the practice of ornamentation in the multipart vocal music of southern sardinia. a ‘bifocal’...

7/27/2019 The practice of ornamentation in the multipart vocal music of Southern Sardinia. A bifocal perspective in ethnom

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Multipart Musics in Sardinia

The practice of ornamentation in the multipart vocal music of

Southern Sardinia.

A bifocal perspective in ethnomusicological analysis

Paolo Bravi


2/25468 MULTIPART MUSIC:A SPECIFIC MODE OF MUSICAL THINKING, EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR AND SOUND


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Introduction. A short descriptive survey on the a mutetus (multipart) singing

poetry

Multipart vocal music has a primary role in Sardinian oral traditions. However, until

recently, vocal polyphony was believed a characteristic of musical styles spread onlyin the northern part of the island (like the four-part a tenoresinging and the broth-

erhoods holy polyphony, see Lortat-Jacob 1996; Lutzu 2003; Macchiarella 2009),while the traditions of the southern part were neglected or ignored in musicologi-cal publications. In recent years, the traditions ofa mutetusand a versusextemporary

singing poetry, in the Sardinian-campidanese language (i.e. the variety of Sardinianin use in Southern Sardinia) have gained attention and a number of publicationsof various kinds have been dedicated to the subject (Zedda 2008; Mossa - Trentini

2009; Bravi 2010).The a mutetusimprovised poetry is characterised by an extraordinary metrical com-

plexity and a peculiar way of setting up the contest between the improvising poets(cantadoris). Observed from the point of view of the acoustic realization of thepoetry in the performance, the a mutetuspoetry can be seen and described follow-ing the taxonomy proposed in (Arom et al. 2005) and focusing on the polyphonicsections of the a mutetussinging as a drone music, performed by more than oneperson, with a simple and non-continuous drone, with parts of tuilage (overlap-ping) between the voice of the soloist and those of the bi-vocal accompanimentchoir (called bsciu e contra), and with parts of counterpoint between the soloist andthe voices of the choir, or following the taxonomy proposed in Agamennone -Facci - Giannattasio 1996 and focusing primarily on the relation between the solo

part and accompaniment it can be considered as a form of melody with vocalaccompaniment.1

Figure 1 provides a graphical representation of the basic structure of the a mutetusinging style. Every section of the singing of the mutetucan be divided for the

sake of a synthetic description into two main parts with a short intermediatesection, indicated in the gure by three rounded rectangles. In the rst part, theimproviser sings without accompaniment a different number of lines (usually 8,

9 or 10 in the rst section of the mutetu, called sterrina; 3 lines in the following sec-

tions, called torradas). At the end of the monodic part, the improvisers melodicprole reaches the tonal centre in the tonus nalisand there is a short tuilagebetween

the voice of the soloist and the two voices of the accompanying choir, with thehigher voice of the choir (the contra) usually preceding the entrance of the lower

voice (the bsciu) by a small fraction of a second, respectively in unison with thetonus nalisof the poet and one octave lower than it. The last part is polyphonic:

1 Although the structure of the a mutetus singing cannot be recognized in the four exemplar

types of melody with vocal accompaniment listed in the taxonomic table presented in Aga -

mennone - Facci - Giannattasio 1996: pp. 245-246.



the bsciu, with a guttural emission of voice2, sings a low note with a stable pitch(drone) on a slightly changing vocalic sound; the contramakes a variable melodicmovement which always ends on a tone one fth higher than the bsciu, usingnonsense syllables; the poet usually, but not every time (the optional presence of

the poets voice in this polyphonic section is indicated in Figure 1 by a broken linedividing the choir and the soloist) sings a line which again has the tonal centreas tonus nalis.

The essential description of the main structure of the a mutetusinging presentedhere focuses on the musical activity performed in the poetical duels (cantadas) interms of its textural organisation. However, singing in this fashion is clearly far

more than this. Grasping it in depth means looking at it not only as an asepticacoustic realization, a pure combination of melodic lines, a disembodied productof abstract musical structures, but even as a particular musical behavior, a social act

whose aim is accomplished by means of the combined actions of three perform-

ers, each of whom expresses an intentionally distinct and coordinate participa-tion in a collective musical production, exhibiting a specic sound identity and

specic relationships and hierarchies (Macchiarella, this volume pag. 11), as well as

particular personal relations in their (extra-musical) lives. In the case of the contrasinger Agostino Valdes, who has had a central role in this research, his relationship

with the bsciusinger Gianni Cogoni has been almost life-long as an accompany-

ing choir in the poetical duels in Southern Sardinia, they have been among the mostappreciated and requested duos for decades and overcomes the scope of their

musical activity Agostino and Gianni are not just friends, butgopais, since they are

linked by a compragerelationship.

