European Voices III

The instrumentation of sound is an inseparable part of music making processes in local musical practices. It obtains a special role in the formation and perception of sounds familiar to the performers and their communities. This process is crucial, particularly for multipart music traditions. They can be understood as a specific mode of music making and expressive behaviour based on the intentionally distinct and coordinated participation in the performing act by sharing knowledge and shaping values. In spite of the intensive research carried out, multipart music traditions have hardly been investigated from the viewpoint of the sound instrumentation. The common sound of an ensemble produced through the simultaneous performance of several instruments and/or human voices differs from the sound each member of the ensemble produces separately. Therefore the making and the perception of these two different sounds should be investigated independently, also with respect to the role the performers and their communities play in its formation. This perspective leads inevitably to questions of the instrumen- talzation of sound. Concepts of sound formation and perception based on the creativity and the interaction of individuals within a group became notably significant for the three main topics of this research. Sound and Society enabled the focus on multipart music making as communication, on sound emblems and soundscapes as identifiers of cultural expression, on singing territories, musical logics and self-presentation strategies of the performers and on amalgam, as a combination between the maintenance of individual distinctiveness and mutual merging. In Performance as Instrumentation were explored the specifics of musical tuning as social marker, cyclicality, drone and harmony, dirty playing by means of accidental coincidences of musical parts which lead to the emergence of sound structures, the influence of ecclesiastical on profane music, and questions of aural and visual in sound-making. These were followed by reflections on Tradi- tion, Revival, Practice and issues related to the politics of instrumentation in European folk music revivals and Volksmusikpflege. The results show that the instrumentation and instrumentalization of sound have a crucial impact on the everyday life of the respective communities. Here the powerful allegory of the pilgrims progress from the local to the universal became substantial. The allegorical path of the pilgrim shapes the musical complexity of the multipart music that gives meaning to the local community of the faithful and then sounds the very universality of sacred music.