A language of thought for the mental representation of geometric shapes

Why do geometric shapes such as lines, circles, zig-zags or spirals appear in all human cultures, but are never produced by other animals? Here, we formalize and test the hypothesis that all humans possess a compositional language of thought that can produce line drawings as recursive combinations of a minimal set of geometric primitives. We present a programming language, similar to Logo, that combines discrete numbers and continuous integration in higher-level structures based on repetition, concatenation and embedding, and show that the simplest programs in this language generate the fundamental geometric shapes observed in human cultures. On the perceptual side, we propose that shape perception in humans involves searching for the shortest program that correctly draws the image (program induction). A consequence of this framework is that the mental difficulty of remembering a shape should depend on its minimum description length (MDL) in the proposed language. In two experiments, we show that encoding and processing of geometric shapes is well predicted by MDL. Furthermore, our hypotheses predict additive laws for the psychological complexity of repeated, concatenated or embedded shapes, which are experimentally validated.

The life and music of André Tchaikowsky: A series of performances, an analytical survey of his compositional style, and a critical/performance edition of the Sonata for Piano

<p>This thesis focuses on André Tchaikowsky (1935–82) – a Polish émigré musician who was mostly recognised as a brilliant pianist, even though he considered himself primarily a composer. His traumatic childhood spent in bombarded Warsaw during World War II, losing his mother along with almost his entire family due to the Holocaust, and being hidden in several places after escaping the Warsaw Ghetto, made a great impact on creating his eccentric and complex personality as well as his artistic outcome. Tchaikowsky’s legacy of seven published works, including compositions for piano, two string quartets, a piano trio, and an opera, as well as several unpublished works, is a small but very significant body of 20th-century music. This research explores the evolution of Tchaikowsky’s compositional style throughout his lifetime, based on selected works with piano, and investigates the elements of war stigma in his compositions. Significant contributions to the existing body of knowledge are the analysis of the selected works and a critical/performance edition of the unpublished Sonata for Piano, written in 1958 by the 33-year-old composer. Some answers can be provided to three main research questions through this analytical survey. The questions are: How did Tchaikowsky’s compositional style evolve over his life? Why does he remain largely unknown even in music circles? How did the Holocaust affect his life and work as a composer and pianist? This thesis consists of two parts, with the first presenting the result of research into the stylistic development of Tchaikowsky’s compositional language and a critical/performance edition of the Sonata for Piano, while the second is a performance component comprised of five recitals, which is the prevailing element of this degree. Each recital includes one of the analysed Tchaikowsky compositions, which are connected with other composers and their works in various ways, shaping five concerts of engaging and under-performed music.</p>

The life and music of André Tchaikowsky: A series of performances, an analytical survey of his compositional style, and a critical/performance edition of the Sonata for Piano

<p>This thesis focuses on André Tchaikowsky (1935–82) – a Polish émigré musician who was mostly recognised as a brilliant pianist, even though he considered himself primarily a composer. His traumatic childhood spent in bombarded Warsaw during World War II, losing his mother along with almost his entire family due to the Holocaust, and being hidden in several places after escaping the Warsaw Ghetto, made a great impact on creating his eccentric and complex personality as well as his artistic outcome. Tchaikowsky’s legacy of seven published works, including compositions for piano, two string quartets, a piano trio, and an opera, as well as several unpublished works, is a small but very significant body of 20th-century music. This research explores the evolution of Tchaikowsky’s compositional style throughout his lifetime, based on selected works with piano, and investigates the elements of war stigma in his compositions. Significant contributions to the existing body of knowledge are the analysis of the selected works and a critical/performance edition of the unpublished Sonata for Piano, written in 1958 by the 33-year-old composer. Some answers can be provided to three main research questions through this analytical survey. The questions are: How did Tchaikowsky’s compositional style evolve over his life? Why does he remain largely unknown even in music circles? How did the Holocaust affect his life and work as a composer and pianist? This thesis consists of two parts, with the first presenting the result of research into the stylistic development of Tchaikowsky’s compositional language and a critical/performance edition of the Sonata for Piano, while the second is a performance component comprised of five recitals, which is the prevailing element of this degree. Each recital includes one of the analysed Tchaikowsky compositions, which are connected with other composers and their works in various ways, shaping five concerts of engaging and under-performed music.</p>

Two artists and two mélodies

André Caplet (1878-1925) set just two of Baudelaire’s poems: La Cloche fêlée [‘The Cracked Bell’] and La Mort des pauvres [‘The Death of the Poor’]. These mélodies were composed in 1922, just three years before the artist’s death. For a composer with a tendency to shy away from setting poetry of the French giants of literature, the questions of how and why Caplet chose to translate Baudelaire’s poetry into the mélodie are intriguing. This exploration of La Cloche fêlée and La Mort des pauvres considers the ways in which Caplet reflects the poetic imagery of Baudelaire’s texts within musical structures. Caplet’s compositional language is distinctive, and his artistic approach to musically illuminating poetic meaning is perceptive and sensitive. Through viewing the creative intersection of these two artists, this article offers an interpretation that presents a perspective on Caplet’s musical character and reveals insight into his connection to Baudelaire’s poetic language.

