Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Van Tongeren
Hoy en da, los armnicos son familiados a mucha gente, de legos a los
investigadores y compositores cientficos. Esta familiaridad es
indudablemente el resultado de la introduccin reciente en el oeste de una
nueva tcnica vocal llamada el canto de armnico. Esta tcnica habilita a
un cantante para producir dos voces simultneas: un zngano continuo y
una meloda de armnicos sobre ello.
El inters para ese estilo peculiar vocal en el mundo occidental empez
alrededor del 1960. Desde esta vez haya existido muchos especialistas
estudian de los escolares, as como exploraciones musicales por
compositores y cantantes. Mi fascinacin con el canto de armnico empez
en 1969. En ese ao los primeros documentos sanos de canto mongol de
garganta se traan a Pars por el antroplogo Roberte Hamayon. Ello me
empuj hacia los armnicos investigando primero desde el punto de vista
acstico, y ms tarde hacia la anatoma de la voz, inquieren sobre terapia
de msica y los aspectos musicales de su desempeo y composicin. El
inters creciente de armnicos en el oeste tiene adicional haga evidente en
msica contempornea, en nueva msica de edad y al sanar con la voz.
En 1995 Mark Van Tongeren y yo nos acercbamos en Amsterdam antes
que empezamos nuestro viaje a Tuva, donde nosotros dos comparta en el
festival mundial de segundo de la garganta cantando en Kyzyl. A esa hora
ha terminado slo su disertacin a la universidad de Amsterdam. Era el
primer estudio extensivo de la msica de Tuvan por alguien fuera de la
federacin rusa, llevado a cabo poco despus de Tuva convertido en
accesible para los visitantes extranjeros. Negoci con la historia y moderno
practique del khmei de Tuvan o el armnico gutural cantando. Como un
cantante, un colector de las grabaciones de campo y un musiclogo, la
investigacin excelente de nota Van Tongeren trajo nuevas dimensiones y
los desarrollos de Tuvan hablan con voz gutural el canto para encender.
Entonces me impresion con su garganta cantando al festival en Kyzyl de
que era escogido como presidente del jurado.
En 2001 , Mark Van Tongeren solt su CD en armnicos con sus
desempeos originales. Ese mismo ao, me envi el manuscrito de su libro
en el canto de armnico. En este libro bien documentado usted puede
encontrar, para la misma primera vez, toda cosa concerniente al canto de
armnico en el oeste, de la msica contempornea de Karlheinz
Stockhausen a Jill Purce " curando voz; de electro acstico a World - y otra
msica fusin; de los ejecutantes occidentales renombrados tal como
Michael examina un animal enfermo y David Hykes a los dueos del
armnico cantando de Tuva, Mongolia y otras partes del mundo; y del
sistema armnico pitagrico a 0m cantando y nuevas mantras de edad.
El canto de armnico hace pleno uso de esta multitud de las tradiciones
culturales y a las personalidades innumerables que han contribuido al
desarrollo de por este camino del canto. Tiene interesando y las cosas tiles
para instruir a todos que se intrigan por los misterios del sonido y msica.
tengo gusto en recomendarlo a todo amigo del canto de armnicos y
garganta en el mundo entero.
Reconocimientos
Preludio: Acercarse con un pastor de Tuvan XXI
El almacn snico 3
Vocales, timbre y armonas 4
Hablar en las cuerdas 6
La serie armnica 8
La voz
Mongolia 119
Canto pico 126
Repblica de The Altai y el renacimiento de epopeyas 129
Ecos del pasado 130
Ir a Kyzyl 132
Cancin para Katun del ro 134
Khakassia: los nimos retornan 136
recibiendo un regalo de los nimos 139
Kalmykia: epopeyas e ideologa 140
Bashkortostan: un caso independiente 143
Tbet: sonido y smbolo 145
por cuenta de testigo de ojo 147
Sutras, mudras y las mantras 148
una herramienta para la mente: el armnico como simbolice 152
una realidad diferente 153
Cerdea: la voz virtual 154
Fuera de Tuva
191
Meditacin
206
La ley de octavas
218
La herencia griega
220
El baile de molculas
226
La actitud pitagrica
227
El armnico universal
237
La dimensin espiritual
FSICAS CONTRA METAFSICAS
239
Ciertos pensamientos sobre naturaleza
243
El paradigma cambia
248
El quinto elemento
252
El reino
253
Coda
256
Notas
258
Bibliografa
262
ndice
268
Ms informacin
271
CONTENIDOS DEL CD
El CD de msica contiene un estudio de las tcnicas diferentes del armnico
cantando en este y oeste y forma una antologa completa de los estilos de
TurcoMongol del armnico cantando. No sigue la orden de la discusin en
el texto pero se dispone temtica. Permite el lector para asir varios aspectos
de las armonas vocales: ejemplos de regionales estilos; estilos y tcnicas
en el Este; las demostraciones tcnicas por el autor; principiantes; formas
modernas; paraphony; instrumentos con las armonas. Las grabaciones se
hacan en varias colocaciones y circunstancias y con el equipo diferente. El
escuchante debe esperarse por lo tanto ms bien divergiendo las calidades
de sonido y, ocasionalmente, suenan del entorno.
REGIONS
/ Tuva Kara-ool Tumat (with balalaika) -- khmei, sygyt, kargyraa,
borbannadir (3:48)
Mongolia Altai Hangai Tavan kasag (Five Kazakhs) song with
khmii (2:22)
Altai Tanyspai Shinzhin el fragmento de pico cantado con la tcnica
de kai
Khakasia Slava Kuchenov el fragmento de pico cantado con el khai (
2:48)
Bashkortostan Robert Zagritdinov uzlyau guttural technique ( 1:19)
South africa Nowaylethi Mbizweni y Nofirst
Lungisa el do con el umngqokol "ordinario" ( yo:40)
ESTILOS Y TCNICAS
Tuva Kaigal-ool Khovalyg Kargyraa (1:28)
Mongolia Ganzorig Nergui khmii (3:28)
'Ibva Andrei Opei (with chanzy) Bazhy Betik (khmei, sygyt) (3:52)
Tuva Andryan pei Khmei kak basla men (sygyt) (l )
L ITuva Andrei Chuldum-ool Artii Saayir (sygyt) (3:02)
Tuva Mergen Mongush chilangyt (1:19)
Tuva Aldyn-ool Sevek ezenggileer ( 1:01)
Tuva Aldyn-ool Sevek khat kargyraa (0:56)
DEMOSTRACIONES - OESTE
Mark Van Tongeren cinco tcnicas elementales ( 1:09)
Mark Van Tongeren la trada (I .08) vocal
El zngano de fundamento de Mark Van Tongeren ( 0:16)
El movimiento de paralela de Mark Van Tongeren ( 0:14)
El zngano de armnico de Mark Van Tongeren ( 0:23)
El movimiento de contradiccin de Mark Van Tongeren ( la o: 16)
PRINCIPIANTES
2 1Tuva Artysh Mongush chilandyk (0:35)
22 Tuva Sildis, Mikhail and Chash-ool khmei and sygyt (2:37)
NUEVOS DESARROLLOS
Kalmukia Tsagan Zam fragment of Janggar (3:16)
'Ibva Mngn-ool Dambashtai kargyraa (l :43)
Altai Arzhan Kezerekov Imitation of the Shoor, with sygyrtyp (3:28)
Altai Raisa Modorova Blessing song (algysh) with kai technique (3:09)
South africa Nowayilethi Mbizweni iRobhane cantado con la tcnica
de ngomqangi de umngqokolo ( yo:OO)
Tuva/la improvisacin de Netherlands Biosintes y Mark Van Tongeren al
banco del Yenisei ( 5:09)
PARAPHONY
Mark Van Tongeren Paraphony ( 2:39)
Mark Van Tongeren el ajedrez de ciudad ( 2:46)
INSTRUMENTOS
Tuva Opal Shuluu jugando los khomus (birimbao) ( 1:51)
Tuva Kaigal-ool Khovalyg (on the igil) Uzun khoyug (3:24)
La electricidad provee de alambre en Aryg Bazhy ( 2:28)
XIV
INTRODUCCIN
MCvT
Teruel 1997 Amsterdam 2002
RECONOCIMIENTOS
Durante los aos que he estado trabajando en este proyecto, he sentido un
sentido inexplicable de aliento y confianza de mucha gente ese cruzado mi
camino. no puedo nombrar todo de ellos, pero soy profundamente
agradecido para este apoyo continuo. Esto se aplica, ante todo, a mis Ben y
Hetty de padres, sin cuya paciencia y amor no deseara haber podido hacer
lo que hice, a mi hermana Daphne y a Dorien Chachmany.
Es un placer para agradecer algunas de las otras personas que ayud al
liquidar este proyecto aqu. Es dudoso si este libro podra haber sido escrito
sin Maksim Shaposhnikov (la ventana de fundacin a Europe), un
aficionado de Tuva temprano cuyo nombre retornar varios tiempos en este
libro. Sin las ayuda y contactos de Maksim podra nunca haberse
aventurado en Siberia (y ciertos siberianos pueden nunca haberse
aventurado en Europa occidental, en cuanto a eso). Pero ms que un enlace
esencial, Maksim se convierte en un amigo excepcional con una excelente
sensibilidad musical. Daphne Van Tongeren y Ruben Snater han sido los
compaeros regulares al explorar sonido durante los perodos de sesiones
de memorable innumerables que sin intencin crearon una base slida para
este libro. Rollin Rachele ha sido un maestro original e inspirante, no solo
en las materias de msica. Desde estos das tempranos he tenido las
colaboraciones inolvidables con el teatro visionario de silo que ha excedido
mis experimentos con el sonido ms all del imaginable. Docenas de otras
reuniones musicales ensearon me ms de las palabras pueden expresar,
pero sos con Biosintes, cuerpo de Horst Rickels, Palamshav Childee y Jack
merezca especial mencionando. Cuando esta fascinacin gir en un
proyecto de investigacin, yo grandemente beneficiado de las lecciones y
gua de mis profesores y los supervisores al departamento de
Ethnomusicology a la universidad de Amsterdam: Rembrandt Wolpert and
Ernst Heins. Las ltimas dudas sobre embarcarme en un viaje de trabajo de
campo a Siberia desapareci agradecimientos al aliento de Henrice Vonck.
Desde el principio da de mi llegada en Tuva, Valentina Suzukei (instituto
de investigacin de persona humanitaria de Tuvan, Kyzyl) me ha guiado a
travs de las varias fases del trabajo de campo y generosamente parta su
conocimiento y red inmensa. Su persona y sus ideas han significado mucho
a m entonces y durante las visitas subsecuentes. yo soy tambin greatful a
Zoya Kyrgys y su provea de personal al centro de International Scientitfic
Khmei para su inters en mi investigacin. Organizaron una de dos
expediciones inolvidables para Erika Taube (la universidad de Leipzig) que
era bondadoso invite para unirse. Svetlana Donggak, Svetlana Orus-ool,
Rada Chakkar and Larissa
Tsedenbalovna ( para nombrar pero alguno del ms importante ) haya sido
tambin de la ayuda . De Mosc para el borde de Tuvan mogol me he
quedado con muchos anfitriones generosos, de quin Aidemir y el Mira
tarde merecen especiales mencionando.
Maya-Matthea Van Staden y Liesbet Nijssen, los colegas, amigos y los
cofundadores del North Asia Institute Tengri, me enseasteis muchas cosas.
Su sensibilidad y correcciones me habilitaron para comprender mejor las
diferencias sutiles en Tuvan, Khakass y msica mogol, mientras que
nuestras discusiones en muchos sujetos grandemente expandidos mi vista
en msica y cultura. Ello ha sido tambin un honor para trabajar
estrechamente a varias fases con dos investigadores mayores que me han
guiado ms all de la llamada del deber. Tran Quang Hai ( CNkS/Muse de
l'Homme, Pars ) haya sido un asesor regular desde entonces nuestro viaje
al festival de Khmei en Tuva, en 1995. l y su esposa vive como soltero
el yen me ha ayudado tambin a travs de algunos de los momentos ms
duros de investigacin y escritura. debo tambin mi gratitud a Ted Levin de
la universidad de Dartmouth, cuyo explorando trabaje en Central Asia y el
entusiasmo personal ha contribuido a este libro en muchas vas. Su
comentario en un captulo temprano sobre la msica de Tuvan y,
finalmente, en el manuscrito entero haya ayudado enormemente para
formar este libro.
Michael Van Eekeren hizo las sugerencias esenciales que llev a la forma
de cinco partes final de este libro. La entrada original de Klaas
Kuitenbrouwer ha dado mucha materia de reflexin y ayude al compilar y
editar la quintaesencia separe los captulos individuales se han mejorado
adelantar agradecimientos a los comentarios crticos y las preguntas
estimulantes de Jan Van Dijk ( la universidad de Amsterdam ), Dik Hermes
( el instituto para investigacin de percepcin, Eindhoven ), Michael
Hoogenhuyze ( la academia de las letras visuales, La Haya ), Annemiek
Vink (la universidad de Groningen), Allan Toms y jardn de superioridad
( la universidad de victoria de Wellington, Nueva Zelanda ), Maaike
Riemersma (grupo de Support de Tbet) y Magnus Robb. Saskia Trnqvist
edit una de las ltimas cosas sacadas completas del manuscrito y ayud
para condensar. Steve Belgraver corrigi la versin final completa del libro
y las docenas aclaradas de detalles. Altansulth Adilbish hizo los dibujos
bellos en las secciones de Tbet. And Sonja Van Hamel volvi toda cosa en
la forma presentable con su diseo de libro excelente. Para todo de ellos
mis agradecimientos ms sentido ! Para toda cosa eses restos unclear
despus de todo esta ayuda que ello es me que se deba culpar.
El apoyo de campo generoso para mis viajes eran provedos por el NUFFIC
en 1993 , el Rens Holle Stichting en 1995 y la sociedad geogrfica nacional
e institucin de Smithsonian en 2000. Bernard Kleikamp (inscripciones de
cazuela) y el V PRO ha soportado tambin mis expediciones y muchos otros
envian bondadosamente cdes y otros materiales. Esta publicacin ha sido
hecha posible agradecimientos para recibir apoyo de una reserva familiar y
Trn Quang Hai. mi gratitud sincera para todo de ellos.
Finalmente, mi respeto ms profundo va a los msicos y pensadores en este
y oeste que me inspir para escribir este libro en primer lugar. dedico este
libro con el afecto a los Tuvans.
PRELUDIO
XXII
Tiempo de XXIV,
as que nosotros podemos mejorar oiga y vea lo que est haciendo? Mergen
parece reaccionar pero est de acuerdo con cierta vacilacin. Toma su
tiempo para respirar y raspar su garganta. Entonces finalmente l empieza
a cantar, todava sentado en su corcel confiable. Como l trague el humo,
su pecho se vuelve grande, y con el primero suena su cara tie de rojo un
poco. Crea una presin enrgica en su garganta que hace algunas de las
venas alrededor de sus ojos e hinchazn de cuello. De nuevo omos las notas
penetrantes de alto. Pero esta vez ellos parecen para ser spero que cuando
les omos desde lejos. El roce de nuevo, y prueba para cantar cierto ms,
pero en vano. Con los ojos de los forasteros fijados en l de la roca, el canto
parece ser mucho ms difcil.
El almacn snico
Desde una edad temprana en nios sea deseoso, e inste, para dar a
significado a los sonidos que oyen. Como bebs o infantes que hacemos
una variedad de las imitaciones sanas. No comprendemos el significado de
las palabras, pero rpidamente estudie poner sonidos en una especie del
plan. Esto es el momento en que empezamos distinguiendo entre sonidos
que sea correcto o cultivar significativo y suenan que sea extrao o intil.
Ponemos la fundacin de una biblioteca sana enorme que ser llenos de los
anteproyectos de bits y piezas usados en el habla y con los tonos distintos
del sonido musical de la L.
Antes de que empecemos nuestro "almacn snico", nuestra mente es una
pgina en blanco que obtiene los ruidos meramente para lo que son. Msica,
idioma, y cualquiera otra forma de comunicacin aparecen en un contnuo
de las impresiones que tenga de igual, y ms o menos valor. Ellos no se
analizan, insertan piezas, procesando o almacenando en cualquier
intermedio, por lo tanto sin sentido. Pero entonces empezamos a picar los
sonidos en unidades fcilmente digeribles. Estudiamos reconocer los
vocales y consonantes de nuestra lengua nativa y para extraer pares de
contrastes entre ellos, las fonemas llamados en la lingstica. En unos pocos
aos la variedad de las imitaciones sanas que inicialmente se haya
producido y haya evolucionado en un cuerpo extremadamente ingenioso y
elaborado de sonidos. Los sonidos musicales se separan gradualmente de
los sonidos del habla. Nuestros cerebros estudian casar las propiedades de
sonidos registrados por el odo con estos modelos guardados, y para extraer
una orden significativa de vocales o consonantes. Traza diferencias antes
que similitudes.
2
Esto no es nada ms que economa de cerebro: los cerebros estudian salvar
tiempo y energa a fin de procesar las masas enormes de la entrada sensorial,
distrayendo a las unidades significativas ms grandes. Empezamos a
discriminar un sonido de otro y para hacer las elecciones o preferencias
rgidas de una calidad de sonido sobre otro. Podemos manejar
perfectamente los modelos de sonido, tales como vocales, consonantes, los
banderas, melodas, armonas instrumentales y vocales, RhFhms, que
constituyen nuestro campo comn y nuestra propia cultura. Pero pagamos
un precio para nuestro sistema elegante que habilita nos para comunicarse
con nuestros miembros de una tribu asociados y mujeres. Perdemos nuestra
sensibilidad a aspectos del sonido que no somos tiles inmediatamente y
se no contiene el significado en ellos mismos. Una vez que hemos
terminado las plantas bajas de nuestro almacn snico estos sonidos
extranjeros o "extraos" son subordinados en este sistema de la
organizacin.
Como nios que aprendemos de nuestros educadores lo que es muy bonito
y lo que es feo, lo que tenga el significado y lo que no lo tiene. Al mismo
tiempo una facultad sutil entera de nuestros odos se descuida: para enfocar
en el espectro sano armnico. En las armonas de culturas de la mayor parte
del mundo haya sido efectivamente escondido en el fondo en los cerebros
en favor del habla significativo decoran y los sonidos musicales que es
considerado bello o placentero. La prosperidad de esta empresa al comienzo
de nuestras vidas se convierte en aparente con la introduccin de las
armonas vocales en el oeste. Jill Purce, uno de los primeros maestros del
mundo del canto armnico, sabe lo que se parece " para desatar la habilidad
de nombrar que hemos sido enseados desde el nacimiento y por lo que
conseguimos el examen con buenas marcas, a travs de talleres a los que
asista y a las docenas de maestros que pueda tener
/ Figura 1.2
La trada vocal
Sensations 6
que ocurrir en todo el mundo. Los otros tres son el paso (la altura de un
tono), volumen (la intensidad de un sonido) y duracin (la longitud de un
tono). La armona ( la sobreposicin o acodadura de sonidos ) y meloda (la
sucesin de sonidos) son elementos secundarios, que son percibidos
diferentemente en dependencia del contexto musical y la base cultural del
ritmo
listener.7
son la diferenciacin a tiempo de sonidos. En el canto de armnico
negociamos con la parte sostenida de un sonido. Otros aspectos vitales para
la estructura de sonidos, tal como el comienzo y deterioro, no son as
importantes ahora.
/
Michael examina un animal enfermo haya dicho que cuando hablamos
producimos secuencias de cuerdas. stas no son las tradas que nuestro uged
de compositores amado, por supuesto. Pero ello sea verdadero ese cuando
hablamos producimos rpidamente un complejo de acodado pitches,from
que los cerebros seleccionan los ms fuertes y la mayor parte de la
necesidad fundamental unos. Esto se ilustra mejor cuando escuchamos a la
trada vocal. La grabacin, a propsito, se haca en un espacio vaco
resonante sin efectos artificiales, y muestra que sus calidades acsticas nos
ayudan para oir las armonas. Tenga una mirada al espectro de otra trada
vocal en el sonagram (Figure 1.3) para ver las intensidades cambia.
Es evidente ahora ese armnico cantando solapa parcialmente con palabra
hablada y cancin ordinaria. Los vocales tienen varias regiones de armonas
ms fuertes que dan les su color distinto. Cuando omos alguien hable, el
cerebro traduce la combinacin de resonancias en un vocal distinto, como
rpido como una computadora. Nosotros nos convertimos en
acostumbrados a percibir vocales como algunos en cierta medida los
timbres fijos. En verdad los vocales y timbres son los elementos percibidos
del espectro sano armnico. La gama entera del sonido vocal, de vocales a
las ms espectaculares formas del armnico mogol cantando, es un
continuo. No existe ningn diffrence absoluto o cualitativo entre la
naturaleza de habla y ese del armnico cantando.
HUELLA 16
La serie armnica
Tabla 1.7
Las armonas de
4b el armnico
/serie en succesive/las octavas e ms altas. /oc-fwe- Los nmeros
/octava
3
debajo de las columnas designan el inter-
/ / 084...rc
.1
valores ( dis- de paso los tances ) de esa fila de las armonas comparado con
el fundamento (nmero uno) y sus octavas ( dos, cuatro,
La voz
El mecanismo de voz tenga tres principal constitutivo separa: una fuente de
poder que da el "combustible" o energa, un oscilador para volver esta
energa en sonar, y un resonador o infiltre se la forma la fuente sound. 12
todos los sonidos naturales contienen estos tres elementos y en el cuerpo
humano sus funciones se ejecutan por los pulmones, el laringe y las varias
partes de la boca respectivamente (ver ilustracin 1.8). El aire de golpe de
pulmones a travs de la trquea, que alcanza las cuerdas vocales que
producen el sonido de fuente. Expresar especialistas favorecen los pliegues
de vocal de trmino ( o el glotis ) porque consisten de varios tejidos antes
que un par de cuerdas. La estructura, densidad y forma de los colocadores
se diferencian de la persona a persona y compensan por variaciones en el
timbre de voces. Los pliegues vocales son unidos al nuez de la garganta ( o
el cartlago tiroideo ).
Cuando en - y exhale los pliegues vocales se separan, pero cuando hacemos
sonido nosotros contratamos les y creamos una barrera para las molculas
del aire. Como los pulmones empuje las molculas y los pliegues vocales
les tienen respalde la tensin crece. Cuando la presin es demasiado alta el
glotis descubre el pecho
Las partes, las funciones y los sonidos correspondientes del thc de la voz./
/
A..o-stven-m
/
y las molculas del aire rpidamente afluyen a la cavidad de boca y adems
ausente. Ahora la presin bajo las disminuciones de glotis, y por un
momento tira sobre menos de cero. El underpressure causa los pliegues
vocales para trabajarse en armona de nuevo. Inmediatamente las molculas
del aire se estn acumulando y la presin se eleva otra vez. Las molculas
se abren paso por y toda la historia se repite.
Este proceso mecnico, llamado el efecto de Bernoulli, sea mucho
demasiado rpido para nuestro sistema nervioso central para controlar.
Ajustando la presin del aire y variando la contraccin muscular podemos
hacer la fuente suene ms arriba o ms abajo, en voz alta y ms suave, muy
suelto y rico o en apuros y duro. Cada cambio requiere que nuevos ajustes
para alcanzar el equilibrio entre todas las fuerzas. Esto es un hecho
asombroso que es casi ms all de la comprensin cuando considera cmo
hablamos.
An cede -
13
toman un tono comparados con habla muy simples cantantes. En este caso
slo pocos ajustes se tienen que hacer: nosotros mantenemos
constantemente los mismos ligeramente tensos o timbre de nasalised. El
vocal se pliega cierre se desee mucho relativamente obtenga harmonics. 13
ms alto
Derecho sobre los pliegues vocales es una "cavidad" algo ms ancha pero
pequea o tubo: los pliegues vocales falsos o los pliegues ventriculares. El
tubo que empieza a los pliegues vocales es el laringe o garganta. varios
detalles en el espacio vocal causan las diferencias en el timbre de una
persona para otro, por ejemplo: la longitud del cuello, la estructura de los
fauces y dientes. La lengua es entre nuestros rganos ms flexibles, que
puede ser controlada muy precisa y rpidamente . Con la precisin filtra el
rango de armnicos que sido ms adecuado para hacer melodas.
Figura 1.9
El espacio vocal
Se debe enfatizar que los estallidos pequeos del aire constituyen el sonido,
antes que los pliegues de derrumbar vocales. Las las molculas del aire que
balancean propague se de un lado a otro la vibracin a travs de la boca a
la salida principal, mientras que una porcin pequea de la energa sana
vuelve en la trquea. En caso de una voz moderadamente aguda varios
cienes resoplidos del aire han pasado el vocal se pliega dentro de los
segundos. Ihal del tmpano recibe estos hils.' les pasan al cerebro, que
traduce
- cmo (XXX)/
Figure 1. 10
Ahora que hemos tomado armonas fuera de oscuridad y sepa cmo ellos
suenan en los instrumentos, es hora de levantar otro nivele en nuestro
depsito sano y bsqueda para ellos en la voz. No existe ningn instrumento
que pone las posibilidades ofrecidas por la serie armnica ( y prcticamente
todos los otros fenmenos sanos a ese ) a uso mejor que la voz humana. El
secreto de la voz es su flexibilidad. Los instrumentos tienen una forma
slida o construccin que se puede cambiarse slo raramente al jugar.
El espacio vocal
15
Ahora venimos a una parte algo tcnica, que explica las mismas cosas del
prrafo previo en los trminos ms precisos, aproprie de para las tcnicas
especficas del canto armnico. Siempre que producimos un tono y forman
las cavidades de la boca que escogemos ciertas frecuencias altas y bajas del
espectro sano producido en nuestra garganta. Nuestra boca se convierte en
un filtro y porque las resonancias filtradas dan a forma para el sonido de
fuente nosotros les llamamos ondas de sonido que caracteriza a una vocal
determinada. Las ondas de sonido que caracteriza a una vocal determinada
diferentes constituyen un modelo de resonancia que es llamado la "funcin
de filtro" de la boca. La primera onda de sonido que caracteriza a una vocal
determinada para las voces masculinas mentiras entre 250 y 700 hertz, el
segundo entre 700 y 2,500 el hertz. El sueco expresa Johan Sundberg
especialista encontr que "la primera onda de sonido que caracteriza a una
vocal determinada... ascensiones como la mandbula es abierta ms ancha.
La frecuencia de segunda onda de sonido que caracteriza a una vocal
determinada es particularmente sensitiva a la forma del cuerpo de la lengua,
la frecuencia de tercer onda de sonido que caracteriza a una vocal
determinada a la posicin de la sugerencia de la lengua."" las ondas de
sonido que caracteriza a una vocal determinada constituye un molde
flexible que podemos cambiar libres. Si hacemos as, entonces los picos se
mueven, otros armnicos vienen al frente y percibimos un cambio de vocal
suene. Esto sea mejor ilustrado por el sonograma de la trada vocal,
reproducido en ilustracin 1.3. No necesitamos pensar muy
cuidadosamente cmo ponemos nuestra lengua, mandbula, la etctera.
Cuando alguien articula pobremente el cerebro del escuchante aplica su
conocimiento del idioma y rpidamente examina a travs de los estantes de
nuestro "almacn snico" para llenar las partes nucleares de palabras o
frases.Permtanos considerar ahora este proceso de la perspectiva de
armonas antes que de los sonidos del habla. Encontramos que deba ser
posible poner las armonas exactamente en el pico del filtro. En lugar de ir
gradualmente de vocal a vocal, podramos cambiar adems step- del filtro
Figura 1.13
Esta es una elaboracin de las figuras previas mostrando las ondas de sonido
que caracteriza a una vocal determinada que forman un sonido. Ello se
puede ver ese ninguno de las armonas hacen juego exactamente con la
resonancia
Tcnicas elementales
Zemp y Tran llaman a este el de una tcnica " de una cavidad porque en
el interior de la boca se une la cmara de resonancia grande. En esta boca
la colocacin de la lengua no est en relieve y los armnicos se pueden
dominar por los movimientos combinados de la mandbula, los labios y la
raz de la lengua. El color sano asemeja ese de 00 y AH. las armonas
pueden ser de he hecho ms pronunciadas levantando el velo, que crea un
timbre de nasalidad. Los armnicos seleccionados ms altos en esta tcnica
promedian los sexto a duodcimo armnico, segn Zemp y escucha de
Trn. para seguir la pista de 29.
Tuvan habla con voz gutural los cantantes use una posicin de
boca ligeramente diferente que el previo. En la variante de
TuvanMongolian la lengua carga con una cavidad, antes que una
forma redondeada. La sugerencia de la lengua toca los dientes
delanteros y se mueven apenas, como en la "L" consonante de semi.
La meloda se hace por elevacin y bajando la parte radical y media
de la lengua, que hace el paso que omos ms arriba y ms abajo,
respectivamente. Esta tcnica con una lengua de "cavidad" da a un
timbre de fullero ligeramente que su contraparte con la lengua
redondeada. En combinacin con una voz gutural es el estilo principal
en Tuva, donde es llamado sygyt. Est atento a ejemplo a huellas 10 y
ll.
Khmei
Kargyraa
Las cinco tcnicas han resultado para ser ms provechoso por aprender
ciertas habilidades elementales para la voz armnica. Se instruyen a
novatos y son definibles y es distinguible ms o menos precisamente.
Al menos uno de ellos es la fundacin slida para cantantes en este y
oeste. Con un rango vocal medio de fundamentales frecuencias estas
tcnicas se pueden reproducir bastante fielmente por muchos cantantes
diferentes. F.ventually pueden convertirse en una segunda naturaleza
a nosotros, tal como el habla.