2 The vocal style of the bsciu is analogous to that of the bassu in a tenore singing. An analysis

of this style is in Henrich - Lortat-Jacob - Castellengo - Bailly - Pelorson 2004.

Figure 1. Schematic graphical representation of the basic musical structure of the a mutetus singing style.


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Object and method

In the present study, one of the musicological features of the accompaniment hasbeen taken into consideration, i.e. the melodic variation of the contrain the multi-part sections of the a mutetussinging. The topic has been analysed by putting twoheuristic procedures in connection, i.e. (i) interviewing Agostino Valdes, one ofthe most requested and expert contrasingers, and eliciting him to give information

about the conception and practice of his singing style3 and (ii) carrying on formal

and statistical analysis on a particular performance in which Agostino Valdes wasinvolved along with his constant partner Giovanni Cogoni.

The performance under consideration is the a mutetus poetical duel which tookplace in Assemini, a village in the neighbourhood of Cagliari (Southern Sardinia),on 28 June 2006, during the festival in honour of Saint Peter, with the cantadoris

3 The interview was made by the author in Quartu S. Elena (CA), on 7 June 2010. All quotations

reported below identied with the acronym AV ([A]gostino [V]aldes) have been extracted from

that interview. I am very grateful to Agostino for his kindness and willingness to collaborate in

the present research, as well as to my friend and colleague Marco Lutzu for his helpful sug-

gestions, insightful critical remarks and amusing tongue-in-cheek comments on the research

project.

Figure 2. The typical setting of the cantada a mutetus longus, with the bsciu and contra standing on

the left side of the improvising poet (cantadori). From the left in the photo: Eliseo Vargiu (cantadori),

Giovanni Cogoni (bsciu) and Agostino Valdes (contra) during the cantada held for the Festival of

Santa Maria in Quartu S. Elena on 5 September 2009. During the poets rst and last turns, the two

members of the accompanying choir sing standing up, whereas for the rest of the poetical duel they sing

remaining seated.



(extemporary poets) Ireneo Porceddu, Marco Melis, Antonello Orr and RobertoZuncheddu. Firstly, a manual transcription of the basic musical and phonetic char-acteristics4 of each contraintervention was accomplished by means of Praatsoft-

ware (Boersma - Weenink 2010) see Figure 3. Secondly, the data were collectedand analysed by means of Rsoftware (RTDC 2009).

The theoretical foundation of the adopted method is found in Clifford Geertzs

pages where the anthropologist, overtaking usual approaches to anthropologi-cal analysis dened in terms of inside/outside or phenomenological/objectivist

or emic/etic dichotomies, borrows the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohuts distinctionbetween experience-nearand experience-distantconcepts5 and maintains that anthro-pologically-oriented analysis should grasp concepts which, for other people, are

experience-near, [and] do so well enough to place them in an illuminating connec-

tion with those experience-distant concepts that theorists have fashioned (Geertz1974: p. 29). In the present case, the latter types of concepts which were used in the

analysis come both from the theoretical apparatus of traditional musicology and

4 The musical transcription was carried out in a gured form (Agamennone - Facci - Giannat -

tasio - Giuriati 1991: pp. 260-263); the phonetic transcription was made based on the criteria

indicated in Macha - Skarnitzl 2009.

5 An experience-near concept is, roughly, one which an individual a patient, a subject, in our

case an informant might himself naturally and effortlessly use to dene what he or his fel-

lows see, feel, think, imagine, and so on, and which he would readily understand when similarly

applied by others. An experience-distant concept is one which various types of specialists an

analyst, an experimenter, an ethnographer, even a priest or an ideologist employ to forward

their scientic, philosophical, or practical aims (Geertz 1974: p. 28).

Figure 3. Example of Praat textgrid with manual annotation of the contra intervention.


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from other elds of scientic inquiry based on formal procedures and a quantita-

tive approach6.

Discussion

In the following pages, the analysis will follow the same pattern in different pas-

sages. First, a statement concerning aspects of the contrapractice and aesthetics

extracted from the interview with Agostino Valdes is quoted; then the issue isexamined through a formal approach, taking the elected performance as the object

of various types of quantitative analysis. The concept offrorgiu i.e. embellish-

ment, musical variation will be the core of the discussion, the key issue aroundwhich a number of aspects concerning the musical practice of the accompaniment

will be examined.

a) Types, similarity and evolution

Po no essi ripetitiva, sa contra circat de variai. Narendi variai, nau afrorigiai, cio si afro-

rgiat su chi est contra de acumpangiamentu. Ecu sa variabilidadi de sa contra: afrorigiai sa

contra po no essi monotona e ripetitiva.

