Varia

Vittore Carpaccio - Visione di Sant Agostino

Vittore Carpaccio - Visione di Sant Agostino
Victor I. Stoichita was writing a paper where he investigated the multi-sensoriality in Carpaccio's painting. His paper was published in German and English as "Über einige telepathische Dispositive. Vittore Carpaccios Gemäldezyklus in der Scuola degli Schiavoni in Venedig / On Several Telepathic Dispositifs. Vittore Carpaccios Cycle of Paintings in the Scuola degli Schiavoni in Venice", Berlin/München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2016.

The painting shows St Augustine in his study (1507). In the bottom right corner of the painting are two musical notations. These had been deciphered by Molmenti & Ludwig at the begining of the 20th century in their book The life and works of Vittorio Carpaccio. Fifty years later, Lowinsky had proposed a musicological analysis of the two pieces in an article published by the Art Bulletin. I did the following experiment to try and help Victor I. and his audience hear what the music could have sounded like.

Spectogram of Dag Kargiraa singing

Spectogram of Dag Kargiraa singing
These films show spectograms of various recordings. Spectograms are representations of sound on three axis:

- Time is on the horizontal axis
- Frequency is on the vertical axis
- Loudness is represented by line color and thickness

In effect, spectograms show the spectral composition of the sound and its evolution in time.

One can read various things on a spectogram, like the precise frequency of a sound, or the time it takes for a speaker to utter a given syllable. Spectograms are also useful to help untrained listeners "hear" specific sonic features and stay focused on them. Some people for exampe have trouble hearing the tunes produced with overtone singing. In my experience, spectograms would help them to distinguish the melodic linem, especially in techniques such as Dag Kargiraa.

The films are screen recordigns of Sonic Visualizer displaying the spectrograms (sonic visualizer can also export still images but of course you loose the synchro with the sound). I supply the settings of the analysis in case you want to reproduce it yourself and tweak it further. 

Couverture du livre

Couverture du livre
Cours donné à l'Université Paris-X, 2e semestre de l'année 2007, dans le cadre du module "Qu'est-ce que l'ethnomusicologie?" (L2 SSA), sur:

Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment. Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990 (1982 pour la 1reéd.).

Ci-dessous, des notes et quelques images. Les images proviennent de l'ouvrage. Les enregistrements sont de S. Feld et figurent sur le disque Bosavi: Rainforest Music From Papua New Guinea, Smithonian Folkways,000059RTY.

Cours donné à l'Université Paris-X, 2e semestre de l'année 2007, dans le cadre du module "Qu'est-ce que l'ethnomusicologie?" (L2 SSA). 

Cours donné à l'Université Paris-X, 2e semestre de l'année 2007, dans le cadre du module "Qu'est-ce que l'ethnomusicologie?" (L2 SSA), sur:

J.-J. Nattiez. Musicologie générale et sémiologie, Christian Bourgois Editeur, 1987.

(Ci-dessous, des notes et quelques images mais sans les sons accompagnant le cours)

Cours donné à l'Université Paris-X, 2e semestre de l'année 2007, dans le cadre du module "Qu'est-ce que l'ethnomusicologie?" (L2 SSA), sur:

G. Rouget. La musique et la transe. Esquisse d'une théorie générale des relations de la musique et de la possession. Paris: Gallimard, (1990 [1re éd. 1980]).

(Texte seul, sans les images ni les sons du cours.)

Cours donné à l'Université Paris-X, 2e semestre de l'année 2007, dans le cadre du module "Qu'est-ce que l'ethnomusicologie?" (L2 SSA), sur:

J. Blacking, How musical is man ?, University of Washington Press, 1973.

A été publié en français sous le titre Le sens musical, aux Éditions de Minuit. La traduction est cependant médiocre.

(Ci-dessous, notes et quelques images, mais sans les sons accompagnant le cours)