scholarly journals ‘False Relations’: Hermann von Helmholtz's Study of Music and the Delineation of Nineteenth-Century Physiology

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Julia Kursell
Keyword(s):  
Music Theory ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
The Body ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Physiological Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Controlled Experimentation ◽  
Hugo Riemann ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article discusses the delineation between physiology and music theory in Hermann von Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863). It takes the phenomenon of ‘false relations’ as a point of departure to question the methodology Helmholtz devised to study music and hearing. The key to understanding this experimental method is the concept of ‘controlled deviation’, which is substantiated in two main sections. After providing some background information on the history of music theory, the first section explores ‘false relations’ within the context of physiological experimentation and hydrodynamics, the two most important areas of Helmholtz's scientific research. The second section of the article is centred on the experimental methods of Helmholtz as used in his investigation of vision and hearing. More specifically, it introduces notions of distortion, defamiliarization and deviation to distinguish levels of physiology that relate to the body and to cognition. As it turns out, music posed specific problems for the researcher. Beyond the ephemerality of sound, the malleability of hearing and of musical aesthetics proved even more of an obstacle for controlled experimentation. The article concludes with a discussion of Hugo Riemann, who continued to explore the central finding of Helmholtz, namely that the rules of music change due to the habits of the listener.

Listening to Modernism: New Books in the History of Sound

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLARA HUNTER LATHAM
Keyword(s):  
Sound Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Scientific Certainty ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sound Reproduction Technologies ◽  
Sound Technology

The rapid industrialisation and electrification that characterises the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved the revolutionary and irreversible technologisation of sound. The ability to send sound great distances, through time and space, amplified the instability of sonic presence both inside and outside the body. Sound reproduction technologies such as gramophone and radio emphasise the questionable materiality of sound. Scholarship in the emerging field of sound studies has tended to focus on sound technologies that emerge in this period, promoting the axiom that the ear epitomises modern sensibility. Even before technological developments revolutionised sound, discourses surrounding the ear anticipated the collapse of scientific certainty that marks the modern age. Developments in sound technology can mask the severing of scientific measurement from musical aesthetics that coincided with the age of recording. If the study of sound in modernity has tended to focus on technological changes and bracket aesthetic questions, it is perhaps because the relationships among the science, technology and aesthetics of sound have not yet been adequately parsed.

Body and law in late Anglo-Saxon England

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 209-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Manuscript Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article explores some textual dimensions of what I argue is a crucial moment in the history of the Anglo-Saxon subject. For purposes of temporal triangulation, I would locate this moment between roughly 970 and 1035, though these dates function merely as crude, if potent, signposts: the years 970×973 mark the adoption of the Regularis concordia, the ecclesiastical agreement on the practice of a reformed (and markedly continental) monasticism, and 1035 marks the death of Cnut, the Danish king of England, whose laws encode a change in the understanding of the individual before the law. These dates bracket a rich and chaotic time in England: the apex of the project of reform, a flourishing monastic culture, efflorescence of both Latin and vernacular literatures, remarkable manuscript production, but also the renewal of the Viking wars that seemed at times to be signs of the apocalypse and that ultimately would put a Dane on the throne of England. These dates point to two powerful and continuing sets of interests in late Anglo-Saxon England, ecclesiastical and secular, monastic and royal, whose relationships were never simple. This exploration of the subject in Anglo-Saxon England as it is illuminated by the law draws on texts associated with each of these interests and argues their interconnection. Its point of departure will be the body – the way it is configured, regarded, regulated and read in late Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses in particular on the use to which the body is put in juridical discourse: both the increasing role of the body in schemes of inquiry and of punishment and the ways in which the body comes to be used to know and control the subject.

scholarly journals Offline eller online bhakti: Fra mediering til medialisering?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger
Keyword(s):  
Direct Contact ◽  
The Body ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
A Current

  English abstract: In this article, I will give a short outline of the Hindu bhakti-worship and introduce various mediation techniques and forms throughout the history of Hinduism until modern times. With this as the point of departure, I will discuss whether a current medialization of bhakti through cyberspace – bhakti online – can be equivalent to bhakti offline, where the worshipper is understood as having a more direct contact with a divine presence. This article is based on a wide understanding of the mediation concept, but will primarily focus on the body as the central pivot of mediation. Dansk resume: I denne artikel vil jeg give et kort overblik over den hinduistiske bhakti-tilbedelse og præsentere forskellige medieringsteknikker og -former op igennem den hinduistiske religionshistorie helt op til moderne tid. Med det som udgangspunkt vil jeg diskutere om en nutidig medialisering af bhakti via cyberspace – bhakti online – kan ækvivalere med bhakti offline, hvor tilbederen anses at have et mere et direkte møde med det guddommeliges tilstedeværelse Artiklen vil bygge på et bredt medieringsbegreb, men vil primært fokusere på kroppen som medieringens helt centrale omdrejningspunkt.  

