Winterreise op. 89 di Schubert: una lettura a tre chiavi

This paper explains the “birth” and development of an idea of performance: “Winterreise” by Franz Schubert; the concert was premiered at Levanto Music Festival (La Spezia-Italy) in summer 2021. The performers were Mirella Di Vita (soprano), Tiziana Canfori (pianist) and Simone Fareri (painter and sculptor). The artists conceived a detailed performance that combined music, lyrics and fine arts, intending to get the audience more involved in listening to this long and complex Lieder cycle. The different languages and the space-time arrangement had to be considered in the structure of this concert to create a more natural and complete sharing experience for the audience.

MUSIC AS A FACTOR IN ETIOLOGY OF CRIME: CAN IT MAKE US ACCEPT THE UNACCEPTABLE?

With no intention to present the importance of music for our lives and for the culture, lesser than it truly has, authors are testing the role of music as a potential factor in etiology of crime. More specifically, they are trying to question whether the music lyrics whose content indicates acceptability of actions that are usually not acceptable, moreover that are criminal, might have an influence on individual so that person perpetrates criminal offence. After brief overview of criminological theories that correlate music and crime, authors will present qualitative study on lyrics of one of the most famous rap duos in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the analysis of the text, and results of survey conducted among student population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regarding the general and personal influence of the duo's music.

Explorative Visual Analysis of Rap Music

Detecting references and similarities in music lyrics can be a difficult task. Crowdsourced knowledge platforms such as Genius. can help in this process through user-annotated information about the artist and the song but fail to include visualizations to help users find similarities and structures on a higher and more abstract level. We propose a prototype to compute similarities between rap artists based on word embedding of their lyrics crawled from Genius. Furthermore, the artists and their lyrics can be analyzed using an explorative visualization system applying multiple visualization methods to support domain-specific tasks.

Social distance through music in EFL students

<p>Music is constantly around us and, if in English, it fosters social distance in EFL students, consequently increasing the level of affinity with the language, however, can social distance help with other personal aspects? Music lyrics provide different perspectives that can become enriching on an academic level, as music brings cultural aspects of the country of origin and directly affects emotions, therefore song lyrics may become a very powerful instrument when combining social distance and the level of English of students in order to improve academic and future professional performance, among others.</p><p>The aim of this study was to measure the impact of social distance on the improvement of academic performance, emotional states and future prospects in EFL students. In order to measure those variables, a questionnaire, based on the Likert scale, conducted amongst 82 students from different educational centres. Resulting data analysed with the use of the structural equation modeling (SEM-PLS) revealed the relevance of social distance through music in order to improve learning processes, to feel emotions and to consolidate hopes for future prospects.</p>

Popular music lyrics and the COVID-19 pandemic

A limited amount of previous research suggests that deteriorating socioeconomic conditions may be associated with greater popularity of music lyrics featuring negative emotional content and references to relationships. The present research considered this in charting popular music before and during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. A dataset based on the song lyrics of the top-5 charting weekly songs in the United Kingdom and the United States from January 1999 to August 2020 was computer-analyzed for interpersonal variables, such as satisfaction and human interest, and positive and negative emotional valence. Results indicated lower satisfaction and human interest in lyrics in the United States and United Kingdom in the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the lyrics in charting songs in 2015–2019. The US charting songs in 2020 also saw higher leveling and negative emotional content, and, when considering monthly data from 1999 to 2020, there was a positive association between economic misery and the number of negatively valenced words. The findings broaden our understanding of the relationship between significant global events and trends in popular music.

Portrayal of Nurses in the Lyrics of the Music During World War I

Purpose: The study explores the description of nurses serving with the US Army and the American Red Cross during World War I as described in a collection of sheet music. The purpose was to identify themes within the lyrics which describe how the nurse was viewed at the time.Background: Analyzing the description of nurses who served during World War I allows the present-day reader insight into how they were perceived by the soldiers they cared for and the public. The contrast between the two types of songs; those written from the point of view of the soldiers and songs written from the point of view of the public, provides an insight into the depiction of the nurses.Method: Thematic analysis was used to review a collection of songs (N=29) for themes and examples of how nurses were described in the music lyrics of World War I music. Library of Congress music archives is the repository of the music reviewed.Findings and conclusions: The song lyrics from the soldiers' point of view describe these women as beautiful, selfless angels, and much like their mothers back home. The lyrics from the public's point of view describe the nurses as one who does her part for the war effort, one who doesn't get enough praise, and a woman of courage. Many songs ask God to save the nurse. Looking back 100 years later, it is interesting to see how the nurse was a revered member of the US war effort during World War I.

