Abstract
The paper is devoted to the research of vocalist’s individual manners of performance made on audio recordings with use of their acoustic analysis. The research method was tested on recordings of five performances of the famous song “Spring waters” by Sergei Rachmaninoff sung by different vocalists-tenors. Audio recordings were manually segmented into vocal syllables to obtain information on duration of each vocal note. Tabulating data on different performances into a single database allowed to conduct their statistical analysis. As a result, we have obtained time series that reveal tempo dynamics for each singer, composed an averaged profile of all performances under study, and made comparison between tempo characteristics of syllables, vocal lines and performances in whole. It turned out that an average tempo differs significantly for different performers. In “Spring waters”, tempo profiles of different individual singers have much in common, going almost in parallel in the beginning of the song, however diverging from each other closer to its end. The greatest variation of tempo was observed in two important points—in the final vocal line and in the point of the golden section, the latter being the break point in the song composition. The proposed method allows to reveal the average style of performance for a particular song and the deviations from it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Florensky, P.V.: Razbor nekotorykh suzhdeniy o zakone Ceizinga [Analysis of some judgments about the Zeising’s law]. In: Florensky, P.V. Sochineniya v 4 tomakh [Selected works in 4 volumes], vol. 3(1). Mysl [Thought], Moscow (2000)
Ivanov, V.V.: Ocherki po istorii semiotiki v SSSR [Essays on the history of semiotics in the USSR]. Nauka [Science], Moscow (1976)
Martynenko, G.Y.: Korpus russkogo romansa kak osnova issledovaniya verbalno-muzykalnykh tekstov [The corpus of Russian romances for studying poetry and music]. In: Trudy mezhdunarodnoj konferencii “Korpusnaja lingvistika 2013” [Proceedings of the International Conference “Corpus linguistics 2013”], pp. 371–378. St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg (2013)
Martynenko, G.: Structural interaction of poetry and music components in songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In: Eismont, P., Konstantinova, N. (eds.) LMAC 2015. CCIS, vol. 561, pp. 127–139. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27498-0_11
Mazel, L.: Analiz muzykal’nyh proizvedenij [Analysis of musical works]. Muzyka [Music], Moscow (1979)
Morozov, V.P.: Kompyuternye issledovaniya intonacionnoy tochnosti [Computer studies of intonation accuracy]. Eksperimentalnaya psihologiya [Exp. Psychol.] 2(3), 35–46 (2009)
Jin, P.S.: Vokalnoe tvorchestvo S. V. Rakhmaninova: k probleme evolyucii stilya [Vocal works by S. V. Rachmaninoff: to the problem of style evolution]. The Author’s abstract of Ph.D. dissertation. The Herzen State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg (2002)
Rozenov, E.K.: Zakon zolotogo secheniya v poezii i muzyke [The law of the golden section in poetry and music]. In: Rozenov, E.K. Statyi o muzyke. Izbrannoe [Selected works on music]. Muzyka [Music], Moscow (1982)
Sabaneev, L.L.: Etyudy Shopena v osveschenii zolotogo secheniya. Opyt pozitivnogo obosnovaniya [Chopin’s Etudes and the Golden Section. An Experience of Positive Justification]. Iskusstvo [Art] 2, 132–145 (1925)
Saitanova, N.I.: Nekotorye ritmicheskie sootvetstviya notnoy zapisi i ee ispolneniya [Some rhythmic correspondences of musical notation and its performance]. Issledovaniya po strukturnoy lingvistike [Studies on structural linguistics], pp. 159–168. Nauka [Science], Moscow (1975)
Scott, M.: Rachmaninoff. The History Press, Stroud (2008)
SINGRUSSIAN homepage. http://www.singrussian.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Rachmaninov-Spring-Waters.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2017
Sylverster, R.D.: Rachmaninoff’s Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts and Translations. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (2014)
Todd, N.: The dynamics of dynamics: A model of musical expression. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 3540–3550 (1992)
Zeising, A.: Neue Lehre von den Proportionen des menschlichen Körpers. Rudolf Weigel, Leipzig (1854)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Martynenko, G. (2019). Singer’s Performance Style in Numbers and Dynamic Curves: A Case Study of “Spring Waters” by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In: Eismont, P., Mitrenina, O., Pereltsvaig, A. (eds) Language, Music and Computing. LMAC 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 943. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05594-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05594-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05593-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05594-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)