The new book “Emotion and Aesthetic Experience During the Performance Act: Explorations on the Making of Multipart Music”, edited by Ardian Ahmedaja and Ignazio Macchiarella, is published by the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music in collaboration with MUSICA BALTICA and the University of Cagliary (Italy).
This newest publication of the Study Group on Multipart Music within the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD) is the result of presentations and discussions during the symposium, which took place at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in September 2019, and the following double-blind peer review process.
The performance act allows us to discern emotion and aesthetic experience in the most intensive moment of the music-making process. In multipart music practices, this happens through the coordination of individual ways of music making within a group. During this process social relationships are also performed. This focus forms the main contribution of this book in a cross-disciplinary discourse to the topic.
The contributions included in this book are grouped in three sections. The first section is dedicated to making multipart music as a social construction. At the centre of Zoe Dionyssio’s contribution is a specific multipart singing tradition in the village of Kato Garounas on the island of Corfu in Greece. Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė approaches the female singing tradition in the village of Nibragalys. Chia-Yin Hung basis her research on the analysis of sound recordings realized over fifty-five years ago among the Taiwanese Amis in the village of Ciwkangan. Stefan Hackl’s contribution is dedicated to the tradition of popular dance performances in early 19th- century Viennese guitar music. The second section looks at music making in migratory contexts. Fulvia Caruso discusses issues about people in resettlement situations enacting the music culture they have grown up with, especially in terms of its link with memory, affections, religious rites, and as a place to express the rights to perform their beliefs in their new environment in the town of Cremona, Italy. Jasmina Talam analyses questions of longing for the homeland and the role of music in the shaping of national identity exemplified the activities of an ensemble of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina living in Sweden. In the third section, Thomas Hochradner explores adaptations and modifications in publications and performances of the Christmas carol “Silent Night” and its spread from Oberndorf in Salzburg, Austria, in 1818 to very diverse musical and social settings all around the world in the present day.
Table of Contents – here.
The book can be ordered at musicabaltica.com.
Ahmedaja, Ardian and Ignazio Macchiarella. Eds. 2023. Emotion and Aesthetic Experience During the Performance Act: Explorations on the Making of Multipart Music. A publication of the University of Cagliari and the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. Riga: Musica Baltica, 152 pages, 70 figures, 7 audiovisuals (QR codes), list of audiovisual examples, notes on contributors, index. ISBN 978-9984-588-71-1 (hardcover).