(tr.: the contraseeks variation in order to avoid repeating himself. To vary means to adorn

[afrorigiai: add grace-notes, embellishments]. Contravariability comes from these embellish-

ments made to avoid monotony and repetitiveness) (AV).

Despite the apparent regularity of the contra interventions in the cantadas, twelvedifferent melodic types are present in the poetical duel examined. Although, the

twelve types show evident similarities: as Agostino says, they are the outcome of aprocess of progressive embellishment (afrorigiamentu) which aims at giving varietyto the accompaniment.

A common way of analysing music similarities and processes of variation in musicis the so-called paradigmatic method (Briloiu 1982; Ruwet 1972), the heuristicprocedure (and/or graphical outcome) of which is a transcription where the ele-

ments belonging to the same paradigmatic class, are placed in the same verticalposition allowing for easier comparison and to effectively display the overall mu-

sical structure. In recent times, several methods for measuring musical similarityhave been developed, based on a variety of formal criteria and approaches (seeHofmann - Engl 2002; Aloupis 2003). In the present case, a measure based on the

6 The idea that this twofold or, as pointed out in the title, bifocal approach in the hereby

proposed ethnomusicological analysis is inspired by Geertzs anthropological perspective, has

to be taken within the limits of the specic point declared here. In order to avoid any possible

miscomprehension and running the risk of some epistemological confusion, I believe it oppor-

tune to clarify that this does not mean sharing the theoretical basis and adopting the method-

ological approach of Geertzs work in toto.



edit-distance(also known as Levenshtein distance after its inventor) has been usedin order to quantify the extent of similarity between all pairs of melodic proles(see Table 1)7.

Using Agostinos own terms (see infra, par. 3.c), afrorigiai sa contra [to embellish

the contra] is a matter offantasia[inventiveness]. Can we say something more orsomething different about the musical process involved in this creative activity? Inorder to get an insight into the process of afrorigiamentu, we can examine the simi-

larities between the twelve types of melodic prole. A formal way of identifyinga possible path in the process of afrorigiamentuis to seek the shortest way to passfrom one melodic type to another one. To that end, a minimum spanning tree 8

based on the distance matrix was rst calculated. The identied tree can be musi-cally interpreted in terms of the theory of melody put forward in Baroni - Dal-

monte - Jacoboni 1999 as a progressive evolution of the nuclear scale by means

7 As outlined in Grachten - Arcos - Lopez de Mantaras 2004: p. 211, the edit-distance between

two sequences is dened as the minimum total cost of transforming one sequence (the source

sequence) into the other (the target sequence), given a set of allowed edit operations and a cost

function that denes the cost of each edit operation. The most common set of edit operations

contains insertion, deletion, and replacement. Insertion is the operation of adding an element

at some point in the target sequence; deletion refers to the removal of an element from the

source sequence; replacement is the substitution of an element from the target sequence for

an element of the source sequence.

8 For a technical denition and a historical survey on the development related to the research

regarding the minimum spanning trees, see Nesetril - Milkova - Neset 2001. Calculations and

graphs were accomplished by means of the R packageApe (Paradis - Claude - Strimmer 2004).

Table 1. Distance matrix of the melodic proles measured through the edit-distance method.


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of various types of melodic gures, like skip gures, inversion gures, voltas, pass-

ing tones (see Figure 4).

b) Memorized / improvised types and distribution

Tui candu ti setzis ingunis, a parti cussas duas o tres chi fais poita ca ddas as memorizadas,

ma totus is altras benint calincuna bella - poita ndi bessit de custus afrorigiamentus ca no

funt mancu totu perfetus, eh! - ddu provas po sa prima borta e su cumpngiu tuu ti narat:

ah, bellu! torraddu a fai!, poi, mancai abarras duus o tres girus chi no ddu fais e ti ddu sca-

rescis, no tarregodas prus su passgiu. E intzandus ndinventas unaltru. Custu est afrorigiai.

Poita ca afrorigiai sempri in su prpiu modu est una cosa chi po mei, chi seu bintixincannus

fendi sa contra, est una cosa chi no depit essi

(tr.: When you are sitting there, apart from the two or three embellishments which are

memorized, all the other ones are improvised. Among those which are improvised, some

turn out to be good, some are not so perfect ... Sometimes, you try out an embellishmentfor the rst time and your colleague [the bsciu] tells you: Ah, beautiful! do it again. Later,

perhaps you dont repeat that embellishment for two or three turns, and so you forget the

melody [passgiu]. Then, you improvise a different embellishment. This is afrorigiai[to embel-

lish]. As a singer who has been acting as contrafor 25 years, I think embellishing always the

same way should be avoided) (AV).

