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PROF Richard Widdess' Outputs (40)

A ḍamaru for Jagat-Candra: a historical musical instrument from Nepal (2025)
Journal Article
Sharma, N., & Widdess, R. (2025). A ḍamaru for Jagat-Candra: a historical musical instrument from Nepal. European bulletin of Himalayan research, 63(2024), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.4000/13mzv

Historical musical instruments are rare in Nepal. So far, a few examples of ritual instruments associated with former rulers have been identified. A previously unpublished hour-glass-shaped pellet-drum (ḍamaru) from seventeenth-century Bhaktapur is o... Read More about A ḍamaru for Jagat-Candra: a historical musical instrument from Nepal.

Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music: A Survey of Devotional Singing Groups (dāphā khalaḥ) in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal (2024)
Journal Article
Sharma, N., & Widdess, D. (2024). Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music: A Survey of Devotional Singing Groups (dāphā khalaḥ) in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Himalaya (Portland, Or.), 43(2), 149-154. https://doi.org/10.2218/himalaya.2024.9012

Dāphā bhajan is a participatory genre of Hindu–Buddhist devotional music, sung by groups of farmers and other Newar singers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It is deeply integrated with local neighbourhood communities, but owing to recent disasters (t... Read More about Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music: A Survey of Devotional Singing Groups (dāphā khalaḥ) in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

Analytical Approaches to Music of South Asia, Volume 1 (2023) (2024)
Other
Krishnaswamy, J. A., Wells, R., Pacciolla, P., Rao, A., Widdess, R., Mukherji, S., & Peiris, E. Analytical Approaches to Music of South Asia, Volume 1 (2023). New York

Contents:

1. Editors’ Introduction to the AAMSA journal

2. A Novel Generative Paradigm for Carnatic Rhythmic Composition

Jagdish A. Krishnaswamy and Robert Wells

3. The Musical Journeys of a Goddess

Paolo Pacciolla

4. Suḷādi Songs o... Read More about Analytical Approaches to Music of South Asia, Volume 1 (2023).

Gũlā: Music of a Sacred Time (2022)
Digital Artefact
Widdess, R., Sowa, A., & Sowa, R. (2022). Gũlā: Music of a Sacred Time. [Video]

For the inhabitants of Bhaktapur, a historic town in Nepal, Gũlā is a sacred month. It is celebrated with processions, music, and other observances in the streets, squares and temples of the town, culminating with a festival in which Buddha statues p... Read More about Gũlā: Music of a Sacred Time.

Humanities and Engineering Perspectives on Music Transcription: (2021)
Journal Article
Holzapfel, A., Benetos, E., Killick, A., & Widdess, R. (2022). Humanities and Engineering Perspectives on Music Transcription:. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 37(3), 747-764. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab074

Music transcription is a process of creating a notation of musical sounds. It has been used as a basis for the analysis of music from a wide variety of cultures. Recent decades have seen an increasing amount of engineering research within the field o... Read More about Humanities and Engineering Perspectives on Music Transcription:.

Western listeners detect boundary hierarchy in Indian music: a segmentation study (2021)
Journal Article
Popescu, T., Widdess, R., & Rohrmeier, M. (2021). Western listeners detect boundary hierarchy in Indian music: a segmentation study. Scientific Reports, 11, Article 3112. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82629-y

How are listeners able to follow and enjoy complex pieces of music? Several theoretical frameworks suggest links between the process of listening and the formal structure of music, involving a division of the musical surface into structural units at... Read More about Western listeners detect boundary hierarchy in Indian music: a segmentation study.

Lokapañca: Analysing Structure, Performance and Meanings of a Temple Song in Nepal (2020)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2020). Lokapañca: Analysing Structure, Performance and Meanings of a Temple Song in Nepal. In G. Borio, G. Giuriati, A. Cecchi, & M. Lutzu (Eds.), Investigating Musical Performance: Theoretical Models and Intersections (220-234). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429026461-19

The song Lokapañca belongs to the repertoire of a group of temple singers in the town of Bhaktapur, in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Such songs can be considered both as artefacts and as performance processes. The text and melody of Lokapañca can be c... Read More about Lokapañca: Analysing Structure, Performance and Meanings of a Temple Song in Nepal.

