cantometrics

…Since 1937, he has been collecting American folk songs under his father, JA Lomax, who was also a folk song researcher, and developed an anthropological interest in recording folk songs and singing styles. Since then, he has recorded traditional folk songs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and other countries, and produced many LP records, but what made him famous was his involvement in the Cantometrics project, a research group of ethnomusicologists that he organized in 1963, which developed a research method for quantitatively analyzing and comparing various aspects of folk song singing. This was a cross-cultural comparison of the characteristics of recorded folk songs, such as the shape of melodic lines, the length of phrases, volume, vocal tone, vocalization and pronunciation characteristics, and over 30 other stylistic features seen from the perspective of musical structure, and concluded that the style of folk songs is closely correlated with the characteristics of the social structure of the culture that produced them, and that the geographical distribution of singing styles traces the tracks of past ethnic migrations and clearly depicts the historical distribution of cultures ("Style and Culture of Folk Songs" 1968).

*Some of the terminology explanations that mention "cantometrics" are listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…1937年以来やはり民謡研究家であった父親J.A.ロマクスの下でアメリカ民謡の収集に携わり，民謡の録音と歌唱様式に関する文化人類学的な興味を深めた。以来，アメリカ，イギリス，イタリア，スペインその他で伝承民謡の録音に従事し，数多くのLPレコードを制作したが，彼の名を一躍高めたのは，1963年に彼が組織した〈カントメトリクス･プロジェクトCantometrics project〉と名づけられた民族音楽学者の研究グループで，民謡の歌唱のさまざまな側面を計量的に分析し比較する研究法を開発したことである。これは録音された民謡の特徴，例えば，旋律線の形，フレーズの長さ，音量，声色，発声･発音上の特徴，その他30余の項目にわたる音楽構造からみた様式上の特徴を通文化的に比較するもので，結論として，民謡の様式はそれを生み出した文化の社会構造の特徴と密接な相関関係にあり，また歌唱様式の地理的な分布は，過去における民族移動の轍を跡づけ，文化の歴史的分布を鮮明に描き出していると唱えた(《民謡の様式と文化》1968)。…

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出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報