The number of occurrences of the twelve melodic types is unequal. As Figure 5shows, some melodic types have a heavy presence during the course of the perfor-mance, and consequently may be assumed to be memorized, others are seldom or

Figure 4. On the left: the minimum spanning tree for the graph based on the distances between eachpair of melodic types. On the right: the process of afrorigiamentu seen as the evolution, via progressive

additions of melodic gures, of an original nuclear scale.



even used just once (they are indicated as hapax[legomena] in the barplot), and aresupposedly improvised.In a different perspective, we can incidentally observe that the melodic type distri-

bution meets with some approximation the prediction of Zipf s law concerningthe frequency of words in corpora of natural languages (Figure 6)9. However, it isobvious that no generalization on this topic is possible at present, and that it could

be useful to compare this distribution with other ones relevant to other contraperformances.

9 According to Zipfs law (Zipf 1935), in any corpus of natural languages the frequency of any

word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency, that is by taking the natural logarithm

of the rank and of the frequency of the words and plotting the data, they should approximately t

a straight line. Zipf distributions have been found in several other areas of social behaviour for

example, recent ndings regard web catching strategies (Adamic - Huberman 2002) as well as

other types of phenomena as, for example, city sizes (Soo 2005).

Figure 5. Number of occurrences of the melodic types. Highlighted, the three hapaxes (melodic types

attested once in the performance) and the three most common types, which can be supposed to be

memorized.


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c) Melodic creativity and richness

Su frorgiu de sa contra dipendit sempri de sa fantasia de su chi fait sa contra. Calincunu fro-rgiu ncest chi ddu feus abituali, poita benit beni, sonat beni, e allora ddu feus abituali. O si-

nunca duranti sa cantada, sa fantasia de su chi fait sa contra ddu portat a variai custu frorgiu.

[] Sa magior parti chi si vriat su frorgiu est prpiu po no essi ne monotona ne ripetitiva

(tr.: Thefrorgiu[embellishment] of the contraalways depends on the contrasfantasia[inven-

tive power]. Some embellishments are common, because they sound good, so the contra

often repeats them. In other cases, during the poetical duel, thefantasiaof the contraenforces

him to vary these embellishments. In most cases, the contravaries the embellishments in

order to be neither monotone nor repetitive) (AV).

This is Agostinos perspective on the variation offrorgiuspivots on the concept offantasia[inventive power]. Some further considerations may be made by means ofthe observation of the distribution of the melodic types over the course of the per-

formance. The plot in Figure 7 shows the growth curves of each melodic type inthe performance. The curves generally rise quite regularly, but there are two notice-able exceptions regarding the melodic types [87675] and [8678987678765]. In these

cases, two breakpoints appear respectively in the middle and in the nal part,where a steeper slope of the curves indicates a more frequent use of the type withrespect to the rest of the performance. Perhaps, borrowing (and of course ercely

adapting) the well-known denitions used by art critics to split up and dene Pablo

Figure 6. Rank / Frequency plot (log scales) of the melodic types distribution (regression line added).



Picassos artistic path, we could make use of these kinds of stylistic phases onthe contras part occurring during the performance to dene the central part of thecantadaas the 87675 period and the nal part as the 8678987678765 period.In order to get an insight into this process, it is also useful to consider the growth

curve of the (melodic) vocabulary over the course of the performance. In thiscase, we can borrow the distinction between tokens(in the present case, the numberof contrainterventions) and types(in the present case, the number of melodic types)

of computational linguistics to see how Agostinosfantasiaprogressively increasesthe melodic variety during the performance (Figure 8). The appearance of unheardmelodic types follows a decreasing trend but continues up to the nal part of thecantada. In other terms, the contras creative process seems to be open at least toa certain extent all through the cantada.

Figure 7. Growth lines (smoothed) of the melodic types in the performance. In black, the lines regarding the[87675] and the [8678987678765] types, with broken-lined rectangles highlighting their steeper slope in

the middle and in the nal part of the cantada respectively.


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d) Durational issues

Candu su mutetu est afrorigiau tendit a essiri legermenti prus longu. Poita ca tui fais sa-

frorigiamentu, est craru ca ti richiedit unu pagheddu prus de atu, unu pagheddu prus de

allunghiai su chi est contra. No est meda, perou est legermenti prus longa

(tr.: When the mutetuis embellished, it tends to be a little (not much) longer. The embellish-

ment clearly requires some more breath, some lengthening of the contraintervention) (AV).

