Launeddas – Il suono organizzato

The harmonic context in the music for launeddas
The insertions of Glareanus – The Renaissance
(.pdf, 101 kb)

In the analytic introspections of the work performed on the Ballu by Efisio Melis (“Chiavi di Lettura del Repertorio Tradizionale” – Edizioni “Sa Liunedda”), the attention was given on the chance that the overall scale emerged by the mixture of all the nine typologies of cuntzertus used in the folkloric music (read also La Launeddas delle Launeddas vol. III – Edizioni C.T.E.) and the scale being subjected to the single cuntzertus must respond to the major typology, thus discarding the modal option according to the different hierarchies, emerged by the analysis, regarding the heights which clearly move toward a tonal centre.
A successive contextualization of the “launeddas system” compares the material with the Renaissance musical praxis, thus putting the eventual genesis at about the middle of the sixtieth century a. D.

Right click on the picture and then on "save target as..." for downloading the table (.jpg, 1,07 Mb)

Launeddas – Il suono organizzato

Analysis of music for launeddas
Formal principles
(.pdf, 62 kb)

During the latest decade the research of ethno-musicological action performed on the field with particular attention to the musical phenomenon of launeddas is leading to an introspection of the problem with totally innovative ways, which make use, and are at the same time supported by the informatics and, in general, by an approach which privileges an action which is mostly founded on scientific and rational elements.
Dwelling upon the classification of the repertoire for launeddas, developed by means of tools which often miss a careful systematic analysis, appears to be a less exhaustive action if not diffused to the realization of exegetic apparatuses which allow displaying the hidden peculiarities of the musical fact, specificities which connote so deeply the music for launeddas.
The analysis of the form in music, when form is intended in its meaning which is nearest to the noun, represents not only the pleonastic act, because the forms of Sardinian music are well-known and already underwent a process of sedimentation by the scholars of ‘900, but it must proceed according to unusual canons to the more traditionalist musicological environment.
It is therefore indispensable to make stable the concept of form and clarify which are the actions to perform for its definition, in relation to the musical environment of launeddas.
A possible and practicable meaning is the one of tools ordering the composition process created by the author.
Form also intended as metastructure: subject directly connected to the known form and from which it take the information for its existence.
The fundamental principle of the concept of metastructure put the creative act in the centre of the exegetic interest.
The container, the form in which the author realizes their metastructures, in perfect symbiosis with the form, is the receptacle of mutable, conscious or unconscious composition acts.

Launeddas – Il suono organizzato

Polyfunctional Analysis of the music for launeddas
Phase 1 - The application
(.pdf, 72 kb)

The approach to the analysis of music for launeddas can appear to be a procedure relatively simple and can trigger exegetic mechanisms which appear easily practicable to an outsider, or to a simple estimator; for sure it cannot result arduous if you take into account the unavoidable social and folkloristic implications in which the environment of launeddas is so indissolubly inserted.
You can be overpresumptuous and by approaching to the sound event with levity for analysing it or, more simply, for enjoying its indisputable beauty and fascination, it can lead the traveller to an experience which is satisfying, but often surrounded by an inexplicable mystery which is nourished by the players themselves.
The schematization of forms can be an easy work as well and the researchers from the past, who for the first time ventured on this field, surely offered suggestive interpretations of the musical phenomenon, and not only, by addressing their study toward those players who represented the aurora and at the same time the twilight of launeddas musical culture in Sardinia.
The academic criterion of the analytic action connoted the hermeneutics of what concerns the musical instrument, the scales and its more representative expression forms (among which, perhaps, su ballu is the one which, thanks to its contents and realising technique, represents the perfect union), this appears to be an objective fact.
The aesthesic prospective, the one of the listener, also guaranteed a starting point which is favourable and adaptable for the first attempts of cataloguing and analysis of the musical forms that are mostly used in the basic structure of the Sardinian musical society, which join the cultured experience to popular forms (the influence of the cultured music, nowadays, is conditioning very much the traditional player who, in many cases, begins to own some rudiments of musical grammar and general formal principles, clearly borrowed from the cultured music).

Launeddas – Il suono organizzato

Metastructures of the Ballu for launeddas
Hyper-structures
(click on the title for viewing the tables)

Form - Ballu
Author - Efisio Melis

Forms which are subsequent to the action of the melodic elements [1] in the score (1.0/1.1/2.0) in interaction with the pace of nodas [2]. Recall in execution, from the author, of the active melodic units of the analysed Ballu.

[1] Melodic Element – A melodic element is composed by a certain number of heights, through which a launeddist realizes complex melodic fragments inside a performance. Three typologies of melodic element are recognized:

1st kind – Three heights (2 + arrefinu3) – 123, 124, 125, 134, 135, 145.
1st kind – Three heights (3 effective) – 234, 245, 345.
2nd kind – Three heights (4 heights) – 1234, 1245, 1345, 2345.
3rd kind – Three heights (5 heights) – 12345.

[2] Nodas – Linguistic unit generally composed by three beats, characteristic of the music for launeddas. The structure of an improvised composition is mostly determined by the logic and rational link of these articulated sound subjects.

[3] Arrefinu – Height resulting from the occlusion of all holes.

Launeddas – Il suono organizzato

The transcriptions of A.F.W. Bentzon and the evaluations of Pietro Sassu
(.pdf, 509 kb)

The approaches to the music for launedda-s generated, during the past century, a system of interpretation of the musical phenomenon, the conceptual centre of which showed to be less careful to the real instrumental characteristics. The interference of methods, perhaps too much borrowed from academic experiences of aesthesic environment, and the lack of a direct knowledge of the instrumental problems, brought to wrong considerations on the musical scales and therefore on the traditional repertoire.
It is indispensable to distinguish with the necessary clearness - it seems superfluous to repeat it - that a net contrast between the concept of sound and of silence subsists. This pleonastic statement is necessary when you talk about musical analysis of the repertoire for launedda-s, because the evaluation errors, in this case, have brought their interpreters to incomplete and wrong conclusions. Two specific neumatic typologies have been consolidated in the musical praxis for the underlining of the manifest antithesis, this is a known fact. The analytic approach to the music for launedda-s, started with the Danish musicologist A.F.W. Bentzon, and taken up by Pietro Sassu, concerns the confusion between these two distinct materials of the music: so, between will to express a concept made by sound matter and the opposite need to escape this matter.
Once this preamble is made, you need to specify on which analytic basis the work of Bentzon and of the following tendency moves.