Modelling the Syntax of North Indian Melodies With a Generalized Graph Grammar (2019)
Journal Article
Widdess, R., Finkensiep, C., & Rohrmeier, M. (2019). Modelling the Syntax of North Indian Melodies With a Generalized Graph Grammar. Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 2019, 462-469. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3527843

Hierarchical models of music allow explanation of highly complex musical structure based on the general principle of recursive elaboration and a small set of orthogonal op- erations. Recent approaches to melodic elaboration have converged to a repres... Read More about Modelling the Syntax of North Indian Melodies With a Generalized Graph Grammar.

Time Changes: Heterometric Music in South Asia (2019)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2019). Time Changes: Heterometric Music in South Asia. In R. Wolf, S. Blum, & C. Hasty (Eds.), Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm (273-313). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190841485.003.0012

The chapter examines a distinction between isometric music, in which successive metrical cycles are of equal length, and heterometric music, where the length and structure of the cycle can change. In South Asia, most music is isometric. In the classi... Read More about Time Changes: Heterometric Music in South Asia.

World Music: Historical Dimensions (2018)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2018). World Music: Historical Dimensions. In C. Lawson, & R. Stowell (Eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music (693-695). Cambridge University Press

Incidental Learning of Melodic Structure of North Indian Music (2016)
Journal Article
Rohrmeier, M., & Widdess, R. (2017). Incidental Learning of Melodic Structure of North Indian Music. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 41(5), 1299-1327. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12404

Musical knowledge is largely implicit. It is acquired without awareness of its complex rules, through interaction with a large number of samples during musical enculturation. Whereas several studies explored implicit learning of mostly abstract and l... Read More about Incidental Learning of Melodic Structure of North Indian Music.

North India (2015)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2015). North India. In M. Church (Ed.), The other classical musics: fifteen great traditions (139-159). Boydell Press

A contribution to a multi-author volume characterising the "classical" music traditions of the world. The chapter covers North Indian classical music as a form of knowledge and practice, the principal theoretical concepts, the historical and social c... Read More about North India.

Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music (2015)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2015). Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music. In F. Orsini, & K. B. Schofield (Eds.), Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0062.08

Dāphā bhajan is a style of devotional song performance practised by Newar men in the towns of the Kathmandu Valley. Although it is now primarily the farming community who maintain it, it originated in the court culture of the Newar kings in the 17th... Read More about Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music.

Pulling chariots, singing songs: Musical structure, performance and cultural meaning in a dāphā song from Nepal (2015)
Digital Artefact
Widdess, R. (2015). Pulling chariots, singing songs: Musical structure, performance and cultural meaning in a dāphā song from Nepal. [Cultural Musicology iZine [Online]]

How does music embody cultural meaning? What is the cultural significance of musical structure? How is music linked with other domains of human behaviour, meaning and experience in oral cultures? An approach to these questions might be based on the c... Read More about Pulling chariots, singing songs: Musical structure, performance and cultural meaning in a dāphā song from Nepal.

Dāphā: Sacred singing in a South Asian city. Music, performance and meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal (2013)
Book
Widdess, R. (2013). Dāphā: Sacred singing in a South Asian city. Music, performance and meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315258515

Dāphā, or dāphā bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The s... Read More about Dāphā: Sacred singing in a South Asian city. Music, performance and meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal.

Schemas and improvisation in Indian music (2013)
Book Chapter
Widdess, R. (2013). Schemas and improvisation in Indian music. In R. Kempson, C. Howes, & M. Orwin (Eds.), Language, Music and Interaction (197-209). College Publications

Indian classical musicians, like jazz musicians, display impressive ability to perform with an apparent fluency and spontaneity resembling that of normal speech. It has been suggested that this appearance of spontaneity, often labelled “improvisation... Read More about Schemas and improvisation in Indian music.

Music, meaning and culture (2012)
Journal Article
Widdess, R. (2012). Music, meaning and culture. Empirical Musicology Review, 7(1–2),