Agostinos statement is conrmed by the analysis of the duration of the contrainterventions in the performance. The left panel of Figure 9 shows that there is a

general trend towards the lengthening of the contraintervention in correspondenceto an increase in the complexity of the melodic proles (measured by the number

Figure 8. Growth of the melodic vocabolary over the course of the performance.

Figure 9. On the left: distribution of the duration of the contra interventions as the number of

notes of the melodic type (regression line added). On the right: mean and standard deviation ( 1

SD) for the starting, intermediate and end tones of the contra interventions.



of notes which form them), with the exception of the case of the melodic types

formed by 5 notes. As can be seen from the right panel in Figure 9, the biggest partof the variance in the duration of the contrainterventions is related to the centralsection of the contrainterventions, i. e the one where thefrorgiumay take place.

Safrorgiu ddu feus in totu sa gara, ma normalmenti ddu feus in is primus tres peis, poitaca is primus tres peis funt sterrina e cubertantza. Dopu sascurtanti puru, su mutetu no

ddascurtat prus poita at intndiu sa sterrina e sa cubertantza

(tr.: We make embellishments throughout the poetical contest, but usually we make it in the

rst three sections (peis), because these are sterrinaand cubertantza. Later, the listener does not

listen to the mutetuany longer, since he has already listened to the sterrinaand the cubertantza)

(AV).

As has been previously said, a coarse-grained measure of the complexity of themelodic types, i.e. of the extent of their afrorigiamentu, can be obtained via the sum

Figure 10. Sunower plot indicating the distribution of melodic types by their position in the sections of

the mutetu.


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of the number of notes of which they are made up. The sunower plot10 in Figure10 shows that the complexity of the melodic types used in the interventions at the

end of the rst three parts of the mutetu(i.e. the sterrinaand the rst two torradas;indicated as position 1-2-3, on the X-axis of the plot) is generally higher than theone of the following interventions (position 4 onwards) . The difference between

the two groups, tested by means of the Wilcoxon rank sum test (with continuitycorrection), is statistically signicant (W=12179, p < .001).Given the correlation between number of notes and duration of the intervention,

we can also face this issue from the temporal perspective. In this case, we can seethat the duration of the contrainterventions has a general trend towards the short-ening within each mutetufor all four poets (Figure 11).

e) Interaction with the poets

Si issu [su cantadori] fait su mutetu e no fait sa torrada, nosu safrorigiamentu ddu feus a su

prpiu, antzis candu issu no fait sa torrada, safrorigiamentu benit intndiu de prus, mentriinveci candu issu fait sa torrada, medas bortas metadi de safrorigiamentu benit casi tupau

de su chi est boxi sua; mentri inveci candu issu no fait sa torrada, safrorigiamentu benit

ascurtau de prus

(tr.: When the poet is singing the mutetuand doesnt sing the prolectic line (torrada), we make

the embellishment all the same; rather, when the poet sings the prolectic line, the contras

10 A sunower plot is a plot where [m]ultiple points are plotted as sunowers with multiple

leaves (petals) such that overplotting is visualized instead of accidental and invisible (R Docu-

mentation, in RTDC, 2009).

Figure 11. Duration of the contra interventions by position in the mutetu. Each plot and relevant trend line

regards one of the four poets (here indicated as C1,C2,C3,C4).



embellishment is overshadowed by the poets voice, while when the poet doesnt sing it, the

contras embellishment is more hearable) (AV).

In most cases, during the contrainterventions the poet sings a line which anticipates

the rst line of the following section (prolectic line). Since the number of cases inwhich this does not happen are very few in the examined performance 11 out of294 (4%) Agostinos assertion cannot be adequately tested here. In these eleven

cases, the preferred melodic type is [8765], which occurs in 8 cases, but we also notethe presence of the most complex type [8678987678765], formed by 13 notes, oc-curring in this context 2 out of 10 times (perhaps a clue in the direction indicated

by Agostino) see Table 2.

Figure 12. Correspondence plot based on the contingency table in Table 3. A rectangle shows the

off-centered position of the melodic type [87675] and of the poet C2 in Factor 1.

Table 2. Number of occurrences of melodic types by number of notes and presence/absence of the prolectic line.


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Calincunu afrorigiamentu podit sutzedit de ddu fai cun d-unu cantadori chi ti ispirat []

Poita nci funt cantadoris chi ti faint mutetus ecelsus, nci funt cantadoris chi ti faint su mu -

tetu giustu po fai su mutetu e basta. O su timbru de sa boxi de su cantadori ti permitit de

afrorigiai de prus. Ecu chi sutzedit chi cun d-unu cantadori podis afrorigiai prus de unaltru

(tr.: Some embellishments may be made with an improviser who inspires you [] because

there are some improvisers who make wonderful mutetusand other ones who make the mutetu

just because they have to do it. Otherwise, it is the timbre of the voice of the improviser that

permits you to make more embellishments. So, it happens that with one improviser you can

embellish more than with another one) (AV).