Considere el sonido de un globo que sido separar cuando el aire escape: los
ms duros le tirar, la friccin ms del aire que usted genera y los duros el
sonido que hace. El mogol y cantantes de Tuvan, que invariilbly canta con
cuerdas vocales tiesas, se parecen el estrechamente tirado infle como un
globo con sus chillidos duros penetrantes. Los cantantes occidentales, que
se aplican relativamente LitIle tense, es ms como los globos libremente
flotantes propulsados a travs del aire por sus sonidos cmicos. Contemple
una de las diferencias ms esenciales entre armnico oriental y occidental
cantando.
(khmei)
p. 145
Figure la resolucin de 1. 18 ms arriba del kargyraa.
El espectro sano tiene dos veces como armonas de niany comparadas con
la voz normal.
Podemos dibujar una analoga con una pantalla del televisor de alta
resolucin. Al momento que existe ms pixeles o puntos por el centmetro
rectngulo que los conjuntos de TV ordinarios, podramos decir que la
resolucin de estas profundidad cantando montonamente modos son muy
altos. La profundidad cantando el modo se parece una voz de definicin alta
con una obra de fragmentos de las armonas superiores que es dos veces
como denso comparado con armnico cantando en el registro normal.
Como consecuencia, el movimiento ms pequeo que el espacio vocal se
vuelve discernible en el espectro sano.
Es una atractiva idea que el modelo lento de vibracin es el comienzo de
una serie de voz baja, como una inversin de la serie de armnico. Hugo
Riemann, un terico de msica de decimonono siglos y compositor, era el
primero en desarrollar una teora de una serie de voz baja cuando l busc
un explicacin fsica para la escala menor. un fundamento de 120 Hz
dividido de dos en dos, tres, cuatro,. . tenga una serie de subfundamental de
sesenta,
Voz
Venas hinchadas
Garganta mogol
duela ase el cantante clsico cuando l o ella oye un demonio de Tuvan -
cantar (khmii) el strating un sygyt apretado o kargyraa tormentoso. Para
largo, tradicional deletree se ligeramente tuvan de "L" y garganta mogol
cantando escape el maternal a cargo de diferentemente de mdicos mdicos.
Pero Carole Pegg de antroplogo, que hizo un estudio intensivo de mogol
" khmii, encontrado un cantante de garganta llamado Tserendavaa que
tuvo que investigarse clnicamente, de modo supuesto debido a su garganta
cantando.
Tuvan habla con voz gutural el canto (khmei).
La voz femenina
El paso medio de las voces de mujeres es una octava ms arriba que ese de
SIGA LA PISTA DE 6 , 2 6 Y 2 7
la voz cantante masculina. Uno puede comprender sin demora que esto pica
alguno del espectro armnico total. Al momento que los modos profundos
de cantantes espectros de alta resolucin de producto, as la voz
naturalmente femenina ms alta se puede fijar como una baja voz de
resolucin. Como nosotros slo vimos, un fundamento de una octava ms
abajo aade que armonas diecisis a 32. Una octava ms arriba reduce la
eleccin desde el principio diecisis a las primeras ocho armonas. El
problema es se las cavidades de boca y las posiciones de boca usadas en
el armnico cantando las frecuencias de favor hasta 2000 hertz la mayor
parte del claramente. La voz femenina ms alta maneja las armonas en el
rango meldico sobre sus picos u ondas de sonido que caracteriza a una
vocal determinada de resonancia "cantables" principales. Adems, las
resonancias vocales pueden an mejorar su fundamento, que hace lo an
ms difcil de producir harmonics. 26 fuerte
Arquitectura musical
Los bajados femeninos voz tiene la misma resolucin como una voz
masculina normal
SIGA LA PISTA DE 1 7
SIGA LA PISTA DE 1 9
32 CANTO DE ARMNICO
Cowell de henry
Armonas 10-36 ( el lisplaved en un teclado de piano. Uno puede ver que
del nmero 20 armnico hacia arriba las distancias de paso de las armonas
se vuelven ms pequeas que las distancias medias solitarias
21
Paraphony
-- El fre fundamental
-- los parmetros musicales
--timbre de
-- instala
-- de ritmo
36
Maturana y Varela han examinado en una escala muy pequea, pero en vida
real, lo que los filsofos han ms tiempo mantenido en abstracto: que en
ordenar adquiera el conocimiento nuestros trabajos de mente como un
reflector. Realza ciertos asuntos, pero nunca tenga visiones que hace no el
primero pone en su proyector orientable.
TRACK 1 3
attention
un mecanismo ltimo que deba ser mencionado aqu tiene lugar en nuestro
sistema auditorio y resulte otra vez cunto nuestros cerebros son
sintonizados 10 la serie armnica. Cuando tenemos una conversacin de
telfono o escucha a un violoncelo a travs de un radio a transistores
pequeo, percibimos slo las armonas del sonido original, porque los
altoparlantes no pueden producir las frecuencias ms bajas. No percibimos
realmente el fundamento, sin embargo no sentimos algo falta. Lo que
suceda es que nuestro cerebro surte la frecuencia fundamental cuando no es
fsicamente presente en el propio sonido. Nuestro cerebro sabe que el
armnico pesa todo demasiado bueno e inmediatamente " comprenda " que
los tonos fundamentales pertenecen al porlion de armnicas ms altas
frecuencias.
Localiza los desaparecidos los fundamcntals y pensamos que nosotros
estamos oyendo el sound. 42 entero este mecanismo somos popularmente
conocidos como el efecto de transistor. Como vimos antes de, cantantes de
pera de siglo XIX servido de esta regla a fin de competir con las orquestas
enormes sin usar amplificacin.
Espacio y sonido
- el zumbido de wires. 43
Las armonas nos habilitan para entrar en una interaccin dinmica con las
partculas del aire que rodean nos con la exactitud . un cantante con los
odos capaces pueden detectar un espacio resonante para encontrar sus
reflexiones acsticas ms fuertes.
Paraphony se toma de mi CD con el mismo ttulo por lo que " todo material
se registraba en las colocaciones acsticas diferentes. Un extracto de otra
huella, el ajedrez de ciudad llamado, registre se en una sala simple sin
mobiliario. Aqu las reverberaciones eran tan claras que uno puede ser
discernidor hasta cinco eche a trabajar vigorosamente mi voz. Lo que hice
en ambas piezas no era tanto tratar de cantar una meloda de las armonas,
pero en vez juego con las intensidades de las frecuencias mltiples de la
voz. Antes que ser un corte y pieza clara con un comienzo, centre y termine
se, empujan el escuchante en el corazn de peridico, armnico se suena.
Este acercamiento espacial para profundamente no estar nuevo. El hombre
temprano probablemente cuevas de vencrated y otro subterreal resonante
espacia, que parezca para tener una voz de su propio. En el sonido europeo
de renacimiento se pueda ver como una ornamentacin del espacio, antes
que el contrario. Ms recientemente Joan La Barbara, un cantante que
experiment con las armonas ya en 1970 , hizo los viajes de turismo
profundamente dirigidos examinando varios lugares con su voz para
mostrar sus resonancias naturales. Veinte aos despus las voces del grupo
de American fantasmales, llevado por col de Jim, registre un CD en un
tanque de agua vaco de 120 pies alto vaco. Cantar en tales iglesias de
industrial se convierte en una experiencia impresionante, como unos los
cantantes del grupo descritos.
" pisamos las olas nebulosas de espacio y cascada en brillar tenuemente
reinos. Nosotros eclipsamos los mundanos y mueva se ms all del
conocido en el intuitivo. Ningunas palabras pueden describir que ponga o
ese sintiendo: se parece cierto anciano y comprensin eterna para lo que ata
el universo y lo que la resonancia armnica
HUELLA 29
HUELLA 30
44
PARTE DOS
ESTE
CAPTULO TRES
ciertos hechos
el concierto de unos nios en la estepa
hable con voz gutural canto en la vida diaria
el promedio y los excelentes
compositores de dos msicos mayores
estilos y tcnicas
el khmei de monografa clsico de Aksenov, sygyt, kargyraa
mi maestro de khmei
:el khmei de nformal enseando
la educacin moderna
msica o sonido?
suene y los mundiales del espritu
animismo
el hombre y la naturaleza
el oj de cuentas temprano habla con voz gutural el canto
el khmei y el bienestar
los chamnes cantantes de garganta
perodos de historia de Tuvan
guadaa, dalle, Turcs, mogoles y rusos
el sonido de /first registra
viva en Mosc
profesionalizacin y modernizacin de la msica
el primer coro armnico
el ool de Khunashtaar orzhak, un khmei legendario sea maestro en
ideologa sovitica, autoridad y la jerarqua
los conjuntos oficiales
las paradojas soviticas
dos trav de msicos - /" Ilers
de padre a hijo
Oidupaa
la ciudad de Tuvan azula
una nueva era comienza
el conjunto de Tuva
los cantantes de garganta viajan en el exterior
la sensacin de khmei
Tuva en alboroto Kombu de nieto
Tu de Huun-Huur
de vuelta a los races
hable con voz gutural canto y declaran tab
el khmei femenino
los desarrollos recientes
la improvisacin al Yenisei
Genghis azulan
Se dice ese no existe ningn lugar hasta ahora quitado del mar como Tuva,
una repblica pequea en el sur de Central Siberia. Yet Tuva tiene mucho
del mismo modo que una isla, aun cuando en medio de los estiramientos
enormes de la tierra. Ello es una vasija natural firmemente incluido de las
regiones cercanas por los rangos montaeses y los bosques interminables.
Al norte es la cordillera de Western Sayan, detrs de que es la inmensidad
planta de rboles y la tundra de Central Siberia. Sur de Tuva, oculto detrs
de las montaas de Tannu-Ola, yacen las estepas ilimitadas y, adems
debajo de, el desierto de Gobi de Mongolia. A la ascensin occidental las
cordilleras norteas de las montaas de Altai enormes. Al Este que ello no
es tanto montaas que bloquee el pasadizo a Buriatia y Northern Mongolia.
Aqu bosques y docenas primitivos de ros y arroyos forman una barrera
natural.
Uno puede decir que lo que se llama ahora Tuva existi mucho antes una
poblacin humana hizo su casa aqu. Los teatures geogrficos
excepcionales, antes que los Tuvans se, constituya Tuva en primer lugar.
Los primeros exploradores extranjeros de este yermo pronto comprendido
ese I Jriankhai, como uno de sus nombres ms tempranos leen, era de
ningn modo una creacin artificial, pero un fortalecimiento natural.
Pgina de guarnicin: Singer Aldyn-ool Sevek in his hometown Mugur-
Aksy
3. 1 de mapa
" ello podra ser un socio torpe en realidad que, cuando en Tuva, ni con
mucho torture con las preguntas "
" no tengo ninguna educacin clsica. Las imagenes que veo de Kazajistn,
las yurtas, las estepas, y las montaas, stas son mis notas. "
5
Bai Taiga (bosque rico) en Tuva occidental es unos de estos lugares donde
el espectculo maravilloso de la naturaleza son el breathtaking. En una tarde
tarde nuestro equipo de expedicin pequeo visit una familia en su morada
tradicional, construya cercano ciertos rboles pequeos y un riachuelo.
Consisti de una estructura plegable de madera redonda con un dimetro de
ciertos seis metros, con polos pegajosos de su filo superior a un crculo de
madera pequeo en el centrar para formar un techo. La estructura entera se
cubierto con varios colocadores de de fieltro lata de la lana de carnero. La
tienda, comnmente mencionado para como yurta y g llamado por los
Tuvans, es una obra maestra de la tecnologa nmada. Resiste el fro
extremo y las tempestades notorias de arena ( a pesar de una falta del tipo
telegrafia ), y sea fcil de desmontar, transportar y reconstruir en otro sitio.
Nos dbamos la bienvenida con los granos de cebada y varios productos
lcteos, y t de leche caliente que se cocinaban en la estufa a mediados de
la tienda. El padre de la familia estuvo ausente con su carnero, la madre
hizo sus diariamente tareas y tres hermanos, envejecido entre nueve y
dieciocho, est ayudando su. Nosotros entonces escuchado a cierta multa
hable con voz gutural el canto del hermano mayor, Sildis. No era un msico
excelente, pero su voz de roncar en el registro ms bajo y los rasgueos
repetitivos en su lad tiene el efecto embriagador de un paseo caballar largo.
El respingo, centra hermano llamado Mikhail no jug adems sin embargo
y el ool de hermano Chash de ms joven estuvo todava aprendiendo para
cantar.
" va a naturaleza, a una alta montaa, donde nadie est presente. Se sienta,
y cuando mirar al escenario cantar de su alma. "
" imagina le sea un pastor, " dijo que otro, " y forma parte de su caballo y
est yendo en alguna parte, muy lejos. El momento que es aburrido o
cuando sea encantado por algo, como las estepas o la taiga, inmediatamente
tiene que cantar lo que se siente. Si forma parte de su caballo y usted canta,
entonces le oye decir que est cantando. Y ir ms rpido uniforme, porque
gusta de su cancin."
El cantante de Tuvan medio sabe dos o tres de los estilos bsicos: sygyt,
khmei and kargyraa. La mayor parte de ellos cantan slo uno del sygyt
de estilos y khmei, debido a las diferencias tcnicas entre los dos. Existe
mismo pocos khmei especial se ajustan. Los cantantes intuitivamente
estudian reglamentos orales de th para hacer sus propias melodas de
khmei. stos tipicamente empiezan alrededor del octavo armnico, suba
la escala armnica a travs de varios modelos meldicos y rtmicos
estandares al duodcimo armnico y entonces retorno a los octavo. Nunca
usan el onceno armnico, de modo que una escala de cinco tonos
caracterstica emerja, speramente similar a las teclas negras de un piano.
Muchas melodas son fcilmente identificables para Tuvans como
originandome en un distrito especfico, pero debido a migracin y medios
masivos de comunicacin ms y ms cantantes tienen un repertorio nacional
con melodas que no son de su distrito nativo.
Ciertos cantantes, an si ellos se casi nunca ejecutan, componen sus
propios textos de cancin. un msico se tiene libertad para optar por
acompaar en cualquier instrumento de cuerda, como el igil de violn, o los
mayores doshpuluur o shanzy parecidos a banjo de widelyused. Ciertos
cantantes se enorgullecen de la elaboracin su propio instrumento que
ajustan su nota particular necesitan y combine se bien con el timbre de su
voz. No todo de ellos tenga su propio instrumento, pero en el campo casi
cada subsistencias de un hogar. Estos hechos son slo algunas de las
caractersticas generales de la msica de Tuvan en su forma de suelos
superficiales autntica. Como es a menudo el caso con msica tradicional,
il muestre que la refinacin personal de los msicos individuales, mientras
que ello tambin repite los clichs muy conocidos. Los msicos ms finos
se pueden distinguir por muchas calidades y sus estilos o ideas son
altamente apreciados y copiado por numeroso otros. una tradicin musical
viva prospera en esas circunstancias: el cambio progresivo entre los
excelentes y el modcrate es en el corazn de su proceso dinmico.
Algunos de los matices ms finos entre los msicos de Tuvan llegaron a ser
vivamente claro a m cuando yo me encontraba dos hombres
extraordinarios: Kara-ool Tumat and Chuldum-ool Andrei. Cada uno en su
propia va arraig profundamente en la tradicin musical de sus personas,
pero al mismo tiempo son de modo impresionante original y contribuyen
en las vas significativas para la msica hubieron aprendido de sus parientes
ms viejos.
La ocasin tuvo lugar como parte de una expedicin de trabajo de campo a
West Tuva, que yo hube sido bondadoso invite para unirse cerca el instituto
de investigacin de Tuvan para idioma, literatura e historia y el etngrafo
alemnes y folklorista Erika Taube. Se organizaba en honor de la primera
visita a Tuva por Taube. Aunque hubo estado estudiando la vida y ciencia
popular de los Tuvans en Mongolia desde los aos '1960 , siempre hubo
trabajado a la universidad de Leipzig en Repblica Democrtica Alemana
anterior y no haya sido nunca a Tuva antes. A pesar de mis esfuerzos para
encontrar y leer todo eso tiene sido escrito sobre la msica de Tuvan antes
de tomar fuera en mi primer viaje de trabajo de campo, yo no he an
encuentre una referencia sencilla al mdico Taube muchas publicaciones en
la cultura, religin, idioma y la msica del Mongolian Tuvans. yo aprendido
a mi asombro cmo incansablemente la Cortina de Hierro, vertido lgrimas
abajo nicos cuatro aos ms temprano, haya hecho su trabajo.
Ilustracin 3.3
Kara-ool Tumat
TRACK que yo
para texto ve pgina siguiente
page 19
TRACKS I AND 9
HUELLA 7
HUELLA 10
Ilustracin 3.6
Andryan Opei
es poco ms que suenan las imitaciones que pueden parecer ideas musicales
impares, inconclusas, antes que las piezas musicales, en el desempeo.
Borbannadir es la imitacin del agua parloteando en un arroyo. Se deriva
de un verbo de Tuvan esto significa que " para enrollar over,' y refiera al
agua sana hace cuando contina con piedras. Cuando se aplica a una de las
tcnicas cantantes de garganta, carga con el carcter de un vibrato rpido o
trmolo. Borbannadir puede ser un estilo separado con una alternancia
conocedora de dos notas adyacentes haciendo movimientos rpidos con la
lengua. Puede tambin
HUELLA I
TRACK 1 3
Un maestro y experto
Mergen los dos tipos usados del lad para acompaarse. El ms popular de
los dos es el doshpuluur, que tiene un trapecio gusta del covcred corporal
por ambas partes con la piel. Tiene dos espesor avanza en lnea hecho de la
fibra que Mergen arrancado con su mueven los dedos y produzca un ms
bien blando, no sonido particularmente resonante. Ello le tom mucho
tiempo para armonizar lo correctamente a su voz. l lo sintoniza y y el
punto a la una agarr otro lad, llamado un shanzy, para ver si ello que
pueda proporcionar el timbre para soportar su voz. El shanzy tiene un ms
pequeo, el cuerpo redondeado y tienen un ms tiempo cuello que el
doshpuluur. Asemeja el banjo en timbre y construccin. Tiene tres cuerdas
y una cubierta hecho del serpiente desolle y produce un sonido ms staccato
y agudo. Mergen no era satisfecho de nuevo, pero sin embargo demostrado
seis estilos diferentes que usan uno de los dos instrumentos. Como v
Mergen trabajando con estos instrumentos que yo liquid cmo los msicos
de Tuvan sensitivos puede ser encontrando que el timbre apropiado.
Cuando hubo demostrado ciertos estilos muy conocidos Mergen empez
arrancando su doshpuluur de nuevo y cant en un registro normal.
Entonces, cuando estuvo haciendo el primer khmei suene, de repente deja
tumbar su voz. yo recuerdo claramente sobresalte cmo era cuando cambi
a esta profundidad masiva diciendo en voz grave hable mucho, y cmo mis
odos y cerebros eran diligentemente tratar de comprender lo que est
acercndose a. Ningn menos extrao era el efecto de los armnicos
parecidos a silbato, ese contine en el mismo registro alto como si nada les
hubo sucedido abajo. Ellos hicieron una meloda similar a la sintona l
tiene tomposed y slo cantado en el estilo de sygyt. La diferencia tcnica
sutil era el de sexto a decimotercero armnicos se convertan en los
duodcimo a veinte-sexto armnicos, debido al fundamento sumido.
Otra diferencia de mayor con msica occidental y los msicos son que
Tuvans no usan el idioma tcnico cuando hablan sobre el khmei. Cuando
empiezo entrevistando msicos una de las primeras cosas que yo aprendido
era que no existe ninguna palabra para zngano o armnico en el lenguaje
vernculo. Antes de los compositores y msicos rusos, educados envie se
de West Rusia para ensear la msica en Tuva, la msica no estaba escrita
abajo. Los ejecutantes no consideraron su msica desde el punto de vista de
los libras, ritmos y armonas. Muchas generaciones de cantantes han
explorado las posibilidades musicales de la serie armnica exclusivamente
por sus habilidades creativas y de intuicin.
Han acumulado un negocio tremendo de conocimiento y experiencia con
los armnicos cantantes, pero fraseado les en vas que sea diferente la forma
los nuestros. Miraremos a algunas de las vas ms viejas de considerar
sonido en las secciones de siguientes
Las lneas meldicas introductorias que Turnat de ool de Kara canta (en la
primera huella del CD) sea llamado khrekteer. Khrekteer ( de khrek,
enfrente ) ocurrir al comienzo de una cancin de khmei o en entre los
pareados de texto. Ello significa literalmente " para cantar con el pecho " y
es considerado como una medida
A la periferia de la msica
Uno de los primeros oriundos del oeste para darse cuenta las tradiciones
musicales vivas de las nmadas de South Siberia eran Ted Levin, un escolar
americano que ha estudiado msica de Central Asia desde 1978. Levin y un
fotgrafo fueron a Tuva sobre la invitacin de Eduard Alekseev y Zoya
Kyrgys, respectivamente un musiclogo ruso y miembro de la unin de los
compositores soviticos, y un mdico de Tuvan en la musicologa. Las
expediciones tuvieron lugar en 1987 y 1988 con el objetivo " para
documentar los sonidos de comedia musical y, ms ampliamente, lo que
uno podra llamar el mundo sano de los Tuvans. " 8 de sus grabaciones de
campo que compilaron el primer CD de Tuvan disponible en el oeste. El
proyecto tuvo lugar durante la guerra fra y era una brecha en varias vas.
Tuva era notoriamente difcil para extranjeros para entrar hasta 1991. 9 para
los Tuvans el CD eran una de las primeras comunicaciones exitosas al
exterior mundial el bloque sovitico. Para el mundo occidental era una
primera vislumbre de los sonidos y tcnicas milagrosos del canto de
armnico y otros estilos poco conocidos vocales, que se hubieron descrito
slo en los artculos especializados
YO
El mundo de nimos y suene
Elementos de todo
13
"A Tuvan asoci cada paso y cada comportamiento con la respuesta de los
nimos de ese lugar. Siempre supo lo que se permita hacer y qu s yo qu
ms, porque el espritu del lugar se enfadara si deseara hacer algo un algo
no haga. Es el mismo con la msica. Si tiene exito bien al armonizar la
msica que juegue o canta a la naturaleza que rodeo le, entonces sabe en
ese momento que el espritu del lugar le oye y que est satisfecho con. Es
decir, l deba ejecutar ello en tal va que ambos l se y los nimos
encontrarn que ello enderece se y bello " 15
Para describir la naturaleza de las melodas armnicas para su, los msicos
usaron trminos como el " bsico sound,' " acompaando "sonidos
acodados" de sounds,' o " la sombra de acompaar sonidos.' Szkei
concluya que el principio de jugar con el espectro del sonido sobre un
zngano bajo est situado a la base de la msica instrumental de Tuvan. 16
En tiempos pasados los msica y khmei instrumentales se basaron en una
tres divisin de pliegue: los bsicos o sonido fundamental, la meloda de
armnico y la base snica de las otras armonas. 17
Pero adems del kham enteramente plumado existe muchos otros que
khamnaar, personas que tienen ciertas habilidades para restaurar el
desorden en la vida personal de alguien, asuntos sociales, y as en. 30
El experto primero de Tuva en el chamanismo es Mongush Kenin-Lopsan.
Es el presidente de la sociedad de Tuvan de chamnes y concedi el tesoro
vivo titular del chamanismo por la fundacin americana para el estudio del
chamanismo en 1994. En una conferencia durante segundo International
Symposium Khmei en 1995 dijo Kenin-Lopsan que antes del octubre
revolucin ambos silbando un aire y hable con voz gutural el canto era
reservado para los chamnes. l expres su prueba de culpabilidad personal
que khmei se origina del ritual de shamanistic se adiestran e ilustre este
con el caso de uno de sus entrevistados, Salchak Dopchuur. Dopchuur
alcanz la edad de los 101 aos y las llamadas que durante su niez
temprana, alrededor del ao 1900 , el canto de garganta era una preparacin
importante para el ritual de shamanic. VThen el chamn se ha puesto en su
vestimenta que l empez movindose segn las manecillas del reloj y cante
el sygyt blando, quieto y melodioso, que se desarrollaba gradualmente para
perforar garganta cantando. Estuvo prohibido para imitar, porque el chamn
convoc los nimos visibles e invisibles con ello. 31
"Si la entrega es dura, que debe cantar khmei o sygyt para la mujer.
Cuando se ejecuta khmei quieto, que la mujer puede dar a nacimiento, en
voz alta no est bueno. Si puede encontrar palabras que ser todava mejor.
Estas palabras se deben componer por el cantante."
En las prximas secciones veremos cmo khmei evolucionado de un
idioma expresivo con los elementos naturales y el universo en un arte vocal
cultivado. Este proceso acompa inevitablemente por una prdida o
adaptalion de las asociaciones y significados ms viejas del khmei que
he slo descrito. Todos estos, adems, convierta en oscurecido por khmei
de Rbout de nociones que desarrolle ms tarde. Para comprender la msica
en su contexto de hislorical es esencial para saber ciertos hechos histricos
del general se haya formado la imaginacin de personas sobre su arte y
cultura.
En los siglos octavo y nueve otros grupos turcos, los Uygurs y Kyrgys,
partes controladas grandes de Central Asia incluyendo Tuva.The
descendants de estas tribus han sido casi completamente absortos en las
tribus que habite occidental Tuva o venga despus de ellos. Los pueblos
que habitan los bosques densos del este de Tuva son ms estrechamente
asociados a las tribus de siberiano norteas y haya permanecido como
bastante intacto por estos y los cambios subsecuentes del poder. El reno
reuniendo en rebao, los refugios parecidos a wigwam cubiertos con ladrar,
y otro del chamanismo distinguen los uvans de "L" orientales o Todzhans
de sus vecinos occidentales.
Al final del siglo XVIII un nuevo poder poderoso apareci por detrs los
urales, hacia Tuva, entonces llamado Uriankhai. Rusia lentamente pero
concluyentemente expandi sus bordes hacia el este, poniendo reclamacin
a los bosques y taigas inmensos que sidos domestico a muchas docenas de
turco, Paleo siberiano y otras tribus de no-eslavo. Pronto los primeros
enviados procurar para establecer los contactos diplomticos con nobles de
Tuvan, y se encontraban el xito variante. Para ciertos dos siglos las estepas
alrededor de Tuva hubieron sido la escena de frecuentes batallas entre
tropas de los kanes mogoles, manch chino y funcionarios rusos y varios
jefes militares turcos.
Tuva escap la explotacin cruel de Siberia y sus poblaciones aborigenes
por Rusia de tsarist, que hubo tomado en las formas dramticas en los
precedentes centuries.33 comparado con la va de horrorizar en que varias
otras tribus siberianas llegaron a ser informado sobre el mundo "civilizado"
de los zares, uno podra decir que los Tuvans han sido afortunados hacer as
debajo la bandera sovitica. Tuva mismo permanezca como libran de
relativamente alborotos y fuera influya en comparado con su inmediato
colindan los Altaians y Khakass. Los nobles de Thus Tuvan pudieron hacer
un beneficio del comercio de brotar de piel y otro negocio llev a cabo en
su distrito. Algunos de ellos vueltos en las aristcratas genuinas que
pudieron elevarse a la altura del ruso cosmopolita, mogol y los funcionarios
chinos estuvieron tratando sobre. Al final del siglo XIX familias y
compaas rusas hubieron creado sus factoras propias detrs de las
cordilleras de las montaas de Sayan.
Las cintas crecientes con el diodo emisor de luz de mundo moderno a uno
del primer concreto dan un paso en el desarrollo musical de Tuva. En 1934
el gobierno de Tuvan orden la fbrica de Moscovian para las grabaciones
sanas para producir una serie de la msica de Tuvan. Para este propsito los
msicos mejores de algunos de Tuva de esa vez vinieron a Mosc para
registrar en el estudio. Los nombres y voces de dos pastores y msicos
pendientes, Kombu y Soruktu, era el primero en registrarse. No slo en el
disco, sino tambin en los anales de la historia musical de Tuva.
Pronto la msica tradicional era reescrita con hasta cuatro partes diferentes:
soprano, contralto, contenido y bajo. Esto hizo tan firmemente que llev a
la construccin de un instrumento absurdo. A fin de hacer la msica
folklrica de Tuvan orquestral que ello se consideraba necesario para
construir una copia exacta del doshpuluur formado de trapezoide, pero
cierto cuatro veces grande. El "doshpuluur bajo directamente ascendente"
enorme era al mismo tiempo una demostracin fsica de los soviticos "
hermanazgo de pueblos " filosofa y un smbolo musical de la adaptacin
de los tuvans de modernas, europeas normas.
una adaptacin similar para el khmei era menos extraa, como los pasos
diferentes naturalmente existen en el campo comn hablan con voz gutural
los estilos de canto. Apareci que un coro todo masculino en que kargyraa
substituy una parte de bajo normal, khmei la parte de contenido o
"contralto" , y sygyt la parte de "soprano", sonado lejos de artificial. The
bais para este tipo de canto de khmei era puesto alrededor de 1968 ,
cuando el mismo Maksim Dakpai y otros tres cantantes de khmei
acompaaron un desempeo de coro de una cancin folklrica de Tuvan en
un festival grande en Novosibirsk del metrpoli. 36 Las piezas armonizadas
modernas as uno se compona a menudo para tales ocasiones pblicas de
especial, donde las nacionalidades soviticas diferentes pudieron mostrar
su progreso artstico.
El ejemplo de este primero armnico coro se segua por muchos otros, como
los hermanos cantantes con la vaca de bramar demuestran.
38
De Vladivostok a La Habana
Tales eran los reglamentos disee para mantener los ciudadanos soviticos
en la lnea. De la perspectiva de los cantantes de khmei individuales, el
ol de aplicacin diario estos reglamentos era desde luego no siempre
dramtico y a veces an las historietas cmicas ilustradas. Las habilidades
musicales eran un pasaporte para ciertos msicos para ver muchas partes
diferentes del mundo, y un no bastante as depresivo y de un solo lado como
la base de ejrcito distante del thc de su servicio militar.
