Developments in Musicology in Tibet (EN)
Developments in Musicology in Tibet (EN)
The Emergence of a New Tibetan Musical Lexicon (EN)
Asian Music
1996
This article examines the way in which Tibetan musicologists and performing musicians are developing a vocabulary to describe the features and practice of Tibetan secular music. In an era of increasing globalisation, some scholars draw on historical sources, adapting it for the modern context, while performers sometimes use loan-words from other languages or coin terms as they see fit. Regional dialectical variations and the dispersal of musical authority make standardising a musical lexicon challenging. On the other hand, this article shows that an innovative and determined effort to bring precision to musical definitions is under way. The author uses both oral and written sources and focusses on a selection of important musical concepts such as ‘music’, ‘melody’, ‘notation’, ‘instrumental passage’, and ‘octave’. This leads into a discussion about a possible nomenclature for the details of musical notation and a discussion about terminology to describe Tibetan musical modes. The author concludes that there is a trend driven both by intellectual rigour and a pressing practical need to institute a modern working technical lexicon for secular music. This requires further debate and discussion and in the end will be determined by those who use it. The article includes a glossary of sixty seven musical terms that appear in the article and many others that relate to this discussion. (EN)