scholarly journals Looking Beyond the Score

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schutz ◽  
Fiona Manning
Keyword(s):  
Sound Production ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Musical Scores ◽  
Listening Experience ◽  
Multi Media ◽  
Physical Gestures ◽  
Musical Elements ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Performing musicians frequently use physical gestures that are more elaborate than required for sound production alone. Such movements are not prescribed in traditional musical scores, nor are they evident in audio recordings, and consequently they are rarely regarded as integral to a formal musical analysis. However, there is growing evidence that these movements do in fact alter an audience’s listening experience—i.e., the way a performance “sounds.” Therefore, we believe that analyses of these movements can inform more traditional analyses of notes and rhythms by lending insight into the way in which these musical elements areperceived. Here, we review research on the role of gestures in shaping the musical experience, focusing in particular on gestures used by percussionists to control perceived note duration. This paper embraces the multi-media affordances ofMusic Theory Onlineby integrating stimuli from key experiments—the first publication of these materials. Our aim is not only to summarize a growing body of work on the musical role of extra-acoustic factors such as ancillary gestures, but also to present new avenues of musical research that complement existing approaches.

4. Islamic and Confucian accounts of the virtues

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Craig A. Boyd ◽  
Kevin Timpe
Keyword(s):  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This chapter evaluates how two different cultural traditions understand virtue, specifically Islam and Confucianism. The work of Al-Ghazzali provides insight into the central role of virtue for Islam. In living out the five pillars of Islam—the shahadah, salat, zakat, sawm, and the hajj—one becomes a person properly related to Allah and to others. In this context, adab (the manner in which people acquire good character) provides an entrée into Islamic accounts of the virtues. Meanwhile, while there are important differences between the thinkers in the Confucian tradition, they all emphasized the dao (the ‘way’) as providing the highest human good and the proper cosmic ordering of the universe.

Drunk in Society

Drunk Japan ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 142-174
Author(s):  
Mark D. West
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Drunk Driving ◽  
Employment Law ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This chapter focuses on the role of intoxication in society. After examining the way courts discuss alcohol use as a social problem, it turns to three legal contexts: employment law, family law, and torts. First, it examines cases of disciplinary dismissals, in which civil servants whose employment is terminated after drunk-driving convictions sue their former employers. Second, it explores divorce cases in which alcohol consumption and intoxication are raised as factors that contributed to the demise of the marriage. Third, it turns to cases in which people claim they were defamed by statements related to alcohol consumption. In each case, courts issue opinions that either offer little insight into their thoughts on intoxication (despite a penchant for editorializing in other types of cases) or apply uneven, but individualized, justice.

What Do We Know that Varèse Didn’t?

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-29
Author(s):  
Rajmil Fischman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
Sound Control ◽  
Cultural Artefact ◽  
Insight Into

This article reflects on significant technological, musical and cultural processes that took place since Varèse envisioned the concept oforganised sound: understanding these processes may provide a strategic vantage point from which to gain insight into our evolving attitude to modern aesthetic and technological development and thus formulate informed strategic decisions concerning our relationship with the latter. The discussion begins by focusing on technological processes, including accelerated change, cycles of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal, and the non-neutrality of technology. This is followed by a focus on musical issues resulting from the decoupling of sound control from sound production, interactivity, the expansion towards time-based media and the possible active role of audiences in the realisation of music. Discussion is then posited within the wider cultural context of modernism and the postmodern era, the eroding popular/art divide and the obsolescence of music as a cultural artefact resulting from technological change. This leads to the conclusion, which identifies tentative learning outcomes that may be helpful in formulating future strategic decisions.

scholarly journals Let Them Eat Cake:  Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny  in Revolutionary France and Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hugh Eldred-Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

scholarly journals Let Them Eat Cake:  Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny  in Revolutionary France and Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hugh Eldred-Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

Rhythm and the Physical

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-173
Author(s):  
Eugene Montague
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Physical Aspect ◽  
Temporal Experience ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Physical Gestures ◽  
Rhythmic Performance ◽  
Musical Elements

Of all musical elements, rhythm is the most closely associated with temporal experience. When rhythms are categorized as structural objects, their active qualities can be lost, obscuring the physical life of rhythmic performance. This chapter argues for understanding rhythmic objects as inherently active, with a necessary physical aspect. One way these aspects emerge is through the processes that undergird performance. When a rhythm is learned as a gesture, it brings with it a particular physical history, developed over periods of repetition. This chapter examines rhythmic objects in three case studies, including performances of piano music by Saint-Saëns and Chopin, and a hardcore punk song by the band Minor Threat. Close analysis of the gestures that produce rhythms in these varied musics suggests the role of metrical experience in creating rhythms and, consequentially, how rhythms may be valued for the physical gestures they demand.

scholarly journals Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 391-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol S. Dweck
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Adaptive Functioning ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Using recent research, I argue that beliefs lie at the heart of personality and adaptive functioning and that they give us unique insight into how personality and functioning can be changed. I focus on two classes of beliefs—beliefs about the malleability of self-attributes and expectations of social acceptance versus rejection—and show how modest interventions have brought about important real-world changes. I conclude by suggesting that beliefs are central to the way in which people package their experiences and carry them forward, and that beliefs should play a more central role in the study of personality.