"Antes que nunca cant kargyraa, nico sygyt, " l me dijo a en Mogur
Aksy, la aldea donde naci. "Pero despus de escolar entr el Filharmonia
y aqu es donde empec interesndose en kargyraa. Me preguntaron: 'can
canta el kargyraa?' as yo dije, s, yo puede. 'Entonces no es necesario para
cantar sygyt, porque tenemos ya tres de ellos como solistas.' as como yo
empec a conseguir envuelto seriamente con ello, cuando dur dieciocho
aos viejo."4 1
Vea para una foto de Sevek de ool de Aldyn la pgina de apertura de este
captulo.
SIGA LA PISTA DE 1 3 Y 14
Yat-kha Yenisei-punk. Msica global
Andrei pei es otro msico para quin navegando entre el mundo sano
antiguo de los Tuvans y los cambios constantes de la edad moderna
convierta en segunda naturaleza. Vivi la mayor parte de su vida en Teeli,
un establecimiento plano, espacioso y arenoso que puede ser la base para
una pelcula occidental mientras ello sea veraniego, que es. Es la ltima
aldea en el recto paviment el camino que lleva de Kyzyl a West
Tuva.Adelante oeste, un pista de ripio airea la cuesta ascendente a travs de
los valles empinados a Kara Khl (lago negro). La reservacin inhabitada
vasta de bosques, los planos, riachuelos y ros se extienden hasta muy
adentro de la repblica cercana de Gorno-Altai.
"Hace mucho tiempo, " me asegur, " cuando el hombre slo los sonidos
hechos como UH UH, dicho a gritos y laten tambores, tales canciones de
khmei faltas de palabras eran el arte ms alto de las personas.
96 CANTO DE ARMNICO
Estilos de jazz de ciudad de Tuvan
Por supuesto la mayora de Tuvans tiene otras cosas en sus mentes que la
msica tradicional. El modernismo ha penetrado cada esquina de la
repblica. Tuva ahora tiene las reas, estadios industriales e informan
oficinas, caminos y puentes pavimentados, un parlamento, vestbulos de
concierto, lquidos espirituosos y crimenes pequeos, queso holands
llamado, MTV y cine de b americano. En los camiones privados de campo
venga y vaya a la cobranza personas y traiga el pan ruso, uno encuentra
acampando tiendas junto a la yurta, y ciertos hogares sea los dueos
orgullosos de un conjunto de alta fidelidad porttil con hacer flamear las
luces de la marca china. Una vez, despus de horas de impulso un camino
de suciedad sinuoso largo, y creyendo que quit adems de la civilizacin
occidental que hube sido alguna vez, me golpeaba como un rayo por un
joven de nueve aos en una yurta que hice una investigacin, en toda la
seriedad, " es le Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
un ao ms tarde, cuando estaba en Tuva me, estaba deseoso para tener una
reunin ello le acuerda y empiece preguntando pueblos en Oidupaa. Su itge
era estimado para algo de treinta hasta sesenta quinquenales para Tuvans
diferente. Dijo que Several Tuvans que eran su amigo y protestas de que
haya cortejado l el para mientras que ese antes en Kyzyl.
Pero en mi apartamento descuidando los crceles notorios de uno de Kyzyl,
conocimientos me dijeron para que encarcel en otra parte. Hubo
condenado del modo de suposicin de Iwice antes para los crimenes
severos, sirviendo siete y ocho aos respectivamente. Ahora l conden un
tercer tiempo para servir un trmino de los quince aos en /prison muy lejos
de su patria. Tal vez el uniforme algo peor era el /umour que l no hubo
muerto as una gran cantidad de antes.
( ) el estatus social del idupaa era as como discutible como su edad y lugar
" il encausa. Por favor, los tradicionales y versificando los msicos
vagabundean en las sociedades ms aceitosas, as como los bluesmeneses
de Misisip y musi/ l.m.s del rembetika de Grecia, Oidupaa era un carcter
principal y una paria al mismo tiempo.
la poesa de I IIS era nica, sin embargo era considerado un criminal. l
nunca Ill.lde una equivocacin musicalmente, pero suspendido sin confiar
la sociedad.
3.1 1 ool de ilustracin de Mngun del jugador de los bayans del cantante
de Dambashtai con su OVERTONE SINGING del daugther
Total.
un totora de posesin crucial de creando la conciencia en Tuva gana coraje
para ms inde-
Los cantantes de The Tuvinian que son concebidos sobre sovitico, antes
de Tuvan, los ideales culturales"
y comedia musical "
Tuva
El total de The The Tuva era creado en un perodo cuando esta distincin
empez
WDR/mundo
para decaer y Tuvan es del inters caracteriza prominente en la libreta. Th
LC 6759 de la red
Tuvans lo amaron y el total se convierte en un success. inmediato sino
cualquier Tuvan imagina el impacto considerable su msica pronta tiene la
distancia ms all de los bastardos de su casa, el Unin Sovitica?
Probablemente no Gennadi Tumat proveen de los uniformes, aunque tiene
se envia para ejecutar en Francia en 1985 edades slo 21. Hacia ello parte
la dominacin del Unin Sovitica todos los ojos enfoque se en el pliegue,
Tumat modesto. Esta circunstancia era del tratamiento difcil para el
compositor de cantante y puede haber contribuido a su muerte inoportuna
en diciembre de 1996.
El repertorio de The Tumat encall firmemente en las melodas de su
provincia nativa Ovyur, que era de transmita para los pintores clsicos as
como el ool de Sandzhy Kyzyl y Sergei Kuular. Tumat di a su propio
desempeo de sus canciones y ello le cambia y mezcla en conjunto como
deseando. Se pudo cambiarse fcilmente entre un estilo lento, alto con la
atencin para detallar, a las partes ms rpidas y ms expertas. Us el
chanzy y doshpuluur para un pulso firme a sus canciones, pero puede
improvisar las melodas de ausiente se, el khmei de contradases lrico al
mismo tiempo. Resalt en sygyt, khmei y kargyraa, y crearon sus propios
estilos personales. El borbannadyry de The Sygyttyng es una combinacin
experta del sygyt con las notas del trmolo pesado del borbannadir que
Turnat invent a un joven.
Una comprensin artstica que Tuvans no el neumtico para cantar el
alabado, es la habilidad de un msico para coger en la trampa los sonidos
de caballos en cancin y juego. La observacin de castrar del viajero del
dcimoctavo de siglos que el toque de Tuvans mejora marca uno por uno
en la parte posterior de un caballo que en sus propios pies es inmvil como
desde luego para los pastores actuales. El animal de cra es la mayora de
compaero apreciada de las nmadas con una excelente diferencia. Es su
posesin ms bella, y realmente joven ponga se en un caballo cuando pueda
uniformar apenas insisten sobre sus pies. The Tuvans sabe que todos los
ritmos de sus pasos diferentes de memoria y lo consideras el animal ms
rtmico que existe. Andrei del ool de Chuldum tuvo este para encontrar que
/" existen seis o siete pasos diferentes del caballo. Consideramos el aat del
chera como la cosa ms bella de todo. Se mueve como si est bailando, una
vista magnfica. Cuando canta mientras que ese asiento en el caballo sus
hombros mueve rtmico. Cuando mueve rpidamente, aparezca cantan en
persona sygyt o khmei. Cuando se mueven lentamente, cante kargyraa.
"
/L " umat tiene un talento inusual que calific le para rendir los pasos
diferentes caballares y el el suyo relinchando en la msica.
Debido a sus tcnicas de canto del armnico especial y el camino que
jugaron su doshpuluur que pudo escoger libremente cualquier ritmo de
lento para muy rpido. La comedia musical pequea es capaz de ejecute
tales hechos para el instrumento o la voz, pero Tumat le querra hacer
simultneamente. Para el /I uvans las alternancias rtmicas de sus piezas
son inconfundibles snicas, onalogueses al aumento de exceso de velocidad
y disminuyendo la velocidad del paso de un caballo.
El mximo cambia para el total de Tumat, y Tuva en conjunto, sea venir
despus de la cada del Unin Sovitica en 1991. El poltico de sta
Escuchante a rastro de 8 para una imitacin dominante de las tcnicas de
melodas de Turnats y del trmolo para un cantante mogol
102
The Tuva
Total
Ecos de Tuva de
El mundo del espritu
PAN registra 2013
El total de The The Tuva era un xito inmediato tan pronto como vaya capaz
de hollar la tierra occidental. Vinieron a Europe en 1991 , visita Canad y
el EE.UU. en los aos subsecuentes y hasta 1995 viaje por casi el mundo.
Tumat refuerza con capricho exactamente que falta de su compaa de viaje
de desde luego diez de los cantantes ms finos de jvenes,
instrumentalistases y actores de la repblica y entren aquellos que no era
hasta el nivel alto del fingimiento.
La presentacin del total concebida originalmente para Tuvan y otros
teatros siberianos, y tira para ser una introduccin excelente para las
audiencias occidentales a la msica de este pastoral de tribu desconocido.
Uno de su primero de vivos fingimientos en Amsterdam que ello registros
y conversos en un CD mejore de venta internacional. El concierto di a un
estudio comprensivo del monje de Tuvan y cartas de ejecucin, centradas
sobre su msica tradicional. La exposicin preparada sueltamente como una
promulgacin, aprobacin y sancin de varias escenas de la vida tradicional
de Tuvan. Su presentacin teatral traicion la base profesional de los
cantantes, pero ello est inspirando el afecto al mismo tiempo en el puro
entusiasmo brill. Todos el hombre dur madure, el brillante extiende las
alas en o las banderas azul celeste amarillas, azules, rojas o verdes y con los
modelos bellos circulares. Sus sombreros eran cualquier menos diverso y
recorte con las piezas exuberantes de la piel o adorne con las colas de
masculino largo zorro.
La corneta de monte (amyrga), una trompeta de put fuera de tono
acostumbrado a atraer animales en el bosque de Tuvan, anuncia el comienzo
del concierto. Improvisando, cada a su vez, en uno de mucho cien de
estribillos de una sintona famosa de sus antepasados, los cantantes se
mostraban cmo caravandriverses pueden a veces reunirse la cada a lo
largo de la ruta de Beijing. de comercio a la noche un hombre visti
ascensin en un vestido ricamente adorn modos de colgar con docenas de
campanas y las cintas completas del color monte el ritual de unos chamns,
chocando en el tambor (dunggur). El total entero recit extractos de los
mantrases lamastas, entremezclado con las explosiones fuertes del ritual de
trumpets. toque el tambor, as como rabias del canto armnico. Los
intervalos cmicos pintaron un retrato de un msico cantando o jugando
slo en las estepas, hasta el hc encontr que el eco de sus sonidos haga se
para un furtivo acerroje el pastor se asocia detrs de l. El canto armnico
ocupa un placc especial en el program. al menos la mitad de los miembros
del total eran ausentes los cantantes de la posicin armnica, cada con sus
propias melodas y va del fingimiento.
El metal pequeo pronuncia la arpa (khomuses), los violineses y abrigo con
la almciga todo opuesto que un lugar en la exposicin.
Existan vestigios todava inconfundibles de los ideales estticos soviticos
en el camino el total de Tuva se ofreca. La msica pesadamente ordenada
de Tuvan estaba al carecer de la parte sus armonizaciones, pero el esfuerzo
colectivo que hubo sido un de la influencia tpica de Unin Sovitica,
permanecido como como un factor clave. La presentacin completa era
tambin querer acostumbrado a estar en el de los totales de Unin Sovitica:
un collage dinmico de los varios tipos de la msica en la alternancia hecha
fluir. Los conciertos del total de Tuva respiraron el optimismo
extraordinario de las exposiciones del folkloristic. Que el total se una estos
bailes demasiado optimista y canto era piezas de un humor ms introverso
que refleje un tema principal de la vida nmada: la soledad del hombre.
Tuva en la agitacin
alrededor con las muchas banderas del igil. Estos cambios del colouristic y
la interaccin interminable de los dos cordones constituyeron una porcin
excelente de Uzun Khoyug. Para este camino de jugando, Khovalyg
explicado, inspire para los pintores clsicos para que hubo odo como un
joven pero era su propio nuevo desempeo de ellos/lo.
Khovalyg pas para imitar el sonido para cambiar el golpecito de reno en
su igil, y que del cuervo con su voz. Cantos entonces el kargyraa del khovu
(kargyraa de regin montaosa), el impacto conmovedor que describi
antes. La msica registrada no puede transportar realmente la presencia de
su voz que tlt, sin habla del camino cmo lo completamente completo la
habitacin con las oscilaciones de pulsatiog. y realmente es todava ltimo
surrender las palabras con que Khovalyg entremezcl la meloda armnica.
Las palabras del kargyraa del khovu son normalmente tradicional y han sido
cantado por Tuvans para muchas edades. Sobre cubierto con manchan
Khovalyg pida abajo las lneas que cantan y sume inmediatamente que no
pueda traducirle realmente para mi en el ruso. Pero uno pueda ser atento
para para estas palabras de Tuvan y lea su traduccin aproximada.
Ello se puede hacer evidente que los instrumentos son ricos yes inusual
bastante tambin. " 44
s45
Ilustracin 3.14:
Tres miembros de
El su de Huun - Huur llevando a cabo en la estepa de Tuvan, 1995. De
izquierda a derecho soporte: Anatoli Kuular ( with a byzaanchi ), Kaigal001
Khovalyg ( with an igil ), Sayan Bapa ( with a doshpuluur )
El trabajo de Valencian Szkei del musiclogo de Tuvan gana describe la
comprensin sutil del paisaje fsico y snico del IUvans. Es un camino de "
escuchando para el mundo " ese en nuestro tiempo sea extremadamente
extrao. En desde luego sentido es un arte de la refinacin y distinc
considerable ( ion. a fin de explicar las banderas en la msica de Tuvan a
Szkei, ms viejo msicos usaron la analoga con las impresiones visuales
del paisaje. Esta idea es todava profundamente empotrada en la cultura de
Tuvan: muchos grupos son llamados como tal las metforas visuales. Su de
Huun - Huur, por ejemplo, /lists traduzca su nombre como " la separacin
vertical del exterior claro de rayos en las tierras de pequeo pastoreando
despus de la salida del sol o nico antes de la puesta del sol, " sino tambin
como el etfect de los rayos circulando sobre el sol, comparable al ventilotor
en retornar en el motor de un automvil. El grupo escogi este nombre
debido a la analoga con las lneas separadas del sonido o "rayos saludables"
que puede oir en /throat cantando.
Sin dejar de la influencia de Huunj Iuuru de la armona europea lo
ganancias exploran las fundaciones de la msica de Tuvan. Aleksei
Stryglar, un msico verstil que habita un festival regional de la ruptura o
msica del "camino" en 1995 , convirti el miembro en cuarto de
Huun,Huur,Tu " s. el grupo ha convertido en gradualmente una msica
verdadera a nivel mundial acta, y haya experimentado recientemente con
synthesiserses, los efectos digitales y cruzan-en al crisol moderno de la
msica global. De muchas propuestas para participar en la msica cultural
cruzada proyecta que ellos cuidadosamente seleccionado alguien, la
mayora del notablemente con el compositor de gato Alperin y los gritos
blgaros de la mujer y los tambores de Japanese Kodo. Cognisant del hecho
que es la pgina 190 que con referencia a-inventa la msica de Tuvan viejo
basado en la suposicin interina antigua practican ese nadie sabe realmente,
invitaron los msicos de no Tuvan tambin. Frecuentemente una la fuerza
con Sergey Starostin, un cantante ruso y el jugador de la flauta tradicional,
e invita el msico holands German Popov Ukranian, que versifique bien
en eslavo, Tuvan y borracho tradicional musical.
Para matarle blandamente: mujeres y khmei
3. 15 Tyva Kyzy que pueden tener los efectos adversos en las mujeres
preadas
Para nombrar un ejemplo: la introduccin del alfabeto latino en el 1930 el
crey tambin para imponer una amenaza en la salud de las mujeres
esperando que un child.47 uno pudo llenar hasta el tope un libro listando
todo Tuvan depone tab. Pero en una sociedad con tal abun ( el folklore del
lant de supersticiosas cosas de las creencias slo no tiene razn realmente
si los tabes no rompa se. Valencian Salchak vino de en 1979 as la primera
mujer para cantar khmei en public.48 pero una investigacin en pequeo
escala, estudia que tienen cada vez sus cantantes de la garganta de la hembra
que han sido considerados como excepciones a la regla que las mujeres no
puede y no cante khmei. Yo contratando el 1990 Valencian Chuldum
recibi una gran cantidad de atencin como un cantante de la garganta.
Parientes cercanos de los cantantes famosos, como el njece de Khunashtaar-
" ool de s (en 1960) y la hija de Kombu (en 1940 1950), haya ejecutado
el khmei pblicamente ms de un tiempo con su father.49 el artificio del
ool del canto de Bilek de la garganta de los chamns de Manchrek,
Aldinsova IOrtoyavna, nos diga para se siempre ha cantado khmei "
porque era innato a ella del nacimiento. " no pudo resistir cantando el
khmei despus de ese casado que ella y tenga el khmei de nios, y
sangre pblicamente en 1950 /1960s. Pero su hermana, que cante tambin
khmei como una muchacha, hizo alto para cuando otro recuerda
repetidamente su del dangers.50
Tradicin en movimiento
El lobo y el nio
Shanachie 64070
Igor Koshkendey Music from tuva
Inscripciones de Amiata
ARNR1497
Varios artistas
Profundidad en el corazn
/
Msica del vaquero del CD de cartas de la elipsis de Wild
Eaast 4050
CAPTULO 4
FILO DEL ARMNICO EN OTRO
MSICA TRADICIONAL
El khmii mogol
el ofkhmii del origen
los totales vocales instrumentales
armonice las armonas
las armonas vocales en las tradiciones picas de TurcoMongol
la repblica de Altai
produzca el eco del past
el ejemplo de Tuva
una mujer canta los poemas picos heroicos
Khakassia /called para las respiraciones
Kalmykia
poemas picos, yoga y los estados moderno
Bashkortostan
incgnita de origen
armonas vocales y el budismo
Tbet
suenan y simbolice
una herramienta para la mente
los colocadoreses de ser importante
las armonas vocales en el mundo cristiano
Cerdea, Italia
el Quintina, el quinto y la voz virtual
el Xhosa de Sudfrica
armonas vocales, polifona y polyrhythm
los casos aislados
Mongolia
peso para ellos/lo con las clusulas de las polticas desde luego en las
clusulas de las plizas de seguro sobre huelgas energticas en sus
violineses grandes. Los poderosos
(doble(" .1 ))
Para escuchar para mogol musical de hoy uno puede notar un eco del
unificador y lder de todo mogol tribus recuerdan y canta el alabado de un
tirn con las reservas naturales del pas, sus caballos y su msica.
Mongolia es un pas inmenso establecido para dos personas nicas
millones, pero desde luego treinta millones del ganado. La meseta mogol es
el sur de beneficio fijo de Siberia y el norte de China. Ello caracteriza los
inhospitalarios (;los merecimientos de obi de, esparcido con huesos de
dinosaurio, cerca de la tela fuerte de algodn bastarda. yo ) los bosques de
la taiga del ense constituyen las nuseas del st del dialecto norteo
fronterizo, las estepas verdes del oeste para esto; y la montaa de las formas
de Altai en refuerzan con cuadernas lo se curvan a travs del occidental de
Mongolia. Los picos de estas cadenas de montaas largas rebotan en el
lugar mogoles de praderas, y una minora de Tuvans y Kazakhs, ejecuta su
hable con el sonido gutural expresa a songs. 51
Khmii es el deletreo que ser acostumbrado a cantar el mogol de la
garganta, en contraste con el khmei de Tuvan.
Ilustracin 4.1
Ilustracin 4.2
Altai Hangai
Uno de los conjuntos que vinieron a Europe para juegan arpones de pesca
son Altai Hangai.
Naariits Biillye/
Este cuarteto primero se posaba abajo en Alemania en 1996 y entonces en
el
Altai Hangai
Childaa, el bailarn anterior y de lder del conjunto del Mandukhai
Ido con la compaa viajera. En conjunto invitaron los dos jugadores de
khuur de morin para formar Altai
Viento
Ventana a Europe
Hangai. Byambakhishig Lkhagva es un khuurchi dotado o caballar
principal fid/
Egschiglen
Cielo y tierra
L 4
HUELLA 2
Canto pico
" mi hermano cant kai y mi abuelo era el relator de historia tambin. Nadie
me ense realmente, yo tal como para escuchar. " vaya y escoja hierbas,
" mi hermano me dijo a, " y le ensear. " hago rpidamente que y entonces
cantara. comienzo ya cantando me cuando estaba de diez a quince aos.
Cuando otros nios preguntan yo hacer as dije que las historias simples y
lista de jurados suplentes en la tarde. " 66
Shinzhin explic que el chrchk de kai significa " para cantar la epopeya
(chrchk) con una tcnica vocal gutural (kai).'
mucho de lo que Shinzhin dijo a frasee se en el tiempo pasado. Sugiri que
los aos de su joven eran estos ltimos das para la tradicin de epopeya de
Altai. Mencion que el pegple mayor acostumbra a empezar cantando
alrededor de siete u ocho o " registre la entrada de la tarde y contine hasta
la maana temprana. una epopeya corta dur una noche, uno largo pudo
tomar unas noches de docena. Sin terminar una epopeya era uno de los
pecados peores para un kaizhi. Con cierta observacin de Shinzhin de
amargura que un desempeo de kai en un festival tradicional hoy "
normalmente ltimos ciertos tres minutos."
El hermano de Shinzhin le ha mostrado cmo cantar los armnicos, que se
adelante desarrolle se. A la altura de su carrera tiene una orden excelente de
los cantos de armnico tcnicas, que aparecieron en las inscripciones rusas
y a travs de sus interpretaciones dominantes vueltas en los estilos vocales
en su propio derecho. Sus nombres ( sygyrtyp o sybysky, kmei "
kargyrlap de tnd ) asemejan claramente los estilos de Tuvan ( sygyt,
khmei y kargyraa ) y haga que la derivacin de un campo comn arraigue
probable.67 es desconocido si el kaizhi antes que Shinzhin ejecut las tres
variedades del armnico de Altai cantando como los estilos conocedores
fuera de la epopeya. Pero las tcnicas eran claramente conocidas
anteriormente. Es probable que en estos ms temprano ( pone el kaizhi
entremezcl sus desempeos con las alternancias rtmicas de slabas como
YO, YA, 00, la u, as produciendo algo consanguneo a los armnicos
tmidos o el armnico rudimentario melodies.68
Ilustracin 4.3
Relator de historia
Tanyspai Shinzhin con su lad
HUELLA 3
Ir a Kyzyl
Altai
133
HUELLA 25
" todas las montaas cantan. Silban como el viento y a veces cante sybysky.
Las montaas tienen una voz como humano, que pueden ser masculinas o
femeninas, y con o sin palabras."
Arzhan expres su sintiendo que el canto de armnico de Altai est
relacionado con el /sounds, animales y los materiales orgnicos de la
naturaleza en la cancin siguiente /about el shoor, un pipereed largo simple
hizo de la caa.
137
canto, que varie mucho en proporcin y meloda. Cantar con la garganta es
llamado khai en Khakassia y puede ser combinado con el lista de jurados
suplentes heroico (nymakh de alyplykh) o con las canciones.
Khai se distingue adems en recitacin y canto, ambos al acompaamiento
de la ctara o como diga palabra. Khaidzhilar puede usar un conjunto de las
frases meldicas en el acompaamiento instrumental para acentuar los
elementos de contrastive de la narrativa. Salmodian con una voz gutural en
un rango de paso moderado ( que es el khai medio llamado ) o con la voz
baja de subfundamento (khai bajo). La ctara de The Khakass ha siete o ms
cuerdas y es llamada un chatkhan. Suelte nudillos de carnero, apretado entre
las cuerdas y el secreto de madera, sirven de los puentes movibles para
sintonizar el instrumento. Apretando abajo un lado de la cuerda al arrancar
en el otro crea hacia arriba corredizo entonan tpico de la ctara de Khakass.
Hacia 1990 a nueva generacin de los constructores de ejecutantes de
Khakass joven y de instrumento empiece a traer el decreciendo tradiciones
poticas y musicales de vuelta a vida. Sus nmeros son pequeos (menos
de una docena) pero el talento e inspiracin de algunos han cambiado la
perspectiva para el futuro de la msica de Khakass. Los ms prominentes
msicos envueltos en el renacimiento de la msica tradicional de Khakass
son cantantes e instrumentalistas profesionales. Sergei Charkov (1964) es
un especialista de uso variado en la msica de Khakass, que los
instrumentos nativos de los cantos, juegos y estructuras como el chatkhan,
el lad de khomys, el khobrakh y syylas tocan la flauta y el violn de yykh,
un pariente del igil de Tuvan. Visita las personas mayores para reunir
material en las provincias de Khakassia y eran uno de los primeros artistas
despus de muchos aos para interesarse en el khai que supo de su temprano
joven.
" como un nio que viv en una aldea. recuerdo que cuando era sobre cinco
o seis aos, y fui al primer grado, un khaidzhi vino para cantar en el klub
aldeano, o la casa de la cultura. Cuando estaba en el sexto grado que yo lo
prob me, y yo escuch a grabaciones. Entonces fui al conservatorio, donde
el escritor y narrador Kilchichakov vino. dur 25 aos cuando empieza
enseando me en 1989. se hube interesado ya en la msica de Khakass
desde 1987 , cuando empec a construir instrumentos. " 73
Kilchichakov no era un khaidzhi, pero sin embargo el experimento de lo de
Charkov inspirado con el canto de garganta. En los noventas tempranos,
adems, era duro para escapar la ola de la atencin inundando sobre Tuva
y sus cantantes de garganta. Los festivales de khmei de 1991 y 1992 en
Tuva era eventos principales que ponen las tradiciones de msica turcas
indgenas respaldan de importancia. Hizo la maravilla de Charkov si hubo
existido lans de Khakass musi/ que pudo cantar una variante de Khakass del
armnico de khmei cantando. l lound un manuscrito viejo en el instituto
de investigacin de la repblica, escrito en 1950 por un folklorista nombre
Kenel, que describa en realidad Khakass
SIGA LA PISTA DE 4
/
Syr chome
Pura msica de naturaleza
CD DE PNM 003
Hoy sobre 150.000 de ellos haya permanecido como donde el Volga entra
el Mar Caspio como el nico budista, comunitario asitico entre el
islamismo " Turcs y rusos ortodoxos, los Kalmyks se han desarrollado en
vas radicalmente diferentes que sus antepasados asiticos.
Eran deseosos para adoptar nuevas ideas y tecnologas de las
contribuciones significativas de mundo de wcstcrn y madc al desarrollo de
la ciencia rusa ya durante el imperio de tsarist. Su frecuente y cierre se toca
con civilizaciones que son bastante diferente de su propio haya sido de la
influencia decisiva en el carcter cosmopolita de los Kalmyks modernos.
una figura central en el renacimiento actual del canto de epopeya de Kalmyk
es Vladimir Okonovich Karuyev, cuyo nombre de artista es Okna Tsagan
Zam, o white way Tsagan Zam desarrolle un inters serio en la poesa pica
de Kalmyk nacional Jangar en 1980. Cierto jangarchi ( ejecutantes de la
epopeya de Jangar ) todava recitado o cantaron las partes de la epopeya,
pero slo pocas personas de la generacin de /Ikagan Zam lo hubieron
estudiado a tal edad joven. Hacia el fin de tbe de la dcada, era el nico
cantante de Jangar joven entre una feria numere de antao jangarchi que
slo recitado la epopeya. Decidi para trazar cmo la prctica actual entre
los Kalmyks relacionados con sus parientes distantes en Mongolia.
Tsagan Zam primero encontr de casualidad los cantantes mogoles de
khmii y entonces, a principios de 1990 , descubra los cantantes siberianos
de garganta a un festival tenido en Rusia. Se fascinaba instantneamente
por su tcnica vocal y empieza imitandoles. Pone as la base de un estilo de
desempeo gutural de la epopeya de Kalmyk nacional que es notablemente
diflercnt de eso de sus predecesores. Pero sus experiencias mogoles han
convencido Tsagan Zam ese esta tcnica vocal ha sido una vez comn entre
el jangarchi de Kalmyk y que sus antepasados tienen TRACK 23 conocer
el canto de armnico.
Un nombre alternativo para el uzlyau es kurai de tamak o " hable con voz
gutural kurai.' el kurai de tamak de nombre traiciona una relacin de esta
tcnica vocal con el instrumento de Bashkir nacional: la flauta de kurai.
Esta flauta larga no tiene ningn /mouth-piece y es abierta lateralmente
mientras que valga hacia abajo de la boca de /player's. Entre sus parientes
lejanos es el shoor de Altai, el mogol
Ilustracin 4.7
Tzagan Zam
Uzlyau. El canto gutural de los pueblos de la ilustracin de CD de
PAN 2019 de Sayan, Altai, y ural mountain PAN Records 4.8
Figura 4.9
Anotacin de Xlnernonic de vocal tibetano rnelodv. ( la reproduccin cerca
Allansukh Adilbish, basado en Vandor 1976)
La msica de Tbet
Registrado por
Huston Smith
Anthology
AST 4005 LP
diez pies a mi derecho y dos filas en frente, est cantando solo lo que suene
como una cuerda principal de tres tonos compuesto de un musical primero,
tercero y quinto " 88
Despus de este intervalo maravilloso, el ritual recomenz a hablar como
antes. Los monjes permanecen sentados casi todo el da. Slo en la tarde
haga que ellos dejan
l'ltras de Gyiito: Mahakala Elektra / Nonesuch 1--1 - 72055 Tantras of
Gyto:
Sangwa l)pa
Elektra/Nonesuch
H-72064
Las ceremonias tienen el solo separe para el dueo del canto y grupo
Budismo tibetano. Dibujar cerca
Altansukh Adilbish
canto.
Muchos rituales tambin contienen las partes instrumentales que pueden ser
jugadas por handdrums, cmbalos, tambores, campanas, oboes y las
trompetas pequeas y grandes. Se ejecutan por los mismos monjes y
acompaan partes de las recitaciones o alterne con ellos.
