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Rhythmic Variability in European Vocal Music 193 RHYTHMIC VARIABILITY IN EUROPEAN VOCAL MUSIC DAVID TEMPERLEY to have higher variability in syllable length than French Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester (Grabe & Low, 2002). Several subsequent studies have further explored cross-cultural correlations between RHYTHMIC VARIABILITY IN THE VOCAL MUSIC OF music and language using nPVI. Huron and Ollen four European nations was examined, using the nPVI (2003) repeated Patel and Daniele’s procedure with measure (normalized pairwise variability index). It was a larger sample of instrumental melodies, and again predicted that English and German songs would show found English melodies to have higher nPVI than higher nPVI than French and Italian ones, mirroring French; they also found that German instrumental mel- the differences between these nations in speech rhythm, odies had relatively low nPVI, which is notable since the and in accord with previous studies of instrumental speech nPVI of German is relatively high. Daniele and music. Surprisingly, there was no evidence of this pat- Patel (2013) suggest that this may be due to the influ- tern, and some evidence of the opposite pattern: nPVI ence of Italian music on German composers (Italian is higher in French and Italian vocal music than in speech, like French, has fairly low nPVI); they show that English and German vocal music. This casts doubt on the nPVI of German instrumental music increases in the theory that the differences in instrumental rhythm the 19th century, as Italian influence wanes. This line between these nations are due to differences in speech of reasoning is pursued by Hansen, Sadakata, and Pearce rhythm. (2016), who examined nPVI in Italian, German, and French instrumental themes, finding evidence for a com- Received: November 30, 2016, accepted April 10, 2017. plex pattern of influence between the three nations. McGowan and Levitt (2011) examined nPVI in the Key words: Vocal music, rhythm, nPVI, speech, music- speech and instrumental music of three English- language connections speaking cultures—Irish, Scottish, and Appalachian— and found that regions whose dialects had higher nPVIs N AN INFLUENTIAL STUDY,PATEL AND DANIELE had a higher musical nPVI as well. (2003) examined rhythmic variability in French and Patel and Daniele deliberately focused on instrumen- I English instrumental themes from around 1900, tal music in their 2003 study because, in their words, ‘‘if measured using the normalized pairwise variability music is based on words, and words have different index, or nPVI. The nPVI formula assigns a value to rhythmic properties in the languages under study, then a series of durations: it would be no surprise if musical rhythm reflected lin- guistic rhythm.’’ In short, it is simply taken for granted XmÀ1 100 dk À dkþ1 that differences in speech nPVI will be reflected in vocal nPVI ¼ Â ð1Þ m À 1 ðdk þ dkþ1Þ=2 music. This is an understandable assumption, especially k¼1 now that differences in nPVI have been found in instru- where dk is the kth duration and m is the number of mental music. Nevertheless, several studies have exam- durations. The value reflects the amount of contrast ined nPVI in vocal music. VanHandel and Song (2010) between adjacent durations; if short notes tend to alter- nate with long ones, the nPVI will be high. The mini- mum possible nPVI is zero (if all durations are the same); the theoretical maximum is 200, though this could never occur in practice (unless some durations had a value of zero). Some simple rhythmic patterns with their nPVI’s are shown in Figure 1. Patel and Daniele (2003) showed that English instru- mental themes had higher rhythmic variability than French themes. They attributed this difference to the FIGURE 1. Some simple rhythmic patterns with their nPVI’s. (Assume influence of language: English speech has been shown each pattern repeats indefinitely.) Music Perception, VOLUME 35, ISSUE 2, PP. 193–199, ISSN 0730-7829, ELECTRONIC ISSN 1533-8312. © 2017 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE DIRECT ALL REQUESTS FOR PERMISSION TO PHOTOCOPY OR REPRODUCE ARTICLE CONTENT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS’S REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS WEB PAGE, HTTP://WWW.UCPRESS.EDU/JOURNALS.PHP?P¼REPRINTS. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2017.35.2.193 194 David Temperley TABLE 1. The Six Song Books Used In The Study # # mean Nation Book songs measures nPVI English Hatton, J., & Faning, E. (Eds.) 1900. Songs of England, Vol. 1. London: Boosey & Co. 102 4351 45.2 French [No editor identified]. 1904. Songs of France. London: Boosey & Co. 60 4252 60.6 Jameson, R. P., & Heacox, A. E. (Eds.) 1920. Chants de France. London: Heath & Co. 61 1493 49.1 Both French books (excluding duplicates) 117 5641 54.4 German Max Spicker (Ed.). 