topic. Hindu nationalism is not new, far from it, and as I demonstrated in my book on Gurudev Patwardhan, it formed a significant part of the rationale for the life and work of Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in the early 20th century. As many scholars have pointed out, it had roots in colonialism, and developed as an anti-colonial movement focussed on Hindu identity politics. That narrative, based on invented notions of a glorious Hindu past, downplayed the contributions of Mughal culture and the great lineages of Muslim musicians (not to mention women), and Indian Muslim identity within the sphere of music has suffered a decline ever since. Scholars have taken note of this dynamic and have attempted to trace some of the counternarratives that have hitherto been ignored, such as Max Katz’s excellent book Lineage of Loss (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) about an important family of Muslim scholar-musicians, the so-called Shāhjahānpūr-Lucknow gharānā. I suspect that a motivational force in much modern scholarship on music in India is the desire not to omit important cultural narratives but to animate them and frame them within the grand sweep of South Asia’s history.
– Following on from Rebecca Stewart’s work, you too have highlighted the complex interweaving of rhythmic and metric approaches in tablā playing by showing that it results from various cultural contributions which have followed one another over time. With the intensification of global cultural exchanges since the end of the 20th century, have you observed one or more evolving trends in tablā playing?
Since the inclusion of tablā in pop music in the 1960s, the exciting jazz fusion of John McLaughlin’s group Shakti in the 1970s, and the ubiquity of tablā ever since in music of every kind, it seems only natural that tablā players the world over should explore and experiment with its magical sounds. Zakir Hussain has led the way in demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of these drums, and the thrilling, visceral velocity of its rhythmic patterns. As for tablā within the context of Hindustani concert music, I have noticed that there are many who attempt to inject that same sense of excitement, enhanced increasingly, it seems, by amplification so loud that it distorts the sound and beats the audience’s eardrums into submission. I would go so far as to say that this has unfortunately become the norm.
In this regard, I count myself as something of a purist who longs for a return to a practice where the tablā player maintains a subtle, understated yet supportive role, complements the material presented by the soloist, and is modest and not overpowering when invited to contribute a short flourish or cameo solo. By the same token, I crave a return to tablā solos that are packed with content rather than “sound effects.” By “content,” I mean traditional, characterful compositions featuring specialised techniques, whose composers are named and thus honoured. And yet it is painfully obvious that such “content” is not reaching many younger players these days.
Ethnomusicology
– As mentioned, your research highlights the importance of historical sources as well as the consideration of broader phenomena such as Orientalism or Nationalism in order to understand Indian musical practices in the present. At the same time, you are very attentive to the intense current transcultural phenomena and to the need to comprehend them. In the profession, the concept of “ethnomusicology” does not always achieve consensus. What is your position with regard to this name and the subject of this discipline at the start of the 21st century?
I have never been particularly comfortable with the label “ethnomusicology.” As John Blacking used to say, all music is “ethnic music,” and therefore there should be no distinction between studies of tablā, gamelan, or hip-hop and those of Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms. We all engage in a “discourse on music”: in other words, “musicology.” The advantage of terms like the “anthropology” or “sociology” of music is that they imply a broader slate of theoretical and methodological approaches that remind us that music is a social fact. Yet we must recognise that the purview of ethnomusicological studies has evolved, and nowadays far greater attention is paid to phenomena like noise or the mundane sounds of everyday life. Therefore – without wishing to sound too cynical – although in some quarters the term “sound studies” is treated with a degree of contempt, perhaps that very general term is the most honest and accurate definition of what we (all of us) do. However, I acknowledge that it would be a shame to reject the term “music” altogether, and so I could imagine ethnomusicology, musicology, and music theory coming together under the rubric “music and sound studies.”
Teaching
– After a short period in Belfast, you taught in Toronto. Can you tell us about your teaching experience?
Yes, Toronto is a wonderful city, and by most accounts it is the most multi-cultural city on this planet. It offers a very rich and stimulating musical environment.