Los estallidos abrumar fuertes de las trompetas bajas largas, el ruido de
parlotear de los cmbalos, el moviendome con un ruido pesado y apagado
los tambores y las notas repetitivas frenticas de los oboes chillones no
transportan la impresin de siendo organice abiertamente -- a menos que
piensan dando a una definicin musical de la teora de caos. En realidad
existe cierta verdad en este retrucano: los juegos rituales de orquesta
menos casuales que parece y las piezas instrumentales de ciertos budistas
tibetanos se decoran segn matemtico complejo formulas.89 uno se
sorprender, por ejemplo, para hallar el grado de la similitud entre las
repeticiones de cmbalos. Para el forastero el caos aparente oscurece el
hecho que existe tcnicas estrictas para hacer que los clic de acelerar de los
bordes de cmbalos y banderas diferentes de la trompeta suenan.
Otros elementos del servicio religioso son los mudras o mano simblica
gesticulan; cambios frecuentes de vestido y sombrero; vizualizaciones; y
exaspere, que sea quemado a todos los tiempos. una parte grande de las
recitaciones de las lamas consiste de los textos antiguos o sutras, que
contienen las enseanzas bsicas de Buda de thc. Estas oraciones no son en
ejercicio tibetanas, pero en un Ian /guage esotrico que las lamas aprenden
a la universidad de Tantric. As los monjes usan /es de phras que no usan
para comunicacin normal y que hacen ningn sentido a los legos tibetanos.
Este vocabulario solamente existe en el contexto 01 las mantras y parezca
se una dimensin semntica separada dentro de la vida monstica tibetana.
Este se mantienen particularmente para mantras ejecutadas con las tcnicas
cantantes que la falta aclara armonas. Aqu estn los tions aproximados de
translu de los contenidos de ciertas mantras recitados por los monjes de
Gyt:90
Tenshug
Mayo este mundo permanece en paz y felicidad sin daar ningn haga a los
objetos espirituales del cuerpo de Buda, habla y la mente que est en este
mundo por los cuatro elementos ; sin teniendo dae ningn haga al entorno
de las aldeas y ciudades por los cuatro elementos y sin tener cada dao
hecho por guerra etctera otras calamidades
Japay Monlam
Los budistas tibetanos nunca usan un ordinario planee cantando la voz para
las mantras. Usan todo el yang de trmino para uno de su cantando tcnicas.
La calidad caracterstica de voz de los Gyt y Gyme combina un
fundamento muy bajo con una resonancia bien controlada y produce un par
de armonas claras. Para asegurarse de que el sonido es el yang continuo se
debe ejecutar por al menos dos monjes. Otro requerimiento es que deben
tratar de hacerlo sonar como un exprese, si estn con dos o doscientos.
Cuando los monjes se adiestran individualmente, hacen as (casi) silenciosa
o internamente, como las slabas sagradas no son maravillosas para oirse
cerca otros.
El yang de otras tradiciones monsticas carece de la profundidad de los
Gyt y Gyme expresan y las armonas reforzadas. Por ejemplo, los
monjes del yang de canto de rama de Sakya con una voz menos forzada, y
suene ms melodioso. Dentro de la rama de pap de Gelug, Gyme es el
ms enrgico mientras que el estilo de Gyt transforma las frases sagradas
en su forma ms distorsionada.
Cuando el Gyt recita en el estilo de yang ellos usan slo algunos tonos.
Nawang Lodue de abad de The Gyt explic a m a la vspera de un viaje
de turismo de concierto en la holanda que existe ms que slo una diferencia
musical o tcnica entre el yang de varios monasterios.
" Yang se parece una sintona ofrecido a las deidades. Esto puede ser
Mahakalla, la deidad protectora, o cualquier otro. Una oferta al Dios
significa una oferta al odo. Usted tiene que cantar profundo de su corazn,
y su voz deba estar en un nivel muy bien. Existen muchas diferencias.
Nosotros, dice el Gyt: si un elefante consigue marcado con una cicatriz,
entonces gritar ello, y que es el sonido que producimos. Eso es tpico para
nosotros. Este sonido era usado del tiempo que Gyt se estableca. Se
transmite de generacin a generacin. El sonido debe parecerse el elefante.
La va del canto del Gyme se parece el Dios del infierno si se enfada tiene
una voz diferente, y que es la voz la marca de Gyme. " 92
De numeroso LP- , casete -- y CD registra que sea disponible
comercialmente, es evidente que los monjes no prefieren una cuerda
sencilla
La transcripcin oficial del yang es dByangs
Los monjes de buddist tibetanos del Drepung despreciable
La msica sagrada del monasterio, msica bailable sagrada y CD de letras
736
El (;monjes de vt Windham Hill Records WI ) 2001
/
Aum simbolizan en comn y la escritura sagrada
/o la combinacin fundamental armnica. Los monjes de varios
monasterios pueden mejorar el nmero armnico cinco de la serie de
armnico hasta el dcimo armnico, a veces en combinacin con el ol
armnico la octava ms alta. Es posible que otras armonas vienen al frente
tambin.
La carrera tpica de un monje budista empieza con sus lecciones de primero
a edad seis cuando entra la universidad de Tantric o " universidad de lama.'
l estudia leer escrito religioso pero no canta. Primero tiene que pasar un
examen y tener su cambio de voz antes de empezar a practicar el especial
que canta voz.
Esto sucede algn da entre sus duodcimo y dcimoctavo aos. un novato
entonces prueba para reproducir el sonido correcto de odo y para imitar la
posicin del cuello y boca. Segn las lecciones de Nawang Loduc. de abad
consista de imitaciones y ejercicios particulares.
" si los maestros cantan, entonces el novato debera conseguir la misma
voz. Esta es la va para aprender. Existe ninguna otra va. Si entrenan para
beber una gran cantidad de agua, entonces finalmente cierta sangre sale a
borbotones de la garganta. Ciertos estudiantes conseguirn una voz, pero
otros no poder. Esta es una va para entrenar la voz. Otro es tomar una
cuerda de carne, que cuelgan en su garganta y adelante y abajo. A veces
consiguen una voz mejor, a veces se entrenan durante aos sin mejorar.'/
una herramienta para la mente: el armnico como simbolice
Las armonas vocales son siempre usadas en la combinacin con la palabra
sagrada " y es por lo tanto una parte integral e inextricable de la mantra. It
/difficult para expresar el significado simblico de la cuerda canta beltCl
que Huston Smith, que escriba que
" los armnicos despiertan los sentimientos sobrenaturales: sentido sin
siendo explcitamente odo, estn situado en exactamente la misma relacin
a nuestra audiencia como el sagrado ocupa puesto de alerta para nuestras
vidas mundanas de ordinario. " 93
La extra expresa generado por los armnicos pueda sobreentenderse como
los colocadores de /the de onc de significado contenido en las slabas
sagradas. Como el Tibet.llt. lo explique, yang se tiene intenciones
explcitamente para oscurecer en realidad el significado de T " palabras de
las mantras. Una va para lograr esta meta es aadiendo e de improp silabe
para ellos. Los ms famosos ejemplos son las mantras " Aum ( o "0m" ) y
'Zumbido,' el comienzo y fin de colina de Aum Mane Padme"
Con estas dos slabas, que sea escogido para su poder de mantric, il " monjes
de Gyt canta su aclarar cuerdas. El supposedl de Aum de mantra " origine
en India varios siglos BC, y es considerado un Smith sano de semilla tiene
este para decir casi zumbido de Aum Mane Padme:
" por las slabas medias se entienden, respectivamente, la "joya" y "loto" ,
mientras que las desde todos los puntos de vista slabas son apreciadas para
su poder fontico nico, ser definiendo semntica nico desde el punto de
vista del armonizar con el Dharamakaya, el Buda como la realidad ltima.
En las preguntas de respuesta a presentadas en una variedad de vas, las
lamas de Gyt manifestadas repetidamente que no pudieron explicar el
significado de estas slabas, pero eso al pronunciarles uno debe siempre
hacer un esfuerzo especial para armonizar corazn y mente al significado
del momento santo " 94
As Smith adelanta explique, la palabra mantra es del origen snscrito y
literalmente significa " herramienta para la mente.' lo referirse a una slaba
sagrada que tiene el poder para evocar la divinidad en el hombre. En el indio
antiguo ensean Aum sea que abarca todo y contiene un poder que
transforma el habla ordinario. Es el comienzo y fin del alfabeto snscrito, y
as " el comienzo y fin de todo eso se puede decir. " 95 " como todas las
partes de una hoja se tienen en conjunto por una varilla central, as todo el
habla se tiene en conjunto por AUM, " Smith del Chandogya Upanishad
antiguo, y contine,
/" en la medida en que los paseos de pensamiento en idioma, AUM lo
contiene demasiado germinando. ./
Las cuerdas de las lamas ponen, como si fuera, una lupa sobre el empotrado
simblico auricular de virtudes en la mantra de AUM: alcanzan el mximo
al punto de los armnicos de audibilidad completos se sienta se de otra
manera pero no explcitamente odo " 96
yo lence las slabas, los armnicos y la voz de profundidad, el contexto del
desempeo de grupo y el " el esfuerzo especial para armonizar la mente y
el corazn " es el parte esencial de las mantras. Las slabas sagradas son la
corona de los versos de tantric porque sobrepasan los lmites de hombre la
mayor parte del distintivo 1001, el idioma, y derrumban los mecanismos de
la mente hasta IIS muy fundaciones.
una realidad diferente
/10 pare nuestro viaje esotrico y traiga el tema de vuelta a las materias ms
terrestres nos deja considerar finalmente la experiencia fisiolgica de
Buddhist hant. Habla por s mismo que la tcnica de yang no solo mejora la
elocuencia de mantras, sino tambin sentimientos el estado fsico de los
monjes de cantar en una va profunda. Todo el mundo que haya
comprometido seriamente en 0M de groupwise cantando sepa que las
resonancias de dos voces producen sonidos que es significativamente ms
poderoso que esos de un exprese slo. Los " tonos de ()mbined dan a cierta
realimentacin a los cantantes que hace encendedor de inging. Puede dar
origen a experiencias de un supernatu casi -
/
exprese desaparezca solo. La nocin de los fsicos propio puede ser
temporalmente extendido a travs de los medios de sonido. Airee
molculas, ponga en marcha por la voz, venga de adentro el cantante, est
todo alrededor de l y regrese en sus odos. Por lo tanto airee constituye la
realidad fsica de no-slido que penetra la experiencia de los fsicos propio
y pueda an parecer combinarse con este ltimo. Estas impresiones
fisiolgicas y acsticas de psicpata se vuelven infinitamente ms
poderosas cuando sean ejecutados con una congregacin de veinte, treinta
o sesenta hombres; cuando ltimo de diez a quince minutos al cabo de una
hora y medio del estado normal cantando montonamente; y cuando es
hecho para cuatro das consecutivos con slo una comida magra y algunas
horas duermen. Durante tales momentos, cuando un monje entero ser est
convirtiendo en el sonido y todo ese ello use smbolos, l sea en realidad
probable que realidad de experiencia de cierta manera que es mismo
diferente de los nuestros.
Cerdea: la voz virtual
La ocurrencia de armnicos como una parte consciente del vocal o la
msica t de los instrumenes fuera de Asia son un fenmeno raro. Por este
motivo el pre ent y ejemplo prximo, de la Europa y Sudfrica
respectivamente, el arco incluido en esta parte, titule este que esto no
significa que estos casos son de algn modo menores que sus contrapartes
asiticas. Muestran ms bien que la divisin hacia el este occidental estricta
de este libro, que puede estarse situado debajo tambin como una divisin
de tradicional contra moderno, puede no finalmente mantenerse. una va
especfica de aplicarme las armonas del /musically han sido conocidas para
muchas generaciones en la Europa. Este caso de ed de isolal viene de ciertos
hermanazgos en el italiano asle 01 Cerdea en el mar Mediterrneo, que
deliberadamente produzca harmoni " /in que su litrgico chants.97
Ethnomusicologist Bernard Lortat-Jacol ) . que es el director de la
investigacin al centro nacional para investigacin de Scientill en Pars,
encontrado de casualidad este fenmeno mientras que l made/
in-depth study of the poly phonic songs performed by the Sardinian Broth"'
/hoods during Holy Wcck The material that he col lected forms the basis ul
this section.98
In Sardinia we are agam dealing exclusively with Italy with the male
singers. Like /island of SardiniaTibetan monks discussed
Mediterranean Sea choir creates a single, hill monic ring high above
/fundamental of the /voices. But contrarv to Il"'
/l'ibetans, who sing more or less on the same pedal tone, the Sardinians all
sing their own melody. There are always four voices, and each of them
contributes a unique part to the whole. The interweaving of the tour
melodies is characteristic for European polyphony. But unlike any known
kind of older European multi-part singing, some Sardinian choirs create an
extra voice, well above the fundamentals of these four different melodies.
Each voice produces a second resonance tone, apart trom the ground
melody. These higher tones are placed in such a way within the polyphonic
framework that they melt into one powerful tone. In this way four singers
jointly produce one extra line above their
Sardinia:
Polyphony for Holy
Week
Recordings and commentary by Bernard Lortat-Jacob Le Chant du
Monde LDX
274936
tour individual lines. This fifth note is called the Quintina in the vernacular.
The Quintina seems to be created out of thin air: it is a virtual voice that
consists of nothing but harmonics.
The Quintina is produced with remarkable precision on top of sevcral
chords. But it becomes most clear when the four singers produce a harmony
known as a major triad in root position (for example: sol-resol-si). This
comes down to the group neatly singing the intervals of harmonics four, six,
eight and ten of the harmonic series in a row. The lour singers merge their
voices perfectly because they fine-tune to one another upon these harmonic
resonances.
The fifth harmonic voice is not the only unusual element in Sardinian
liturgical music. To the casual ear used to the quiet flow of the choral works
of Renaissance polyphonists, the liturgical chants may appear as a corrupted
form of these ancient compositions. In their authentic, rural form, the
Sardinian' chants sound as if the chords are correct, but sung in backward
order. When for instance the outsider's cars anticipate for a minor chord,
the choir all of a sudden continues with a major chord. The chants may also
stop quite abruptly and unexpectedly. Then, after some five lengthy seconds
of silence, the choir recaptures itself and slowly drag-slide their sonorous
voices back into the next chord. All of this is meant to be this way and is
executed with the utmost care and detail. The music tradition that has
developed in these isolated villages simply defies the laws of music that we
are most familiar with and that it resembles. It puts our expectations to the
test. Among these many musical surprises, an average listener is likely to
miss the quintessence of this branch of European polyphony: the fifth lind
harmonic 'voice.'
Lortat-Jacob was the first to describe in detail how Sardinians were using
harmonic resonance as a musical principle. He found that the brotherhood
of the village Castelsardo has a good reputation for conducting its musical
services. Over half of the fifty members are active singers, who devote
much of their time and energy to singing. Like the schola cantorum, the
institution in which Gregorian chant was maintained in the Middle Ages,
they use a Latin liturgy. Another trait the brotherhoods share with the oldest
surviving music from Europe is the extraordinary dedication to this art. Like
in the schola cantorum, the brothers practice frequently and discuss at great
length whether all parts were satisfactorily executed or not.
Apart from the religious practices and doing charity work, an essential task
of the Sardinian brotherhoods is the maintenance ot /good social contacts
among each other and with others. Most brothers enlist on a charitative
basis apart from their normal work. Singing can absorb much of their time
as they conduct numerous ceremonies and funeral rites throughout the year.
The act of singing itself beholds for them a social and spiritual element and
fulfils at the same time profanc and devotional tasks. For some novices, the
wish to sing weighs as heavily in their motivation to join a brotherhood as
the religious and spiritual considerations.
Besides the coro, the choir that performs religious music, there is the tenore,
the worldly choir that is a markedly different from the former. The tenore
singers perform at celebrations and meals, sing in Italian and make
extensive use of non-sense syllables like 'boim-bo-lilloro' and 'bombimbo-
rimbobo.' In some villages the tenore bass voice sinks down to the deep
register, like Tuvan kargyraa.
In the case of the religious coro, however, overtones are consciously
produced and the spiritual function is emphasised. The extra harmoni(
stands for harmony in the broadest sense of the word, and is like a con
firmation from above that the brothers' good intentions are recognised.
When this happens, Lortat-Jacob writes,
"then suddenly, as they put it themselves, the voices are doubled in order to
let another one appear: the quintina. ...l It comes into being through the
perfect harmony of the singers (in every sense of the term), and their
combined voices compete to render it fully audible. ...l When the quintina
is formed well enough, both as physical object and as mental representation,
it succeeds to obscure the voices that produce it in a strange way. Then a
virtual chant replaces the four real voices. The hearing is literally absorbed
by its aerial, unique, omnipresent timbre. ...l A strong presence of the
quintina furnishes an immediate and perceptible proof of the perfection of
the singing. l... The phenomenon of the quintina maintains its obscure
aspects. Without a doubt the people at Castelsardo are fond of its mystery.
At times present and absent, it evidently enters the symbolism of the
Passion and, every year when Easter comes, they await its reappearance.99
In advance of the Part Metaphysics, I may add here a few words about the
significance of this single older European example of overtone singing .
The Quintina is a notable occurrence in Europe, because of its suggestion
of a perfect, universal harmony. It forms a magnificent illustration of a
music philosophy that goes back to the cradle of Western civilisation. In the
sixth century BC Pythagoras, the philosopher and mathematician who
resided with a group of disciples in Southern Italy, sought to unravel the
mysteries of the universe through sound and its underlying mathematical
ratios. Several centuries later Plato described the highest form of harmony
as the Music of the Spheres. Thus Pythagoras and Plato, whose ideas
became firmly established in F.uropean thinking, initiated a long tradition
of physical and metaphysical theory which has been a constant influence on
European music and aesthetics. However, there has never been a proof that
in ancient times this ultimate, metaphysical harmony was approached by
way of amplitying vocal harmonics. The known history of Sardinian
polyphony does not go back more than a few centuries, and there is nothing
that points to a link with Ancient Greece. In Part Four we will return to the
Metaphysics of music and Greek Harmonics theory.
South Africa: the human voice as a type of musical bow
The Cape Province in eastern South Africa, the home of the Xhosa people,
boasts the only other overtone singing tradition with a significant number
of practitioners. The Xhosa are more famed for their 'click sounds' than for
their overtone singing: the 'x' in their name stands for a click with the
tongue. The 'q' in umngqokolo, the name that the Thembu Xhosa use for
overtone singing, stands for yet another click sound.
In 1980 David Dargie, a priest and musicologist who works in the Cape
Province, was visited by some local musicians who had heard that they 'ould
earn a little money by singing their songs to a music researcher. In the
process of listening to the music and to the stories the women told itbout
them, Dargie suddenly noticed that one of them was singing chords.
The Xhosa chiefdoms in South Africa
"No documentation of any traditional overtone singing in Africa had come
to light when, on 9th December 1980, while recording a group of young girl
singers at Sikhwankqeni, I realised one of them was producing chords
apparently in imitation of the umrubhe bow, [the instrument] with which
the same song (Umzi kaMzwandile) had been performed moments before.
The technique being used by that young girl was to produce unnaturally
deep tones by singing in a forced manner in the back of the throat. These
deep, gruff tones are rich in overtones, and it was these patterns of overtones
of which I became aware. Later it became clear that singers using this
technique are in fact following a pattern of melody, by using overtones."
100
In the district where Dargie found the umngqokolo technique of over /tone
singing, it is executed only by women and girls. The very low voice. like
kargyraa but more constrained and gruff, seems to take a lot 01 energy,
judging from the groans and wheezes with which umngqokolo is
interspersed. 101
Improvisation and 'going where the mood takes them' is an impor tant
aspect in Xhosa music. At liberty a singer can start a song which will be
followed by any number of singers that wish to contribute to thc
improvisation, and may develop for an indefinite length of time. Each
singer can choose a different rhythm and melody as long as they com ply
with a few basic rules. Some singers hum, others sing and still 0th ers make
overtones. Several umngqokolo singers may join the group /the same time,
thus extending the vocal harmonies with several over tones. All voices
together make for an intricate structure, which is nev(" TRACK 6 the same.
Track 6 shows just the beginning of such a rhythmical improvisation with
voices and hand clapping by Mrs. Nowayiletlll Mbizweni and Nofirst
Lungisa.
Normally the women sing a certain melody with the harmonics, and pick
whatever is convenient from any of three or four different fundil mental
tones. The only requirement is that the fundamental docn indeed contain the
overtone they want to sing. Certain singers are rc,il masters at making such
complex structures of rhythms and harmonic' They are in fact improvising
with a single voice a two-part piece,/
/
melodic pattern.
The Xhosa songs are closely related to the music they play on /umrubhe
musical bow. The bow is struck with a twig while onc ot /ends is pushed
slanting against the upper teeth, hence the umrubhe /also called mouth bow.
By changing the shape of the mouth cavity when striking the musician
selects particular overtones. Thus the
umrubhe player makes overtone melodies and chords. By shortening and
extending the string they can choose from various fundamental tones.
According to David Dargie, singers try to make similarly multilayered
sounds, in imitation of the mouth bow. Hence the way Xhosa think about
their music is as a multi-part framework in which fundamental and overtone
move rather independently and have equal value.
Ukungqokola is another verb referring to Xhosa overtone singing and is
also used for the whistling of boys that herd cattle. Sometimes these boys
play a somewhat cruel game: they pin a beetle down on a thorn so that the
insect starts to fly frantically, hoping it can free itself. The resulting loud
buzz turns the beetle into a living musical instrument: a boy holds the
buzzing insect in front of his mouth and resonates different overtones by
widening and closing his lips. This 'playing the umqangi beetle' inspired the
apprentice diviner Mrs. Nowayilethi Mbizweni to invent a style of overtone
singing of her own. She demonstrates this on another recording made by
Professor Dargie on track 27.
In the 1980s David Dargie found that the technique was known by only a
few singers in a small part of his study area. He surmised that it has been
practised more widely and that it may still exist among other Xhosa. Now,
some two decades later, the interest in singing harmonics has grown again:
a twenty-piece choir of women learnt to perform songs with umngqokolo.
Idiosyncrasies
We have examined how different musical traditions make and perceive
harmonics and how they are related to vowels, timbre, the guttural and the
nasal voice. But there still is some confusion about the vocal music that
exhibits a more than average (that is: more than subliminal) output of
harmonics. I introduced the term paraphony to designate those ways of
making music where a singer or instrumentalist is aware of the changes and
effects of harmonics in the spectrum. Oftentimes we cannot be so sure that
this is what the musicians themselves, literally speaking, have in mind.
Some singers are not so easy to classify as ( non- )overtone singers and
simply have very resonant voices. After these few last examples, it is up to
the inquisitive reader to go still further and listen for harmonics elsewhere,
whether they be intentional or not.
In Chapter One I mentioned two other communities that use harmonics to
embellish choral music: Bulgarian women from the Shop legion and
American barbershop singers. In Bulgaria women intentionally produce
shrill and nasal voices that grate and rub, because they re not, as we call it,
'in tune.' Thus they produce a wide spectrum of fre-
TRACK 27
South Africa Xhosa Women's
/
The Ngqoko
Women's Ensemble
VDE Gallo CD 879
> page 38
> page 43 quencies including many high tones in the harmonic range.
Barbershoppers approach the choral singing style of Sardinia because they
too seek to create a fusion tone above the voices that otherwise sound like
any other 'normal' choir. They pile up their voices at the same distances as
those of the harmonic series and then fine-tune their voices accordingly.
Although they do not make melodies with them, the harmonic resonances
are deliberately sought after.
There is a vast repertory of songs, chants, prayers and recitations where the
meaning or importance of harmonics and even just their presence is less
clear-cut. Jonathan Goldman's Healing Sounds (1992) popularised the idea
that ancient mystery schools passed on secret knowledge about the hidden
dimensions of the voice. He mentions for instance the chanting of sacred
formulae with amplified harmonics in Sufi and Cabalistic rituals and relates
vowel singing and overtone singing to colours and the chakras. 102 In these
cases harmonics may originally have been the by-products of speech or
recitation, which came to be conceived as some sort of supernatural, divine
languagc once they surfaced to the consciousness of initiates. In the more
schol /arly essay The Mystery of the Seven Vowels ( 1991 ), musicologist
Joscelyn Godwin showed that vowels were associated with tones, scales
and planets by mystical Christian and Jewish orders. None of his sources
extends these correspondences to harmonics, the indispensable companions
of vowels. But the author hypothesises that the enigmati' strings of vocal
formulae that were used in ancient Egypt might in fact represent different
harmonics of the voice. These secret vowel-harmonic combinations may
have been used by priests and initiates "for heal /ing and technical
work."103
The list of unequivocal forms of overtone singing, transmitted through
generations in an oral tradition, herewith comes to an end. A few last
examples should suffice to show that any individual can open one's ears to
harmonics and learn to articulate them even without /teacher. A number of
reputed overtone singers have found the tech nique on their own,
supposedly without a shared performance practice. One of the oldest
accounts appears in a book with miraculous and strange facts published in
Belgium around 1520, and compares the man who sings, on his own, "above
and below," with famous composers ol that time. 104
I have seen, as it seems to me,
A strong man of honour, Who sang alone together
Both above and below
Olbeken, Alexander,
Josquin, nor Bugnois
Who knew well to compose songs
Have made something so strange
Was the singer a gifted individual from the Lowlands? A foreign guest? Or
was the poem written or inspired by a traveller who sojourned among the
Bashkirs or the Mongols? We may never know, but the origin of the
following cryptic description does not leave us speculating. A sixteenth
century Chinese document speaks of a man whose singing had 'many
sounds from the throat and lips.' 105 In all likeliness this happened within
the confinements of the Chinese empire, which at that time included
present-day Mongolia and Tuva. Several other individual cases are known,
also in our times, one of which cannot be left aside.
When after the First World War the phonograph industry became big
business for the first time, a certain Arthur Miles from the United States of
America dedicated a special feat of his to this technological novelty. Miles
seems to have left no written trace in the annals of American music history.
But the singer of cowboy songs apparently had received enough local fame
to be worth his own disc. Miles stands supreme as the most queer example
of an overtone singer who in all likelihood developed the technique by
himself. His tune hits off with an authentic, southern singalong melody. He
then proceeds with a pleasant, unadulterated yodel ditty, which was not
altogether uncommon in the cowboy pastiches of the time. VThat comes
next, surely was unheard of: Miles renders the song's theme in a fine
Southerly overtone style of his own invention. From the first to the very last
note he faithfully repro(luces the cowboy melody with overtones. This
cowboy melody sung in harmonics proved clear enough to stick in the
worn-out grooves of the original record pressings. In passing Miles makes
a subtle, semitoneNhift in the fundamental tone that is hardly noticeable,
and displays a ' onsiderable grasp and ease of overtone technique that few
singers posNess. This being 1929, Mr. Miles receives the posthumous
honour of being one of the very first overtone singers recorded on disc ever.
PART THREE
WEST
CHAPTER 5
A HISTORY OF OVERTONE SINGING IN THE WEST
the 1960s the experimental sounds of La Monte Young a musical
visionary: Karlheinz Stockhausen the 1970s Tran Quang Hai,
musician, researcher, experimenter new sounds and uses of the voice
the 1980s Michael Vetter: Transverbal sound David Hykes'
Harmonic. Choir changing musical experiences New Age and related
styles the 1990s: cross-fertilisation and globalisation throat singing
featured in opera khmei out bf Tuva vocal experiments
polyphony in the studio 20m Toby Twining's mass for a millennium
return to the source: plainchant a bird's eye view on western music
history
We began Part Two with the elaborate techniques of overtone singing
among the Tuvans and ended it in a shimmering zone where the vocal
harmonics demand a discerning ear to single them out. It is in this twilight
zone of sound awareness, of the vague sensation of something that is hidden
yet within reach, that the history of overtone singing in Western music has
begun. This beginning is generally connected with the name of German
composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Indeed Stockhausen was the first to write
out harmonic melodies for the voice in a score. But well before he did this
in the late 1960s, European voice specialists, acousticians, philosophers,
theosophists, orientalists, writers, musicians and poets described how they
had observed overtones in the voices of singers and even speakers. Hence
the awareness that there
exists a musical dimension within each sound itself surfaced among a varied
group of people before composers took them up as the musical ground
material for a composition.
It is telling that observers of all walks of life encountered these overtones
before they were being applied in the official domain of music composition
and practice. Even today a lot of activity involving vocal harmonics takes
place outside the professional and amateur music Institutions, for example
in circles aimed at meditation and healing through sound. In every culture
music entails a practice and ideas about sound. In the western world there
is a marked distinction, which has grown historically, between musica
practica, or making music, and musica theoretica, the theory and philosophy
of sound and music. The developments within each of these two disciplines
have of course been mutually influential. At times they complemented one
another, at
facing page: Michael Vetter singing with the tambura
La Monte Young The Melodic
Version of The Second Dream of
The High-Tension
Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China Gramavision
R279467 CD
another instance they were in disharmony, and so the theory and practice of
western music have constantly stimulated each other's progress. Now that
this more or less logical progress has come to and end ( > page 198) there
is a tendency among composers and musicians to bridge these fields in new
ways. But for reasons of clarity I maintain the distinction between theory
and practice. I leave questions of a philosophiCal, spiritual and music
theoretical character, which may be considered elements of musica
theoretica, aside for the next part of this book, Metaphysics. We will now
concentrate on musica practica: the development of overtone singing in the
western world in a strictly musical context, as a technique used primarily
by musicians and composers.
The Tortoise, his Dreams and Journeys
Amidst the unrelenting flood of ideas and (non-)sounds that the American
avant-garde produced, the spectral music of the American composer La
Monte Young stands out. Young (born 1935) did the first explicit
experiment with vocal harmonics, but not after trying out many other
radically new ideas. He belonged to a movement that was interested in
intuition, the process of musical creation itself and the role of the performer.