The distribution of the melodic types appears quite balanced with respect to thefour poets. One exception could be, in this case, the distribution of the melodic

type [87675], which is more common for one poet than for the others (see Table3 value 17 in italics and the correspondence analysis11 two-dimensional plotin Figure 12 the rectangle highlights the position of the melodic type [87675]

and the one of the poet identied as C2, clearly off-centred in the X-axis in thecorrespondence map, relevant to the rst factor, which accounts for 56% of thevariance). For that matter, the statistical test used to evaluate the hypothesis that

the distribution of the melodic types is not random for the four poets does notreach despite the presence of this anomalous value the signicance level (2 =46.47, df = 33, p = 0.06).

11 Correspondence analysis is a descriptive/exploratory technique which allows the structure

of categorical variables included in a table to be explored (see Baayen 2008: pp. 139-146).

Table 3. Number of occurrences of the twelve melodic types per poet (in italics the

anomalous value relevant to the type [87675] for the poet identied as C2).



Medas bortas capitat, candu su cantadori fait unu mutetu bellu, chi ti snniat, ti pigat, una

borta chi custu mutetu ddu intendis ca est tropu bellu, intzandus ddu afrorigias poita su

mutetu puru candu no est meda bellu est monotonu, inveci candu corpiscit e ti pigat, intzan-

dus scadenas sa fantasia e afrorigias custu mutetu.(tr.: Sometimes you are struck by the beauty of the poetry while hearing the poet singing

his mutetu. You think to yourself: What a beautiful mutetu!, and this triggers yourfantasia

[inventiveness], so you add embellishments) (AV).

An attempt to give some kind of empirical verication of this observation wasmade by asking Agostino during a meeting subsequent to that of the interview

to give two separated scores to the sterrinas and cobertantzas of each mutetu

Figure 13. Relation between the level of afrorigiamentu (measured in terms of number of notes) and

evaluation of the mutetus (rated on a scale from 1 to 10). The scores relevant to the sterrinas and the

cobertantzas (rst two torradas) are set apart (left and right panel respectively). Regression lines are

added to each plot.


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(transcribed as verbal text) of the cantada12. Of course, this type of analytic aposteriorievaluation of the quality of the mutetusis weakly comparable to the estheticemotion that could be felt in the midst of the performance. Agostino himself

highlighted the relevance of the impact that the view of the faces of the listenersreacting to the delivery of the improvised mutetus always has on his emotional im-pression during the cantada. That being stated and considered, it can nevertheless be

observed that some clues in this direction are shown by the two plots in Figure 13,despite the presence of many contradicting data. The graphs show the relationshipbetween the level of afrorigiamentu(measured, as mentioned above, via the numberof notes of the contrainterventions) and the evaluation of the poetical quality ofthe mutetus(rated on a scale from 1 to 10 by the contrasinger). The regression lines

added to the plots suggest that a general trend in this direction more evident inthe case of the cobertantzas is present, despite a large amount of variation in the

data.

Conclusions and methodological notes

The statements of Agostino Valdes and the analysis of the cantadain which he per-formed together with his peer Giovanni Cogoni have shown that the practice ofthe accompaniment of extemporary poetry at least, as it is intended and practiced

by Agostino and Giovanni is currently ruled by some basic principles, which I willtry to condense and summarise around four key words:

(i) variability: variation is a necessary and qualifying point for the contra

singing;(ii) embellishment: variation is obtained through a progressive adding of

frorgius, i.e. melodic gures such as skips, voltas, passing tones etc.to a basic model;

(iii) improvisation: while some variations are common and repeatedly used,

others are improvised and seldom appear or are unique in the poeti-

cal duel;(iv) empathy and interplay: besides the essential interplay between the bsciu

singer and the contrasinger, there is a subtler interaction between theaccompanying choir and the poet, based both on the characteristics

of his singing and on the quality of the poetry that he is improvising.In this nal chapter, I will also try to subject the bifocal method adopted in thispaper to a preliminary self-review - thereby fatally biased - by touching on somegeneral issues concerning its scope and by laying bare the extent and the limitations

of its applicability. From this self-critical viewpoint, the problem which presents it-

self as more challenging is the fact that a great deal of Agostinos knowledge, even

12 The topic and the poetical style of the two parts of the mutetu -sterrina and cobertantza -

are strictly distinct (Bravi 2010), so it is worthwhile getting separate scores for each of them.



