Emily's Student Blog

Mongolian Throat Singing.  For my Musical Trip blog, I wanted to go into Mongolia. More specifically their throat singing. While it is more commonly known as Tuvan throat singing due to the people of Tuva, Siberia, and Mongolia practicing this kind of singing. "Throat singing originated among the indigenous Turko-Mongol tribes of the Altai and Sayan mountains of southern Siberia and western Mongolia" (Britannica).   Originally it came from male herders as a way of sounding like nature and their surroundings. It was forbidden for women to throat sing as it was believed that it would cause infertility. Lucky, that belief was overthrown and now there are many women throat singers.  "The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei  as an integral part in the ancien

                                                                                     Introduction For this blog, I decided to go with the hurdy-gurdy instrument. This interesting instrument can be traced as back as the 9th century. Many believe that it originated from the fiddle but there is little to no evidence for this claim. But what exactly is a hurdy-gurdy? Good question. Unfortunately, the answer isn't quite simple. Wikipedia puts it like this:                                                                                                                              "... a mechanical  string instrument  that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned,  rosined  wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a violin. Melodies are played on a  keyboard  that presses  tangents —small wedges, typically made of wood—against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like m

                                                   "Escala - Palladio"- 2nd Musical Analysis.  My second music analysis is about the Escala's version of Palladio.                                                                        https://youtu.be/aDYwXMNm7F4    This song was composed by Karl William Pamp Jenkins in 1995. It's name has caused a lot of discussions as to why it w as called "Palladio". Which is simple to find out. It was inspired by a sixteenth-century Italian by the name of Andrea Palladio. Jenkins was inspired by the mathematical harmony and architectural elements of Andrea Palladio's work. After Jenkins published Palladio in 1996 an English string quartet, Escala, "recorded a version of Palladio in 2009 which featured on their self-titled debut album..." (Wikipedia). Later it would be released as a single and peak at number 39 on the UK Singles Chart. It stayed in the top 40 for a week.  Escala's version is composed by