I have chosen two pieces of music, both played with a woodwind instrument, but from two very different regions. The first one with title “Lam thang san” is played by a Thai performer using a free-reed aerophone that accompanies the vocalists. The second one is a Native American flute performance with use of an end-blown flute.
The title of the piece is “Taos Pueblo Courting Song”. The music gives audiences a gentle touch of peacefulness and solitude of earth. There is an obvious contrast of traditional cultures between Thailand and Native American.However, there are still some musical links between these two distinct cultures in the six elements of music which are pitch, duration, timbre, texture, dynamics and structures. The two obvious musical links in the two pieces are the improvisatory free rhythm and imitations. In the Thai classical music tradition, an octave is divided into seven equal parts, while in an American tuning system, the octave is divided into twelve equal parts.
The scale of this Thai music is pentatonic and it can be described as C, D, F, G and A with C being the tonic.Therefore, we may find the pitches in the Thai piece sounds differently from the American piece. It seems that this Thai piece is odd and “out-of-tune” as its frequency level is different from our commonly accepted tuning system. The Native American piece is played within a range of an octave. Music with notes in more than one octave is not commonly used in Native American music. Vibrato, a rapid wavering of the pitch is often heard on extended tones.
Both pieces are performed with improvisatory free rhythm.The vocalist in the Thai piece enters with free rhythm on a single syllable of “O” and continues his improvisation with extended phrase of “O la naw”. Thai music is atonal, with crash notes In the Native American piece, it also begins in free rhythm, with each of the melodic phrase following its own sense of timing. Although the music piece does not follow a steady beat, there are clear melodic phrases. The texture of these two pieces is different. The Thai piece is polyphonic with chord accompaniment.
The Native American piece is monophonic where the music is played in a single melodic line.Though both pieces are played with a woodwind instrument, different structures of free-reed aerophone and end-blown flute produce different timbre of the musical pieces. The Thai free-reed aerophone sounds graceful and heartwarming. The piece gives a feeling of expressing tenderly love and courtship. Its tonal range is nine to ten intervals. The music produced by the Native American flute gives a breathy timbre and distant reverberation.
Upon first hearing of this music piece, we are reminded of an American music as the instrument’s timbre sounds like harmonica.As most of the music of Native American is related to peaceful unity with nature, this piece has a special sound effect that creates a distant and supernatural sound as if the music is echoing through a great canyon. The dynamic arrangements in these two pieces are affected a lot by their symbolic representations and cultural considerations. The Thai piece is actually a love poetry which takes the form of an imaginary courtship between the singers.
The Native American piece is imitating the sound of nature which tries to take listeners back to time when life was pure and simple.Therefore, there are only gradual changes in volume in both music pieces to show their romance and simplicity accordingly. In the Thai piece, more remarkable dynamic changes can be found when vocalist enters. Then the music becomes relatively soft when the vocalist is close to the phrase.
A gradual increase in volume is noted again when another vocalist enters. In the Native American flute music, the dynamic is quite steady throughout the whole performance. However, decrescendo can be found at the closing pitch and when the extended reverberation occurs.Then the piece ends up with a feeling of quietness and peacefulness. Furthermore, there are imitations in both pieces.
Imitations in the pieces emphasize and highlight the themes. The melodies themes appear in the beginning of the both pieces. In the Native American music, the first part and the second part of the music is exactly the same. However, the Thai music has a binary form. The first part of the music is sung by a male voice, while the second part is sung by female.
Although the first and second part of the music is similar, they are not exactly the same. There are modulations in the second.