Stravinsky's Les Noces and Russian Village Wedding Ritual

1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Mazo
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Voice Quality ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Folk Ritual ◽  
The Village ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This study presents Stravinsky's well-known ballet Les Noces as seen by an ethnomusicologist familiar with wedding rituals and, particularly, laments of Russian villages. The music of Les Noces, statements made by the composer himself, and the data gleaned from published sources of folk music (those Stravinsky is known to have come in contact with or those accessible to him) are juxtaposed with observations obtained in field interviews with Russian villagers who themselves were participants in wedding rituals and performers of wedding laments. The conceptual and structural ideas of Les Noces are compared to those of the village ritual. The examination of the role of laments and songs in the unfolding of the ritual, the use of ostinato, the analysis of the manner of singing and voice quality in laments, and an inquiry into the polyphonic forms based on polymorphic texture enable a fresh insight into Les Noces and the way Stravinsky handled materials derived from folk practice. The general conceptualization of the composition with its coalescence of high emotional intensity and, at the same time, personal detachment is traced to folk ritual where the episodes, being part of the ritual, embody primarily impersonal responses to the requirements of a ritualized situation, even though they are presented as highly tense and emotionally charged.

scholarly journals Dendrites decrease the synaptic weight resolution necessary to implement linearly separable computations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romain Cazé ◽  
Marcel Stimberg
Keyword(s):  
Synaptic Weight ◽  
Single Layer ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Strong Constraint ◽  
Multiple Orders ◽  
Limited Precision ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn theory, neurons modelled as single layer perceptrons can implement all linearly separable computations. In practice, however, these computations may require arbitrarily precise synaptic weights. This is a strong constraint since both, biological neurons and their artificial counterparts, have to cope with limited precision. Here, we explore how the non-linear processing in dendrites helps overcoming this constraint. We start by finding a class of computations which requires increasing precision with the number of inputs in a perceptron and show that it can be implemented without this constraint in a neuron with sub-linear subunits. Then, we complement this analytical study by a simulation of a biophysical neuron model with two passive dendrites and a soma, and show that it can implement this computation. This works demonstrates a new role of dendrites in neural computation: by distributing the computation across independent subunits, the same computation can be performed more efficiently with less precise tuning of the synaptic weights. We hope that this works not only offers new insight into the importance of dendrites for biological neurons, but also paves the way for new, more efficient architectures of artificial neuromorphic chips.Author SummaryIn theory, we know how much neurons can compute, in practice, the number of possible synaptic weights values limits their computation capacity. Such a limitation holds true for artificial and synthetic neurons. We introduce here a computation where the required means evolve significantly with the number of inputs, this poses a problem as neurons receive multiple thousands of inputs. We study here how the neurons’ receptive element-called dendrites-can mitigate such a problem. We show that, without dendrites, the largest synaptic weight need to be multiple orders of magnitude larger than the smallest to implement the computation. Yet a neuron with dendrites implements the same computation with constant synaptic weights whatever the number of inputs. This study paves the way for the use of dendritic neurons in a new generation of artificial neural network and neuromorphic chips with a considerably better cost-benefit balance.

Gender Aspect of Fictional Communication between the Writer and the Reader

10.12737/1251 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 48-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Федотова ◽  
Oksana Fedotova
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Narrative Text ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Time Shift ◽  
Correct Analysis ◽  
Gender Aspect ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

The paper shows that English language narrative discourse is multidimensional and heterogeneous. The author explicitly addresses the reader concerning things that are not directly connected with the fictional reality of the story. The aim of the paper is to analyze gender aspect of fictional communication between the writer and the reader. It’s a fact that the writer may reveal his presence in the narrative irrespective of the time the piece of narrative was written. The main markers are time shift, shift of narrative perspective and the use of maxims. When the author of a narrative text touches upon peculiarities of women’s nature he (she) usually emphasizes their negative sides, such as rivalry, flirtation and so on. When dealing with peculiarities of men’s character the author usually shows positive features such as friendship between man and man, loyalty and many others. Studying the role of the author in the narrative text with the correct analysis of the author’s views, ideas and attitudes may help to get a deeper insight into the way the narrative is structured and model the way in which narrative is formed in the process of creating a work of fiction.

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