Audio clip 5: Here, we encounter an example of more experimental approaches to performance on the Vietnamese guitar, and a different tuning system, drawn from the traditional tuning of the Vietnamese four-stringed lute, the đàn tỳ bà. In 2013, The Six Tones embarked on a bigger dance film project together with the American composer Richard Karpen, the choreographer Marie Fahlin, and the director Jörgen Dahlqvist. The film was called Seven Stories, and drew its material (choreography and some musical sources) from Vietnamese Tuồng Theatre. In several scenes, the Vietnamese guitar played a central role, for instance in a scene, drawn from the Tuồng play entitled Tam Nữ Đồ Vương (Three Women who Saved the Crown). Here, the music was composed as a duo for đàn tranh and Vietnamese guitar. The cross-fertilization between the two instruments is evident already in the first part, in which the short stopped notes on the guitar are mirrored in the stopped chords on the đàn tranh (a rather atypical playing technique on this instrument), which creates a heavy sense of expectation, and of unrest. The possibilities for bending several notes and chords are displayed already in the introduction, and receive even more attention later on in the piece. When the major part of the music (and of the choreography) takes off, typically idiomatic đàn tranh figurations constitute the central material, as mirrored in the guitar part. But in the guitar, the possibility of shifting between the treble and bass registers is also an important building block, and thereby, the guitar adds to the trajectory of the music by bringing in low bass figuration also in this manically fast section.
Video clip 3: In this clip, Môn looks closer into the role of different registers in the fretboard space of the Vietnamese guitar. He demonstrates how it is easier to carry out the central ornaments on strings two and three, but he also makes the argument that this register also is more pleasing for the listener. In our joint workshops and rehearsals in the Musical Transformations I often sought to challenge this idea, and encouraged him to use the bottom register of his instrument more fully. In the video, he explains that, when he plays in an ensemble, he may use the bass register more: “It sounds mùi, under the condition that it is played in an ensemble”.
Abstract
This chapter builds on findings from Musical Transformations, a research project set in the south of Vietnam, and concerned with the development and transformations of a particular tune called Vọng Cổ, believed to have been composed by Sáu Lầu in 1919. Since then,an intricate gradual development of the piece has taken place where not only the music has changed but it has also evolved into the cornerstone of Cải Lương, a popular form of music theatre (Trainor 1975). This syncretist style of music theatre emerged in the Mekong Delta in the very south of Vietnam. It combined elements from French theatre and music with Hát Bội, an ancient form of traditional theatre in the country. Although first accompanied by traditional instruments, the Western guitar and violin made their way into performances of this new form of theatre, called Cải Lương, in the 1930s (Nguyen 2012). Most importantly, the western guitar was re-fretted, to allow for the performance of the characteristic ornamentation, which entails extensive bending and glissandi. This chapter is built on stimulated recall interviews with master performers in the tradition, most essentially the guitarist Phạm Văn Môn, thereby situating the chapter in an intersubjective form of analysis. The chapter explores the affordances of this re-fretted guitar in the five central modes in which Vọng Cổ is played. Furthermore, building on the experiences of the author, who is a professional guitarist and artistic researcher, the affordances of this re-fretted guitar in two distinct musical traditions are compared and discussed, from the perspective of the historical development of Vọng Cổ.
Video clip 1: In a stimulated recall session on 1 January 2019 with Phạm Công Tỵ—in which the “stimuli” were the recordings of Vọng Cổ made the year before, both as a trio and in solo versions—Tỵ discussed the nature of mùi and how it is achieved. The entire clip is centered around his playing, and is characterized by his very firm conviction that he himself has complete command of the qualities that bring forth mùi in performance. In the video, in which two instances in the same session are edited together, he basically demonstrates how it can be achieved. Unfortunately, only the camera audio was retained from this session and therefore the sound quality is rather poor. What Tỵ demonstrates beautifully in this clip is how, similarly to the way duende is deeply linked with the cante jondo, mùi is very much characterized by an expressive, singing quality in the ornamentation.
The interviews which form the basis for the analysis in the book chapter were recorded in Sài Gòn on 1 Jan and 14 July 2019. Two topics were central, first, the core expressive quality of mùi, an expression particular to the performance culture of Vọng Cổ. It has similarities to the concept of duende in flamenco, as a core expression and a quality in performance (a comparison taken further in the book chapter). Second, the interviews with Phạm Văn Môn provided detailed evidence of the affordances of the Vietnamese guitar in performance in the five main modes in which the piece typically is played.
The Vietnamese Guitar: Tradition and Experimentation
Stefan Östersjö (2022), published in Rethinking the Instrument
edited by Mine Doğantan-Dack. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the renewal of Vọng Cổ music from the south of Vietnam 2018-2021
Video clip 2: Well structured figurations are indeed important in Vọng Cổ, but do not immediately contribute to the core expression. Along similar lines, Môn, in an interview on 14 July 2019, discussed how mùi is immediately connected to the emotional expression, which in the Vietnamese modal system is the fundamental characteristic of the Hơi one plays in. Just as the Vietnamese concept of modes is intrinsically related to both the ornamentation and the fundamental expression which they articulate, mùi is ultimately a matter of the spirit of the performer and the way it is articulated in performance. In the clip, Môn demonstrates how the expression of mùi is immediately linked to the ornamentation performed on Xang, the third step in the scale used in Vọng Cổ.
Video clip 4: The history of the Vietnamese guitar is not only to do with how luthiers experimented with making deeply scalloped frets to allow bending techniques similar to that of the Vietnamese lutes, but also of musicians experimentation with different tuning systems. In the fourth clip, Môn considers the different affordances of two tuning systems, and to what extent they allow for the expression of mùi.
Video clip 6: Drawn from a trio performance with Nguyễn Thanh Thủy and the laptop improviser Matt Wright at Deptford Town Hall in London in May 2013, this video provides an example of how, with this tuning, and in this performance context, the guitar certainly affords polyphonic and chordal playing, in ways that have never been part of the performance practices of the Vietnamese guitar. By focusing more on the lower register, and the possibilities for bending and ornamentation which preserves a singing quality, and further enhancing these lines with added harmony, the Vietnamese guitar unveils novel possibilities, and modes of expression.