1904. Songs of Germany: Eighty-one German Folk and Popular Songs. 81 1391 45.4 New York: Schirmer. Italian [No editor identified]. 1880. Songs of Italy. London: Boosey & Co. 54 2329 52.1 Marzo, E. (Ed). 1904. Songs of Italy. New York: Schirmer. 65 1650 48.9 Both Italian books (excluding duplicates) 101 3353 49.8 examined melodies in 19th-century German and about this in the case of French and German). The French art songs, and found almost no difference intent was to examine the more specific causes of this between them in nPVI. Jekiel (2014) found that English supposed difference. In particular, the ‘‘Scotch snap’’ nPVI exceeds Polish nPVI in vocal music (in accord pattern—in which a sixteenth note on a strong beat is with the nPVI difference in speech between the two followed by a longer note on a weak beat—has been languages) but not in instrumental music. And Lee, shown to occur much more often in English vocal music Brown, and Mu¨llensiefen (2017) found that popular than in German or Italian (Temperley & Temperley, songs by artists speaking multicultural London English 2011); it was thought that this pattern might have had had lower nPVI than those by artists speaking southern the effect of increasing the nPVI of English vocal music British English, mirroring the difference in nPVI relative to the other three languages. The results of the between the two dialects. investigation were surprising, and led the study in The current study presents data regarding nPVI in a rather different direction. vocal music, focusing on four important nations in the European musical tradition: Germany, France, Italy, and CORPUS ANALYSIS England. These languages differ markedly in nPVI, with As a corpus, six songbooks were used, each one repre- German and (British) English having higher values than senting songs of a single nation: England, France, Ger- French and Italian. (Grabe and Low, 2002, report values many, or Italy (see Table 1). The books all have similar of 57.2 for English, 59.7 for German, and 43.5 for titles (Songs of X, where X is a country name), and were French; Arvanti, 2012, reports 59.9 for English, 53.6 for all published around 1900; the earliest is from 1880, the German, and 48.5 for Italian; Ramus, 2002, reports sim- latest from 1920. (Not all of the songs in the books were ilar values.) The data for the current study are taken composed during this period, however; more on this from songbooks published in the late 19th and early below.) The six books are also similar in content, all 20th centuries, a period during which it has been found of them containing a mixture of folk songs (i.e., songs that English instrumental themes exceed French ones in with no known composer), popular songs (songs with nPVI (Patel & Daniele, 2003), and German instrumen- known composers intended for a mass audience), and tal melodies exceed Italian ones (Daniele & Patel, art songs (songs with known composers intended for 2013).1 Following Patel and Daniele’s reasoning, the a more sophisticated audience—though the distinction study was undertaken with the expectation that nPVI between popular and art songs was less clear-cut than it in vocal music would follow a similar pattern (though is today). The books were all published in English- VanHandel and Song’s 2010 study raises some doubt speaking countries (see Table 1). The lyrics are printed in the original languages, though all the books except 1 The themes in Patel and Daniele (2003) were by English and French Chants de France have English translations as well. In composers who were born the 19th century and died in the 20th. occasional cases, the songbooks provide different musi- Regarding German and Italian music, Daniele and Patel (2013)’s main cal rhythms for the English and non-English lyrics; in finding concerns change in nPVI; they show that German instrumental such cases, the rhythm for the non-English lyric was themes show an increase in nPVI in the 18th and 19th centuries while Italian themes do not. However, they also observe that German themes used. ‘‘rise above’’ Italian themes in nPVI sometime in the late 18th century All songs in all six books were encoded. Durations (2013, p. 16). were encoded in sixteenth notes. (Since the nPVI only Rhythmic Variability in European Vocal Music 195 FIGURE 2. Charles Gounod, “Serenade,” from Songs of France, mm. 7-13. The first row of symbols shows the encoding of the melody. Durations are encoded in sixteenth notes; the duration of a tied note (marked with square brackets) is the sum of the two tied notes, e.g. [6 | 2] ¼ 8. Non-integer values are used when necessary, e.g. 0.5 for a 32nd note or 1.33 for an eighth-note triplet. The second row shows the nPVI values for each pair of durations; the overall nPVI (treating this portion of the melody as an entire song) is the mean of these values multiplied by 100.