English 
In Search for Home Culture: Muzak in Chiense New Year Celebration
前言:
在大型高級購物商場裡播放的背景音樂，究竟有甚麼作用呢? 以下文章就是我以前做的一個 field work 研究，探討商場的背景音樂對購物者和遊人有甚麼影響。我的研究是在特定的節日期間做的，所有資料是在農曆新年期間搜集而心成。所以，結論是與農曆新年有關的。
In Search for Home Culture: Muzak in Chinese New Year Celebration
Introduction
The notion of cultural identity has in recent years become increasingly problematic. When we think of ourselves as belonging to a particular culture, we tend to forget that we are living in an affluent, globally connected world where the crisscrossing of cultures has become the norm. We can have European raisin bran for breakfast, Indian curry for lunch, and Japanese sashimi for dinner; we can enjoy Western operas, traditional Chinese music, Western classics, jazz, rock, Canto-pop, Japanese song, or even African juju; we can be a Christian, an theist, a Buddhist, or a Sufi. We can choose – or believe we can – different aspects of our lives from what has come to be called the “global cultural supermarket.”[1] And cultural identity as such is simply a matter of consumer’s choice.
Yet multiculturalism can be deceptive. For while we no longer have a single dominant culture, our ancestral cultures have not forever vanished. The latter, which regularly confound us by their resilience, their survival in spite of everything, may well remain in potent shape. But if freedom of choice does not necessarily imply the loss of identity, where do we see the possibility of a home culture in a world that seems to encourage too much diversity? How are we supposed to locate our identity amid a cultural anarchy? One possible line of inquiry towards answering these questions is offered by looking at the way in which a specific social activity – shopping and buying during the Spring Festival period – under the New Year festive atmosphere, which is mostly enhanced by a particular type of community-based music, namely, muzak accompanying Chinese New Year celebration, is used in the department store or shopping mall in Hong Kong.
This paper attempts to show that while the notion of cultural identity is never without ambiguity in present day societies, neither will it be easily undermined by a laisser-faire orthodoxy that simply encourages one to pick and choose. The moral demands and collective identities of a culture may be brought into focus under such specific activities and festive circumstances when the entire members of a community find themselves awakening to their cultural self-understanding.
Participation-Observation Method
The methodology I employed in this paper is the participation-observation method. This ethnographic method entails a kind of double role or stance. One the one hand, the “participant part” means that the researcher immerses him/herself in a real world, the “field-based” setting. This suggests that the researcher is committing his/her whole self to that setting. By experiencing that setting through feelings, thoughts, emotions and so on, the researcher can obtain a more self-understanding of that music culture or some aspects of it from an insider’s perspective. However, on the other hand, the “observer part” can bring about a “scientific” approach to creating knowledge and understanding by collecting data, interviewing and observations from that particular setting. In this paper, my main focus is the socio-cultural activity of shopping-buying “new things” by Hong Kong people during the Spring Festival (The Chinese New Year Festival) under the New Year festive milieu, which is prepared and enhanced by the specific kind of muzak played in the department stores.
My fieldwork will be carried out in one of the large, representative shopping malls, the Sogo Department Store, at Causeway Bay
Chinese New Year Custom
To Chinese people, “having everything new” for the coming new year is as important as having a Christmas tree or receiving a present at Christmas to westerners. Without any exception, Hong Kong people are aware of buying new “presents” for themselves, as well as for the others in this festival. The Chinese describe Spring Festival without having everything new not only as being like a dish without seasoning, but also as symbolizing a bad, unhappy and unfortunate year coming. Although this year-by-year festive activity is embedded with abundant traditional cultural meanings, it also function as an essential medium for the survival of such Chinese traditional culture. But how this tradition can be continued in a place where the tradition has often been undermined?
