> On Sep 16, 2011, at 1:14 AM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
>> Any musicologists lurking about that can explain to me how all this
>> lovely rhythmic polytonal stuff got purged out of western music?
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My guess is that the west didn`t develop much rhythmic complexity. Perhaps it was against the ideological mind set of the Holy Roman Empire. I am pretty sure peasant dancing was frowned on. Maybe forgiven for their sloath. On the other hand you have to wonder about the latent sensuality of Islam where complex rhythms developed quite nicely, or India. Maybe the Islamic hords in their conquest of northwestern South Asia picked up some of that fancy sexy civilization stuff from there.
I can`t answer to the purge, but instead focus on Spain and how the sound of Arabic music was deeply incorporated into a musical tradition that still exists. Since I liked the music for Fobidden Games so much, I went on a search for Narciso Yepes who composed the song, Romance where all the music comes from in the film.
There are a lot of videos on the web for this song because it was and probably still is very popular for learning guitarists. But look for Yepes version of Rodrigo, Concierto de Aranjuez. Listen to it with an intellectual suspension. You can hear the music version of some aspect to this discussion. It didn`t get purged in Spain, but became its heart, which is a corny (be mistaken) way of explaining Rodrigo's famous Concierto.
The first movement is really a melange of themes that hint at moderismo, conquestadors, horses, busy city streets. All the noisey confusions of the 20thC. Then the famous second movement takes over reaching into the past. Anyway here is the Yebes version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIWUFpgatJw&feature=related
CG