Studien zur Idiomatik afro-amerikanischer Instrumentalmusik
Instrumental music and vocal music appear to be two, separate, fixed entities. But the question as to their criteria is filled with considerable difficulty. In Afro-American music, Blues and Boogie-woogie show a connection between "vocal" and "instrumental" (Boogie as an instrumental interpretation of the Blues). The field of Blues/Boogie is paradigmatically understood for analagous phenomena in the musical history of Europe, and is analysed to obtain categories, based on works of L. Schrade, E. Ferand St. Kunze about the typology, conditions and development of instrumental musical idioms. The specific and accultural peculiarities of Boogie are analysed according to the theories, (a) that instrumental as a category is only comprehensible from case to case and (b) that the starting point for instrumental Afro-American music should be the European music tradition. The results are: (1) Not using a text forces a dependency on instrumentation. (2) Dealing with instruments establishes boundaries and opens up possibilities, for example, the different functions of the hands or playing figures. (3) The permanence of Boogie which is its "specific form", is an instrumental characteristic obtained through an ostinate repetition of a structural bass formula, with complementary variations in the right hand. (4) The functional ties of Boogie lead to instrumental specifics. (For example, Boogie, "the undisturbed sound continuance" as a result of a music without text, possibilities to take atmospheric influence through the anaesthetizing effect of the permanence; loudness as an exclusive possibility of the instrument; the inherent characteristic dance quality of Boogie as a privileged possibility of instrumental music; fast tempos as recognition of the virtuoso, respectively of the instrumental; associations in the fashion of program music through realistic sound reflexes.)