It is widely known that under the British colonial sovereignty, the Chinese traditional cultures in Hong Kong were often undermined. But traditions can always manifest themselves in new guises and continue to be extant. As Paul Connerton argued in How Society Remember, “the cultural images of the past are conveyed and sustained by social practices and ritual (more or less ritual) performances.”[2] We, indeed, experience our present world in a context which is causally connected with past events and objects. Some of our ancestral cultures can also manifest themselves year-by-year in form of a particular social practice. Buying and shopping in Chinese New Year time, thus, should be regarded as one of such practices. But how can music relate to this socio-cultural activity to enhance a metaphor for the “Chinese identity” formation?
Music’s Social Power
Despite its alleged autonomous statue, music is also well known for its social power to influence people’s daily life. It is implicated in every dimension of social agency. Just as Tia DeNora argued, “music may influence how people compose their bodies, how they conduct themselves, how they experience the passage of time, how they feel – in terms of energy and emotion – about themselves, about others and about situations,”[3] music, in this respect, can provide a framework for the organization of social agency, and a framework for how people perceive, whether consciously or subconsciously, potential avenues of conduct. Unsurprisingly, therefore, exploiting music’s social effects are familiar to marketers and social planners. Many in-store experiments suggest that background music, such as muzak in shopping malls, can be used to structure a range of consumer behaviors and choices, such as, the time it takes to eat and drink, the average length of stay in a shop, the choice of one brand or style over another and the amount of money spent.[4] Creating a happy and relaxed environment through the imaginative use of music is a vital element in securing maximum turnover and ensuring that the business has optimum appeal. When the muzak is used correctly, it can influence customers’ buying behavior by creating or enhancing the image, mood and style that the business strategy wishes to achieve.
During the period of the Hong Kong Lunar New Year, the muzak played in many large shopping malls and supermarkets is the traditional Chinese instrumental music. This practice may be one of the usual marketing strategies. However, I believe that this muzak for Chinese New Year celebration does not merely function to fulfill the commercial objective. It also helps to enhance, or even to confirm every local’s intellectual and sensuous self as a “Chinese,” both in a cognitive and aesthetical dimension. As viewed, the background music can serve as a medium to modulate and structure listeners’ parameters of aesthetic agency, such as feeling, motivation, desire, action style and memory. Reliving experience through the Chinese traditional instrumental music assists to constitute memory of a “self-culture.” Within this human-music interaction, when locals are participating in the family-based activities of shopping, eating, drinking and celebrating in such a festive milieu, whether they are self-aware or not, their practices are interwoven with their acts of memory, reshaping and cementing the so-called the cultural identity. I now begin the description of my observation in the Sogo Department Store.
第一部份:
Part I — To be continued.
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-05-08 (published)
[1] It is a term used by Gordon Mathews to describe the present problem of cultural identity of a particular nation or a society. See Gordon Matthews, Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket (New York
[2] Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 2-3.
[3] Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge : Cambridge University
[4] For the discussion of these in-store experiments by many other scholars, refer to DeNora’s exploration in Music in Everyday Life, 18.
Visiting a Soundscape Site – The “Kingdom Hall”
前言: 研究 soundscape 是屬於民族音樂學的範疇。我也曾修讀過一些這學科的研究方法。以下的文章就是作為旁觀者，我怎樣觀察和了解王國聚會所舉行的一個聚會的 soundscape.
正文:
Visiting a Soundscape Site – The “Kingdom Hall”
One of the most interesting soundscape in the Christian community of Hong Kong , perhaps, may come from the small family churches in private buildings. Here, I am not talking about the soundscapes produced by the large churches, such as St. Joseph Cathedral in the Central. The ringing of church bells from these large cathedrals has been familiar to many local people, signaling their urgent need for spiritual comfort. However, I am far more interested in a sound that bridges local believers and God in a more private space located in the urban area. It is a “religious site” that has no loud voice of church bell or grand symphonic sound of organ and choir.
