MUSICAL POST-GLOTTS

SECOND EDITION

It is clear that any attempt to transfer a purely oral musical idiom to paper constitutes from the very beginning a project of transliteration, regardless of whether it is done in the pentagram, the Byzantine notation, in tablature or in any written musical code.

The author of the present volume attempts to give a readable form to fifty melodies from the urban-folk music tradition of Smyrna and Constantinople (mainly), as they were originally recorded, with the help of European notation.

Subsequently, the above anonymous songs are intended to be used as persuasive tools for a series of musicological issues concerning the process of music recording itself, the use of the Turkish makam in Greek musical practice, the mobile nature of musicians as autonomous carriers of culture and, finally, the catalytic effect of recording in the History of musical creation.

MUSIC AS A "PHYSIOLOGICAL ACT"

THE MUSIC SCHOOLS OF ATTICA - THE UNOFFICIAL INSTITUTION OF ORALITY IN OFFICIAL MUSIC EDUCATION

SECOND EDITION, UPDATED

If we accept that the journey towards the conquest of musical knowledge is long and the road difficult, then surely we have no choice but to walk as pleasantly as possible⋅ choosing the right company, driving away negative thoughts, having fun at every step...

Treating music as something abstract and original, like the mother tongue or children's play, could – at least in the first steps – turn out to be an excellent guide.

This opinion intends to prove that the Music School has succeeded, in the last thirty years or so, in approaching an educational model in which music is often unintentionally introduced to students with the face described above.

The author's long-term presence in these schools, as a student and teacher, ensures certain obvious advantages in his research, since, without overlooking his subjectivity, he narrates "his" story, which he lived closely and knows its details from first hand...

Along with it, the figures of the ethnography – figures closely linked to the institution in question – intervene, giving their testimonies in a human tone and enabling the reader to enter this still unknown world where music is, indeed, an act normal...

The adoption of such a framework of ethnographic polyphony in the way the text is written underlines the importance of Interactivity and Reflexivity in contemporary anthropological thought.