Estimating the incidence of cocaine use and mortality with music lyrics about cocaine

In the United States, cocaine use and mortality have surged in the past 5 years. Considering cocaine’s reputation as a fashionable social drug, the rise of cocaine mentions in popular music may provide a signal of epidemiological trends of cocaine use. We characterized the relationship between mentions of cocaine in song lyrics and incidence of cocaine use and mortality in the US. Incidence of cocaine use from 2002 to 2017 was obtained from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and cocaine overdose mortality rate from 2000 to 2017 was obtained from the Centers for Disease Control. Distributed lag models were fit using ordinary least squares on the first difference to identify associations between changes in cocaine lyric mentions and changes in incidence of cocaine use and mortality. A total of 5955 song lyrics with cocaine mentions were obtained from Lyrics.com. Cocaine mentions in song lyrics were stable from 2000 to 2010 then increased by 190% from 2010 to 2017. The first-order distributed lag model estimated that a 0.01 increase in mentions of cocaine in song lyrics is associated with an 11% increase in incidence of cocaine use within the same year and a 14% increase in cocaine mortality with a 2-year lag. Lag-times were confirmed with cross-correlation analyses and the association remained after accounting for street pricing of cocaine. Mentions of cocaine in song lyrics are associated with the rise of incidence of cocaine use and cocaine overdose mortality. Popular music trends are a potentially valuable tool for understanding cocaine epidemiology trends.

Making the invisible visible: visualization of music and lyrics for deaf and hard of hearing audiences

Music is a major art form present in all cultures. It is nearly ubiquitous in Western culture. As a shared social experience, music is a shared knowledge space. Some music is so well recognized that people may refer to it by name (e.g., Beethoven’s 5th symphony, the Star Wars theme). Signing Deaf communities have indigenous forms of lyrical music. While these may not be melodic in the Western expectation, they still conform to the idea of music as metrical lyrics accompanied by instrumentation. Music is a system made up of several elements and attributes containing discrete information chunks that can be perceived by a human listener. Music communicates complex emotional signals and, in some cultures, has specific conventions designed to manipulate emotions. However, deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people are unable to fully access the richness of the aural musical experience. This dissertation explores ways to make information that is presented in an auditory modality accessible to those who cannot fully perceive it due to hearing loss or environmental barriers; making the invisible visible. A multi-disciplinary, multi-method project, this research examines the design of visualizations intended to present different kinds of otherwise invisible music information in a visible, entertaining form. Ninety-four people, 66 women and 28 men, who identified themselves as Hard of Hearing (46), Deaf (38), Cochlear Implantees (8), or Deafened (2), participated in one of four experiments. Eight of the 94 participated in a fifth experiment. Research questions included determining the fundamental properties of music that visualizations must present, determining what emotional responses users might have to visualizations of music information, and determining whether a music experience similar to that of hearing audiences can be experienced via visualizations of music information. Among several findings, this project learned that many deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people are active consumers of music; lyrics represent a key piece of music information hard of hearing people require of any visualization; different visualizations might be better suited to different musical genres or emotional moods; and the set of music visualizations tested convey some types of emotional information but do not obviously communicate the emotional component of the music.

Making the invisible visible: visualization of music and lyrics for deaf and hard of hearing audiences

Music is a major art form present in all cultures. It is nearly ubiquitous in Western culture. As a shared social experience, music is a shared knowledge space. Some music is so well recognized that people may refer to it by name (e.g., Beethoven’s 5th symphony, the Star Wars theme). Signing Deaf communities have indigenous forms of lyrical music. While these may not be melodic in the Western expectation, they still conform to the idea of music as metrical lyrics accompanied by instrumentation. Music is a system made up of several elements and attributes containing discrete information chunks that can be perceived by a human listener. Music communicates complex emotional signals and, in some cultures, has specific conventions designed to manipulate emotions. However, deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people are unable to fully access the richness of the aural musical experience. This dissertation explores ways to make information that is presented in an auditory modality accessible to those who cannot fully perceive it due to hearing loss or environmental barriers; making the invisible visible. A multi-disciplinary, multi-method project, this research examines the design of visualizations intended to present different kinds of otherwise invisible music information in a visible, entertaining form. Ninety-four people, 66 women and 28 men, who identified themselves as Hard of Hearing (46), Deaf (38), Cochlear Implantees (8), or Deafened (2), participated in one of four experiments. Eight of the 94 participated in a fifth experiment. Research questions included determining the fundamental properties of music that visualizations must present, determining what emotional responses users might have to visualizations of music information, and determining whether a music experience similar to that of hearing audiences can be experienced via visualizations of music information. Among several findings, this project learned that many deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people are active consumers of music; lyrics represent a key piece of music information hard of hearing people require of any visualization; different visualizations might be better suited to different musical genres or emotional moods; and the set of music visualizations tested convey some types of emotional information but do not obviously communicate the emotional component of the music.