Miecyzslaw Kolinski taught at the University of Toronto from 1966 until 1978. His ethnomusicological interests were shaped by his training under Hornbostel and Sachs, and by the worldview shared by so many of the early giants of our discipline. He published on the scientific basis of harmony and melody, and developed methods for cross-cultural analysis – an approach emphatically rejected in my own training with John Blacking who argued vehemently for cultural relativism, much as it was at odds with Tim Rice’s training at the University of Washington. Tim was hired in 1974 and left for UCLA in 1987. Like me during my early days, Tim struggled to persuade colleagues of the importance of the ethnomusicological approach and the need to treat our discipline with the respect it deserved and the resources it required. We both fought hard. Tim introduced a program that came to be known under my watch as the World Music Ensembles, and I acquired a Balinese gamelan in 1993, which was taught by my wife, ethnomusicologist Dr Annette Sanger, formerly a colleague of John Blacking. Moreover, both Tim and I succeeded in drawing ethnomusicology classes further into the core of the curriculum to ensure that all music students, whatever their interests, were exposed to our approach and understood the value and importance of a socially-grounded view of all music. One initiative I created was a year-long introductory course called Music as Culture which for a few years I co-taught with a musicology colleague: we alternated our presentations, illustrating and cross-referencing our material and observations from the Western canon and the vast world of music beyond. Later incarnations of this course included our flagship Introduction to Music & Society. Essentially modular in approach, the chosen themes shifted and adapted over time to reflect more contemporary concerns, including music and identity, religious experience, migration, gender, healing, and sound studies.
I devised and taught a variety of courses during my time: Hindustani music; Music & Islam; Theory & Method in Ethnomusicology; The Beatles; Anthropology of Music; Fieldwork; Music, Colonialism & Postcolonialism; Rhythm & Metre in Cross-Cultural Perspective; Transcription, Notation & Analysis, etc. I worked with the South Asian community in Toronto to put on concerts by vocalist Pandit Jasraj that drew sponsorship that generated healthy scholarships for students studying Hindustani music. I helped institute an Artist-in-Residence program, inviting musicians from all over the world to spend a term with us teaching and performing. I helped to overhaul our musicology-oriented graduate programmes and introduced an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology. But perhaps the two achievements of which I am most proud are firstly the many wonderful doctoral students I mentored, many of whom have themselves gone on pursue to careers in academia, and secondly my success in expanding our representation from a single faculty position to four full-time positions in ethnomusicology.
– What is your position within the Lucknow gharānā?
I have greatly enjoyed learning and playing tablā in my life, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had such a close and productive association with one of the most remarkable tablā players in history: Afaq Hussain. I am blessed with a good memory and therefore still have in my head a vast repertoire of wonderful compositions dating all the way back to the early members of the Lucknow lineage who flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I am particularly interested in technique, and have spent a good deal of time studying the mechanics of playing. However, I am first and foremost a scholar, and in practical matters I have no illusions about being anything more than a tablā hobbyist. Indeed, my interest in playing has provided me with extraordinary insights into the instrument and its history.
As for my place or role within the Lucknow gharānā, I would say two things. Firstly, I continue to be part of the exchange of ideas and repertoire with my peers alongside whom I studied tablā and who now are, like me, senior figures within the silsila, the direct teaching lineage of Afaq Hussain. I am considered by them to be knowledgeable: an authority, if you will. On occasions I am asked if I remember a rare composition over which there has been some debate, and sometimes I introduce into our dialogue information and questions arising from my research that spark a lively interest. For example, Afaq Hussain’s son Ilmas Hussain and I have been working together to resurrect the notebooks of his great-grandfather Abid Hussain, and place them in the context not only of his tradition but also of the early years of Lucknow’s Bhatkhande College where Abid Hussain served as the first professor of tablā in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Secondly, I believe that my work has brought greater attention to the Lucknow lineage. When I arrived at Afaq Hussain’s doorstep in January 1981 he was frankly at a low ebb in his life – psychologically and financially – and much about the future was uncertain. Other foreign students followed my lead and joined an ever-growing number of Indian disciples who came to learn. My book, The Tabla of Lucknow, as well as other facets of my research helped to bring national and international attention to Afaq Hussain, his son Ilmas, and their entire tradition.
When I came to Toronto I made a decision not to teach tablā outside of my duties at the University of Toronto, since I did not wish to risk depriving local tablā players (of whom there were several very good ones) of the opportunity to earn income. Within the university itself, I did run occasional workshops and courses for students, plus individual lessons, and some of them (particularly percussionists) became quite competent players.