Figure 14 and Figure 15. Giovanni Cogoni and Agostino Valdes (respectively on the left and on the

right in both photographs) sing as bsciu and contra in two different cantadas. Above S. Basilio Festi-

val, Maracalagonis, 1 September 2009; Below: S. Maria festival, Quartu S. E., 5 September 2009.


21/25 487

if made explicit and thus changed into information (opinions, accounts, theories,

descriptions, feelings, judgements, self-representations, etc.) seems hard, ill-advisedor completely impossible to be treated with a formal and quantitative approach, as

has constantly been the case throughout the present paper. By way of an example,is there any sophisticated technique to reasonably and reliably measure, evaluate orinvestigate the degree of tness, highlighted by Agostino as a crucial point for

the quality of the performance (see the following quotation)?

E poi medas bortas, Paolo, dipendit de sa gana puru, eh! Ca cussu est importanti, eh! Torru

a fai sesempru de su giogadori: candu unu est in forma pigat, scartat, andat e snniat; su

prpiu est in sa contra e su bsciu. Candu ses in forma tarrenescit totu, is cosas chi no as

mai fatu, chi no as mai provau, tarrenescint.

(tr.: In many cases, Paolo, it depends on your will too! This is important! Let me repeat

again the example of the [football] player: when hes t, he dribbles, goes and scores; thesame is for the contraand the bsciu. When youre t, you succeed in doing everything, you

succeed in doing things that you have never done before) (AV).

There are a number of aspects in a performance that seem unlikely to be taken ad-equately into account within a quantitative approach. The couple of images in Fig-ure 14 may help illustrate the point again. The usual equipment for amplifying the

bsciu e contrachoir provides just one microphone for both singers, who move theirmouth closer to the microphone (and to each other) when they are singing. The

photo on the right shows two singers who, despite their engagement in a public

and professional activity, exhibit condence and a positive emotional involvement.Conversely, the presence of two microphones (one for each singer) is uncommonin the cantadastechnical service and, as the facial expressions and the body languagein the photo on the left tell us, the two singers do not seem to be comfortable withthis setting, where they are not even afforded eye contact. In this case, the decision

to capture each voice separately while being clearly understandable as regards thesound control of the event on the part of the sound technician seems to producea strong emotional unease on the part of the two singers, who are used to singing

with their mouths (and heads) in close proximity, almost propping each other up.As Ignazio Macchiarella points out, multipart music offers an extreme emotional

intensity arising from the performative proximity with others i.e. with other in-dividual passions and emotions (this volume pp. 20-21), and here the separationimposed by technical needs has an apparent disruptive effect on the feeling to beactually part of collective entities, the feeling to merge with the others (ibid.)

of the two singers.Can we face this aspect of music making by means of the same approach that wehave adopted so far? Can we come to grips the way we did in the preceding chapter

with this subtle, incorporeal (but actually weighty) matter and all the intangible,while not necessarily hidden and certainly not secondary, aspects related to thepsychological and emotional contents of making (multipart) music?



In this case, formal analysis does not seem to be as useful as different kinds of ap-

proach like those based on dialogue, on the intimacy with the music makers, on theelaboration of personal and collective memories.

The same kind of remarks can be made as for what concerns ideals, desires, aspi-rations as the one expressed by Agostino in the following quotation derivingfrom the fact that in multipart music often not all the performative roles are

considered as being of equal importance (Macchiarella, this volume pag. 13), as iscertainly the case for the bsciuand contraaccompanists, whose status is denitelysubordinated to the one of the poets.

Una cosa chi emu a bolli nai est ca sa contra oi benit considerada unu strumentu po mei

est unu strumentu musicali, chi benit usada de su cantadori cumenti su cantanti de msica

legera usat unu strumentu pianoforte, ghitarra ectera , mentre prima is cantadoris custa

contra no dda teniant in consideratzioni, teniant in consideratzioni sceti su chi cantant issus,sentze cumprendi ca sa belesa de sa contra fait gurai su chi est mutetu insoru. Cio, prus

sa contra est afrorigiada e est bella, prus gurat su mutetu. Candu sa boxi de su cantadori est

scadenti e su mutetu tenit pagu pasta, si sa contra e su bsciu tenint una bella impronta e unu

bellu afrorigiamentu, tendit a gurai su chi est cantadori puru e mutetu puru. Ecu su chi emu

a bolli nai, chi sa contra fessit tenta prus in considerazioni

(tr.: One thing that I would like to say is that today the contrais considered an instrument

In my opinion it is like a musical instrument, that is used by the improviser just as in pop

music, the singer uses an instrument a piano, a guitar etc. , while before the improvisers

didnt take the contrainto proper consideration, since they took into consideration only what

they improvised, not understanding that the beauty of the contraalso permits their mutetutomake a good impression on the listeners. That is, the more the contrais embellished and is

pleasant, the more the mutetuis heightened. When the improvisers voice is shoddy and the

mutetu has a poor content, if the contraand the bsciuhave a good sound and a good embel-

lishment, the improviser and his mutetutend to appear better. This is what I would like to say,

that the contra should be taken into greater consideration) (AV).