It has been widely known that Hong Kong is small but the population is large. Housing congestion is one of its serious social problems. Many large, wealthy church organizations, such as the Roman Catholic or the Anglican, possess large buildings to provide liturgical services for their believers. However, the locations of these large cathedrals or church buildings are often not convenient to the majority of the ordinary layman, especially the grass-root believers who have no private vehicles. In order to meet their spiritual needs, family churches that held meeting in a private resident building is commonly found. Whether in Sunday morning or any weekday night, or coming from the altar or the seats, a special, unique sound of hope and joy, wish and bless, will disperse in the air, spreading out from a small flat, through the doors, windows, then finally up to the heaven. This is a wonderful keynote sound that cannot easily be overlooked in our local society. It may have imprinted itself so deeply on the believers hearing this sound that life without it would be sensed as meaningless and hopeless joke. It may even affect the behavior of people or life style of a society, like the “wanderer”, who finally regained his courage and hope to live on after he has heard an anthem from a church, in O’ Henry’s short story “The Cop and the Anthem”.
Last Sunday morning, I was invited to attend a meeting held in a private family church. It is located in the residential area of Tseung Kwan O. The place is called Hong Shing Garden
On the wall of the entrance of the “church”, there hangs a plastic block writing the meeting times and the name of this “church”, “Tseung Kwan O Kingdom Hall”. Instead of using “church”, the use of “Kingdom Hall” as the name seems to give visitors a rather new, fresh impression, telling them that the “Hall” inside possesses boundary, like a ‘kingdom”, which is a new, however isolated, world. If God presents at the splendid cathedral, God will also dwell in here, since this is His ‘Kingdom’. Thus, the “Kingdom Hall”, which is a community (Christians) inside a community (people living in Hong Shing Garden
I still remember that the keynote sound of the “Kingdom” community was not a ting-ting sound of a church bell. It was indigenous sound, like the voice from chatting. People attending the meeting were familiar to each other. They called themselves “brothers” and “sisters”, just like belonging to the same family. It seemed that there were no different between the voices inside the “Kingdom” or outside the retailing shops, except that the language spoken here was more polite and gentle.
The main signal sound undoubtedly was a man’s voice from the stage. Yes, the voice is from the “stage”, not the altar. I did not call it an “altar” because I found no liturgical objects, scared cross, splendid idol of Jesus, or brilliant paintings over the stage. This interior design was so plain, pure that the “Kingdom” looked like more a family, giving visitors a sense of warmness and intimacy. No sooner did the man announce the opening of the meeting than the whole group of worshippers (not more than a hundred) stood up, and then, sang and prayed. This series of actions was the only liturgical activity that I found in the entire meeting. For the rest of the time, the signal sound was the only male voice from the stage, sounding like a priest or bishop, and giving a talk based on the bible to the audience (the worshippers). It was seen that the signal sound of the “Kingdom” was a regular routine, which includes the voices of speech, singing and prayer. During the two hours’ meeting, the background keynote sound remained the occasional noise and people’s daily lives sounds of buying and selling, chatting as well as walking to and fro outside the “Kingdom” community.
Undoubtedly, the “Kingdom Hall” is a special soundmark in the local community. The soundscape produced not only regulates the daily lives, behaviors and life style of the local community, but also brings forth a special form of voices that bridges the God and the grass-root people, not in a supreme and splendid Cathedral, but in a warm intimate family-like “Kingdom”.
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-05-2 (published)
論音樂理論與數學的關係
前言: 究竟音樂理論與數學是否有直接關係? 有很多同學做和聲習作時，根本不聆聽音響，而 是在計數。可是，老師就會在這時大大禁止他們這樣做。同學們就算計數做對了和聲答案，也不算甚麼。可是在音樂理論的研究裡，數學是否沒有任何地位? 如果是有，也是甚麼呢? 以下的閱讀文章評論，相信可以簡易的提出了答案。
正文:
Music Theory and Mathematics
The story of Pythagorean’s discovering the mathematical ratios illustrates not only the establishment of the underlying the science of harmonics but also a frame of reference in music-theoretical thought in the association between music and number. Indeed the relationship between music theory and mathematical models is not through number alone but through the more fundamental notions of universality and truth embedded in Pythagorean and Platonic mathematics and philosophy that one best begin to apprehend the broad range of interrelationships between music theory and mathematics. Catherine Nolan discusses such a relationship in several perspectives of topics, including numerical models, geometric imagery, combinatorics, set theory and group theory and transformational theory in this article.
