The panel, moderated by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schäfertöns (University of the Arts Berlin), will begin at 11:20 with four short papers, culminating in a roundtable discussion.

Prof. Dr. Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, professor emeritus and UNESCO Chair for Transcultural Music Studies at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, will introduce the (by no means identical) concepts of transculturation and transculturality, and present his experiences from the Transcultural Music Studies programme at Weimar, which are relevant for music theory, but also for music pedagogy and composition. The presentation will be accompanied by several short musical examples performed live on the Brazilian viola caipira by Prof. Dr. Ivan Vilela from São Paulo.

Dr. Sarvenaz Safari, who lectures in music theory at the University of the Arts Berlin and at the University of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig, will discuss the transcultural relevance of ornamentation in contemporary music against the backdrop of her own compositional work.

Ehsan Mohagheghi-Fard, a colleague of Prof. Dr. de Oliveira Pinto at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, will deliberate on his experiences of incorporating music from different cultures and regions of the world into traditional subjects taught at German conservatoires, such as aural analysis, music theory and aural training.

In my own short paper, I will use the example of ostinato chord progressions in South African pop music to demonstrate some of the benefits of analysing music from other world regions – along with its historical and cultural context – in music theory courses at a German conservatoire, bearing in mind historical responsibilities of Germany and other European colonial powers.

In order to demonstrate the significance and relevance of the term “transcultural” for a future-oriented music theory, I include below translations of a long version of the panel abstract as well as of my paper abstract:

In addition to the “historical turn” and the “cultural turn”, is there also a “transcultural turn”, doing justice to the complex interconnections of our globalised (music) world? Following theories of Fernando Ortiz and Wolfgang Welsch, we would like to understand the idea of a transcultural music theory as an opportunity not to view historical or culture-specific phenomena primarily in isolation, but to look at what we hold in common and what connects us, as Kofi Agawu suggested in the first GMTH International Music Theory Lecture in 2022 (see HERE and also Agawu 2016).

At a time when more and more attempts are being made to demarcate supposedly incompatible cultures, these attempts being increasingly at odds with the reality of many people's lives, understanding the complexity of individual socio-cultural practices and belongingness is becoming increasingly important. One example of this is the 22.3 million “people with a migration background” recorded in Germany in 2021, 49% of whom speak both German and at least one other language at home (see the report by the German federal statistical office HERE).

Particularly in training future generations of teachers, increasing internationalisation and diversifying teaching practices and repertoires being covered is becoming indispensable, not least because of the increasingly diverse socio-cultural backgrounds of current and future learners. Dealing with music from different regions of the world and their manifold overlaps ultimately also enriches our understanding, and that of our students, of their “own” (core) repertoire and, following Alexander von Humboldt's “method of worldwide comparison and correlation”, may at the same time lead to a “self-critical questioning of our own, culturally influenced approaches to research in the context of specific cultures of knowledge” (Ette 2009, p. 15, my translation).

Stephan Schönlau: Music as “frozen time”? Ostinato chord progressions in South African pop music and their transcultural references

In the RATM special issue Can we talk of a passacaglia principle? Susanna Pasticci writes somewhat pointedly that European music is characterised by two fundamental structural principles: the sonata principle and the ostinato principle (Pasticci 2014, pp. 13–14). Although the ostinato chord progressions forming the basis of many South African songs – often limited to the three main chordal functions of common-practice tonality – undoubtedly have their origins in the spread of Christian religion and music (including by German missionaries) and the cultural imperialism that this conveyed (cf. Agawu 2006), their continued use also testifies to a sense of resistance evident in the juxtaposition of “European” harmony and “African” structural principles, a combination that ultimately ran counter to the apartheid doctrine of “separate development”. Analysing and discussing this repertoire, while taking into account the historical and socio-political context of its origins, also allows us lecturers in European conservatoires and other higher education institutions to deal with our own colonial past and the responsibilities associated with it, as well as passing this awareness on to our students.

Picture credits: Olga Ernst, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

References:

Agawu, Kofi (2006): “Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa”, in Ronald Radano & Tejumola Olaniyan (eds.), Audible Emire: Music, Global Politics, Critique (Durham, NC), pp. 334–55.

Agawu, Kofi (2016): The African Imagination in Music (Oxford).

Benessaieh, Afef (2010): “Multiculturalism, Interculturality, Transculturality”, in idem (ed.): Amériques transculturelles – Transcultural Americas (Ottawa), pp. 11–38.

Ette, Ottmar (2009): Alexander von Humboldt und die Globalisierung (Frankfurt am Main).

Pasticci, Susanna (2014): “In search of a passacaglia principle”, in Can we talk of a passacaglia principle? Si può parlare di un principio-passacaglia? (= Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, 10), pp. 7–15.

Welsch, Wolfgang (1999): “Transculturality – The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today”, in Mike Fetherstone & Scott Lash (eds.): Spaces of Culture – City, Nation, World (London), pp. 194–213.

Welsch, Wolfgang (2009): “Was ist eigentlich Transkulturalität?”, in Lucyna Darowska, Thomas Lüttenberg & Claudia Machold (eds.): Hochschule als transkultureller Raum? Beiträge zu Kultur, Bildung und Differenz (Bielefeld), pp. 39–66.