These points show that analytical tools and statistics are capable of giving answers

to some musicological issues relevant to performing actions (in this case, the varia-

tion in the contrasinging style), to conrm or to question the validity of some sing-

ers convictions or statements13, to make predictions etc., but seem quite unt, ifleft on their own, to provide deep insights into aspects of the performance which

13 In the elds of anthropology and sociology, a time-honoured and deeply-rooted theoretical

reection has been developed on this topic, which has fostered the onset of a vast literature

and has engendered a considerable terminological and conceptual apparatus, focusing on the

relations between conscious and unconscious phenomena (Boas 1911), attitudes and

actions (LaPiere 1934), jural rules and statistical norms (Leach 1961), models of and

models for (Geertz 1973), operational, representational and explanatory models (Caws

1974), etc.


23/25 489

deal with emotions, subjective evaluations and motivations, to help catch aestheticor social values and to minimise eurocentric legacy.Complementary to this is the fact that there are many musical features which can

be investigated only via a formal approach, and to which no effective theoretical orpractical contribution can be given from ethnography. There are issues and levelsof analysis which cannot realistically be tackled relying upon the knowledge, ex-

perience, awareness and self-consciousness of the musicians, however skilled andwell-seasoned professionals they might be. In these cases, formal analysis must beself-sufcient and cannot walk in tandem with ethnography.

Hence, if we come back to Clifford Geertzs notions of experience-near and expe-

rience-distant concepts, the problem is that the relationship between the two kindsof concept i.e., in more pragmatic terms, between two research practices, with

a different epistemological basis, heuristic techniques, instrumental equipment, re-

quired skills and know-how is not dened once and for all:

Connement to experience-near concepts leaves an ethnographer awash in immediacies as

well as entangled in vernacular. Connement to experience-distant ones leaves him stranded

in abstractions and smothered in jargon. The real question [] is what roles the two kinds

of concepts play in anthropological analysis. To be more exact: How, in each case, should

they be deployed so as to produce an interpretation of the way a people live which is neither

imprisoned within their mental horizons, an ethnography of witch-craft as written by a

witch, nor systematically deaf to the distinctive tonalities of their existence, an ethnography

of witchcraft as written by a geometer?

(Geertz 1974: p. 29)

In conclusion, the advantages of the methodology applied here, born as an attemptto render Geertzs ideas on the nature of anthropological knowledge in the eldof ethnomusicological analysis, can be summarised into three main points, each

supplying answers to typical methodological dilemmas and researchers demands:(i) the capability to overcome the classic great divide between emicand etic

approaches (why should we brutally consider etic and emic as two de-nitely separated, unlinked and unlinkable ways to the knowledge of mu-

sicological facts?);(ii) the offered possibility of by-passing the theoretical bias related to the

belonging of the performers/researchers to one or the other (supposed)

opposite elds (as for my personal case in particular: am I to deliber-

ately misquote the title of a famous Paul Simon song still eticafter allthese years? i.e.: may I consider my point of view on Sardinian genres of

sung poetry as external after a good many years of living in this land andpersistent research in this eld?);

(iii) a way out for the problem of the knowledge of musical systems which

lack any (or have hardly any) kind of theoretical notions (as Udo Willpointed to the question, What if they say nothing? (Will 1998). i.e.: can

we carry on musical analyses doing without, at least to a certain extent,



western concepts and scientic methods, as supporters of pure emicapproaches think?).

Based on my experience, I maintain that carrying out the research in parallel,

connecting, balancing and comparing what we can grasp and learn through ourethnography and what emerges from formal analyses, is a powerful and effectiveway to investigate crucial points of musical performances, styles and systems, to

bring out aspects of the musical structure which might be likely to pass unnoticedin research relying on a one-sided approach, and to explore the relations of the mu-

sical structures with other systems and with the context to which they are bound.


25/25

The practice of ornamentation in the multipart vocal music of Southern Sardinia.

A bifocal perspective in ethnomusicological analysis.

Paolo Bravi

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