The article is set out in the discussion of Pythagoreanism in two aspects: numbers are constituent elements of reality and numbers and their rations provide the key to explaining the order of nature and the universe. Nevertheless, central to Pythagorean mathematics is a theory of ratio, the relation of two quantities, and a theory of proportion, the relation of two or more ratios. These theories explain musical intervals in terms of ratios and combinations of ratios, correlating music theory with acoustic science. Through the ratios the dissonant intervals are computed in relation to the consonances.
The rich implications of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy and mathematics, r4atios and magnitudes and their geometric representation, governed the science of music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Ratio and proportion indeed are understood today in the form of algebraic terms. But they were conceived in Greek mathematics as a close association of arithmetic and geometry epitomized by proportional relations of lengths of vibrating strings. Pythagorean’s notion of ratio and numbers thus developed the diatonic tuning which was a music theory remained virtually unchallenged until the fifteen-century. In the monograph Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558), for example, Zarlino, a well-known Renaissance music theorist, appealed to this number theory for theoretical justification of the imperfect and perfect consonances.
While the representation of musical intervals through numbers has undoubtedly been most important to music theory, other kinds of mathematical models have also been adopted. This is the notion of geometric images which is used as heuristic devices to conceptualize music theory from number and proportion to logical and spatial representations of relations. Boethius, for example, utilized geometric figures, ideal universal shapes constructed mainly of lines, circles and arcs, to illustrate harmonic rations and divisions of the monochord. This seminal music theory indeed covered a long tradition extending back from Boethius and early medieval of monochord tunings of engaging geometric space to represent harmonic space to Descartes and the seventeenth-century Enlightenment of formulating a coordinate system and analytical geometry in La geometrie. However, another important mathematical branch, Combinatorics, which concerned with numeration, grouping and arrangements of elements in finite collections or sets, almost came parallel with the development of Descartes’ notion of analytical geometry in the same period. The mathematical combinatorics appeared in the form of ars combinatorial inspired numerous discourses on rational methods of musical composition by a variety of authors of theoretical treatises and practical manuals. Kirnberger, for example, described compositional decision-making by selection, using chance procedures from the total compilation of permutations of a given unit such as melodic or rhythmic figure or a two-part melodic-harmonic module. Thus, from the above discussion, music theory developed in relation to mathematical numbers, ratios and geometric imagery throughout the history was inextricably associated with the development of western science and humanism and rationalism in western culture.
The mainstream of music theory in relation to mathematics in the Modern period was undoubtedly the concept of Set theory, which was initiated by Milton Babbitt and Allen Forte. The algebraic structures of set theory and group theory are designed to explain harmonic innovations in the refractory repertoire of post-tonal music and extend to theoretical studies of other musical parameters and harmonic languages of systems. Even in the present academic field of music theory, there is a growing number of mathematicians and theorists continuing to explore and generalize the algebraic structure of the diatonic system and scales or tonal systems of disparate origins, ranging from diatonic or microtonal scale systems to medieval or non-Western modal systems. Furthermore, the music theorist David Lewin expounded a series of profound treatises, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations, in 1987 was also an important concept of mathematical music theory. His GIS covered a delineation of a formal space consisting of three elements: a set of musical objects, a mathematical group of generalized intervals and a function that maps all possible pairs of objects in the system into the group of intervals. Lewin’s model creates a transformation network recasting the role of generalized intervals, modeling actions upon or motions between objects, and is termed as “Transformation Theory”.