Young wrote pieces consisting of nothing more than extremely long tones,
which allowed one to get under the skin of musi cal sounds.
"The use of long sustained notes in music allows one to better isolate and
listen to the harmonics, and the harmonic series is a clearly audible model
for understanding the structure of "just intonation." Just intonation is that
system of tuning based on the idealised principles of harmonics and
resonances as our ears hears them and our voices produce them, that is, as
they are found in nature." I
Thus La Monte Young elevated to a conscious level the harmonic sound
layers that at least in vocal music were not usually focused upon. A kev
work is Young's piece The second dreaming of the high-tension line step
down transformer, first performed in 1963. It was played by eiglll stringed
instruments that each held no more than one note. Youny. explained that at
that time "sustenance became one of the basic prinu ples of my work,
providing ... the light that illuminated the path Il led to my later work in
tuning and just intonation, inspiring a new vision of composition evolving
from the universal truths of harmonit structure."2 The next year he started
working on a piece that included vocal drones, entitled The tortoise, his
dreams and journeys. He demand ed of "each performer [to] be extremely
responsible. He must know exactly what everyone else is playing, he must
hear at all times eve'
OF
other frequency that is being played and know what it is."3 A decade after
the fact Michael Nyman wrote in his book Experimental Music that
"Young lays stress on special methods of vocal production and careful
attention to amplification. The singers produce throat tones and nose tones,
of which the latter are much closer to simple wave structures, having fewer
harmonics than throat tones. By using the resonating chamber of the mouth
in particular ways with different syllables, different harmonics can be
emphasised."4
Considering that the first performances took place in the mid 1960s Young
is probably the first western musician-composer who recognised that vocal
harmonics can be a genuine musical parameter in their own right. Never
before did composer lay so much stress on this aspect of sound. The sheer
length of the pieces, that would sometimes last for many hours or even days,
made a clear point. Even the most tone-deaf listener would eventually start
to surmise that each singer and player held more than one note ... at the
same time.
Tuning up to the cosmos: Stockhausen's Stimmung
On the evening of December 8, 1968 three male and three female singers
were seated in a circle onstage at the Maison de la Radio in Paris, France.
The choir of six held microphones in their hands and each member had two
futuristic, round loudspeakers on poles near them: one towards the singers,
one towards the audience. There was no conductor to give indications.
Instead, the singers had to rely on each other and, at the beginning, on tape
recorders that only played sinus waves.
Singcircle, director
Gregorv Rosc Karlheinz
Stockhausen:
Stimmung
Hyperion Records
Limited
CDA 661 15
The lowest frequency measured 57 Hertz and all other frequencies were an
exact multiple of that tone. From these tones the singers had to take their
own pitch. Softly, without nasality and vibrato, they produced tones and
called magical names, according to various 'models' that together
constituted the score. The models prescribed that at various Inoments a wide
range of harmonics (between the second and twenty turth) should be
selected as clear as possible, corresponding to specific vowels.
This piece, which lasted 75-minutes, had a solemn, if not sacred and
ritualistic atmosphere and was called Stimmung. It was conceived by the
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928). In the months preceding
the concert the singers had learnt the basics of amplifying vocal harmonics
in person from the composer. The overtones were not very articulated and
must have escaped the attention of some listeners that heard the piece during
its extensive world tour, which lasted until 1970. The seed of the composer's
awareness that overtones are part of every sound was laid while he was
working in the electronic music studio in the 1950s. Designing sounds from
scratch required a thorough knowledge of their physical and acoustic
properties, and through his studies of phonetics Stockhausen learnt that
vowels also have a musical dimension. So began his appreciation of them
as isolated, abstracted phenomena. Quite intellectually then, and all by
himself as he claims, he set out to hear and single out harmonics in the
voice. He taught himself to articulate the harmonics of the natural overtone
series and gradually discovered the core material for a new composition.
For the subject matter of Stimmung Stockhausen had drawn inspiration
from ancient Inca mythology during a stay in Mexico in 1967. Most of the
magical names belong to gods and goddesses of past civilisations
throughout the world.
One meaning and translation of Stimmung is 'tuning' and refers to the fact
that the piece is about the proportions that are within the structure of each
separate sound itself. Besides this internal tuning, the six voices
continuously have to attune to one another, or to 'find accord.' In analogy to
these sound-related explanations, there is the meaning of 'mood' or
'disposition' in the German word Stimmung. This can be explained as the
internal harmony of a person, as the harmony of people amongst each other
or between them and their surroundings. Last but not least, Stimmung bears
great resemblance to the German word for voice: Stimme. The suggestion
is, of course, that the tuning of voices, in themselves and amongst each
other, reflect a deeper, more universal kind of tuning and harmony.
Stockhausen stood at the forefront of musical innovation since the 1950s
and had already made several significant contributions to mod ern music.
Characteristic for his early works was his systematic, cerebral method of
composing. For a short time European avant-garde corn posers were
obsessed with structure on every level of a composition. They deliberately
avoided every hint of harmony and melody which had been the dominant
features of serious music for centuries. Musi' was ripped of its sensuality
and had been reduced to cold numerical processes. Serialism was the
keyword: a composition was thought of /a mere sequence, or series, of
musical elements: pitches, tone lengths. sound intensities, timbres or
colours, manners of phrasing or articula tion, and layers of sounds. Each of
these magnitudes, called parameters, should preferably be equally
represented in a composition. Music ol this period nearly equalled
mathematics, and no simple one at that. 'l'hc most influential composers
were highly skilled in beta sciences. /had become isolated 'events' valued
for their intrinsic structure, and musical form had followed duly. This
tendency to extreme determinism eased off in the 1960s when European
composers allowed musiciann
more freedom for their personal contribution, albeit still within limits set by
the composers themselves.
Stockhausen considers Stimmung as an example of his then current
'intuitive music.' This has nothing to do with the free, improvised sit-in
group chants of some two decades later, where everything would be left to
the spirit of the moment and overtones would be ubiquitous. In this case it
meant that Stockhausen drifted away from the mathematical precision and
extreme determination of his previous period. It bears on the one hand the
influence of the structural, detached manner of composition of the previous
decade: all musical elements, the articulation of names and the syllables are
strictly determined. Even recommendations for the auditorium where the
piece could be performed, the lighting, the position of singers and speakers
and the movements they could make had been prescribed by the composer.
But there was an opposite tendency in New Music to use indeterminacy,
randomness and intuition. In Stimmung the singers are free to choose the
order of the models and, to some extent, to add or (ex-) change musical and
textual elements. None of the singers leads the whole composition. Instead,
each of them, in turn, becomes the principal, leading voice. As one voice
calls a magic name, the others respond by making "transformations,
variations, 'disturbances,' and integrations"of it. 5 Slowly, the singers thus
change the sound of the model that they have begun to sing until a
correspondence emerges with the sounds of the leading singer. When all
singers produce (almost) the same sound, this is the moment to move to a
next model or start a poem.6
The freedom is not so much an improvisation, but rather a variation on the
written elements guided by the interaction with the others. In a way
Stockhausen has composed a modern ritual. Like any ancient ritual, it must
be executed under stringent rules and has the initiation and liberation of the
participants as its ultimate goal. The only difference is that the chief,
Stockhausen in this case, does not direct it in real time but merely prescribes
the terms for its procedure.
Stockhausen continued with his interest in vocal harmonics in Sternklang (
1969-1971 which is based on the constellation of the stars. The composer
specified the purpose of this composition thus: "Sternklang is music for
concentrated listening in meditation, for the sinking of the individual into
the cosmic whole. Furthermore, it is intended as a preparation for beings
from other stars and for the day of their arrival."7 Stockhausen continues to
pay attention to overtones in his more recent instrumental and vocal works
too, such as Freitag C Friday') of the epic cycle of seven operas Licht
('Light') that he plans to complete before leaving this planet.
Phillip Peris didgeridoo with guest artist Tran Quang Hai [no title]
Cinq Plantes
CPI 0296
Illustration 5.1 Tran Quang Hai, his wife Bach Yen and the author testing
their voices
Trial and error: A Vietnamese in Paris
Not long before the world premiere of Stimmung in Paris, a French
anthropologist had returned to the French capital with recordings of
Mongolian overtone singing. In terms of virtuosity and loudness these were
superlative to the gentle overtones that had been made in the Maison de la
Radio in Paris. Roberte Hamayon was researcher of the Nanterre University
of the tenth district of Paris and brought her recordings to the
Ethnomusicology Department of the Muse dc l'Homme, close to the Eiffel
tower. One of the researchers there, Tran Quang Hai, soon became obsessed
with these strange instrumental /sounding noises produced by a single
human voice.
Trn Quang Hai was born near Saigon in 1944 as the son of one of
/Vietnam's great traditional musicians, Trn Van Khe. He learnt to play
many of the classical and folk music instruments from Vietnam, com /posed
electronic music and is well-known for playing rhythms with
/
spoons. His mastery of the Jew's harp familiarised him extensively will' the
acoustic principles and musical possibilities of harmonics. /when he first
learnt about Mongol overtone singing, it was an uttct ly /mysterious musical
technique: its practitioners lived thousands of milcn away behind the Iron
Curtain.
From the very first moment he heard Hamayon's recordings of tradi /tional
throat singing Tran was caught by a persistent drive to reveal the secrets of
this vocal technique. After his acquaintance with them /1969, it took him a
couple of years to get to grips with this new /nomenon, which he called
biphonic or 'two-tone' singing.
"l worked entirely alone groping my way through the dark for two years,
listening frequently to the recordings made by Hamayon stored in the sound
archive of the Ethnomusicology Department of the Muse de l'Homme. My
efforts were however to no avail. Despite my efforts and my knowledge of
Jew's harp technique, the initial work was both difficult and discouraging.
... At the end of 1972 1 got to the stage that I was able to produce a very
weak harmonic tone, which, when recorded on tape, showed that I was still
a long way from my goal.
Then, one day in November 1973, in order to calm my nerves in the
appalling traffic congestion of Paris, I happened to make my vocal chords
vibrate in the pharynx with my mouth half open and while reciting the
/alphabet. When I arrived at the letter L and the tip of my tongue was about
to touch the top of my mouth, I suddenly heard a pure harmonic tone, clear
and powerful. I repeated the operation several times and each time I
obtained the same result. I then tried to modify the position of the tongue in
relation to the roof of the mouth while maintaining the low fundamental. A
series of partials resonated in disorder in my ears./
One may wonder what impression Tran left on those who happened to see
him mumble in strange ways for so long. But he persisted and in the
fllowing years collaborated in one of the first compositions and public
performances of overtone singing in Europe after Stockhausen. Vietnamese
composer Ngyuen Van Tuong created an electronic music piece for the
occasion and also used multi-track recordings of Tran's harmonic singing.
At the premiere of Ve nguon (Return to the Sources), in 1975 in France,
Tran improvised with vocal harmonics and changing timbres over the pre-
recorded tapes.
Apart from his activities as a performer, Tran's main contributions to the
field of overtone singing are scientific and educational. The quote from
above was taken from a pioneering study, published in 1980, in which he
tried to explain the mechanisms of producing overtones with the voice.
Until the 1990s the scientific studies of Tran and others were carried out on
imitations of Asian singers by westerners. The disadvantage of these
imitations was that the exact methods of Asian overtone singers could not
be fully understood. But since the first experiments in the early 1970s many
questions about overtone singing in general have been resolved.
In the second half of the 1980s a new machine became available that greatly
facilitated the examination of the singing voice. From 1987 to 1989 Tran
Quang Hai regularly entrusted his technical expertise as a singer to this
piece of technology, which included an X-ray apparatus to scan the inner
parts of the vocal tract. The investigations were carried out in close co-
operation with cinematographer and colleague Hugo Zemp. Their work
culminated in an article and in the documentary film The Song of
Harmonics, which shows Tran in search of the mechanism of overtone
singing. This film was awarded several prizes.9
Trn Quang Hai's work with vocal harmonics as a singer has never followed
(con)temporary currents or hypes. He composed a solemn, enchanting piece
of overtone singing with an intricate and elaborate harmonic melody called
Hat Hai Giong ('chant of two simultaneous voices'). On the albums of
Vietnamese music that Tran recorded, he interspersed the classical and
popular Vietnamese pieces with short demonstrations of overtone singing,
rendering Vietnamese melodies both normally and with harmonics. In the
eighties and nineties Tran experimented with multi-track overtone singing
(using twelve different fundamentals) and did successful collaborations as
an improviser with various musicians.
One question still remains of course. Overtone singing has never been found
as a traditional expression of one of the Vietnamese tribes. Yet after the
release of the Vietnamese records, aficionados of ethnic music began to
believe that overtone singing was indigenous to Vietnam. 10 This may seem
to be in strange contradiction to Tran's scholarly, ethnomusicological
efforts to compare and describe all extant varieties of overtone singing in
the world. But Tran, who is himself a product of a world where tradition
and modernity fluently melt, is well aware of his position as a researcher
and a multi-talented performer. His reply to my question why he put his
overtone songs on albums enti tled Traditional Vietnamese Music was as
simple as it was perplexing:
"Because I'm Vietnamese!"
The 1970s: extending vocal technique
In the 1970s composers, scholars, singers and fieldworkers contributed to
the development of overtone singing techniques, each in their own
distinctive way. Hamayon and several others published their original field
recordings and wrote articles about traditional music with vou.ll overtones
and so furthered the knowledge of these mysterious sounds /The particular
biases and interests of the scholars differed from that of performing artists
and researchers, but there was a strong mutual inllu ence. Singers started to
use electronic tools to measure and study then own voice. Many performers
who got into this new vocal technique were familiar with traditional Asian
records, which they tried to imitatc In 1970 The Tantric Rituals appeared,
an LP with the first recordings /Tibetan (chord chanting' made by professor
Huston Smith. Several yciil /later it was recognised as "a milestone in the
evolution of extended /techniques." I
Vocal harmonics slowly began to spread within music institutions and
among circles of sound experimenters. These young performers and
composers were not solely fascinated by vocal harmonics but tried out all
the sounds and noises they could think of: grumbles, screams, trills, croaky
sounds, and other ill-defined noises. 'Extended Vocal Techniques,' as they
were called, were in the air. It was the spirit of the time to explore the self
and to cross the borders of musical conventions through highly individual
ways of expression. Singers were creating and mapping their personal
'sound catalogues' from which composers or they themselves made new
compositions. They usually worked on aq intuitive or improvised basis as
many of these new sounds were hard to prescribe exactly. Finding new sites
for performance, using the breath, or surrounding a concert with, for a
example, a spiritual or a technological atmosphere were some of the factors
that were tried out in performance. The experiment was often an end in
itself, as part of the artistic concept. This is where the chief value of the new
music of this period lies. Overtone singing was not yet an independent art,
separated from the vocabulary of expressive cries, drawn-out sighs and
primal screams.
A central figure on one of these University campuses was singer Bonnie
Mara Barnett. In the beginning of the 1970s she worked on a whole series
of techniques to make more than one sound with the voice, a procedure she
named 'vocal multiphonics.' In an extensive report she describes techniques
in imitation of Tibetan chant, yodels, high squeaks, inhaled sounds and
overtone singing. Her explorations and a lecture she gave about her
multiphonics, in 1972 at the University of San Diego in California, inspired
performers to join efforts in order to explore these novel vocal sounds. At
least six composers at the University's campus wrote pieces for Barnett's
multiphonic techniques. 12 In 1972 the Extended Vocal Techniques
Ensemble was established at the same university. Their aim was to explore
systematically hitherto hidden qualities of the voice. A group called Prima
Materia and led by Roberto Laneri was also active in San Diego, as well as
in Rome. Their approach was based on improvisation and public
participation, and had a religious tinge to it. 13
Another American performer who became well-known for her
unconventional approach to vocal techniques was Joan La Barbara. The live
concert recording that she put out on her own label in 1976 is the first record
to present this new style of overtone singing by a single person, and a primer
in solo intuitive vocal music. The major overtone piece, Voice Piece: One-
Note Internal Resonance Investigation, was first performed in December
1974. In little more than 15 minutes she sings now with a deep and relaxed
voice, then with vocal fry technique, another time with a penetrating, harsh
voice. Every second or third breath she changes the fundamental, going up
and down the harmonic scale from there, at one time making one low and
several high overtones, at another time high and piercing overtones, or
clusters of harmonics. It is typical for many vocal experiments of the 1970s:
a sequence of timbres, with frequent changes from normal voice to vocal
fry or double bass. In other words: a straightforward, ungarnished
experiment.
In some cases the expansion of sound awareness went hand in hand with
the fusion between sound and other disciplines. From 1960 onward
'happenings,' 'events,' and mixed media performances made an appeal to
more than one of the senses, sometimes with the participation of the
audience itself. The older disciplines with which music has always cross-
fertilised, such as literature and the fine arts, modern disciplines such as
psychology, primal scream therapy, anthropology and sociology now began
to exert an unmistakable influence on performance art. A few names that
paid attention to overtone singing from this angle deserve special mention.
After the death of the influential German voicc teacher Alfred Wolfsohn
(1896-1962), his student Roy Hart (1926 1975) started his own workplace
for the extension of the vocal range in London and France. Wolfsohn's
method did involve an awareness ol harmonics at least a decade before La
Monte Young initiated his har monic music, and Hart perpetuated these
vocal investigations.
In the 1970s several female singers made significant contributions to
developing and spreading the new technique, much more so than had
happened in the following decades. American multidisciplinary artist
Meredith Monk has incorporated experimental sounds, including ovet tone
singing, in her singing and theatre career. Another is Jill Pur, who was
Karlheinz Stockhausen's partner in the early 1970s. She accompanied him
and his group during a tour and worked with him to study the effects of
sound on matter. In the same period she learned
> page 209 and further
with a Tibetan Chant Master to deepen her knowledge of spiritual / / / /
/ditions, yoga and the power of breath. Soon thereafter she started teat Il ing
'the power of the healing voice' through countless workshops, whil li she
continues to do till the present day.
Another remarkable contribution to western overtone singing / / / / / / /about
through an unexpected meeting. People in the countries / / /Eastern Europe
(most notably, in Hungary) were among the first / / /witness Asian throat
singers in live performances and to learn dire' tl' from them. Siberian and
Mongol singers were invited to festivals in Ill' East Bloc, but rarely went
beyond the borders of the communist / / / / / / /
tries. In 1974 a Greek singer named Demetrio Stratos (born 1945) witnessed
the performance of a cultural delegation from Mongolia in that remote isle
of the communist empire: Cuba. Stratos, who was born in born in
Alexandria (Egypt), had already made a career as a progressive pop
musician. He stood at the beginning of a new career in America's crme de
la crme of contemporary music and dance, counting composer and New
Music guru John Cage among his admirers. He built an impressive
repertoire of highly original vocal pieces and improvisations that would
almost certainly have been more influential had he not
Demetrio Stratos
Cantare la voce
EMI Music 7243
88 57442 2 8
emerge the first, low overtones, which almost sound as separate, muffled
voices themselves. With a precision that has never been demonstrated
Vetter ascends the harmonic series and gradually displays a great range of
overtones from very low to very high. In the second part, on a tenor pitch,
the harmonics become even more poignant. In a seemingly loose way,
Vetter journeys through the soundscape of a single tone, as if producing
melodies from thin air. Yet he creates a sense of harmony and tonality that
in its timelessness reminisces of his great example, John Sebastian Bach.
see the photo of Michael Vetter with his tambura at the beginning of this
chapter
Clouds koto harp and voice Flowers piano and voice Wind flutes,
voice and gongs Spaces gongs and voice Light tamburas and voice
Silence singing bowls and voice Jecklin-l)isco
JD 636-2 to 641-2
The well-aimed selection of overtones and the control of rhythm and
melody show that this is not a musician searching for harmonics. Here is
someone who actually found them. There is not a trace of the searching that
was the inevitable companion of the first experimental singers who moved
along trails with an unknown destination. While exploring this new musical
universe for himself Vetter also initiated western listeners in a wondrous
harmonic cosmos.
With David Hykes (see next section), Michael Vetter stood at the very
beginning of what we might call an oral tradition of western overtone
singing, with a distinct musical idiom. The Indian tambura has become a
substantial instrument in this tradition after Vetter started using it in 1979.
The body of the tambura is formed by a calabash base from where a long
broad neck towers in the air, guiding four metal strings. A thin strip between
the bridge and the lower end of the strings imposes a colour change of the
natural vibration: a row of crystalline, soft harmonics unfolds from high to
low as the string's vibration builds up and fades out after plucking. In his
1983 record Vetter commented that "In the tambura's quiet vertical presence
its ground tone contains the sum of all the sounds out of which rhythm and
melody develop. Unmoved by virtuosity, by passion, or by daring
excursions it remains fixed in the centre as the point of reference of all other
activity." Before learning the Indian technique of playing the tambura,
Vetter developed his own 'harpsichord' fingering technique. Like Vetter's
style of singing, so the choice of the tambura as musical accompaniment is
copied by many. But his playing technique is matched by few, if any.
Vetter has approached every musical instrument he has ever touched in his
life with the same attitude, disclosing surprising new sounds and playing
techniques. He never relies on teachers, but fully trusts his ears, his body
and his intuition. He recorded a series of albums devot /ed to musical
instruments, from the Japanese koto lute to the piano, the tambura to the
Chinese gong. For a second series he did the same, bul mixed in his own
voice, with or without harmonics. For each instru ment he sought for a truly
original fusion between himself and the instrument, and in so doing 'elicited
genuine amazement from estab fished masters of the instrument in
question,' in his own words. 21 Vettcl embodies, so to say, a fully developed
'harmonic approach' towards thc voice and various instruments, and created
a blueprint for intuitive spectral music. Silence, white noise from the gong
and the hidden har monic dimensions of sound are as much part of his
musical universe ii.s tones, melodies and rhythms are.
A key work in Vetter's career is the Missa Universalis or Overtone Mass of
1985. Here he juxtaposes the different characters of all the
instruments he masters, except the piano, and uses his voice to catalyse their
motives and timbres with shrieks, groans, puffs, whistles, chants and
harmonics. Vetter characterises it as a passionate testimony of spiritual
development that corresponds to the invocation of divine powers (Kyrie),
the joy of God's glory (Gloria), the struggle of faith (Credo), the encounter
with the sacred (Sanctus) and the confrontation with the tragic part and the
impotence of human existence (Agnus Dei). 22 At its centre, both as sounds
and as symbols, are the traditional parts of the mass without any other Latin
texts than the titles. These avant-garde mantras are repeated over and over
again. Vetter explained, echoing the methods used by Stockhausen in
Stimmung, that "Their phonetic structure [is] highlighted, slowed down,
accelerated, pulled apart, united and displayed in its harmonic' content. 23
The Missa Universalis is universal indeed in the sense of the performer's
use of sound beyond the constraints of established musical languages of the
west. At the same time it is a personal and highly esoteric interpretation of
the Christian mass. It draws upon Vetter's study of theology and Zen, but
also breathes the atmosphere of pagan or shamanic ritual.
Vetter has elaborated on his idiosyncratic musical idiom for some forty
years now. For twenty years harmonics have been the 'aural aura' around
his every expression of sound. His philosophy of music and life have
become strongly and deliberately intertwined. His records, writings,
concerts and lessons have proven to be highly influential, and not only in
Germany. Many of his students have further disseminated his ideas, his
music and their own interpretations of them.
Michael Vetter
Missa Universalis
Wergo Spectrum
SM 1038-50
Michael Vetter and the Overtone Choir
(including Diem
Groeneveld and
Christian
Bollmann)
Ancient voices Amiata Records
AMR 0129
Recorded in the Cistercian Abbey of Senanque, Southern France
Wergo Spectrum
SM 1038-50
"What IHykes] created was a method for working in the group and a kind
of guided improvisation and out of that process this piece very, very slowly
emerged. And at the end of this process the piece had become frozen into a
form that nonetheless allowed for quite a lot of freedom. It was a completely
non-traditional approach to making music, I would think. We didn't start
from a score or the notes or even a form, but from this process of making
the sounds in our bodies. And I guess that there are techniques or other
teachings about playing music that start from that, particularly I think for
singing, but most of them then quickly move on to another level which does
have to do with all of the conventional parameters of music, like pitch and
rhythm and counterpoint and harmony, whereas for us those were quite
secondary to this process of a kind of self-study through sound. ... at root
there was a real musical sensibility, even if it wasn't something that was
necessarily articulated. It wasn't simply a bunch of people making sounds.
There are a lot of people who do that now, they do overtone singing and
chanting or whatever they call it, but it's really just making sounds."27
Hearing Solar Winds came as a bombshell after its release and still stands
out as a classical and timeless album. It is an excursion into the subtle
realms of sound and acoustics that questions the experience of listening as
such. Hearing Solar Winds is quite different from Vetter's first record with
overtone singing, also launched in 1983. The Harmonic Choir laid stress on
the same principle of harmonics and resonance. But its emphasis was on the
western concept of polyphony, the blending of more or less independent
voices. It doesn't have any musical instruments, except for small Tibetan
cymbals. The choir dominates the major part of the record and occasionally
shifts to the background for the two soloists, Hykes himself and Timothy
Hill.
Another essential distinction is the recording site, a mediaeval abbey with
stunning acoustics. The choir's overall sound sometimes resembles that of
plainchant and early Renaissance polyphony because of the long acoustic
reverberations and the prominence of natural vocal resonance. Altogether
the recording is an imaginative trip through harmonies and timbres that
have occurred before in music, but were never heard in their bare essence
before.
Each part of Hearing Solar Winds is announced by Tibetan cymbals and
introduces new ways of moving and juxtaposing voices. There is no display
of virtuosity or great technical skills besides the harmonic chant itself. The
musical procedures are essentially simple, and could be done by anyone
with a reasonable voice. These procedures are essentially two-fold: l. the
movement of the fundamental tone: each voice is either stable, or it moves
up or moves down; it does not sing a melody or words 2. the articulation of
each voice: the mouth is closed and hums, the mouth is open and produces
a vowel like sound, or it enhances a harmonic by making a strongly
resonant, nasal sound
Simple as this may seem, the resonances of the voices and the reverber ation
of the abbey can make it hard to disentangle the multi-voiced sound into its
parts. The gravitational point of the melodies and har monies shifts and
creates a polytonal character. Sometimes there is no clearly audible
fundamental tone. And it is as if voices appear and dis appear from
nowhere, from low reverberations to high-pitched tones, interspersed with
the plaintive glottal hicks of Hykes. Do we hear the walls of the abbey sing,
and not the singers standing between them? ( /Hearing Solar Winds the
listener is stimulated to give up habitual Pilt terns of listening, which are
usually analytic. At this point the active imagination of the listener starts to
participate and, as the title suggest h. everything seems possible.
Now and then the concord becomes discord: tones rub against one another
and yield high and low beating sounds. An alienating t
occurs when Hykes changes not only his harmonics, but also his
fundamental tone. Relative to the changing fundamental he takes the
harmonics once in parallel, then in opposite movement, or holds them still.
Before the end all voices spiral downward in continuous glissandi. But in
the apotheosis they freely move in all directions, as if released from the
gravitational forces that have steered them all the way.
In popularising harmonic vocal techniques Hykes acknowledges the
inspiration from Mongolian throat singing but also explicitly distinguishes
this older music from his own work. It took him seven years to get a permit
for Mongolia and when he finally got there, in 1981, the inspiration from
the original source had been supplanted by his own ideas and singing
practice. When I asked Hykes about his inspiration from Asian overtone
singing he told me that
"In some of the eastern styles the interest seemed more to suppress or
actually distort the quality of the fundamental frequencies of the voice to
produce the stronger harmonic. To my ears that had always given a very
strained, stressed and unnatural tension in sound, which is aesthetically the
opposite of what I'm interested in. I'm interested in the low level and the
high level both sounding full and complete." 28
Hykes considers his Harmonic Chant is an 'indoors sacred chant' that is
based on the 'copresence of the voice,' in other words: the balance between
the fundamental and overtone. This is diametrically opposed to traditional
throat singing indeed, which is born from the nomadic life on the steppes
and has a suppressed, guttural fundamental or else a raucous, deep drone.
Hykes has continuously striven, however, to put Harmonic Chant in other
settings, be they musical or non-musical. He started studying classical
North Indian singing in 1982 and initiated various collaborations with
instrumentalists of non-western music. He conceived a follow-up album
around the Christian, Judaic and Islamic religions. For this album,
Harmonic Meetings, he combined harmonics with sacred texts of the Latin
mass, emphasising a supposed link between harmonics and the mantras of
different religions. He used the harmonic colours of the tambura and invited
Iranian percussionist Dzhamchid Chemirani to play the zarb or vase drum.
In the 1990s he used synthesised sound to accompany his voice.
At various stages in his career Hykes has drawn inspiration from Sufism,
yoga and a contemporary of Gurdzhieff, the Indian mystic philosopher Sri
Aurobindo (1872-1950). The studies of vibrating matter of the Swiss
researcher Hans Jenny, to which we will turn in the Metaphysics Part,
inspired Hykes to combine overtone singing with visual art in live >page
31
Hykes' recent CDs include:
Let the Lover Be
Auvidis A 6169
David Hykes
Breath of the Heart
Fonix Music
FMFCD 1 132
performances. To Hykes, harmonics are but a part of a much greater array
of phenomena of vibration and periodic cycles. He explained this in an
interview I had with him.
"I think harmonics can be a very powerful help in the search for truth
because they are part of reality. That resonance is a very deep feature of
reality. I think and hope that that is why we are so attracted. We are more
attracted to harmonics than other more troubling aspects of reality, like
death, decay and disease. But a proper view of the harmonic field I think
includes the idea of cycles. One of the things we talk about in harmonic
awareness practice is the equivalent of the concept of harmonic as number,
or as note, but also as cycle or period. The orbit of a planet or my path
through my day to and from my home, all these cyclic features of reality
are part of the idea of harmonics. It's not just higher octaves of musical
sound. It really is the relationship of all sorts of phenomena in time. That's
very interesting I think."29
Hykes puts great emphasis on the fact that a full understanding of overtones
comprises in essence a mental and spiritual effort. But the high spiritual
aims and level of the first Harmonic Choir seems to have gradually moved
to the background in favour of more expressive, artistic considerations.
