Abstract
Despite its musicological, cultural, and religious significance, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) chant is relatively underrepresented in music research. Historical records, including manuscripts, research papers, and oral traditions, confirm Saint Yared's establishment of three canonical EOTC chanting modes during the 6th century. This paper attempts to investigate the EOTC chants using music information retrieval (MIR) techniques. Among the research questions regarding the analysis and understanding of EOTC chants, Yaredawi YeZema Silt, namely the mode of chanting adhering to Saint Yared's standards, is of primary importance. Therefore, we consider the task of Yaredawi YeZema Silt classification in EOTC chants by introducing a new dataset and showcasing a series of classification experiments for this task. Results show that using the distribution of stabilized pitch contours as the feature representation on a simple neural network-based classifier becomes an effective solution. The musicological implications and insights of such results are further discussed through a comparative study with the previous ethnomusicology literature on EOTC chants. By making this dataset publicly accessible, we aim to promote future exploration and analysis of EOTC chants and highlight potential directions for further research, thereby fostering a deeper understanding and preservation of this unique spiritual and cultural heritage.
Abstract (translated)
尽管埃塞俄比亚正教提瓦霍多教会（EOTC）唱诵在音乐学、文化和宗教方面具有重要意义，但在音乐研究中却相对被忽视。历史记录包括手稿、研究论文和口头传统都确认了圣耶雷德于公元6世纪建立了三种规范的EOTC唱诵模式。本文尝试使用音乐信息检索（MIR）技术来探讨EOTC唱诵的内容。在关于分析和理解EOTC唱诵的研究问题中，耶雷达威·耶泽玛·西尔特（即遵循圣耶雷德标准的唱诵方式）尤为重要。因此，我们通过介绍一个新数据集并展示一系列针对这一任务的分类实验，来考虑EOTC唱诵中的耶雷达威·耶泽玛·西尔特分类问题。结果显示，在简单的基于神经网络的分类器上使用稳定音高轮廓分布作为特征表示成为有效的解决方案。通过对以前关于EOTC唱诵的民族音乐学文献进行比较研究，进一步讨论了此类结果的音乐学术意义和见解。通过使此数据集公开可用，我们旨在促进未来对EOTC唱诵的探索和分析，并突出潜在的研究方向，从而加深对此独特精神和文化遗产的理解与保护。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18788
