“Use 19 Metal Pieces of Approximately the Same Timbre”. An Analysis of Twelve Recorded Performances of Xenakis’s Métaux (Pléïades)

Author(s):  
Diederik Mark de Ceuster
2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander P. Demos ◽  
Roger Chaffin

We measured the postural sway of two trombonists as they each recorded multiple performances of two solo pieces in each of three different expressive styles (normal, expressive, non-expressive). We then measured the postural sway of 29 non-trombonist listeners as they moved their arms and body, “air-conducting” the recorded sound as if to draw out the emotion from the performance (Experiment 1), and of the two trombonists as they played along with the same recorded performances (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the velocity of listeners’ postural sway was more like that of the performer than expected by chance. Listeners entrained more to back-and-forth than to side-to-side sway in Experiment 1 and only to back-and-forth sway in Experiment 2. Entrainment was not due entirely to performer and listener both swaying to the musical pulse in the same way. Listeners in Experiment 1 rated performances as more expressive when they entrained more, suggesting that entrainment enhanced their aesthetic experience of the music. The whole body appears to contribute to unpacking the expressive content of musical communication.


1997 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Byo

The purpose of this study was to examine graduate and undergraduate music majors' ability to detect pitch arid rhythm errors in one-, two-, and three-part settings of texturally contrasting musical excerpts. A stimulus audiotape consisting of 12 excerpts resulted from the following arrangement by texture and number of parts: 4 one-part excerpts, 2 two-part and 2 three-part homorhythmic excerpts, and 2 two-part and 2 three-part polyrhythmic excerpts. Subjects ( N = 150) listened to purposefully marred recorded performances of these excerpts and attempted to identify pitch and rhythm errors by circling appropriate places on correctly notated scores. Results of analyses of variance with repeated measures on correct responses indicated significant main effects of degree status (graduate students were more accurate than were undergraduates); number of parts (subjects were most accurate in one-part settings, less accurate in two-part settings, and least accurate in three-part settings); texture (subjects were more accurate in homorhythmic texture than in polyrhythmic texture); and. error type (subjects were more accurate detecting rhythm errors than pitch errors). Significant interactions indicated that these variables did not function independently of each other.


Author(s):  
Joanna Ewa Sycz-Opoń

This paper presents a typology of information-seeking styles exhibited by 52 students of the MA translation and interpreting programme at the University of Silesia, Poland. The typology emerged during the large-scale investigation into trainee translators’ research behaviour occurring during translation of a legal text from English into Polish (Sycz-Opoń 2019). The method of investigation combined observation of students’ recorded performances with a think-aloud protocol (TAP). The case-study analysis brought to light significant variation in student’s information-seeking behaviour, which had gone unnoticed in the aggregate statistical data. Individual differences included students’ source preference, search intensity, level of criticism towards sources, diligence, risk-taking, self-confidence, and source reliance. As a result of the analysis the six research styles emerged: traditionalist, innovator, minimalist, true detective, procrastinator, and habitual doubter. They are presented in this paper with special attention to each style’s strengths, weaknesses and recommended teaching approaches. The results suggest the need for information-seeking training geared towards the diverse needs of individual students.


Author(s):  
Jason Camlot

Phonopoetics tells the neglected story of early “talking records” and their significance for literature from the 1877 invention of the phonograph to some of the first recorded performances of modernist works. The book challenges assumptions of much contemporary criticism by taking the recorded, oral performance as its primary object of analysis and by exploring the historically specific convergences between audio recording technologies, media formats, generic forms, and the institutions and practices surrounding the literary. Opening with an argument that the earliest spoken recordings were a mediated extension of Victorian reading and elocutionary culture, Jason Camlot explains the literary significance of these pre-tape era voice artifacts by analyzing early promotional fantasies about the phonograph as a new kind of speaker, and detailing initiatives to deploy it as a pedagogical tool to heighten literary experience. Through historically-grounded interpretations of Dickens impersonators to recitations of Tennyson to T.S. Eliot’s experimental readings of “The Wasteland” and of a great variety of voices and media in between, this first critical history of the earliest literary sound recordings offers an unusual perspective on the transition from the Victorian to Modern periods and sheds new light on our own digitally mediated relationship to the past.


Author(s):  
James Revell Carr

This chapter examines the first musical encounters between Hawaiians and Euro-American sailors, beginning with the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778. It explains early European and American visions of what Cook called “The Sandwich Islands,” and demonstrates that modern stereotypes of Hawaiian culture had their genesis in the stories of paradise on earth brought back to Europe and the United States by sailors. It shows how Hawaiians used music and dance as a conscious strategy for pacifying and disseminating information about the potentially violent foreigners. The chapter concludes with stories of the earliest recorded performances of hula in North America: in 1792, when two young Hawaiian women traveling with Captain George Vancouver performed at the home of the governor of Alta California in Monterey; and in 1802, when Hawaiian seamen working aboard American ships performed at the Park Theatre in New York and the Federal Street Theatre in Boston in productions of the popular pantomime The Death of Captain Cook.


2020 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Daphne Leong

The meters of the trio at the center of Bartók’s Fifth String Quartet scherzo are (3 + 2 + 2 + 3) / 8, (2 + 3 + 2 + 3) / 8, and (2 + 3 + 3 + 2) / 8. Well-known string quartets differ greatly in their interpretations of these meters, with rhythmic performance ranging from accented and angular to lyrical and flexible. What are the main differences in rhythmic interpretation, and what might explain them? This chapter explores the structure of the trio’s melodies in relation to Bartók’s writings on folk music (Hungarian folk song and Bulgarian meter), and examines ten recordings of the trio empirically. It concludes that the most significant distinctions in interpretation of the trio’s rhythms link to a folk-song-like understanding of its melodies, and that Bartók’s coaching influence coincides with such understanding. Bartók’s instructions to the Kolisch Quartet on the performance of the trio’s rhythms, and Bartók’s own recorded performances of similar rhythms, are examined. A performers’ guide and video interview with András Fejér of the Takács Quartet provide practical interpretive resources. Audio examples complement the written text.


1995 ◽  
Vol 06 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUANG-BO GAO ◽  
S. NOOR MOHAMMAND ◽  
GREGORY A. MARTIN ◽  
HADIS MORKOÇ

Recent developments in the physics and technology of III-V compound heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) are reviewed. The technologies discussed are AlGaAs/GaAs, GaInP/GaAs, InP/InGaAs, and AlInAs/InGaAs based heterostructures. WIth current gain cut off frequencies over 100 GHz and maximum oscillation frequencies of about 200 GHz, the III-V compound semiconductor based HBTs have advanced to the point of commercialization. These developments also had the fortuitous effect of providing impetus and theoretical base to advance Si based HBT technologies, such as SiGe HBTs, to advance also. Recent SiGe HBTs, taking advantage of advanced Si processing technologies, have also recorded performances in excess of 100 GHz with applications envisioned in high speed analog-digital converters. While there remain some voids in the fundamental understanding of HBTs, the state-of-the-art of the GaAs HBT technology, concerning reproducibility and reliability, is at a point where problems related to production are at the forefront. The next few years are going to prove interesting with each technology recording improved performance.


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