Therefore, mathematics brings to music theory not only the technical means to perform measurements and computations and the statistical means to correlate data, but also the conceptual means, symbols and vocabulary need in order to model musical relations of various kinds and to delineate levels of abstraction. The diversity of music theories developed throughout the western history, undoubtedly, tells the fact that from the ancient Greek to the postmodern present, the studies of numbers, ratios, sets, geometries are all inseparable from music and its related concepts. As such, to regard music theory as a fundamental mathematical paradigm is to enhance our understanding of one of the most abstract form of arts (music) in the world with a rather rational process – mathematical reasoning. In this sense, hearing music is no longer an irrational aesthetic process, which has also been the core of our understanding of music for many centuries in the western history of music.
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-04-22 (published)
是音樂的分析，還是描寫，究竟這是甚麼?
前言: 我們動不動就聽到人說音樂分析。他們分析了這段樂曲的和絃運用，label 了chord 的 symbol 之後，就說我分析了這段音樂。考樂理試的學員又常要做所謂的音樂分析題。究竟怎樣才算是好的音樂分析? label 了 chord 之後，是否算是做了音樂分析呢? 身為音樂理論學者的 Dubiel，就這個問題，坦誠的跟讀者討論。以下就是我讀過這篇文章後的讀後感。
正文:
Analysis, Descriptive, and What Really Happens?
Although there is a clear distinction between musical analysis and musical description in the present theoretical discourses, Dubiel’s talk seems to narrow this distinction, and make an alternative, or to extend the scope, of musical analysis. Dubiel uses two examples to demonstrate that a new conception of the piece can change the evaluation and the way of listening to and understanding of the piece. Different in sound is the result of a different in conception. This is why Dubiel suggests that a new conception of what the music is doing is to some degree a new conception of what music can do. The power of thought about music can determine what music is. For Dubiel, to analyze a piece of music means “to explain how it should be heard, and to explain how a given musical event should be heard on must show why it occurs: what preceding events have made it necessary or appropriate, toward what later events its function is to lead”. This explanation has to be teleological, empirical, and audible. Any meta-analytical framework should be avoided in musical analysis.
In most cases, I believe that what Dubiel suggests is the true musical experience in many listeners. However, to me, the so-called “conception” that Dubiel suggests is a “perspective” of listening. It works something like lenses. All theories just works similar to various lenses – anthropological, philosophical, linguistic, ethical, social, queer, aesthetical, political, formal, and so forth – through which a musical work may appropriately be listened, and by appropriately I mean to limit the range of lenses to those for which some good justification based in the work itself may be found. Applying various lenses to musical work is for analyzing purpose, in order to uncover the values of that analyzed piece.
Therefore, Dubiel’s teleological theory of music is a kind of reception theory. Since music theory covers a large variety of different kinds, what is a successful theory will very depend on how far this theory can successfully offer listeners a new perspective and understanding of the musical work. If the theory can lead us go “beyond” our understanding of the work, no matter it helps in audible aspect, or compositional aspect, or even the structural aspect, I believe, this is a good and successful music theory, since it uncover the intrinsic and hidden values of that musical art-work.
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-04-16 (published)
聆聽 — 透視音樂理論的一個層面
前言: 身為一位音樂理論的導師，我一直都很喜歡探究 music theory 如何與聆聽扣上關係。這個題目也有很多知名的研究學者發表過有影響力的文章。當然我這個入們漢也不想在這裡班門弄斧。所以，我這篇文章只算是評論這些大師的研究心得，讓有興趣的讀者對這題目有些了解。
正文:
Perception: A Perspective from Music Theory
Music and cognitive psychology seem to be inseparable. Since music is for listening, it involves human perception. On the one hand, musicians aim to discover the musical structure to gain better interpretation and understanding of actual compositions. On the other hand, cognitive psychologists tend to be more interested in exploring mental theories of how musical events may be perceived. But does music theory and music analysis relate to cognitive science? Nicholas Cook’s article attempts to distinguish the discipline of music theory from that of cognitive psychology. According to Cook, they are radically two different branches of study. He blames that cognitive or information theory places too much emphasis on psychoacoustical studies but overlooks the meaning and cultural value of music. Cook argues that there are potential pitfalls in applying general psychological theories to music without taking into account what listeners actually hear, and why. Listeners usually do not listen to music according to large-scale structures. In addition, Cook points out that studies on the recognition of intervals, chord progressions, and key centers are merely tests of ear training, but not to be considered as the significance of music.