Hypermeter

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-56
Author(s):  
Danuta Mirka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
American Music ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cognitive Study ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter unearths a number of cues that point to eighteenth-century recognition of what today is called hypermeter and retraces the line of tradition that led from eighteenth-century music theory to the emergence of the modern concept of hypermeter in the twentieth century. It departs from the eighteenth-century concept of compound meter, related to hypermeter by some modern authors, and from the analogy between measures and phrases posited by Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz in Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (1771–74). While compound meter proves irrelevant for the development of hypermeter, the analogy between measures and phrases, adopted by Gottfried Weber in his Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817) and further refined by German music theorists, provides the point of departure for the development of the concept of hypermeter in American music theory. The further course of the chapter traces more recent history of this concept. It evaluates the contribution of Schenkerian theory and the cognitive study of music, and it introduces a dynamic model of hypermeter as an extension of the dynamic model of meter presented by the author in Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart (2009).

Four Catholic Congregations in Rural Northumberland 1750–1850

1967 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bossy
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Point Of Departure

In the following essay I have tried to put into practice some ideas about the investigation of English Catholic communities outlined in a paper which I gave to the recusant history conference in 1965. These were much indebted to the school of sociologie religieuse inaugurated in France by M. Gabriel le Bras; I have tried to adapt its approach and methods for use in the different conditions of an English nonconfortning body. The assumptions made are that the congregation is a major object of study in the history of any Christian tradition; and that congregations, being secial entities, may best be studied by methods, including statistical methods, proper to the study of societies. In applying these assumptions to the history of English Catholicism I do not claim to be doing something different from what historians of the subject have usually done, but to be asking about single cells questions which have traditionally been aimed at the body as a whole. How big was it, and was it getting bigger or smaller? Who belonged to it, and why? Where did its members live? What relations had they with one another, outside religious belief and practice? With how much enthusiasm, with what particular emphases did they believe and practise? How did they get on with the community at large? I have sought here to answer some of these questions for four congregations in rural Northumberland between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century: Hesleyside alias Bellingham, Biddlestone, Thropton and Callaly. I chose this period because materials of the sort one needs were available for it; and also because it is a period of peculiar importance in the history of English Catholicism, covering the transition from its ancient to its modem phase, and providing a point of departure for enquiry in either direction. There is little significance in the communities chosen. It is incidental that the region in question should have provided most of the English support and much of the English scenery for the rebellion of 1715, or that Biddlestone should have a small niche in literary history as the original of Osbaldistone Hall in Scott’s Rob Roy. One of the characteristics of this type of investigation is that it does not much matter where one begins. Another is, however, that the value of conclusions drawn depends on. the number of cases studied. I hope to pursue some myself, but should be most happy if others were inspired to do the same. One might, in this way, reach a more intimate and comprehensive understanding of the whole English Catholic community than has so far been achieved or, I suspect, is possible for any other religious community in the country.

Aspergillus Spondylodiscitis After Spinal Stenosis Surgery: A Case Report

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3 And 4) ◽  
pp. 155-160
Author(s):  
Mohsen Aghapoor ◽  
◽  
Babak Alijani Alijani ◽  
Mahsa Pakseresht-Mogharab ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antifungal Drugs ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Lumbar Pain ◽  
Case Presentation ◽  
Delay In Diagnosis ◽  
Death Case ◽  
Therapeutic Results ◽  
History Of ◽  
Probable Diagnosis

Background and Importance: Spondylodiscitis is an inflammatory disease of the body of one or more vertebrae and intervertebral disc. The fungal etiology of this disease is rare, particularly in patients without immunodeficiency. Delay in diagnosis and treatment of this disease can lead to complications and even death. Case Presentation: A 63-year-old diabetic female patient, who had a history of spinal surgery and complaining radicular lumbar pain in both lower limbs with a probable diagnosis of spondylodiscitis, underwent partial L2 and complete L3 and L4 corpectomy and fusion. As a result of pathology from tissue biopsy specimen, Aspergillus fungi were observed. There was no evidence of immunodeficiency in the patient. The patient was treated with Itraconazole 100 mg twice a day for two months. Pain, neurological symptom, and laboratory tests improved. Conclusion: The debridement surgery coupled with antifungal drugs can lead to the best therapeutic results.

Re-imagining Reproduction: Unsettling Metaphors in the History of Imperial Science and Commercial Surrogacy in India

Somatechnics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalindi Vora
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Travel Industry

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge. I conclude that the metaphors we use to structure our understanding of bodies and body parts impact how we imagine appropriate roles for people and their bodies in ways that are still deeply entangled with imperial histories of science, and these histories shape the contemporary disparities found in access to medical and legal protections among participants in transnational surrogacy arrangements.

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