The Catholic Church in Republican Musical Aesthetics

Debates concerning the appropriate nature of sacred music in France persisted throughout the nineteenth century. While many figures within the Catholic Church took the more traditional stance in their proclamation of plainchant as the genre of sacred music par excellence, other priests and church musicians insisted that more modern styles of composition were not only appropriate but necessary for French Catholics. This debate was not limited to the confines of the Church: Republican composers, for their part, also contributed their views on the matter, which largely stated that the realms of sacred and secular were not mutually exclusive. This chapter outlines the debate on both sides in order to reveal how Republican composers absorbed the numerous criteria involved in the composition of sacred music into their secular constructions of French music. It also reveals the discursive slippages between Catholic denigrations of “modern” religious music and “secular” compositional styles: more often than not, modern religious music was strikingly close to the Catholic ideal, even when it was written by a decidedly secular composer for non-liturgical use. A study of Contes mystiques, a collection of twelve mélodies written by such composers as Gabriel Fauré, Théodore Dubois, Henri Maréchal, and Pauline Viardot, reveals how Republican composers absorbed the numerous criteria involved in the composition of sacred music and how this modern music was strikingly similar to the Catholic ideal, even when written by “secular” composers for non-liturgical use.

French Musical Life

This book is a study of French musical centralization and its discontents during the period leading up to and beyond the “provincial awakening” of the Belle Époque. The book explains how different kinds of artistic decentralization and regionalism were hard won (or not) across a politically turbulent century from the 1830s to World War II. In doing so, it redraws the historical map of musical power relations in France. Based on work in more than seventy archives, chapters on conservatoires, concert life, stage music, folk music, and composition reveal how tensions of state and locality played out differently depending on the structures and funding mechanisms in place, the musical priorities of different town councils, and the presence or absence of galvanizing musicians. Progressively, the book shifts from musical contexts to musical content, exploring the pressure point of folk music and its translation into “local color” for officials who perpetually feared national division. Controlling composition, on the one hand, and the emotional intensity of folk-based musical experience, on the other, emerges as a matter of consistent official praxis. In terms of “French music” and its compositional styles, what results is a surprising new historiography of French neoclassicism, bound into and growing out of a study of diversity and its limits in daily musical life.

Handwritten Digit Recognition System

Recently, handwritten digit recognition has become impressively significant with the escalation of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Apart from this, deep learning has brought a major turnaround in machine learning, which was the main reason it attracted many researchers. We can use it in many applications. The main aim of this article is to use the neural network approach for recognizing handwritten digits. The Convolution Neural Network has become the center of all deep learning strategies. Optical character recognition (OCR) is a part of image processing that leads to excerpting text from images. Recognizing handwritten digits is part of OCR. Recognizing the numbers is an important and remarkable subject. In this way, since the handwritten digits are not of same size, thickness, position, various difficulties are faced in determining the problem of recognizing handwritten digits. The unlikeness and structure of the compositional styles of many entities further influences the example and presence of the numbers. This is the strategy for perceiving and organizing the written characters. Its applications are such as programmed bank checks, health, post offices, for education, etc. In this article, to evaluate CNN's performance, we used the MNIST dataset, which contains 60,000 images of handwritten digits. Achieves 98.85% accuracy for handwritten digit. And where 10% of the total images were used to test the data set.

Intertextual Observations of Jimmy Boyle’s Handwritten Manuscripts

Our study on Jimmy Boyle (1922-1971) has been one that attempts to unfold the many facets of his creativity against the single-dimensional image of a patriotic songwriter. His sentiments as songwriters of many kind, a jazzman, and a cultural enthusiast have been proven through his different branches of work that are at times seem contrasting with each other in compositional styles. As a result of a long term archiving project, this paper reveals the entire set of handwritten artefact left after his death in 1971 and was recovered in Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2014, namely some 177 items of Boyle’s handwritten manuscript, that contains unpublished, published compositions as well as hand copy of others’ compositions. Main methods employed were that of the construct of taxonomy, and some cross-examination of the items covered within the catalogue mooted by the concept of intertextuality. Through narrating the interlinks between multiple manuscripts surrounding ‘Mutiara Ku’, ‘Pulau Pinang’ and ‘Medhini’, the process of composition was brought to life in displaying the all rounded capacity of Boyle.

FORMATION OF MUSIC AND PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE OF MUSIC ART TEACHERS GENERAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The article proves the possibility of forming the ability to understand music by primary school students. The influence of program works of the school program on the perception and understanding of music of different genres is proved by concrete examples. The educational influence of works of musical art on the formation of the artistic and emotional sphere of personality is proved. The formation of the ability to understand works of music by primary school students occurs in a certain sequence based on teacher-student interaction, both in music lessons and during extracurricular work on artistic and aesthetic education of primary school children. The collective type of creativity, inherent in the assimilation of the values of musical art, obliges the subjects of the educational process to comply with certain requirements for the organization of joint activities. In accordance with modern music-pedagogical technologies, which enable the effectiveness of the learning process, there are certain requirements for the perception of works of music of different genres and compositional styles provided by the school curriculum. Thus, the quality of the impact of music on primary school students depends on certain factors. Because, according to the school curriculum, music lessons are united by a common theme, which makes it possible to organize work with children in such a way as to give first-graders the opportunity to talk about their favorite music. To do this, prepare and ask the class a few questions, such as: remember what songs you sang or heard from radio and television programs that focused your attention and you liked ?; what song do you dream to sing ?; what dance music do you like Such a conversation should take place in a friendly atmosphere, and children's responses should be supported and evaluated positively. The teacher's tolerant attitude to any thoughts, feelings and expressions of students gives the child confidence in their own abilities, determination and activity in further work.

