Concerts and Modality

Last week we had a visit from Dr. Barley Norton who had two lectures about Vietnamese music for us. The first lecture was about mode in Tai tu and Ca tru and the second about Chau van and "new traditional" music. It was very interesting and it felt good to finaly be able to ask questions to someone who knew a lot about he subject and could speak English! I hope that we will be able to meet him again in Hanoi in januari. Me and Olof had our exam concert, together with a classmate of ours, last saturday. It was a tremendous success, loads of people and happy musicians! The program consisted mosty of swedish tune but also two vietnamese ones, Duong truong duyen phan (Cheo) and Tam luan cuu chuyen (court music). Ysterday we had an other concert, this time with the whole Vietnamese ensemble and a group of dancers that our singer, Pia, have worked with. They have composed dance movments to one Cheo and one Ca tru piece, her idea was to make them learn to understand whats going on in the music by using movments. Pia will present that experiment in her exam paper, I´m looking forward reading it! Mine and Olofs paper is on its way but the last week we have mostly rehearsed for our concert. Our instructor doesn't seem to be worried so we decided not to be either. I have put together a short introduction to mode in Vietnamese music, i decided not to write in detail of the different genres only to give an quick overview, here it comes:

Mode in Vietnamese music
The concept of mode in Vietnamese music is a jungle; everyone seems to have an own interpretation of it! But there are nevertheless some parts that are coherent so we will try to present an overview on the subject. The concept of mode is different in the different genres. In cheo there is no real concept of mode, every song is separate and even though there are similarities in how they are performed there are no general rules to follow. The tunes are normally just divided by their use or which sentiment they show (the different song types are called lan dieu). In the various chamber, court and religious music there are a developed system of modes with separate rules for the different mode rather than the separate tune. Tuong also has a concept of mode but we have not managed to find any information on that. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that there is a lot of different terminology in the various genres and the same words sometimes have different meanings.
In general one can say that the modes in Vietnamese music are divided in: mode and modal nuances, according to Dr. Barley Norton (lecture, 13/11-08) this idea derives from the researcher Tran van Khè’s theories on Vietnamese modality. One mode can have several different nuances. The modes are normally: Bac - Happy (can also be interpreted as north) or Nam - Sad (can also be interpreted as south). The nuances can be named after a feeling like, anxiety or a more metaphorical thing like, spring. Another important thing about the Vietnamese mode is that they do not only contain a tonal material but also things like: different intonation practice, ornaments, melodic movements and speed (Lê, 1998; Norton, 2005;Garland). One should also keep in mind that like most modal music, the Vietnamese music is heterophonic. This means that it is linear, not based on harmonics like western art music and that every musician plays different version of the same basic framework.