List of publications
Books
2006 Gurudev’s Drumming Legacy: Music, Theory and Nationalism in the Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati of Gurudev Patwardhan. Aldershot: Ashgate (SOAS Musicology Series).
2005 The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. New Delhi: Manohar (New edition with new preface).
1988 The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology).
Edited books
2013 with Frank Kouwenhoven, Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers.
Edited journals
1994-1996Bansuri, volumes 11-13 (A yearly journal devoted to the music and dance of India, published by Raga Mala Performing Arts of Canada).
Articles, chapters in books
Forthcoming “Weighing ‘The Assets of Pleasure’: Interpreting the Theory and Practice of Rhythm and Drumming in the Sarmāya-i ‘Ishrat, a Pivotal 19th Century Text” in Katherine Schofield, ed.: Hindustani Music Between Empires: Alternative Histories, 1748-1887. Publisher TBA.
Forthcoming “An Extremely Nice, Fine and Unique Drum: A Reading of Late Mughal and Early Colonial Texts and Images on Hindustani Rhythm and Drumming” in Katherine Schofield, Julia Byl et David Lunn, eds: Paracolonial Soundworlds: Music and Colonial Transitions in South and Southeast Asia. Publisher TBA.
2021 “Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.” MUSICultures (Journal of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music): Vol.48.
2020 “Rhythmic Thought and Practice in the Indian Subcontinent” in Russell Hartenberger & Ryan McClelland, eds: The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm. Cambridge University Press: 241-60.
2019 “Mapping a Rhythmic Revolution Through Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Sources on Rhythm and Drumming in North India” in Wolf, Richard K., Stephen Blum, & Christopher Hasty, eds: Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives. Oxford University Press: 253-72.
2013 “Introduction” in Frank Kouwenhoven & James Kippen, eds: Music, Dance and the Art of Seduction. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers: i-xix.
2010 “The History of Tabla” in Joep Bor, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, Jane Harvey and Emmie te Nijenhuis, eds: Hindustani Music, Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries. New Delhi: Manohar: 459-78.
2008 “Working with the Masters” in Gregory Barz and Timothy Cooley, eds:Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (2nd revised edition). Oxford University Press: 125–40.
2007 “The Tal Paddhati of 1888: An Early Source for Tabla.” Journal of The Indian Musicological Society, 38: 151–239.
2003 “Le rythme: Vitalité de l’Inde.” Gloire des princes, louange des dieux: Patrimoine musical de l’Hindoustan du XIVe au XXe siècle. Paris: Cité de la musique et Réunion des Musées Nationaux 2003:152–73.
2002 “Wajid Revisited: A Reassessment of Robert Gottlieb’s Tabla Study, and a new Transcription of the Solo of Wajid Hussain Khan of Lucknow.” Asian Music, 33, 2: 111–74.
1992 “Tabla Drumming and the Human-Computer Interaction.” The World of Music, 34, 3: 72–98.
1992 “Music and the Computer: Some Anthropological Considerations.” Interface, 21, 3-4: 257–62.
1992 “Where Does The End Begin ? Problems in Musico-Cognitive Modelling.” Minds & Machines, 2, 4: 329–44.
1992 “Identifying Improvisation Schemata with QAVAID” in Walter B. Hewlett & Eleanor Selfridge-Field, eds: Computing in Musicology: An International Directory of Applications, Volume 8. Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities:115–19.
1992 with Bernard Bel “Modelling Music with Grammars: Formal Language Representation in the Bol Processor” in A. Marsden & A. Pople, eds: Computer Representations and Models in Music. London, Academic Press: 207–38. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004506
1991 with Bernard Bel “From Word-Processing to Automatic Knowledge Acquisition: A Pragmatic Application for Computers in Experimental Ethnomusicology” in Ian Lancashire, ed.: Research in Humanities Computing I: Papers from the 1989 ACH-ALLC Conference, Oxford University Press: 238–53.
1990 “Music and the Computer: Some Anthropological Considerations” in B. Vecchione & B. Bel, eds: Le Fait Musical – Sciences, Technologies, Pratiques, préfiguration des actes du colloque Musique et Assistance Informatique, CRSM-MIM, Marseille, France, 3-6 Octobre: 41–50.
