A Non-Governmental Organization in Formal Consultative Relations with UNESCO
Free download of the articles of Nemo-Online Vol. 4 No. 6 below (click for the pdf version on the corresponding title of each article).
Issue 6 of NEMO-Online and editorial will be available in hard copy and pdf with Issue 7 in Volume 4, November 2018.
NEMO-Online Vol. 4 Nos. 6 & 7 call for papers was: Research groups CERMAA, ICONEA and IReMus are seeking papers for the sixth and seventh issues of NEMO. The theme, continued from the theme of NEMO-Online No. 5 (available here), is about ‘Musicology/Ethnomusicology: evolutions, problems, alternatives’.
This call for papers is sustained for NEMO-Online Vol. 4 No. 7 issue. We would like this issue of NEMO to continue the debate initiated in NEMO-Online No. 5&6 concerning the usefulness of the science, the problems raised due to powerful and contradictory non-scientific characteristics, and the alternatives which may be proposed.
Papers to be sent both to Richard Dumbrill and Amine Beyhom and should follow the editorial layout.
Following the updated editorial policy of NEMO-Online, papers are published as soon as ready during the year preceding the official publication in November of each year, then emendated if necessary for final publication. Papers hold the date of their effective publication besides the date of their official publication (between parentheses). To comply with NEMO-Online publishing policy, and as with all articles of the review since Volume 3, the pdf version includes bookmarks corresponding to the titles, sub-titles, tables and figures, which should help the reader navigate between the different parts of the article.
The Editing Board will consider the publication of papers which might be 'off subject' as long as they retain some relationship with the wider theme of the publication.
Deadlines for NEMO-Online No. 7 issue: proposals by end of May 2018 and finalized paper by end of July 2018.
Previous volumes available here, individual articles on the dedicated page (Articles tab) on NEMO-Online website.
Musicology/Ethnomusicology: evolutions, problems, alternatives (2)
Originally entitled "A New Hypothesis for the Elaboration of Heptatonic Scales and their Origins" and published (2010) in the proceedings of ICONEA 2008, this paper has been emendated, updated and enriched, and is reissued for NEMO-Online Vol. 4 No. 6. New research since its first publication presented complementary and sometimes clarifying facts which, with the evolution of terminology (see Beyhom's "Lexicon" in NEMO-Online Vol. 2 No. 2 – in French, with Appendix L – entitled "Core Glossary" – in this article complementing it), makes it indispensable to publish this new edition. Most of the tables and figures have been reintegrated in the body text, and a dedicated appendix (Appendix G) has been added concerning Octavial scales with limited transposition.
(Adapted) excerpts from the article (Introduction):
The insistence of Mainstream Western Archaeomusicology at force-fitting the Babylonian musical system into the Western model is one of the greatest oversights in the History of music. It came from the methodology (or rather of its absence) of certain Assyriologists and of their determination at spearheading “their discoveries” by means of unsuitable Western models. The manner in which Musical systems are constructed, whether consciously or not, are part of the culture of a people and must be unveiled with the utmost respect and without linkage to theories of later cultures as this would lead to colonialist unification. This article is the consequence of my determined endeavor at academically fostering the proof of the evidence against unproven presumptive inference, and more significantly to assert, scientifically, that heptatonism – which is not universal – is by no means engraved onto mankind’s unconscious. It is a structure, among others, which eventually hatched in the Near-East, as part and consequence of another or other systems, but not as a new, independent and exclusive concept.
Bruno Chikushin (his artist name) Deschênes, a musician and author of a book on the shakuhashi, is a trained shakuhachi player. The aim of his article is to propose a musician's point of view on the analysis of the honkyoku repertoire. In order to propose another model for understanding this unique music, Deschênes expands on previous authors’ proposals and shows, in the final section, that some of these authors’ conclusions do apply to honkyoku music, while others do not. Although these authors present a relevant understanding of the melodic structure of honkyoku, Deschênes suggests that there is more to it than they propose, specifically highlighting two important aspects of this music that they miss, namely that playing shakuhachi has to do first and foremost with tone-color, not pitches, and that the melodic quality of each phrase and each piece is more in the melodic forms and contours created by the kakuontei and the kakuon than it is in the pitches (see the Glossary at the end of the article).