None of his subsequent projects was so deeply, and for so many years,
rooted in sound meditation as that of his initial group, which gave only few
concerts. In recent years Hykes returned to using the Harmonizer effect, the
device that helped him to find his natural vocal harmonics in the early days,
and has been working on a book on what he calls 'the Twelve Levels of
Harmonic Chant.'
The snowball effect
It is no exaggeration to say that Michael Vetter and David Hykes' Harm
onic Choir defined the occidental style of overtone singing in its pres ent
form. Many singers who have developed a western way of singing
overtones or heard their music are influenced by their style, eithCl directly
or indirectly. The year 1983 demarcates the beginning of a new tradition, a
blueprint for this emerging musical style. Those who became acquainted
with overtones now would not necessarily go through the tough
experimental stage of their predecessors. Overtone singing was no longer
the sole terrain of nomads from the barren. unknown lands of Siberia and
Mongolia, or that of an esoteric group 01 contemporary music aficionados
and practitioners. As a technique, Il began to lose some of its enigmatic
character. At the same time these new sounds and the underlying laws of
vibration opened up depths ol experience that went beyond the mere
'technique' itself.
As the 1980s progressed the universal principles of vocal harmonics exerted
a considerable attraction. There has been a genuine snowball effect, and
some landslides in between, that sparkled activities of teachers and singers
everywhere in Western Europe. Groups began to sprout that indulged in
chanting, toning, reciting mantras and overtone singing. The interest to use
sound, rather than music, for therapy, healing and meditation increased and
heralded a new phase in the attitude towards sound and music in the
industrialised countries. Something with a much wider impact was going
on that did not concern just this new vocal technique. Boundaries began to
come down rapidly: between performer and listener, between concert and
meditation, between music and not-music and, more so than before,
between east and west. Some of these tendencies had been initiated or
signalled already by avantgarde musicians and composers throughout the
twentieth century. It now began to spread out to larger audiences that
frequently tried out these sounds for themselves instead of being passive
observers.
Overtone singing became strongly associated with the New Age movement
that had grown steadily during the 1980s. New Age is often associated with
superficial and commercial music. But to which artists that does and does
not apply is often hard to make out. The fact of the matter is that overtone
singing spread rapidly among a large group of people from all walks of life,
including a considerable group of spiritual seekers. Jonathan Goldman
(United States), Jill Purce (Great Britain) and several students of Michael
Vetter in continental Europe have been the most fervent exponents of the
idea that harmonics can be used for healing. They have initiated literally
thousands of people in the power of the singing voice. Singers and teachers
of overtones, as well as housewives and clergymen, have reported about the
salutary effects of this way of singing. The harmony of the overtone series
has often become associated with a different kind of harmony: that of the
body and the soul, and that of the earth and the cosmos. The old Platonic
idea of the Music of the Spheres, which cannot be heard but must be
understood mentally, is revived with this new interpretation. The diffcrence
is that overtone singers do not merely grasp celestial harmony intellectually,
as the followers of Pythagoras and Plato did; they themselves can now
resonate with it on different levels in various ways.
Some teachers have been explicit about the idea that harmonics have
beneficial effects. Michael Vetter's student Christian Bollmann, for
example, created "new meditative music" for this specific purpose. He
tunded the Overtone Choir Dsseldorf in 1985 and the Overtone ( ,hoir
Project in 1989, in which he blends "Gregorian chant, jazz, and other
assimilated forms of World Music."30 He states on his website that
Christain
"The goal of the project is to ... grow in the experience of community
Oberton-Chor
improvisations, with the focus on the overtone series. In consciously
Network Medien
contain aspects of social, spiritual, and personal growth (experience of
Cooperative 70000
website Christian
self, group, concert, and recording situations), the universal laws of music
become clear and form the process of personal and communal growth."31
Bollmann
Overtone singing is often combined with instruments that produce a
http://www.
lichthaus-musik.de
lot of harmonic resonance, such as the so-called singing bowls and glass
bowls, the tambura, the monochord and the sandawa, which has many
strings tuned to one single pitch. Michael Reimann (born 1951 ), another
student of Michael Vetter, studied them extensively in theory and practice.
With Christian Bollmann he produced a CD that combines this whole array
of overtone instruments with singing. Taken altogether, there is what we
may call a school of overtone singers and harmonic musicians in and around
Germany. Many of them have a dedicated following of students, concert
goers, chanting circles, in other words; the kind of musical community that
Bollmann speaks of. Their music can be traced back to the original work of
Michael Vetter and Karlheinz Stockhausen, while their musical philosophy
often draws on books in the German language by writers-researchers like
Hans Kayser and, more recently, Joachim-Ernst Berendt. In Part Four:
Metaphysics, we will go deeper into the non-musical elements that form an
integral part ot these musicians and their groups.
Globalisation and cross-fertilisation
The collapse of the Soviet Union became a fact nearly simultaneously with
the popularisation of World Music. Since the late 1980s the musi' business
discovered a new market for western audiences, which wanted to be
challenged and entertained with exciting new sounds. One of thc first
groups to profit (if that's the correct way to put it) from the new western
curiosity hailed from the fringes of the former Soviet Union. Early icons of
the emerging World Music scene were the official female choir of the
national Bulgarian radio, who performed spectaculal arrangements of
polyphonic folk tunes, and the devotional qawwall songs of Pakistani singer
Nusrath Fateh Ali Khan and his troupe. The general western public began
to appreciate this and other exotic musil which had previously been
considered as corny, soporific and impcnc trable. There was a sense of
nostalgia for something that we had 10kI touch with in our desire for the
latest music. This hunger began to bc satisfied by, among others, religious
chanting, African drumming and ritual music from around the globe.
After exploring the musical heritage of Bulgaria and Pakistan interest
shifted further into the unknown, to the tundra's and steppes of North Asia.
Mongol and Tuvan throat singers became a modest hype on the World
Music stage. The new artistic horizons that opened up for them after 1989
had been undreamed of during the decades of the former Soviet Union. In
1991 the Tuva Ensemble from South Siberia made its first foreign
appearances. The relatively unknown technique of overtone singing,
presented in its archaic variant from a Siberian republic that few had ever
heard of before, became an instant success. Invitations for collaborations
followed each other in rapid succession. However, the tight, touring
schedule of the Tuvans allowed for little more than short musical meetings,
which severely limited the bridging of distant musical cultures.
A deeper and more lasting musical exchange took place over the years in
Holland. In the first years of their success, Amsterdam had been a solid base
for the world tours of the Tuva Ensemble and its offspring. It prompted the
Russian pianist and accordionist Aleksei Levin (not to be confused with
ethnomusicologist Ted Levin), who lived and worked in Amsterdam, to
invite Tuva's outstanding singer Kaigal-ool Khovalyg to participate in his
new collective: Vershki da Koreshki, in short Vedaki. Vedaki is a World
Music group in the true sense of the word and was conceived around the
improvised jazz music of Levin. Besides Levin and Khovalyg, the motley
ensemble consisted of bass player Vladimir Volkov from Saint Petersburg
and singer and instrumentalist Mola Sylla from Senegal. The name of the
group, which is Russian for 'Roots and Sprouts,' stands for the group's blend
of archaic elements (the African and Asian 'roots' music) with the modern
(the two Russian improvisers). Just like the living, organic elements after
which it is named, the quartet aims at finding a balance between these
mutually dependant elements.
Over the years Vedaki grew some beautiful cross-continental sprouts (and
continues to do so, albeit without Khovalyg). They gradually found a fine
balance between its ingredients of jazz, improvisation and traditional music,
and developed a musical understanding that trespassed, or even denied
physical and cultural borders. Khovalyg's khmei and horse-head fiddle
playing blended well with the sonorities of the right-up bass, but no less so
with a joyously hopping African thumb piano or the impressionistic sounds
from Levin's grand piano. The odd combination of these very different
musical styles, strengths, and moods sounds completely natural in practice,
as the product of a single organic source indeed. Khovalyg and Sylla
retained the power and integrity of their native music, Levin and Volkov
provided the glue that melted the two worlds together. In a time when World
Music, cross-fertilisation and musical hybrids are on everyone's lips, a
mode of page 106
Vershki da
Koreshki
Real Life of Plants Long arms Records
CDLA 96020
Music Guus Janssen. Libretto
Friso Haverkamp
Featuring the AyKhercl Ensemble from Tuva with Gennadi Tumat
Noah, an Opera off Genesrs Composers' Voice CV 42/43 (double
/
musicianship that allows for a genuine contribution from persons of very
different ethnic and musical backgrounds is still difficult to realise. None
of the contributors of Vedaki dominated and in this sense they established
a truly global sound democracy.
Noah: Harmonics at the opera (Part 'IWo)
One of the first attempts by a Western composer to combine scored music
with traditional throat singing was Noah, an opera off genesis. This eclectic
opera was conceived by Dutch composer and pianist Guus Janssen and
librettist Friso Haverkamp. In their version of this biblical story, Noah turns
into a cruel man, who is not in the least concerned about the fate of the
animals. He is in constant disagreement with his wife Mrs. Noah, who tries
to save some more species that are anxiously trying to enter the ark. The
entire opera depicts the short moments before the Flood and ends,
undecided, in the dreary psychological bickerings of the couple.
Two circumstances led to Janssen's decision to invite Tuvan throat singers
to fulfil the role of the traditional operatic choir in this otherwise non-
conformistic opera. First was Janssen's fascination with harmonics which
had started in the early 1980s and resulted in several instrumental works
that emphasised harmonics. Second was Janssen's obsession with
unorthodox combinations, contrariness and humour in his work. He
developed his playing skills in starkly contrasting reper /toires, from
classical to jazz and improvised music, which he has always tried to fuse as
a musician and composer. Janssen had made several sketches for Noah and
scored for an unusual set-up: a baritone (Noah /a coloratura soprano (Mrs.
Noah), a narrator, a string quartet, elC( /tronics, a percussion set and a large
jazz ensemble. But he had no idea yet what to do with the choir. He was not
very fond of choirs in the first place, but they have been a standard
ingredient in operas. Janssen broke his head on this question with the
librettist until he found a solution /Moscow during a tour with his septet.
"There I heard a tape of a jazz pianist from Moscow called Micha Alperin.
He had done a project with four Moscovian soprano singers and four
overtone singers. Immediately a button switched in nu, because I knew that
music from records and concerts, but always fell /that is folk music, you
cannot use that. Their musical idiom is perfC( t and hermetically closed,
you should not intervene in that, it's finished. But when I heard that
something similar had been done in Russia, Il suddenly crossed my mind
that it would actually be wonderful to have /Tuvan choir of overtone singer
for the elements that make up an impol tant part in the story of the Flood,
such as the rain, the wind, and to sornc extcnt also the animals. . .
It turned out later that their music is essentially the sounds of nature and
imitations of it. In fact that's how they look at it themselves. And when I
talked to Gennadi Tumat he explained that a lot of the techniques and
sounds are imitations of nature, such as waterfalls and birds and so it all
fitted together very well. "32
On first hearing Janssen associated their ethereal sounds with whistling of
the wind, but the Tuvans gradually came to represent other timeless
elements too, such as the forces of nature and the spirits of animal species.
When an initial, small-scale collaboration on some preliminary parts of the
opera yielded good results, four Tuvan throat singers assembled in an ad-
hoc group called Ay Kherel. During the last weeks of rehearsals the parts
with the Tuvans were further determined. The composer had a strong
feeling that the ultra-low technique called kargyraa should represent the
ark's interior, which was as dirty as a pigsty. He then asked the singers to
intersperse their kargyraa singing with dirty words-in Tuvan. The Litany of
Extinctions, partly based on true reports of colonisers who killed entire
populations of species merely for fun and is comprised of three layers.
"The first layer is Noah, who is raging about all the partly or entirely
successful extinctions. This has all been child's play and should be done
differently this time. The second layer is Mrs Noah who recites in a single
tone the names of birds of paradise that have been made extinct in the
twentieth century. The third layer is comprised of the Tuvans, who form the
choir and sing in sygyt style. My own interpretation of that was that they
are the spirits: you first have Noah, then Mrs Noah, and above that you hear
the spirits belonging to the extinct animals."33
/lhe symbolism of overtones as the voices from the deceased animals and
the elements of nature resonated with Tuvan ideas that the world is
inhabited by spirits. But in every other aspect the Tuvans singers contrasted
sharply with the eclectic musical, poetic and scenical style of the opera,
which was light-years removed from classical opera and was idiosyncratic
even for western ears. Noah premiered at the Holland Festival in June 1994.
For the reprise in 1999 Tuvan musician-producer ( )tkun Dostai formed a
new quartet, because two singers of the original Ay Kherel quartet had sadly
died.
Another collaboration that was bound to happen was between the throat
singers and the shrill and resonant voices of Bulgarian women. What strikes
the ears in the vocal music of certain regions in Bulgaria is lhe abundant
use of shrill sounding, dissonant harmonies. It originates an ancient practice
to make grating tones that create a lower, pulsat-
Huun-Huur-Tu with The Bulgarian Voices Angelite and Sergey Starostin
Fly, Fly My Sadness Jaro Records 41972
Illustration 5.2 Four Tuvans seated on the floor in the opera Noah
ing beat frequency, and also small clusters of tones of higher pitches. One
hears that 'extra' sounds are being created, but the mechanism is different
from that of overtone singing. Bulgarian composers who were in charge of
'culturising' their country's folk music used these dissonances for choral
harmonisations. This music was first put out in Europe in the early 1970s
by a French producer who coined it Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares or 'The
Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices.'
The Ukrainian composer and pianist Mikhail Alperin brought the throat
singers of Huun-Huur-Tu, the Bulgarian singers and Russian folk singer
and flute player Sergey Starostin together. The experiment yielded some
remarkable hybridisations ranging from traditional music with a touch of
modernism to modern music made with older ingredients. Some pieces
leaned heavily on the powerful choral sound of the women, while the three
male voices of Huun-Huur-Tu added their deep droning growls. As in the
case of Vershki da Koreshki, some Tuvan melodies merged extremely well
with other music, in this case Bulgarian singing. The composition Fly, Fly
my sadness combines the best of the two music traditions that are rich in
harmonic ornamentation and has a main supporting role for a weeping
Tuvan horse-head fiddle. The common ground for these musical meetings
consisted of the play with timbre and with the expression of loneliness in
the music of Bulgarian peasants and Tuvan nomads.
/
Out of Tuva
The Tuvan ensembles that came to the West more or less stuck to the
indigenous repertoire in a traditional way. In the musical collaborations
with others they provided authentic sounds next to modern sounds. Several
Tuvan musicians deliberately moved away from this tradition to create their
own mix of Tuvan and non-Tuvan elements. One of them is Albert Kuvezin,
the musician of combined Khakass-Tuvan descent who had been a founding
member of Huun-Huur-Tu. He had left the group soon after its conception
because he got bored by the traditional idiom and wanted something more
lively. His own band Yatkha adapts/popular Tuvan songs to a rock format
with rhythm guitar, drums and bass, and sounds like a rock band. Their CDs
and concerts counterbalance the unremitting flood of CDs with traditional
Tuvan and Mongolian music that had accompanied the Tuva hype. Their
combination of throat singing, guitars, shaman drums and amplified fiddles
deliberately contrasts with the image that Tuvans wear sheepskins and have
meat and dairy products for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For recording
sessions Yatkha recruited the undisputed master of the low kargyraa
technique, Aldyn-ool Sevek. Sevek complements Kuvezin's own
extraordinary bass voice which sounds very low and unusual even to Tuvan
ears.
When speaking of unusual vocal techniques and ranges, one older case
comes to mind in the annals of music exotica. In the 1950s Peruvian singer
Y ma Sumac, supposedly a princess from the Andes, shook the world with
an utterly elastic voice that presented a catchy cocktail of mambo's and cha-
cha-cha's. Never before (or after) did a singer with an unusual trade like
hers gain such widespread fame. She possessed an unheard-of vocal range
which she put to good use for popular tunes with a Latin tinge. Her alleged
native South American 'forest' roots made Sumac an even greater attraction
and a World Music queen before the term existed. Sumac's vocal timbre
and the exhilarating percussive sounds of her band had nothing to do at all
with a truly native South American musical idiom, yet to the ears of a great
number of people in the 1950s Sumac sounded as wild and authentic as
could be. Neither Sumac nor her agent and producer, who had carefully
managed her career, would have surmised that half a century later their
concoction would have a true-to-life pendant.
Mrs. Sainkho Namchylak was one of the first Tuvans to emigrate to Europe
in the late 1980s. It cannot be overestimated how off-limits and odd
Sainkho's homeland seemed and was at that time during the Cold War. The
Autonomous Republic of Tuva, at the spurs of the Mongolian > page 94
Sainkho with special guest Djivan Gasparian
Naked spirit
Amiata Records
ARNR 2298
Sainkho Namchylak featuring German Popov and Caspar
David Sacker
Stepmother city
Ponderosa Music
& Art CD 003
Other East-West collaborations include:
K -Space - with
Gendos
Chamzvryn
Bear Bones Slam Records
Chris Hinze
Tibet Impressions
Featuring Thurphu Home of the
Karmapas
Keytone Records
KEYTONE 777
Altai, was the equivalent of Sumac's dreamed-up kingdom in the Andes.
Here, on the border of Siberia and Mongolia, the vocal range of some
indigenous singers can span five octaves indeed. Although a technique
preserved for the male population, Sainkho had been exposed to the
remarkable sounds of Tuvan throat singing a great deal during her youth.
She never imitated it but through listening to traditional music she got used
to the idea that the voice is capable of producing sounds that she would
never hear on the Russian radio.
There is yet another link with Sumac. The queen of mambo-extravaganza
had been incredibly popular in Russia during the 1960s. 34 She had toured
all over the country with the Bolshoi Orchestra, which had commissioned
special arrangements for this occasion. As a child Sainkho used to listen to
Sumac's vocal wizardry on the radio in Tuva and developed the wish to sing
like her. It wasn't until perestroika was well under way, around 1989, before
she could actually start with such daring projects. By then she had already
been educated as a professional folk singer in Moscow and had performed
traditional Tuvan songs abroad. She immersed herself in the capital's free-
jazz scene and went abroad again. In 1992 Sainkho began to try her own
variant of traditional overtone singing technique which she has since
demonstrated world-wide and on many recordings.
Sainkho is constantly seeking new musical challenges and recently teamed
up with a Russian and a Ukrainian immigrant from Amstcr dam. Maksim
Shaposhnikov and German Popov, whose most conspic uous musical
contribution has been the use of samplers and othet electronic tools, give
her performances a fresh flavour.
The impression might arise that in the 1990s Asian throat singers more than
ever determined the way vocal harmonics were artistically explored.
Perhaps this is true, but their sudden peak in exposure did nol diminish the
activities of numerous European and American perform ers that continued
a different and original approach to the technique /After Sainltho and Joan
La Barbara, many improvising musicians anal voice acrobats around the
world have started to give their original intel pretation to vocal harmonics.
In this niche of the contempor.ll /panorama of musical styles, emphasis is
given to creating a person,tl language with a sound that is free from any
previous concept. Noisc,. tones, rhythms, onomatopoeia, sighs, puffs and
much more belong /the arsenal of sounds available to the vocal improviser.
Sometimes tljc,' /utterances resemble sounds of animals, machines or
strange /but just as often one can't be sure what to make of them. The issue
"I
/
abstract sound are fading.
One of them is Spanish vocalist Fatima Miranda who with great fluency
and artistry squeezes out harmonics in the top of her register. Miranda
seems particularly concerned with transforming the sounds of electric
equipment to their vocal analogues. With nothing but her voice she
emulates machines that make the most intricate rhythms and intertwines
them with snippets of harmonics and melodies. Miranda's 'bleepy' harmonic
techniques sound incredible and send listeners on an imaginary trip on a
spacecraft orbiting around the earth. Makigami Koichi from Japan, Juha
Valkeap from Finland and Greetje Bijma and Jaap Blonk from Holland
have done similar uncompromising experiments. In addition to stretching
the limits of the voice, German percussionist Christoph Haas has explored
the musical dimensions of the entire human body. He creates the rhythms
while he sings harmonics by beating his chest. This affects the vocal timbre
and creates odd puffs and sound explosions that escape from his mouth. The
list of these performers who share a passion for radical experimentation
could easily be extended.
Rollin Rachele: harmonic divergence
One of the most talented overtone singers and teachers of the moment is
American-born Rollin Rachele. In his youth Rachele became involved in
Barbershop choirs, which strongly build on the resonances of the singers'
voices. Rachele first became aware of overtones in 1979 when one of his
professors at Oregon State University played a recording of Mongolian
throat singing. He started practising overtones by himself and had acquired
a considerable command of techniques when he came to live in Europe in
1984. He worked as a choir conductor and gave dozens of workshops in
overtone singing, and for many years sang raga scales every morning with
Indian singer Ustad Mohammed Sayeed Khan. He applied the systematic
Indian lessons to develop his overtone singing skills, which he had mastered
to technical perfection by himself. His musical excellence and his
investigations of the mechanism of overtone singing led to the publication
in 1996 of a systematic course to learn this technique, the Overtone Singing
Study Guide.
From the late 1980s onwards Rachele has contributed steadily as a solo
artist and with others in the fields of overtone singing and mediaeval
plainchant. He produced solo CDs with only his voice and with the tambura.
On his CD Harmonic Divergence of 1999 he included the sparse use of
instrumental accompaniment, environmental background sounds and, most
particularly, multi-track recording techniques. The CD title refers to a piece
that uses the sounds of frogs "recorded during the Harmonic Convergence
in 1987 (August 16, Machu Picchu, Peru) when certain planets and stars
were aligned." On other tracks a poly-
Makigami Koichi
Kuchinoa
-radik 7208
Fatima Mliranda
Concicrto En Canto Hyades Arts
Las voces De La
Voz
Umo Musics CD 5
Rollin Rachele Sound Reflections
Whistling Pastimes Harmonic divergenre explorations in overtone
singing Cryptic Voices Productions CV
C.D 001, 002, 00.3
phonic ensemble effect was achieved in the studio. Rachele recorded
different vocal parts one after the other which enabled him to make
compositions that would otherwise require six skilled overtone singers. On
Zero Gravity he thus managed to create an ethereal transparent sound that
no choir that I know of has yet produced. The intertwining patterns of
harmonics have a mesmerising effect on the listener. While it consists of
nothing more than six human voices, it sounds like anything but that.
Momentary Refuge is a song inspired by an early Renaissance composition
in which Rachele uses a repeated sequence of nine overtones, reminiscent
of the drone sounds of the tambura. In the pieces with only one voice,
without overdubs, Rachele's artistic explorations in Indian and mediaeval
singing are most apparent. But these ancient vocal repertoires, which in
themselves are not easy to sing, are expanded by adding harmonics to them.
Or, as Rachele himself put it: the original, ancient melodies and scales are
two dimensional, the harmonics that are added are a new, third dimension.
The difficulty is to deliberately and consciously chose those harmonics on
each new tone that correspond with the scale in which you sing. In other
words, the singer must be aware of /two lines at the same time, and
constantly keep in mind that the second, higher melodic line is bound to the
harmonic scale. It is like playing a two part melody on a keyboard or guitar
with a handicap: with every new bass note certain higher notes happen to
fall away and re-appear. Rachele is among the first explorers to take up this
challenge of an entirely new way of making music.
Toby 'IWining: requiem for a millenium
The combination of solo overtone singers in a choir was first experi mented
with in Tuva in the late 1960s. The first non-Tuvan choir to use traditional
throat singing and modern harmonic sounds is a Japancsc quartet called
Vions ('Harmonics'). Trained by Tuvan throat singers, Vions developed
new a-cappella settings based on the traditional kargy raa, khmei and
sygyt techniques. Other groups that explore the possi bilities of combining
western overtone singing in a choral setting are constantly being founded
in Europe and America. But to date only a IQw composers have actually
written new choral pieces using one or mow overtone singers. To write
scored music that is primarily conceived from the perspective of the
harmonic series, rather than from fundamental'. is notoriously difficult. But
the idea of building a large framework "l voices that are linked to each other
through the universal, harmonic law' of vibration remains an alluring one.
The Western staff notation and tuning systems are based on fixed scale' To
replace certain fixed intervals with the precise intervals between harmonics
involves marks and signs to designate the exact note. What may be sung
quite easily by an experienced overtone singer can be a timeconsuming job
to write down in a score. It is almost certain that this has withheld
composers to write such pieces. Stockhausen did write down the pitches of
the singers but each singer had only one fundamental tone to sing. But to
have several singers in a multi-voiced piece move freely with overtones and
fundamentals, while all frequencies somehow remain related to one another
through the harmonic series, requires meticulous calculations for the
musical score. The singer-composet who finally sat down to do this is called
Toby Twining (born 1958). He created the first composed, polyphonic work
that takes full advantage of the possibilities that the 'single-tone-harmonies'
offered.
Toby Twining first used vocal overtones in his well-received collection of
a-cappella songs Shaman. This ingenious, accessible collection of pieces is
inspired by close harmony, Pygmy and Mongolian singing and is at times
reminiscent of minimal music. The overtones used are but one surprise in a
dazzling combination of odd rhythms, harmonies and colours, all produced
by the human voice. On the basis of this album one would not guess its
composer to be someone tried and tested in the complexities of New Music.
But in the more inscrutable and recent Chrysalid Requiem Twining shows
his affinity for the avant-garde. In this mass for the dead in twelve parts the
integer ratios of the harmonic series are the glue of the composition. The
piece was commissioned as a Requiem for a Millennium by the Festival of
New Spiritual Music, held in Amsterdam in 1999.
Like some Renaissance composers, Twining used specific numbers to
organise the Requiem rhythmically, melodically and harmonically. In many
works of Twining's illustrious predecessor Guillaume de Machaut and his
fourteenth-century contemporaries, numbers determined these large
structural elements. But Twining also applied the numerical ratios to the
tuning, that is, to the exact frequencies that occur in the melody and
harmony of his Requiem. One can find the numbers one, three and seven
on several levels of the music, depending on how far one zooms in and out:
on the rhythm, the melody, or the exact frequencies and ratios between each
pair of notes. What Twining's group achieved was a far greater degree of
detail in using a numerical principle. "What I am trying to do does not
necessarily sound very different from a lot of other music," Twining told
me after the world premiere, "but the specificity of pitch is much higher.
With that as a beginning point it is allowing me to integrate rhythmical and
structural elements too."35
Vions
Thank you! We are Vions Vions Den
VODN 0001
Ibby Twining
Music
Shaman
BMG/Catalyst
Chrysalid Requiem Cantaloupe music/
Bang on A Can ( releasesched uled for 2002)
Table 5.3Tuning system Note above Standard pitch note below
a=440 Hertz a=440 Hertz
391.982
/
a=440 Hertz
393.55
a=440 Hertz
396
Equal 493.9
Pythagorean 495
Mean 491.93
488.88
These numbers show the minuscule differences for the same musical
distances calculated for different tunings. The pitches differ only slightly
and are much smaller than those between two tones in a normal song. Since
ancient times music theoreticians in east and west have debated about the
issue of tuning and ratios. 36
This specificity of pitch has to do with tuning systems. There is a difference
between a scale and its tuning: one scale can be tuned in many ways. Tuning
concerns the fine-adjustment or intonation of voices and instruments, as
shown on the Table. With a tuning system the exact frequency of each tone
is calculated. In most musical scores no tuning is specified, because they
use the standardised equal temperament. But in Twining's piece the exact
frequencies constantly shift. It ventures way beyond the capacities of
trained musicians to tune their voices to one another by ear. Twining faced
an unusual problem, for which there was only one solution.
"The computer had all our parts sequenced in it. It played back and we
listened to walkman-headphones while we sang. ... We did the whole piece
this way. ... We got a lot of it right, we got a lot of it wrong. Everyone in
the ensemble, I'm one of twelve, feels that ... it can be done. We need this
computer. It's literally something like our new piano accompaniment. But
the music is so hard, it is like we are beginners again and we need the
accompaniment to be able to do the music. It is not a piano, it is a computer,
now that the music is a little harder than [at the timel when we needed the
piano to get the pitches."37
Only a small part of the Requiem contains snatches of overtone singing
most of the phrases are sung on a Latin text. The Dies Irae carries the
overtone relations further than any existing composition.
"I was really trying to do something expressive because this is the Dies Irae
and these are the lines 'nature and death are stupefied and creation rises.' So
this text is about the dissolution of the universe. ... My personal take on the
Dies Irae for this piece was that it was really about the dark night of the
soul, an individual's struggle with ultimacy and death and catastrophe and
the need to grow even through such dire circumstances. So it's not just about
the apocalypse. It's metaphorical for something pu go through personally./
Twining has shown that vocal harmonics can be assimilated in very
different musical genres without drawing the listeners' exclusive attention
to them. They are a balanced and organic part of his compositions, not
spectacular or exotic sounds in their own right. Completing his most
ingenious piece to date in the last year of the previous millennium, Twining
closed of the first period of harmonic experimentation in the west in a
dignified way.
such music was performed slowly fell into disuse, reaching their nadir in
the middle of the twentieth century. A re-appreciation of their acoustic
brilliance as well as a growing interest to maintain these places of worship
as cultural treasures changed this tide. The abandoned abbey of Thoronet
where the Harmonic Choir recorded their first album in 1982 is now in use
again by the Cistercian brotherhood.
Igor Reznikoff, a Parisian singer and music professor specialised for many
years in Europe's oldest known music, has attempted to combine harmonic
and Gregorian chant artistically as soon as he learnt about overtones. He is
one of few singers who is dedicated to performing, studying and developing
the old liturgical chants solo, without instrumental accompaniment. He
developed a characteristic, resonant timbre over the years, along with a
personal interpretation of the original plainchant melodies. Without laying
stress on them, he weaves harmonics through the original melodic line of
an Alleluia. It is one possible way in which vocal harmonics may have been
part of the Christian liturgy over a millennium ago. It suggests that careful
listening may have made the officants aware of this higher ring, either
directly or through the echoing of the overtones through the chapels.