Asymmetrical Meter, Ostinati, and Cycles in the Music of Tigran Hamasyan

Tigran Hamasyan (b. 1987) is an Armenian jazz pianist and composer whose music has been described as “grounded in serious reinterpretations of Armenian culture via his take on Bach, French romantics, jazz, dubstep, metal, and modern electronic music” (".fn_cite_year($manukian_2018).", 637). Hamasyan has recorded thirteen studio albums between the years of 2006–2020, and analyzing these recordings suggests that asymmetrical meter, ostinati, and cycles are not a random occurrence in Hamasyan’s music but rather a crucial component of his compositional language. This article defines three types of cycles—phrasal, structural, and developmental—each of which has a unique compositional function. Another important distinction made in this article is the difference between “complete” and “incomplete” cycles. Complete cycles are those that repeat two metrical layers without disruption until they return to a shared point of alignment, while incomplete cycles are those in which the meter used in one or more of the layers is disrupted before returning to a shared point of alignment. Several of my own transcriptions of Hamasyan’s music are analyzed to discuss how asymmetrical meter, ostinati, and cycles are used to create various formal processes in Hamasyan’s compositions.

A language-driven reverse-engineering tool for the analysis of architectural precedents: A Palladian case study

The analysis of precedents represents a significant point of departure for design processing. By applying a language/ design analogy, this research introduces a reverse-engineering tool that helps guide the systematic analysis of architectural precedents. The visual tool consists of four main layers: the morphological, the semantic, the semiotic, and the pragmatic. To test the tool?s applicability, a prominent precedent from the Palladian designs is analyzed as a case study. By developing the tool and demonstrating its applicability for the analysis of the underlying regulatory and formative principles of the Palladian design, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of architectural design by introducing an analytical tool for decoding and externalizing the design language. This tool can be added to the existing toolbox of designers, and it can help reveal new insights into the multi-layered compositional language of precedents and their underlying architectonics. The findings related to the tool?s applicability and the compositional language of the Palladian design and its associative meanings and connotations are explained, discussed and illustrated by diagrams.

Arvo Pärt’s Tintinnabuli and the 1970s Soviet Underground

This chapter focuses on early, largely forgotten engagements between Pärt, tintinnabuli, and student culture in the 1970s Soviet Union. It documents the embrace of Pärt’s new style among students and young artists and depicts how an informal network of Soviet youth and young musicians played a crucial role in fostering and promoting his earliest tintinnabuli works between the time of the October 1976 premieres and the popular breakthrough of Tabula Rasa in the fall of 1977. While not denying the singularity of Pärt’s achievement with his new compositional language, the chapter rebuts the widespread image of Pärt as a solitary, isolated figure during the time of his greatest creative breakthrough

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE „JAPANESE TRACE“ IN THE WORK OF NIKOLAY STOYKOV

e contemporary Bulgarian composer Nikolay Stoykov is extremely attached to the image world of the Bulgarian musical folklore. Colorful as an author, he reconsiders and liberates authentic folk material with modern compositional language and thus breaks the traditional boundaries of musical structures. The subject of my monograph1 was the questions related to the artistic imagery in the choir work of Nikolay Stoykov and the original composer techniques usedby the author. While I was researching and writing about the rich heritage of the composer – about 100 opuses, I encountered various unique and turning points of his life. Stoykov was taught composition by the unsurpassed Pancho Vladigerov. I thought this was the most important fact that largely influenced and shaped his compositional style. In one of the chapters of themonographic survey „Vocal Landscapes“ (Кroteva 2017, pp. 20 – 27), I point to a little-known fact – the meeting of Nikolay Stoykov with the Japanese lyrical art. Back in 1966 he wrote four exquisite pieces of „Tanka“ for a male voice and piano on poems by Ishikawa Takuboku. Nikolay Stoykov has various creative appearances. In addition to musical works, he has published three books with haiku poetry and poetic messages in which he has expressed himself „without notation“. The question of the influence of the short Japanese poetic forms on the composer’s creative invention was not in the focus of my work, and remained unexplored in depth. The theme of the International Science Forum „The East – So Far, So Close“ provoked me to trace the creative predisposition of Nikolay Stoykov to the Eastern cultures and to add extra touches to the portrait of this extremely interesting composer.

Kompozitsiia: immersivnyi diskurs professii i bazovaia paradigma khudozhestvenno-proektnoi podgotovki

The article is devoted to the consideration of composition role in architecture and design, which seems to be a kind of propaedeutic block of the profession, immersive discourse, as well as the basic paradigm of art-project training. The author of the article studies the actual compositional techniques and concepts of modern project practice, interpreted as internal mechanisms and patterns of life in the professional space, a special system of «entry» into the specifics of art and project activities. The author outlines that formed on the basis of such an ideology, the author’s course on the basics of composition reflects key aspects of a compositional language formation taking into account immersive perception and serves as a way of introducing into the profession, mastering compositional thinking. The author comes to the conclusion that proposed approach allows students to integrate into the profession organically, sets the forms of immersing in art and project realities.