1989 with Bernard Bel “The Identification and Modelling of a Percussion ‘Language’, and the Emergence of Musical Concepts in a Machine-Learning Experimental Set-Up.” Computers and the Humanities, 23, 3: 199–214. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004505
1988 with Bernard Bel “Un modèle d’inférence grammaticale appliquée à l’apprentissage à partir d’exemples musicaux.” Neurosciences et Sciences de l’Ingénieur, 4e Journées CIRM, Luminy, 3–6 Mai 1988.
1987 “An Ethnomusicological Approach to the Analysis of Musical Cognition.” Music Perception 5, 2: 173–95.
1987 with Annette Sanger “Applied Ethnomusicology: the Use of Balinese Gamelan in Recreational and Educational Music Therapy.” British Journal of Music Education 4, 1: 5–16.
1986 with Annette Sanger “Applied Ethnomusicology: the Use of Balinese Gamelan in Music Therapy.” International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 15: 25–28.
1986 “Computational Techniques in Musical Analysis.” Bulletin of Information on Computing and Anthropology (University of Kent at Canterbury), 4: 1–5.
1985 “The Dialectical Approach: a Methodology for the Analysis of Tabla Music.” International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 12: 4–12.
1984 “Linguistic Study of Rhythm: Computer Models of Tabla Language.” International Society for Traditional Arts Research Newsletter, 2: 28–33.
1984 “Listen Out for the Tabla.” International Society for Traditional Arts Research Newsletter, 1: 13–14.
Reviews
2012 Elliott, Robin and Gordon E. Smith, eds: Music Traditions, Cultures and Contexts, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, in “Letters in Canada 2010”, University of Toronto Quarterly, 81: 3:779–80.
2006 McNeil, Adrian Inventing the Sarod: A Cultural History. Calcutta: Seagull Press, 2004. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 38: 133–35.
1999 Myers, Helen, Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Notes: 427–29.
1999Marshall, Wolf, The Beatles Bass. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1998. Beatlology, 5.
1997 Widdess, Richard, The Ragas of Early Indian Music: Music, Modes, Melodies, and Musical Notations from the Gupta Period to c.1250. Oxford Monographs on Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117, 3: 587.
1994 Rowell, Lewis, Music and Musical Thought in Early India. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 114, 2: 313.
1992 CD: review “Bengal: chants des ‘fous’”, par Georges Luneau & Bhaskar Bhattacharyya, and “Inde du sud: musiques rituelles et théâtre du Kerala”, par Pribislav Pitoëff. Asian Music 23, 2:181–84.
1992 Witmer, Robert, ed.: “Ethnomusicology in Canada: Proceedings of the First Conference on Ethnomusicology in Canada.” (CanMus Documents, 5) Toronto, Institute for Canadian Music, 1990. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 24: 170–71.
1992Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 1: 171.
1988 Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in the Qawwali. Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter) Bulletin, 20: 40–45.
1986Wade, Bonnie C. Khyal: Creativity within North India’s Classical Music Tradition. Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Cambridge: CUP. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 144–46.
Recordings
1999 HonouringPandit Jasraj at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto. 2 CD set. Foundation for the Indian Performing Arts, FIPA002.
1995Pandit Jasraj Live at the University of Toronto. 2 CD set. Foundation for the Indian Performing Arts, FIPA001.
Liner notes
2009 Mohan Shyam Sharma (pakhavaj): Solos in Chautal and Dhammar. India Archive Music CD, New York.
2007 Anand Badamikar (tabla): Tabla Solo in Tintal. India Archive Music (IAM•CD 1084), New York.
2002 Pandit Shankar Ghosh: Tabla Solos in Nasruk Tal and Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1054), New York.
2001 Shujaat Khan, Sitar: Raga Bilaskhani Todi & Raga Bhairavi. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1046), New York.
1998 Pandit Bhai Gaitonde: Tabla Solo in Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1034), New York.
1995Ustad Amjad Ali Khan: Rag Bhimpalasi & Rag “Tribute to America”. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1019), New York.
1994 Ustad Nizamuddin Khan: Tabla Solo in Tintal. CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD1014), New York.
1992 Rag Bageshri & Rag Zila Kafi, played by Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod) and Pandit Kumar Bose (tabla). CD, India Archive Recordings (IAM•CD 1008), New York.
1990 “In Memoriam: John Blacking (1928-1990).” Ethnomusicology 34, 2: 263–6.
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