The Twelve Tones

Serialism retains its cachet as one of the most severe, learned styles to have been developed in the last one hundred years. Adès seldom uses serialism on its own, but rather in concert with other compositional techniques. For example, he opens The Four Quarters (2010) with a striking juxtaposition of serialism and isorhythm. In a somewhat different vein, Adès relies on what he calls a “magnetic” approach to serialism in Polaris (2010), which artfully masks intricate row relations behind a gradually additive structure. Taken as a whole, Adès’s serial works demonstrate his comfort with not only the history and techniques of serialism, but also the potential for certain strict compositional styles to achieve particular affective ends in diverse contexts.

Arrangements for bandura of polyphonic work by J.-S. Bach in performing and educational practice: methodological aspect

Methodological approaches to the problem of arrangements of polyphonic material for bandura are presented. The problem of comparative comparison of performance capabilities of Kyiv and Kharkiv banduras, the corresponding ways of playing them when performing a polyphonic texture is raised. Prospects for wider involvement of the Kharkiv bandura in performing and educational practice are considered. The professional training of a modern bandura performer should be focused on overcoming certain stereotypes about the technical capabilities of the instrument. The task is to expand the means of performance, to develop new methods and techniques, and to enrich the original and interpreted repertoire of various epoch-making, national and individual compositional styles. A modern bandura performer must develop his musical thinking, aimed at mastering different types of textures, including atypical for the instrument, samples of different types of polyphonic presentation. The aim of the article is a methodological analysis of arrangements of a number of polyphonic works by J.-S. Bach for bandura, consideration of possibilities and variants of interpretations of polyphonic material for bandura of Kharkiv type. Among the examples it is a comparison of modern bandura teachers’ interpretations of “Short Preludes and Fugues for Organ” by J.-S. Bach. Our author’s versions of the interpretation of these and other polyphonic works by J.-S. Bach for Kharkiv type bandura have been presented in the performance classes at Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University and Ternopil Solomia Krushelnytska Vocational Music College The research methodology consists in applying a set of relevant methods: the method of systematic analysis, historical-stylistic method to consider the problem of arrangement, comparative method for comparing the features of transcriptions for Kyiv and Kharkiv bandura, and generalization method to formulate relevant conclusions. There has been introduced the arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue № 13 Fis-Dur from the 1-st volume of DTK J.-S. Bach for a bandura of Kharkiv type with a mechanism (design by V. Gerasymenko), which made it possible to illustrate the technical and expressive possibilities that the performer of the bandura of Kharkiv type gives. Thus, Kharkiv way of playing and the modern construction of the bandura of Kharkiv type by V. Gerasymenko proves its perspective in many aspects concerning arrangement and performance of polyphonic works, show significant potential of technical and expressive possibilities for performing Baroque and Classicism music at a high artistic level and is a powerful stimulus for further development of bandura performance in Ukraine.

Music—An Ever-Changing Landscape

Music is universally a key part of life, with a diversity of styles and usage from love songs to warfare and religion. The variations are immense, and always changing. This introduction has a historical outline, with a rapid overview of early instruments and music. Music developed partly from a gradual relaxation of religious control of what was acceptable. The Renaissance in art and literature contributed, but they require language and knowledge of the symbolisms. Music has none of these restrictions, and our responses are totally personal. There has been a major role of scientific inputs into instruments, concert halls, distribution of music via printing and notation, plus the electronics of recorded music and broadcasting. These factors altered compositional styles. The following chapters will expand on these highly diverse and numerous scientific and technological features and their musical consequences.

The Evolution of Music through Culture and Science

Music is an international key aspect of humanity which impacts life, from love songs to religion, politics, and warfare. Changes in culture and developments in science drove musical progress from printing and distribution to instrumental improvements, innovation, and the acoustics of buildings and concert halls. Every aspect increased public demand and changed compositional styles, plus heightened the need for virtuosic star performers. Conversely, the attempts to record and distribute music inspired the growth of recording systems, microphones, and electronic amplifiers, which has resulted in the electronically dominated world as we now know it. The book maps these continuous changes and how they have influenced musical evolution, and it not only explores the past, but attempts to predict the near future in terms of the potential for new electronic instruments and the ongoing shifts between recording and broadcasting techniques (tapes, vinyl, CDs, streaming, etc.), together with their impact on, and the survival of, the music industry. Examples of changes for keyboard, string, and brass instruments, current understanding of voice production, hearing, and brain processing of music are all discussed. This book is for those interested in all aspects of music, from classical to jazz and pop. It does not require either scientific or musical backgrounds, but it will enhance enjoyment of music, and reveal the probable future of musical trends.