Dear Auditory list,
We are pleased to announce the publication of
Empirical Musicology Review 20(1). The current volume presents a number of empirical studies and commentaries, and one data report that altogether highlight the breadth of topics suitable for the journal.
Gardner and Fiedler investigate the recognizability of various popular music harmonic schemata
as full harmonic units whether presented in isolation or with accompanying melodies. In general, they find that participants are better than chance level at recognizing these chord loops, regardless of the extent of their musical training.
Eitel engages with these findings, asking to what extent self-reported musicianship levels sufficiently capture a participant’s musical perception skill and speculating about the effect that genre markers might have in aiding or undermining participants’
abilities to recognize chord loops.
In a detailed examination of the German Schlager genre,
Thiesen conducted a content analysis of the lyrics to test whether there was empirical evidence consistent with the stereotypical assumptions about the genre as conforming to conservative social dynamics. While his story presents a more nuanced view of
the content of the songs, his results are consistent with his a priori hypotheses that the values of
Schlager music have changed little over time and that described relationships are almost entirely heterosexual, but also that critical subtexts in the songs have increased.
Wolthier, however, questions some methodological decisions, pointing out that focusing on top-10 songs biases the sample toward DJ-played
Partyschlager, which makes crowd appeal a predominant value over more reflective songs that may evidence greater diversity. He also highlights the complexity of concepts like diversity and representation, underscoring the difficulty of operationalizing
these kinds of multi-faceted concepts.
Extending earlier scholarship on the role of pre-learned patterns in jazz solos,
Nurmi examines forty-two transcriptions of bass solos from Paul Chambers and Ron Carter to estimate the extent to which these solos rely on stock patterns and licks. Nurmi found that these sorts of pre-learned patterns were less prominent in the Chambers
and Carter corpus than found in earlier studies. Moreover, his findings suggest that using overlapping patterns, allowing patterns to begin at any note, and other methodological decisions made by other researchers may have led to overestimation of the role
of these patterns in solos. However,
Norgaard points out that there may be significant differences in strategies between bass solos and other instruments. Further, he argues that short melodic patterns are indeed important components of many musicians’ solo strategies.
Finally, in a significant contribution for Baroque corpus researchers,
Roux, Giraud, and Levé present a data report detailing their new corpus of all 38 Corelli trio sonata slow movements in the
Sonate da chiesa Opp. 1 and 8. With over 7,000 annotations pertaining to musical elements such as texture, thematic and imitation patterns, and rhythmic density, this corpus provides new opportunities to explore under-theorized and under-researched elements
of musical style.
Sincerely,
Joshua Albrecht
Niels Chr. Hansen
Editors, Empirical Musicology Review
Joshua Albrecht, PhD
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
95 East Burlington Street, Iowa City, Iowa 52242
uiowa.edu