Reznikoff continues his authentic experiments despite the fact that there is
no documentation that could endorse a practice of this sort during the
Middle Ages.
Igor Reznikoff
Le chant dc
Fontenay
Studio SM 12
/
only hear harmonics, we can also see and measure them as they appear
naturally in the world around us. We can also transform them into
something else and construct them anew by applying these simple num,
bers. Harmonics and the harmonic series can also be linked to other types
of harmony. This is the other, qualitative principle of metaphysical
harmony. These latter aspects cannot be calculated or physically exam ined,
and have to do more with aspects of the mind and consciousness. and related
questions about well-being and harmony.
An unusual experience
The effects of singing and chanting differ in intensity for every individ ual.
Many singers experience a light or slightly dizzy feeling in the head after
singing overtones for a while. And if one closes the eyes during chanting,
one may need some time to re-orient oneself and see every thing in normal
perspective again. If one has taken long breaths the head may feel light for
several seconds, as if it's full with gas, and the environ ment can look paler
than it did before singing. Asian throat singers ( an have similar
experiences. Mongolian throat singer ( ;anzorig Nergui e told me he often
feels slightly dazed after singing a demanding khmii part. But even just
listening may have a considerable influence. When I had played a powerful
recording of Tuvan sygyt by Kara-ool Tumat during a radio broadcasting,
a yoga practitioner called to say that she had been 'lifted' while listening to
it. In short, we can be inspired, soothed, puzzled, lifted, baffled and stirred
by a song of overtones. We can lull an infant asleep, get carried away from
a beautiful melody, feel removed from our body or experience the here and
now as we never did before. Some people see all sorts of images appear
before their inner eye, while others experience a different state of
awareness.
When I started chanting and singing overtones myself, often with one or
two others, we discovered that we could solidly 'lock' our voices through
the resonances. s soon as we started to sing and listen, our voices would
become like one. As if leading an independent life of their own, the high
and low sounds from each of the contributors would fuse and grate. In fact,
it seemed as if these tones fused us (and by doing so they sometimes
confused us too). Even though we made it happen ourselves, we were
overwhelmed time and again by the undulations surrounding us and
resonating within us. Sometimes these vibrations and our intuition would
take over. As we surrendered to this process, our deliberate will to create
and to control our musical meditations dropped to a minimum. My attention
could be drawn towards unusual vibrations in my body, such as the waves
that traversed my spine bottom-up. When I sang with eyes closed, I realised
(often afterwards) that my imagined environment did not correlate with the
physical space I was in. And still there are new things to discover when I
sing with others or alone today.
Composer Toby Twining completed his Requiem for a Millennium in >
page 195
1999. It was the second composition in which he made extensive use of
harmonics. After the world premiere at the Festival of New Spiritual Music
in Amsterdam I asked him what the singing technique which he has been
applying for years means to him. He replied:
"I do believe that there is a spiritual power in overtone singing. I don't have
to reserve it for a piece of music that is obviously on a spiritual subject such
as the Requiem. But whenever I do it I really feel there is something very
wonderful and centering about it. ...l Singing in itself is considered by a lot
of people to be more a purely spiritual music making than playing an
instrument because it comes from a human body and human being. Even
with all of our psychology and scientific understanding of the voice we
don't really fully understand what's going on when someone sings. So it's
already in spiritual territory just to sing, if you do it well, if you do it from
the heart."l
Ted Levin, who was a member of the Harmonic Choir in the early days of
the album Hearing Solar Winds, recalls that
"The effect of that music was really focussing: focussing attention and
reaching a kind of quiet in one self. And I don't think I have ever been able
to do that as successfully as with that music. Maybe it's something like what
meditation is for other people. I don't know. I don't do meditation. But the
music and particularly the way we worked together at this effect of creating
a silence within one's own body and mind and then the effect of singing in
a circle, synchronising the breathing, listening to the sound and trying to
make these harmonies was a very moving experience, I think. I always felt
clearer afterwards. It was often a struggle. Sometimes it wasn't successful,
sometimes the sounds weren't good, but I always felt better for having
engaged in that struggle. 2
In 1983 Michael Vetter wrote in the notes to his first album Overtones:
voice and tambura:
"Overtones are not only musically significant, but from the earliest times
have been considered to have almost universal healing properties. Man is a
vibrating organism in the midst of vibrating organisms. The voice and the
ear are the organs through which he is most directly able to initiate and
become aware of his own vibrations. The overtones embody the
fundamental laws of harmony for acoustical as well as non-acoustical
vibrations. To surrender oneself to feel and hear, actively or passively, the
play of the overtones leads to regeneration in the broadest sense of the word.
A prerequisite for the effectiveness of these vibrations and their music is of
course - as with every pursuit of truth- that one give undivided attention."
Meditation
As we use the word today, 'meditation' usually means: to sit quiet, to
contemplate, to listen and breathe, to chant or to make other quiet music. In
a more narrow sense it refers to specific exercises for the mind, using the
active imagination. 3 We make an effort to transcend our experiences to a
level of non-personality. We meditate when wc become aware of the
symbolic content of sound, and so integrate the act of singing with the subtle
capacities of the mind. We also meditatc when we listen to our breath that
carries sounds and try to reveal its essence as prana or life force. Some types
of meditation will use neither Silence sound nor breath to focus on and
pursue the higher levels of attainment in silence. The most simple definition
of silence is the absence of sound. But when we try to find it, silence appears
to manifest itself in innu merable ways. Silence sounds, and differently so
every time we search
for it. Meditation starts with breathing and with silence. But many types of
meditation also involve some kind of sound.
When we meditate by way of singing the need to make pleasant or even
beautiful sounds moves to the background. It is not the singing that decides
whether we enter a truly meditative state of mind. More important is that
we listen to ourselves, that we search for the voice inside. We are not
concerned with personal judgements about our voice, nor with the
personality in our voice. Singing harmonics automatically focuses the mind
more than most other types of singing, because we essentially sing just one
tone and listen to its internal dynamics. Overtones demand from us a higher
than normal sound awareness. They fulfil a service in certain spiritual
traditions and have a built-in symbolic association with 'things high.' They
have the exceptional ability to unite voices to the highest degree and a
tendency to unify the body and the mind.
When we sit down and listen to the fine nuances of a voice or instrument
we can try to find this metaphysical silence. More so than western music,
eastern music tries to focus the mind on it. Well before the beginning of our
Western calendar, the flageolets (or instrumental harmonics) of the most
distinguished of Chinese instruments, the zither ch'in was particularly
appreciated for its "very fine and still tone, which forces the player to listen
deeply into himself. The silent intent listening will bring the people here
and to themselves, to inner harmony and to peace.
The Chinese were aware of the transcendental powers of the flageolets of
this zither. Just as they may have done as long as 4000 years ago, the
alluring sounds of the ch'in demand from its current players and their
audience a most profound concentration and stillness. The essential stillness
of mind, necessary to observe the most subtle parts of some of its tones, is
demanded from the listener as a finger keeps moving along one of the silk
strings, even well after the tone has faded away! At this point the player's
breathing becomes one with what we might call the mere suggestion of
tone. The joyous experience of beautiful tones imperceptibly moves into
contemplating them for the benefit of 'inner harmony and peace.'
Indian yoga does not strive for this sort of joyous experience. It is closer to
meditation in a strict sense and aims to focus the mind, which can be done
in silence or through the use of sound and visualisations. 5 But whether one
learns to play the Chinese ch'in or becomes a student of mantra-yoga, both
undertakings are likely to bring the practitioner to the realisation, sooner or
later, that the nature of sound is essentially harmonic. In Indian classical
music we hear little more than a reflection
flageolets
yoga
of this awareness. Perhaps it is not surprising then that in between these two
countries (China and India) the finer harmonics of the voice deliberately
began to be used as a meditative tool. For many centuries Tibetan lamas
have fuelled their mantras with the soft resonance of one or two accentuated
overtones. This practice has been handed down to our time, and is believed
to bring enlightenment to the monks and to an increasing number of other
people. And though the world at large can now enjoy the magnificent sound
of a monk chorus, the Tibetan knowledge about the technique and its
meaning remain secret to a large extent. The Tibetan abbot Khen Rinpoche
explained that it is primarily the spiritual perception of a sound that effects
our mind, and not the mechanical observation we make with the ears. 6
In Tibetan Buddhism, the chant in itself is not enlightening. It is merely the
vehicle that carries impulses, and is at all times subordinate to a higher
principle: bringing harmony and compassion to all sentient beings.
Harmonics, likewise, are the means to attain a higher state of awareness,
and not an end in themselves. Sound in this Buddhist sense of the word has
little to do with the way we use it every day. Principally, it becomes a tool
in meditative practices. The most widely accepted mantras name for sound
in this context is mantra, which is derived from Sanskrit. As we saw with
Tibetan yang, a mantra is a tool for the mind and intends to transcend the
normal consciousness to a higher level of understanding. "A mantra is a key
vibration," to use Michael Vetter's words, 7 which we can take very literally
as it can be the key to another reality. The mantra's essence does not lie in
its vibrations, or in its literal or musical meaning, but in everything that it
embodies. When it is repeated over and over again the vibration becomes a
point of recognition for the body which reinforces the strength of its
symbolic association in the mind.
In religious and occult traditions, mantras or sacred phrases and syllables
are central in achieving concentration. The Gregorian Alleluia, the Arab La
ilaha illa Allah and the Tibetan 0m Mani Padme Hum are just some of the
best-known examples. The meaning in ordinary Ian guage of many mantras
has either been forgotten or been dominated, in daily practice, by their
symbolic associations, which lends the syllables a power exceeding that of
words. The physical effect of the constant. rhythmic repetition of an
Alleluia or the slow unfolding of an Aum cer tainly accounts for the sacred
transcendental quality of the mantras. Bill there must be more to a
succession of syllables to be rewarding even after hundreds of thousands of
repetitions. In many religions it is assumed that the sacred phrases were
created by spiritual teachers thal knew of the power of sound and moulded
them with esoteric knowl edge of cosmic powers. By learning and passing
on these syllables we can link ourselves with the powers and the experience
of the sages and
with the time when man still intuitively knew of these powers.
We do not have to go as far as Tibet and as high as the Himalayas to find
vocal overtones in an outspoken spiritual context: the Sardinian
brotherhoods apply their wholesome influence to the mind and to other
beings in a similar way. The harmonic amplification of the Quintina blends
all voices into one even though the brothers sing different notes. The singers
that take part in this sort of harmony are likely to experience the singing
physically, but this is not where the /emphasis lies. They become part of, or
make themselves subordinate to, something that is literally higher and
beyond their individual capacity. A more suitable European example of
musical expression of collective religious devotion is hardly imaginable,
neither musically nor symbolically. The more worldly Barbershop singers
also recognise the psychophysical effects. Because their singing is not
primarily meant as a meditation, but as entertainment, they speak more
emphatically about its mesmerising effect which may be a goal onto itself.
8
Christian chants and buddhist mantras
The German composer Stockhausen likened the overtone technique to a
"rapid spacecraft to the cosmic and the divine."9 He was one of the first to
understand its potential for people of our time to investigate the boundaries
of the self. Soon afterwards, Jill Purce toured along with Stockhausen and
his group and for two years investigated the spiritual dimensions of music.
After several years she started giving workshops
Quintina
Jill Purce
about the basics of overtone singing and its deeper meaning. Recently the
waning state of Gregorian chant led to two closed orders of the Church of
England inviting her to teach.
"The chanting of the offices is the principal practice of the nuns and monks.
Everything else is done in between: teaching, making alcohol, all sorts of
things that monks and nuns have done over the centuries. It's a general trend
that they reduce the amount of chanting and the number of offices that they
do over the years. One of the chantresses, the person in charge of music at
Burnham Abbey, knew that the Gregorian chanting as we know it today
was reinvented by monks in France in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
She felt, since it had been broken, that she was entitled to work out how it
might have been or to find alternative ways of doing it, as anybody else,
which is actually correct. So what she wanted me to do was to help them
revivify their tradition and reconnect them with the meditative power of
chanting, which they felt they had completely lost." 10
Out of respect for tradition Purce did not intend to teach them overtone
singing per se. Much to her own surprise, however, she wasn't invited
merely to do some vocal exercises on the voices of the monks and nuns; she
was explicitly asked for teaching harmonics.
"I told them: 'I have many Christian chants I can do with you, so what do
you want from me?' And they said, 'we would really really like to learn
overtone chanting!' So we sat in a circle, and [ ...l I worked with them on
the very fundamentals of sound, voice, overtones and vowels and how it
works. I think some of the older ones probably found it a bit strange. But in
general they were very open indeed and loved it. They asked me to come
back a number of times and nuns who had been there from other orders also
then asked me to come."
Since then little groups practice together in some sort of meditation room.
To Purce's great surprise, the newly acquired technique was later used as an
actual part of the nuns' religious observances. She was again invited.
"When we arranged the day they said, 'at noon we want to do a requiem for
the deceased sisters of Fairachres.' So they did that and at the end the abbot
came up to me, whispered in my ear and said, 'do you think we could now
just move into the overtone chanting?"'
Buddhims and Christianty
Sacred
Chain
This question baffled Purce, who could just stammer out a mere affirmation.
The moments that followed symbolise a meeting of two entirely different
religious chanting traditions within one service. The one, according to
legend, whispered in St. Gregory's ears by doves around the year 600. The
other, introduced in Tibet by Jezhu Kunga Tundrup some 850 years later.
Of course the sisters didn't burst out in the deep growls of their Tibetan
confreres at this moment, but started to develop their own variant of
overtone singing. For Purce it is certain that her affiliation with a Tibetan
umze (Master of the Chant) played a role in her being asked by the Church
orders. The sisters' careful phrasing 01 their wish in the form of a question
symbolise their respect for Purcc, worthy of an umze.
One of the chantresses wrote in a letter of 1996 addressed to Jill Purcc:
"It was truly a gift of God to have you with us. And I am sure I speak for
all those present when I say that it has brought a renewed sense about thc
essential communication between heaven and earth, which is the specific
task we are privileged to carry out. I like to think of the Sacred Chain which
binds us to heaven above and of keeping that Chain intact and alive. And
I'm sure your work in this world will be a great enabler in thc con, tinual
strengthening and renewing of that chain in the most vivid way."' I
/
and in the universe. But we are still left to guess how the processes of an
amazingly complex organism like the human body can be reduced to simple
ratios of integer numbers.
The law of octaves
The tumbling walls of Jericho, the glass shattered by the soprano's voice.
and entrainment of biological processes can all be traced back to thc earliest
notions about harmony in a broader sense. It was thought in Antique times
that larger and smaller processes were connected to onc another in strict
mathematical proportions. The central proportion
that has been used in many theories, 2:1, is usually referred to by its
musical term: the octave. This is also the central ratio on which the
harmonic series is built. We already found that the waveform of a periodic
sound is in fact built up of a superposition of many partial tones. The first,
the second, the fourth, the eighth and so forth partial tones or overtones are
the octaves of the lowest, fundamental tone.
By simply measuring any given periodical movement and then dividing or
doubling it repeatedly, we can transpose it to any other magnitude. Thus we
can compare the oscillations of a vibrating string with those of a much
larger level, say: the revolution of the earth. Or we can transpose such a
very long cycle down into the range of 30-20.000 Hertz that our ears can
perceive. If we divide one complete rotation of the earth around the suri (24
hours) by two, the resulting time is half a day. The second division gives 6
hours, and so on. These are 2:1 ratios and so we can call them octaves. If
we divide them further, we end up with a swinging pattern so fast that it
equals a musical tone. After 24 divisions of the length of a solar day this
yields a frequency of 388.36 Hertz, which is not far from the g below the
chambertone a.
The example comes from Swiss-born Hans Cousto ( 1948), who made
extensive measurements of the revolutions of the planets of our solar system
and transposed them to audible and visible frequencies. He developed sets
of tuning forks that are exactly tuned to the orbital frequencies of the earth,
the moon and the planets. Around 1980 Cousto himself stood at the basis
of a semi-religious cult of singing planet
38
tones, scales and harmonics. Ever since, numerous people in Germany and
the Netherlands have combined intuitive music, meditation and harmonic
chanting with singing the octaves of planetary revolutions. The salutary
influence of harmonics is not only sought for in overtone singing but also
in singing bowls, the tambura, monochords and board zithers with many
strings tuned to the same pitch. We shall see in the following pages that the
idea of establishing a form of harmony between man and cosmos through
music is not new.
The simple octave rule can be used to calculate the tone value of any
rhythmical cycle. Other magnitudes include, for example, the vibrations
and periodic cycles of atoms and molecules cells and organs musical pulses
the heart pulse and breathing (from 60 to 200 beats per minute) the tides
(changing roughly every six hours) the relative orbits of planets (28 days
for the moon) the movements of galaxies
> page 9
Cousto
rhythmical cycles
Humans are poor receivers of most of these waves but some animals possess
senses for some of them.
The gamut of periodic vibrations, from atoms to supernovas and all the
radiation frequencies in between is enormous. Joachim Ernst Berendt
pointed out that the auditory system is our sole perceptive mechanism
capable of assessing many qualitative and quantitative
40
aspects of the world around us. We can learn to perform these analyses
without having to rely on mathematical operations, mechanical or
technological accessories. Eyes cannot see the difference in frequency
between two colours or separate them when they blend, nor can they tell
you exactly which tree is three times further away than the nearest oak in a
forest. For these other measurements, outside the audible range, we must
either count (how many feet, for example) or use a tool (like a ruler). In
contrast, the ears of a trained musician can readily tell the difference
between two tones, whether they are played sequentially or simultaneously.
They can make a range of other assessments too, for example about rhythm,
melody and harmony, the combination and positioning of instruments. The
entire spectrum of our audition covers some ten octaves (30 20.000
Hertz), whereas all colours fall within the range of one octave (375 750
trillion Hertz).
The Greek legacy
The octave ratio is a universal musical phenomenon. After the prime It is
the most consonant sound two voices can make, and this fact /been
recognised intuitively by the world's peoples for many centuries/
/
Figure 6. I
The electromagnetic spectrum
According to legend, it was the Greek Pythagoras, the founder of a secret
community in the sixth century BC, who discovered this mathematical
order for our western civilisation. He supposedly found that a string length
divided in two equal parts (2: l) sounds the octave of the pitch of the whole
string; and that a ratio of 3:2 sounds the fifth; and 4:3, the fourth. For this
purpose he used the monochord, a sound board with a single string. He thus
demonstrated that the simplest mathematical divisions of string lengths
coincided with the most basic musical proportions (octave, fifth, fourth).
These proportions of the length of the string follow the same pattern as the
first intervals of the harmonic series in ascending order, but are idealised
when compared to those that occur in most real music. Greek music theory
was referred to as Greek Harmonics in the many treatises devoted to its
study, but the Greek theHarmonics orists never explicitly mentioned the
harmonic series, nor instrumental Theory or vocal harmonics.
The relation between sound and number was firmly established by the
Greeks.
"In the teachings of Pythagoras and his followers, music and arithmetic
were not separate; numbers were thought to be the key to the whole spiritual
and physical universe; so the system of musical sounds and rhythms, being
ordered by numbers, exemplified the harmony of the cosmos and
corresponded to it. ( ...l Mathematical laws were thought to underlie the
systems both of musical intervals and the heavenly bodies, and certain
modes and even certain notes were believed to correspond with particular
planets. Such mysterious connotations and extensions of music were
common among all Eastern peoples.""
The theory was exemplified in Plato's famous myth about the Music of the
Spheres, the Myth ofEr. It describes a heavenly music created by the
revolutions of the planets of our solar system. This 'music' cannot be heard
by man, though Plato maintained that one can and should use actual music
to become aware of its metaphysical, ultimate harmony. As the above quote
states, these ideas were common (and in fact seem to have originated) in the
great civilisations of China and Mesopotamia, perhaps as long as 2000 years
before Pythagoras. 42 Ever since Pythagoras introduced them to western
civilisation they have remained firmly in position, particularly in music.
The numerical description of musical intervals has remained a key element
in western music ever since. Long after the Classical period, the ideas of
the Greeks about music and, on a more general level, of num bers and
numerical proportions have been highly influential in Western culture. In
the Middle Ages the sage Boethius named music an exact art. along with
geometry, astronomy and arithmetic. According to his contemporaries,
music was not so much about capturing the spirit of the moment in song or
about moving the audience with virtuoso playing. It rather dealt with a
certain intellectual, abstracted mastery over the numerical aspects of music,
such as those found in its modes, rhythms and intervals.43
The theory of musical proportions deals with the quantitative aspects of
sound. Another aspect is the quality of musical sound. The ancient Greeks
and Aristotle in particular developed elaborate ideas about the moral and
other effects of music on the human mind or psyche. These /teachings,
known as ethos, depart from the belief that there are better and moral effects
lesser kinds of music which affect the human character. According to
Aristotle, music represented certain human states or passions, such as anger
and courage. Music could trigger a virtue or a in someone. The music
played by an individual revealed deep truths about that person's character.
Like Eastern thinkers before them, the Greek philosophers were concerned
with harmony in a very broad sense; one that spanned music, people,
society, the state and finally the cosmos at large. They tried to define the
conditions for the creation of an ideal state. This also involved establishing
which musical scales and instruments corresponded to which moods. The
Greeks believed that if music (and gymnastics!) would be taught correctly
and if the rules would be followed by citizens, this would have positive
effects on the state as a whole.44
For over two thousand years now these ancient notions about sound, the
one numerical, the other moral, have developed each in their
45
own way. There have been many subtle changes in the way they have been
applied in music theory and in the practical execution and appreciation of
instrumental and vocal music. The ongoing debate between composers,
theorists and musicians raised ever new points of attention and have been a
driving force underlying the development of Western music. In a way they
can all be traced back to the central ideas brought forth by the Greeks which
have remained central in the way people in the west think about and make
music. The belief that music has moral effects, that there is music with good
and bad influences, that people are psychologically affected by the music
they play and hear is still widespread. The most worn belief of all may be
that these musical sounds represent specific human sentiments and that
there exists something as 'good' and 'bad' music in an objective sense. The
opposite philosophy, that music has autonomous values and does not
represent anything but itself, is adhered to by many composers and
musicians since the late eighteenth century, but not shared by the general
public.46
Silent harmonics
Number theories became a guiding principle in architecture too. Just like
the string of a monochord could help one's mind attune to the inaudible
sounds of the heavenly bodies, so could the proportions of religious edifices
approach cosmic harmony. Building masters of various epochs did not use
the ratios of the harmonic series, though. They often based their ideas on
the sequences of integer numbers in the Fibonacci series and the Golden
Section. Their proportions symbolised higher, divine truths, and by using
them man hoped to find a key to the mysteries of the universe. Like the
harmonic series, the Fibonacci series
architecture
plainchant
and the Golden Section have a mathematical logic and in theory can go on
infinitely. The Greeks were the first in Europe to use mathematical ratios in
their buildings, such as the Parthenon, for example. Much later, in the
twelfth century, composers began to construct the form or structure of their
music by using such ideal proportions, for example in the duration of notes.
Music has allowed people to appreciate the proportional beauty of buildings
by their ears as well. In previous sections I have spoken several times of the
wonderful acoustic qualities of religious edifices such as churches, in
particular for vocal and wind music. At the time of construction of the Notre
Dame, towards the end of the Middle Ages, it was fashionable to use strict
numerical principles derived from simple integers. European religious
music of that time was also constructed according to these same ratios.
Sound was conceived of as -or at least meant to be- an ornamentation of
space. The music of that time was designed to strengthen the experience of
ideal spatial proportions, and not as sound per se. Music and architecture
were not the isolated artforms, valued for their purely esthetical qualities,
that they would later become. True appreciation of music, architecture and
other arts could be found, with help of the intellect, in their hidden
harmonies: the composition of the edifice and the construction of the
polyphonic chants, so to say. These formed the bridge between the inner,
microcosmic, and the outer, or macrocosmic harmony.47
Plainchant or Gregorian chant, the much older church music of mediaeval
Europe with monophonic (one-voiced) melodies, sounded no less beautiful
in these buildings. They seem to bring the building alive with their angelic
resonances and fill the space with the soft echo of the drawn-out melodies.
Mediaeval churches have therefore not gone unnoticed by overtone singers
either. Ranking superior amongst the sanctuaries used for overtone singing
are the Cistercian churches in which Michael Vetter and David Hykes have
made recordings. They arc characterised by a sober interior and superior
resonance, reflecting the
voice for many seconds. The Dutch overtone singer Borg Diem
Groeneveld, who recorded with Vetter's group, found that
"In Senanque you cannot really sing without the harmonics shrieking
around you. This is particularly so for Cistercian abbeys. They are
characterised by smooth walls, there are no embellishments, and the
proportions of their construction are simple: I to 2 to 3, just like the
harmonic series.'/
The Cistercian brotherhoods despised the strive of other orders for ever
higher towers, more beautiful stained windows and other ostentatious
/design that distracted the mind from higher aspirations. Their churches
were sober places of worship that served the purpose, at least symbolically,
of bringing the devotee closer to the harmony of the spheres. In recent
decades overtone singers discovered that the Cistercian principles of
sobriety suited their sober chants more than any other. The Cistercian
churches are the most rewarding environment for the European variant of
overtone singing. There is no evidence that the building masters who
worked for the Cistercian church deliberately attempted to achieve this
acoustic brilliance or that they adhered to harmonic theories. But we can be
almost certain that simple droning sounds with consonant harmonics would
have pleased Renaissance Cistercians.
Music makes the world go round
Man could make mirror the harmonious proportions he found in the
supposed heavenly order of all things and have them reflect in the music
and buildings he created. The question that remained was how man could
relate these harmonies back to the things he really found in nature. The
German theologian, physicist and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
furnished the first scientific proof that the Pythagorean ratios can be found
in the solar system, and that the tones of man-made musical scales
correspond to real phenomena in the physical domain.49 He first discovered
that the planets moved in an elliptical, and not perfectly round, fashion.
Through ingenious calculations he then found that during their elliptical
orbit they produced strikingly harmonious ratios at the points where they
were closest to and furthest away from the Sun. This musical constellation
occurs very seldom, and most of the time their respective speeds, when
transposed to audible proportions, produce less harmonious sounds.50
Kepler's calculations are endorsed by more recent findings. n Harmon-
Johannes Kepler
ies of Heaven and Earth Joscelyn Godwin presents a table with the addition
of three planets not yet known in Kepler's time. He concludes that
"the law of chance is out of the question here. Of 74 tones, 58 belong to the
major triad C-E-G. ... This table, based entirely on empirical measurement,
is a powerful argument for the harmonic arrangement for the solar
system."51
The dance of molecules
Ernst Chladni
Hans Jenny
The turn of the nineteenth century witnessed a new discovery in the
combined science of sound and vision. The creative intellect of an
acoustician named Ernst Chladni (1756 - 1827) laid the foundations of a
new science called experimental acoustics. Chladni stirred audiences with
an invention that transformed sound-vibration into visible patterns, thus
showing hitherto hidden, seemingly magical properties of matter. It
consisted of striking a violin bow along springy bronze plates randomly
covered with grains of sand. Depending on how and where he struck the
bow, these lifeless heaps would come to life and start to dance, as it were,
organising themselves into surprisingly regular, neat patterns.
In Chladni's age it had been sufficiently proven that the vibration of a single
string consisted of several harmonic vibrations. Assuming that the patterns
would ultimately reveal the harmonic nature of sound, Chladni undertook
careful experiments to lay bare the cause of the patterns. He varied the place
and force of the striking bow, and tried many alternative materials for both
the plates and the grains. As he went along, an enormous variety of patterns
emerged before his eyes. The various lines, rings and curves, though not
always clear, were symmetrically divided across the plates. The
coincidence between the modes of vibration and the patterns was
immediately visible: the figures showed a striking mathematical
organisation. But Chladni did not succeed in formulating a satisfying
explanation for them, whether harmonic, numerical or otherwise. It was not
until the 1960s when the Swiss doctor Hans Jenny continued the study of
the effects of sound on organic and inorganic matter, a field he coined
cymatics.
The sound patterns that Chladni and Jenny tried to explain exist in the
physical world. They are not established artificially, as products 01 /the
human imagination or man-made technique. Their mathematical
proportions suggested a link with the harmonic series, but the organising
principles of the vibrating patterns remained obscure. Chladni and Jenny
were deeply in awe of the beauty of their organisation and dedicated their
lives to unravel this peculiar physical phenomenon. But despite their
enthusiasm, the organising principle of the forms, shapcd by the unseen
hands of nature, remains an unresolved mystery to this day. Like the
zooming tones produced by aeolian windharps, which sounded in many an
open household window in Chladni's age, the sand
/
/
zos/
Chladni figures.
patterns seem to speak from a world we do not know, sending messages of
great beauty that we cannot explain.
The Pythagorean attitude
For centuries other researchers continued to make laborious calculations,
much in the vein of Kepler and Chladni, in order to lay bare the deep
structure of the universe. In the human body, crystallography, and
atmospherics (the electromagnetic radiation of the earth's atmosphere)
proportions have been found that are strikingly close to the perfect
harmonies in European music. 52 And thesc harmonies, in their turn, can
be derived from the ratios occurring at the very beginning of the harmonic
series. Kepler and those who followed in his footsteps gave Pythagorean
theory a new twist by adding a solid empirical touch to the quest for cosmic
harmony.
The examples show that we not only make harmonics, but that in some way
we are also subject to harmonic patterns in our physical environment. The
number of examples is small however, compared to the many other
proportions and numerical laws found in nature. And it may be true that
believers in cosmic harmony will always find confirmation of their ideas
when they treat their numerical data with a 'Pythagorean attitude,' if
necessary through complex mathematical detours. 53 But the measurements
have also found a practical application, as the ingredients for actual sounds.