Although cognitive experiments have been carried out attempting to prove that untrained listeners do not listen to music in the same way that musicians do, and what matters to them is not the same as what matters to music theorists. However, according to Cook, these experiments only reflect that interviewers’ responses are mainly a matter of playing game of language. The finding that the musicians and non-musicians are not bound by the same rule in listening is not an adequate basis for saying anything about how they perceive music in their own ways.
Cook also asserts that the next question showing the fallacy of cognitive theory of music is that no listeners tend to hear the tonal structure of music. Of course, there are a few exceptions to this. Composers, sometimes, would pay attention to the tonal structure of a composition. Milton Babbit, was being told in a story, that he could hear in his first time of the wrongly performed tone-row series in a serial composition. Boulez’s enigmatic tone-row series in Le Marteau is also another example to show the weakness of cognitive theory of music. Compositional grammar designed by Boulez is more or less different from listening grammar enhanced by listeners. If the composition is atonal, its tonal structure is less to be considered by general listeners. On the contrary, Cook’s experiment shows that the compositions by tonal composers have more psychological effects on the listeners and they can hear the change of tonal areas in the work. However, the radical question remains: do listeners hear the large-scale tonal structure of a work? Music theory seems to possess a hierarchy of analytical system in music: large-scale and smaller-scale analysis. However, Meyer criticizes such a hierarchy of analytical theory in music. The so-called deepest level of Schenkerian structure, the Ursatz, is simply an abstraction. It, perhaps, does not exist in perception.
Applying linguistic theory to analyze music, according to Cook, is also problematic. Grammar by definition is a finite set of rules that will generate all and only well-formed sentences in a given language. Music works do not possess unalterable set of rules in nature. We may often hear someone claims that Bach always broke the rules or rules are made by man, not man by rule. Hence composers always show no interests in following compositional rules. As a result, there are many factors that militate against the usefulness of explaining music in terms of strict grammars. Even though purporting to analyze musical sound, the transformational theory of music, as Cook claims, is better treated as a game of ear-training for musicians, rather than a real psychological perception of music.
In short, although Cook points out that there is a pitfall of mistranslation of different theories from different disciplines into music theory, he hasn’t suggested an infallible theory of music that can bind musical sound, psychological cognition and cultural parameters together. It is widely known that musical meaning is not confined to psychological cognition or political and socio-cultural associations solely. Different theories can more or less improve our understanding of music in a particular aspect. No matter developing theories from linguistic, scientific, acoustic, psychological, transformational, rhetorical, cultural, topical or aesthetic disciplines, each successful theory can contribute to the understanding of one of the most abstract form of art, music, in the world.
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-04-07 (published)
Music and Arts: Articles and Poems
Modernism
Cubism
The Lute Player — Franc Hal
This is Young Mozart!
Presentation of young Mozart to Pompadour 1763 Vicente de Paredes
Life Long Learning is a Pleasure -- Contact Leung Sir
Lady sit At the Virginal — Vermeer
Edward Hopper — Sunday
SC 2012 Concerts (1800 attendants)
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Sunrise - Monet
The Swing - JeanHonore Fragonard
Jastrow Duck Fliegende
The Music - Klimt (Modernism in Vienna)
Distorted image - Korean Artist
Placidity-SQ3_Page_01
David - Teniers and the Cabinet of Archduke Leopold William
Jastrow Duck Fliegende
Two-women Waltzing - Toulouse-lautrec
Composition - Kandinsky
Violin Sonata in D major - midi composition modelling
Elizabeth At The Piano - Eakins
The Love letter - Vermeer
Young Young Girl at Piano - Armand Guillaumin