Since the introduction of synthesisers various publications have been
prepared that made audible for the human ear the heavenly sounds that
Kepler and others had calculated. And Cousto's tuning forks designed to
reproduce the different planet tones are still sold today. More than ever,
perhaps, a large group of western people believe that certain sounds, colours
and moods are connected in some mysterious way. Maybe one day some
ultimate Pythagorean harmony will be found in the universe, much like the
harmony of the spheres that the members of Pythagoras' secret community
pursued in their lives.
Sound as pivot
After this long expos of harmonics in bodies small and grand let us return
once more to their immaterial manifestation in our souls and minds. If
neither the quality nor the quantity of tones give us a clear indication about
the effect of harmonics, should perhaps our perceptions and consciousness
themselves I recall that we can imagine ourselves as a newly-born child that
is playing in the basement of a huge warehouse. All sounds come to us
without a filter, as pure sensory impressions. Soon after birth we come out
of the basement and start to make sense out of the bombardment of sensory
stimuli. As we explore the first, the second, and higher levels of the sonic
warehouse, we learn to discern between the various speech - and musical
sounds. There is so much to hear and learn that we turn off the light in the
basement and
sound and the mind
close the door that leads to it. We no longer use the basic impressions of
our first explorations into the world of sound, which includes hearing
harmonics, in a conscious way.
The human mind has a natural tendency to order and categorise, and this
makes it difficult for us to do the opposite: to perceive the world's
phenomena around us as they are, without analysis. In Chapter Four I
discussed Tibetan chanting at length because lamas use mantras, among
other tools, to free the mind from its attachment to worldly phenomena and
surpass the boundaries of language.
Detaching sound from a linguistic meaning, so that it becomes a pure
symbol, has a deep psycho-physical effect. Vowels, simple tones, hums or
other prolonged sounds without definite meaning seem to reside halfway
between our conscious and our subconscious mind. Because they operate
in a 'neutral' area of our mind they are interme-
diaries or pivots that have access to both, depending on how we use them.
These pivotal sounds are used by the intellectual, order-inducing mind and
the intuitive, creative mind alike. Even though we greatly favour their role
as a communicative device in our age, their mantric qualities were used on
a much wider scale only a few generations back. They seem to be making
a comeback now, judged by their popularity in healing, therapy, New Music
and new spiritual movements.
At the subconscious end of our mind these sounds are linked to the world
of symbols. These complexes of associations, thoughts, ideas, feelings, and
the like lose much of their meaning when we try to trans; late them into
words and language, or grasp them mentally. Their complexity and
inaccessibility is their essence. Plain, sounds that are pivots
not framed in the context' of ordinary (musical or spoken) language are the
medium to the secret world within ourselves. Shamans, traditional healers,
epic reciters, mystics and brothers and sisters of religious orders have all
used or still use secret and archaic language. It pulls them away from the
common law and order of events and is their ticket to the otherworld. The
loss of a sacred, ancient language motivated Christian monks and nuns in
England to ask Jill Purce for her help.
"They agreed with me [ ...l that one of the principal reasons that they had
lost the connection with the meditative power of the voice and of chanting
came about through the translation of the liturgy from Latin into the
vernacular, because the whole tradition of mantric chants is always in
archaic languages. If you are trying to go beyond the mind you have to go
beyond words. And if you're constantly bound by meaning you are
constantly kept into the discursive mind." 54
Michael Vetter, after his ten year Zen retreat in Japan, aptly described the
mental warp he experienced through harmonics.
"The path, that I eventually found, had nothing to do with song cultures, the
more so with myself. I began to discover myself as song, and with it felt
myself at the homely beginning of my very own world history. ... It was
clear: the tones spoke from myself for themselves and finally also for me. I
taught myself to understand their messages and to follow them. And every
new day of practice brought new facets about tones as mani-
symbols
Vetter
festations of the essence of vibration, that I am."55
The transition from playing the traverso flute and recorder to using the voice
had been an essential move in Vetter's explorations of new sounds. There
probably is no better instrument than the voice if one is to consciously
explore the self through musical sound. From an early stage in the recent
history of western music the interest in vocal harmonics as tools to reflect
upon our essence, if not of that of the world and the rest of the universe,
was apparent. Stockhausen, in the notes to the record issued from his
groundbreaking composition, described it thus (the capitalisations are his
own):
"Stimmung is indeed meditative music. Time is suspended. One listens
Stockhausen
Rachele
intently to the inner self of the sound, the inner self of the harmonic
spectrum, the inner self of a vowel, THE INNER SELF. The subtlest
oscillations barely a ripple ALL THE SENSES are alert and restful.
In the beauty of things sensual shines the beauty of things eternal."56
David Hykes started to work with harmonics "to seek out a true, symbolic
and universal language, which could express the quest for contact with a
level of being higher than oneself."57 His intuitive approach to choral
harmonics showed to him that "you can get out of the boundaries of
personality. Combining your sound with another creates a very different
perspective. It is like a kaleidoscope given a twist."58
For Rollin Rachelle twenty years of singing overtones showed him that
/'we get to the very essence of awareness itself... It is simply the essence of
how sound is comprised. It is such an integral part of sounds of
nature, of everything of the universe. And not even in the sound spectrum.
It's basically a manifestation of pure mathematics. And we are evolved
around these aspects of nature. We are simply products of nature."5/
Many overtone singers have suggested a link between the mesmerising
effect of harmonics on the mind and the awesome forces of the universe
through an imaginative choice of titles for their pieces. One of Rachelle's
most remarkable compositions, entitled Zero Gravity, alludes to one of
these forces and our capacity to overcome it in space travel. The Missa
Universalis by Michael Vetter, Celestial Tides' by Jim Cole, and Hearing
Solar Winds by the Harmonic Choir suggest a similar frame of reference
for the listener to capture the spirit of these works.
There is a widespread belief among western listeners that Asian throat
singing must somehow be used for the mystical and supernatural
experiences of shamans. Through the quality of its sound and its method of
vocal production, khmei clearly stands apart from everyday music and
speech, which presupposes a ritual or magic use that is equally different
from everyday life. The three basic techniques are likc a passport to the
other worlds: the deep growls of kargyraa evoke associations with the
awesome forces of earthquakes and vulcanoes and could represent the
underworld. The pure and celestial sounds of sygyt are linked with the
heavens and upper world. The 'middle style' kh"l"' is the mediator: it has
some of both and comes nearest to human speech. As a trinity they are a
perfect secret language, a device for communication between a lower and
higher spirit world through our middle world. Yet there is nothing that
points to the Tuvans' subscription to these theories.
The question whether there possibly is a connection between the layers of
musical sounds and those of human experience is not entirely out of place,
however. If sound can indeed act as a pivot to the consciousness, then
harmonic sounds may give us a different perspective on the mind than
normal sounds, that is, the ones which we perceive as /single tones. The
western overtone singers quoted above all speak of a getting in touch with
a deep layer of their being, or self. Could it be that through harmonics we
my learn something about the mind itself?
In the west we traditionally think of the mind as a two-fold entity with a
conscious and a subconscious part, the latter being further subdivided into
the collective and the personal unconscious. The trance and possession
states of shamans, the dream experience and other variations from the
normal, everyday consciousness have long been explained within this two-
fold system, or as anomalies of it. Explorers of the mind have refined this
traditional division. Joscelyn Godwin, borrowing from an idea proposed by
Henry Corbin, prefers to call the Imaginal World collective subconscious
the Imaginal World, or "the objective but nonmaterial world that is
presented as images to the inner organ of imaginative perception."60 This
is distinct from "fantasy or reverie that one invents for oneself"61 and which
is associated with the personal unconscious. In this more elaborate
understanding the messages received in dream - and trance-states, the
revelations of another reality obtained in a fully conscious waking state and
the inspiration in moments of musical or artistic creativity can gain more
equal justification compared to our waking consciousness, for example as
superconscious experiences.
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jill Purce and David Hykes have all taken
inspiration from Aurobindo Ghose (better known as Sri Aurobindo), a
radical nationalist leader and influential philosopher in the first half of the
twentieth century. Sri Aurobindo was born in Great-Britain in 1972 from
an Indian father and British mother and educated there, but lived in India
during most of his active life. Like Krishnamurti, he applied his western
education in a personal synthesis of traditional Indian and western
philosophy. Aurobindo interpreted Indian ideas about the levels of
awareness and of attainment in a way that was radically new, according to
Stockhausen. In an interview held in 1973 the composer praised
Aurobindo's message, saying that
"In the classical yoga of the Indian tradition one always ascends from
bottom to top, until one arrives in the highest centre. Aurobindo has
Aurobindo brought a brilliant idea into the world. An entirely new
conception of yoga: that one can bring light into the subconscious from
above, and not just ascends to a higher consciousness. ... We do not grow
like a tree using the power of the root I ... l, as we always imagine, but we
are pulled up towards the light and take from the earth what we need for it.
So in other words, the entire consciousness is always present! "62
Perhaps the traditional western distinction between everyday conscious
awareness on the one hand and the dark spheres of our subconscious on the
other, is too simple. Aurobindo's philosophy suggests that we may be able
to become truly perceptive at different levels and ultimately get into the
very here and now of our mental states themselves. There is an obvious
analogy with the harmonic spectrum, with its different levels of resonance,
and overtone singing, which highlights these levels one by one. When you
sing overtones, Jill Purce told me, it is possible that "different states of
consciousness become available to you simultaneously."63 If that is indeed
what happens, then this would be the ultimate consequence of the idea that
harmonics refer to something else in the universe than to the mere sound
itself.
PART FIVE
QUINTESSENCE
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GREAT REALM
East versus West the universal harmonic the non-universal harmonic
the spiritual dimension liturgical, epic and folk overtone singing
tangible cosmic harmony opposite tendencies in east and west waning
and emerging traditions physics versus metaphysics some thoughts
about nature music and ideas about nature quantum /mechanics and
animism renewing the ancient marriage between music and physics:
superstrings paradigms shift a 180 degree turn sound colour: a
paradox for the Senses timbre as the fifth element the quintessence of
science sound and self the Great Realm
When I first arrived in Siberia to study Tuvan khmei in 1993, I soon had
to revise my idea that the harmonics themselves were the most important
part of throat singing. The link that I saw between European overtone
singing and Asian throat singing was obvious: in both cases singers
amplified harmonics by shaping their mouth cavities in a very precise way.
But I gradually began to understand that the emphasis that western listeners
put on the overtones themselves did not quite reflect
the values that the Tuvans put on sound and music. This realisation was one
of the main reasons for me to write this book. I wanted to place the eastern
and western traditions in a proper perspective and take away some
misconceptions about harmonics and overtone singing as a physical and a
spiritual phenomenon in different parts of the world.
Admittedly, this attempt in itself is grounded in a modern, western way of
thinking. It isolates one aspect of sound and highlights several music
traditions from this single perspective. It lumps overtone singers from Asia,
Europe and Africa together and suggests that it is possible to compare these
traditions, while in fact we have seen that they are unique in many respects.
Tuvan musicians and colleagues have repeatedly told me that overtone
singing and Tuvan throat singing are not the same, despite some obvious
acoustic similarities. For this reason I have chosen to shape this book in
four Parts, where each discusses a clearly defined aspect of overtone
singing: Physics, East, West and Metaphysics.
The first Part was relatively straightforward and unambiguous. It dealt with
the voice, the harmonic series, and the various methods of producing
harmonics with the voice. It also showed that we do not simply perceive
music as we think we do. Listeners in every corner of the
Facing page:
electricty wires across thc landscape of St-Khl,
West Tuva
world are 'automatically' trained to hear and value certain aspects of sound,
while other aspects may be neglected.
The second Part, East, introduced the Tuvans and several other peoples that
have practised some form of overtone singing for many generations. For all
of them this singing technique is part and parcel of a wider cultural context
which it not only reflects but also shapes and perpetuates. These traditional
cultures have a large degree of coherence which lends them a certain
continuity and internal logic. They are living traditions because they are not
frozen in the minds of its keepers. The folk musicians and epic singers from
North Asia continuously redefine and develop their music. However, the
Buddhist monks from Tibet and the Catholic Brotherhoods in Italy
perpetuate the performance of their liturgical chanting as part of a day-to-
day spiritual discipline, and change only very slowly.
Things become slightly more complicated in Part Three, which deals with
the western world. It lacks the 'naturalness' of the more traditional music
examples because overtone singing has been adopted by people that hold
widely differing opinions about music and performance in general and
overtone singing in particular. We saw that this vocal technique has
consecutively been adopted by contemporary and experimental musicians,
in New Age circles and finally by the World Music and general public. All
of these people have given their own interpretation of this new world of
sound. Composers and professional musicians experiment with overtones
because the harmonic spectrum offers infinite possibilities to play with the
colour and other subtle aspects of sound. Outside the realm of music,
overtone chanting has been valued for its supposed healing properties.
There is much overlap too: holistic healers sing or play harmonics, that is,
make music to treat patients, and contemporary composers lay emphasis on
the mysterious or symbolic character of its sound. Even when the sounds
that western overtone singers make are very similar to one another, the
meaning and context can be entirely different. It is therefore not easy to
speak of the ideas and beliefs that western practitioners share. In fact, they
actually tend to emphasise their differences rather than their similarities.
But in Metaphysics I have nevertheless attempted to summarise some
recurring themes that are mentioned in connection with the music. The most
important of them are healing, therapy and meditation and associations
between overtones, the cosmos and the self, both in a quantitative and a
qualitative sense.
Overtone singing tends to induce a reflective, contemplative frame of mind
and lets us experience music in, one might say, a less musical way. It is as
if the inner world of the singing person surfaces more easi /ly and is less
obstructed by pre-defined associations. It instantly turns newcomers into
explorers who set out to unravel one of the mysteries of the universe.
Metaphysics showed that it can ultimately lead singers to contemplate and
change their deepest convictions and self-image.
In the end all bits and pieces of parts I to IV coexist in different
combinations and gradations. We must tear down these artificial barriers
between east, west, physics and metaphysics and see how they make sense
together. How do they relate to one another? What do they have in common,
what are their differences? What can we conclude from them? In this fifth
and final Part we will see that the rigid distinction that I made between east
and west cannot always be maintained, and may sometimes even be the
reverse from what we expect it to be. We will look at how people in east
and west think about sound and music, both physically and metaphysically,
in different ways. Sound and music often reflect the way in which a
particular group of people looks at the world, that is, their cosmology or
world philosophy. This holds true for people of all times and races. In many
of the world's greater civilisations (including the Chinese, Indian and
Greek) people attributed to sound the capacity to transcend the human
experience or consciousness (in other words: the self) to a higher level,
using the physical phenomenon of periodic vibration (or science) as agent.
The interest for harmonics in the west also reflects some of the changes in
our own, modern cosmology. I will point out that timbre stands in a peculiar
relationship to all other attributes of musical sound. It shows all
characteristics of a quintessence in the Hermetic sense of the word. If we
make sound and vibration the central universal force, then we may consider
timbre as the quintessence of science sound and self
EAST VERSUS WEST
The universal harmonic
Music always has some sort of bias: it has a function or use. l For example,
we have dance music, social music, ritual music; and genres like classical,
rock, country & western or jazz music. Overtones do not come in such clear
definitions, that impose certain limits on the meaning of sound. Overtone
singing has been popularised by the folk and ritual traditions of Asia and by
the composers-musicians of contemporary, New Age and other western
music. But we might say they are beyond the meaning of these musical
stereotypes. Whether we look at them as a physical, spiritual, archaic or
modern phenomena, they remain the same harmonics, each time that they
are created anew. Acousticians and other 'hard' scientists tend to define
harmonics as a purely physical phenomenon, and thus value them as
neutral. Others see in this neutrality a powerful and transcending cosmic
vibration that they can resonate with. They believe that if the symbolic
language of music is capable of communicating 'higher truths,' then this
message will reach deeper into the consciousness when we are more fully
aware of the medium, that is, of the spectral components of each tone.
Unlike instruments or particular vocal genres, harmonics as such have
nothing to do with a certain country, tribe or musical style. They are not
owned by anybody, neither were they 'invented' at a certain place and time
in history. They are the same universally: your overtones are not essentially
different from mine. We learn to hear and use them automatically and after
that we all share their musical presence. It would be better to speak of their
sonical presence. Harmonics exist, in a sense, independent of the worn-out
paths of musical cultures, styles or genres. Stockhausen was quick enough
to emphasise this, as he remarked about Stimmung that "there stands out
above everything an unmistakable characteristic which has nothing to do
with the concept of 'style."'2
The non-universal harmonic
The music created from and with harmonics is not universal, however. In
every place where it caught onas a musical technique it has received a
unique meaning that reflects the beliefs, behaviour and practice of a
particular music community. The idea itself that harmonics are universal is
not universal either. Some western musicians erroneously believe that
indigenous Turco-Mongol singers would view their throat singing as
something universal. That is a misunderstanding: I have never heard any
Siberian or Mongolian musician explain their art in this way. For most of
them throat singing is a true folk music and a song that captures the essence
of being a Tuvan, a Mongol, or a Khakass. It is firmly rooted in their
homeland and physical environment.
There are many other differences between traditional forms of overtone
singing and overtone singing in the new world. It is probably impossible to
draw any general conclusions for all areas discussed in East, or for all the
performers mentioned in West. But if we take Tuvan khmei and the
majority of western singers as an example, we can summarise some of these
differences as shown on Table 7.1.
There can be no mistake about the preference in Tuva for a forced way of
singing, which westerners find unnatural; or about the fact thal Tuvans
prefer to sing outside and westerners inside. But of course most of these
differences are gradual, and not absolute. A khmeizhi uses his Western
overtone singingTuvan khmei / sound / technique /harmony melody
sound layerssound imitation nasal guttural / tradition /culture nature
intellectintuition analytic listening holistic listening /personal
developmentoral tradition / setting /
church
steppe
man-made environment
natural environment
/
Roederer 1983
36
Ibid.: 63
2
Crystal 1997
37
Maturana and Varela 1989: 28
/
Purce in Campbell 1991: 235
38
Sundberg 1987: Chapter 6
4
Vetter 1991
39
This paragraph adapted from
5
Rachelle 1996
6
Some acousticians still prefer the older
40
Averill 1999: 38
division in three sensations. For an
/
Rice 1980: 53-57
8
Adapted from Rossing 1990: 348
44
liner notes Cole CD 1997
9
The three terms sometimes designate
10
Roederer 1979, Chapter 4
12
/
Sundberg 1977
Bloothooft et. al. 1992
/
Sundberg 1977: 84
3
Mnchen Helfen 1992: 157
15
Bloothooft et. al. 1992
4
Vainshtein 1979: 69
16
Barnett 1977; Harm Schutte, personal
5
Saayet Trkz, interview on Dutch
communication
17
Zemp and Tran 1991
6
Sundui 1998: 20
18
Maslov and Chernov 1979
7
Probably Ganbold's kargiraa khmii
19
Deutsch and Fdermayer 1992
20
Sven Grawunder, personal communication, 2002
21
van Tongeren 1995
8
Alekseev et. al. 1990, CD
22
Smith et.al. 1967, Ellingson 1970,
9
[Righton 1991
1999: 86
/
Kyrgys 1992
23
Smith et.al. 1967: 1263; Levin and
/
Taube 1972: 120
Edgerton 1999:86
13
Suzukei 1989
24
See, for example Goldman 1992 (sec-
/
End of paraphrase, based on Suzukei
leaflets
16
Suzukei 1993
25
Pegg 1992: 43
/
Interview with Suzukei 2000
26
Sundberg 1977: 91
18
Suzukei 1993
27
Zemp and Tran 1991. 32-33
/
Castren 1853: 316
28
Roederer 1979: 147
/
Radiof 1895 -Il, 180
29
Cowell 1969
21
From a record in the archive of the
Sundberg 1977
crystal 1997
22
Basilov 1989: 154-55
/
Stockhausen 1957
/
Tatarintsev 1998
25
Interview Ondar, 1993
26
Chalon 1904
27
Kyrgys 1992: 89
62
For this I gratefully rely on two com-
28
Kyrgys 1992: 88
29
Eliade 1989; Mnchen-Helfen 1992;
31
Adapted from a presentation by
/
Interview Shinzhin 2000
Khmei 1995
32
Vainshtein 1980, Forsyth 1992,
68
Sheikin and Nikiforova 1997
Mnchen-Helfen 1992
/
Ernsheimer 1991: 155
/
Forsyth 1992
70
I gratefully acknowledge Ted Levin for
/
MKS Pan Ill, book 2: pp. 412-414;
Aranchyn 1994: 9
tion in 2000; and Liesbet Nijssen, who prepared it and arranged meetings
with Arzhan Kezerekov and Raisa
-17
Biographical information Adapted
joined us in Altai
/
Levin 1996
71
Sheikin and Nikiforova 1997: 69
/
See also Levin 1996, in particular
72
Maslov and Chernov 1980: 86
40
Interview Bapa 1993
74
Interview Ulugbashev 1995
41
Interview Sevek 1995
42
Humphreys in Vainshetin 1980
76
Interview Kuchenov 2000
/
MKS 111-2, 1997: 431
77
Tatarintsev 1998: 58, footnote
44
interview Bapa 1993
/
Forsyth 1992: 1 18
/
Oorzhak 1994
79
Interview Karuyev 1997
47
Kolarz 1950: 165
81
Leonid Tsebikov, personal communi-
/
Bogdanov 1982
cation, 2000
49
A.k.senov 1960
/
Pallas and Bergmann quoted in
50
Interview Tortoyavna 1993
Emsheimer
/
Pegg 1992: 34-35
83
See also Shurov's anthology Ural, PAN
/
Ibid.: 37, 38
2018 CD, 1995
51
Hamayon 1980: 52; see also 202
84
In Bashkir: kukryak khalyp uynaw
54
Hamayon 1980 - XII: 483
(Shurov 1993: 8)
55
Pegg 1992: 39; Hamayon/Grove Ml:
/
Garcia 1847
483
86
Lebedinskii 1965: 86
/
Van Staden, personal communication
87
Shurov 1995: 8
57
Batzengel musical voices 1980: 53
/
Smith and Stevens 1967: 209
89
Ellingson 1979
59
NGDMM 1980-IV: 66
/
Texts provided by Maaike Riemersma,
/
Van Staden 1999b: 13
/
Respectively: khamryn, uruulun, tag-
28 Campbell 1991: Il
/
Godwin 1987: 47
1991: 46
/ / Weeks 1991: 50
105
4
Lortat Jacob 1993: 85
/
6
Godwin 1991: 55
example
8
van Staden 1999b
/
9
Merriam 1964
40
Berendt 1989: 28 and below
/
Walker 1990
41
Grout and Palisca 1988: 6-7
/
Kayser 1968: 8, Il
/
Walker 1990: Chapter 3
/
Eagle 1983
/
Grout & Palisa 1988: 36-39
/
Greene 1998
44
Grout & Palisca 1988
14
Greene 1998: 136
/
Walker 1990
15
Greene 1998: 18
/
Ibid.: 145
16
From a television interview with
/
Warren 1973: 92-105
48
Radio interview, 1997
/
Godwin 1987:132-136
1996
/
Ibid.: 133
/
17
Rvsz 1944 Introduction to Music
Psychology 1944: 300. my translation
52
Jill Purce in Catalfo 1986; Doczi 1981;
18
Godwin 1995: 5, 15
tion, 2000
ments given in Haase (1976: 100; the ratio length of upper arm to underarm
plus hand) have significantly different proportions (O, 605 for females,
0,630 for males) than those of Doczi's source ( 1981: 142; ratios of O, 637
and 0,638 respectively)
22
Smith 1967: 212
Godwin 1987: 1 16 and the rest of the chapter 'The Music of the Spheres'
Purce interview 2
Vetter 1987: 8 - 9 / liner notes Stimmung LP
57 liner notes to Hykes CD 1983
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INDEX
acoustics 4-6, 8-11, 42-45, 47, 246 Aksenov, A. 64-66, 108
Altai 51, 129-135, 240, 254 Altai Hangai 124-26 architecture 47, 224
Aurobindo, Sri 184, 231-232
Andrei Chuldum-ool 61, 101, 256
Aum, 151-153, 208
Bapa, Sayan 88, 105-109
Bashkortostan 143-45
Biosintes 113-15 Body-and-mind 153-54 breath 63, 141-42, 180,
/Buddhism 145-153, 210, 239-40
Chladni, Ernst 226-227 Christianity 154-157, 209, 239-243 circular
breathing, 25
Classical music 36-38, 198-2m, 245 Cole, Jim 47 colour, -of sound see
timbre consciousness 3, 4, 18, 47-48, 208, 230-34, 244, 249
Cowell, Henry 36
Cymatics 226
Dalai Lama, 102, 148-149
Jenghis Khan, 83-84 Dzhambul (Kazakh rhapsodist), 128 education 3, 54,
67, 69-72, 152 electromagnetic spectrum, 220 entrainment 217
environment 45-48, 54-56, 59-61, 74-76, 78, 133-35, 145, 224, 243-48 epic
see Khakassia, Altai, Kalmykia equal temperament 8, 1% female singers
30-31, 110-12, 144, 157-59 formant 16-32, 37 fifth element 252 frequency
8, 25, 220 fundamental 8; lowered - 26-29, moving 31, 154-159, 182, 1%-
97
Godwin, Joscelyn 46, 160, 225, 231
Goldman, Jonathan 160, 185
Gorno Altai see Altai
Gregorian chant, see plainchant Gurdzhieff, George 180-181, 184
harmonic, in physics 4, 8-11, 17-18, 23839, 242, definition of 8
Harmonics theory in Ancient Greece)
218, 222
Harmonic Choir see David Hykes harmonic series 8-11 healing, through
sound 29, 80-81, /208, 211-19
Huun-Huur-Tu 107-110, 191
Hykes, David 31, 48, 179-184, 197, 203,
206, 230
International Scientific Khmei Centre 71 interval Il Janssen, Guus 48,
188-%)
Jenny, Hans 184, 226 Kalmykia 127, 129, 140-43 kargyraa 21, 26, 91-92,
96-99, 107, 214, 230 Kayser, Hans 186, 218
Kepler, Johannes 225, 227-228
Khakassia 115, 127, 132, 136-138, 238 Khan, Hazrat Inayat 218 khmei
(Tuvan), 24, 29, 46, 51-113, 18891, 194, 230, 235, 240-41 khmii
(Mongolian) 119-26, 29 Khovalyg, Kaigal-ool 26, 90, 105-09, 18788, 246
Kyrgys, Zoya 72, 73, 100
La Barbara, Joan 47, 173-74
Lamaism, see Buddhism Levin, Ted 72, 89, 180-181, 187-188, /listening 3-
5, 42, 48, 142, 152, 166-67, 171, 176, 180, 197, 206-07 mantra 148-54, 179,
207-08, 211 medicine, and music 212-18 meditation 206, 229, see also
Tibet
Mongolia 51, 119-126, 240-41, 243, 238 Mongush, Mergen 66-69
monotonous mouth 13-22 nature, and sound/music 72-77, 101, 12021, 134,
166, 240-41, 245-46; various meanings of the word 243-46 New Age 185-
86, 203, /octave (music) 8-11, (ratio) 181, 218-227 Oidupaa, Vladimir %-
99
0m, see Aum
Oorzhak, Khunashtaar-ool 46, 87-88 Opei, Andrei 24 92-95 overtone.
definition of, 8
overtone singing, definition of 24 Padmasambhava 147 parameter 39, 250-
52 paraphony 38-39, 48, 159 partial, definition of 8 Peg, Carole 120 Pena,
Paul 215 periodic sound, - vibration 8-11 perception 7, 8, 37-45, 153, 249-
50 physics of sound 8-14; general 237, 244-46,
249 pitch 8, 250-51, 253 /Planck, Max 246-48 plainchant 197-98, 210
Plato 157, 186, 222, 254
Polyphony 38-39, 198
Purce, Jill 4, 174, 185, 209-210, 213-214,
229, 231-232
Pythagoras 157, 186, 222, 228, 242-54 Quintina 154-157, 209, 240 ratio
10-11, 32, 204, 216-223, 235, 254 Rachele, Rollin 6, 193-194, 230
resonance 14-18, 38, 45, 47, 166-67, 217-18 ritual 79-82, 147-48, 160
rhythm, versus timbre 251-52 Sabjilar 137-140
Sardinia, 154-57, 239-41; see also Quintina scale, musical, 8, 22, 108
Schoenberg, Arnold 253 self 41, 229-32, 243-44 senses 41, 220, 250-52
Sevek, A]dyn-ool 42, 50
269
Stimmung see Stockhausen
Stockhausen, Karlheinz 31, 39-40, 165,
167-169, 171, 174, 177, 179, 186, 195, 209.
230-231 Stratos, Demetrio 175 styles and techniques 18-22, 63-66, 123 sub
harmonic 26-30 Sufism see Khan, Hazrath Inayat superstring theory 246-
48 Sundui, Dovchingiin 122 Szkei, Valentina 75-77, 109 tambura, 177-
78, 186, 194, 219 Taube, Erika 58-60, 74 therapy 211-216 throat singing,
definition of 23 Tibet 28, 145-54, 208-10, 217, 239-243 timbre 4-7, 13, 15,
20, 24, 35, 38-40, 63, 67, 97, 108, 174, 179, 190, 198-200, 217,
241, 249-53 Tomatis, Alfred 216 toning 215
Trn Quang Hai 19, 115, 170-72, 212
Tsagan Zam 141-43 Tsongkapa 148 tuning 166, 2m, 246 Tumat, Gennadi
100-105
Turnat, Kara-ool 58-60
Tuva, geography 51; map 52; history 51,
82-84; music, general 61, 67, 69, 71-77,
85-87, 99
Twining, Toby 32, 194-197, 205 umngqokolo 157-59, 241
shamanism 57, 75, 77, 79-81. 212, 213, 229, uzlyau 143-45, 241
230, 241, 255
Vetter, Michael 6, 7, 23, 176, 182, 185-86,
256
voice 9, 11-14, 37, 177