Error‐free genome duplication and accurate cell division are critical for cell survival. In all three domains of life, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, initiator proteins bind replication origins in an ATP‐dependent manner, play critical roles in replisome assembly, and coordinate cell‐cycle regulation. We discuss how the eukaryotic initiator, Origin recognition complex (ORC), coordinates different events during the cell cycle. We propose that ORC is the maestro driving the orchestra to coordinately perform the musical pieces of replication, chromatin organization, and repair.

This study examines the representation of male and female musicians in world-class symphony orchestras. Personnel of 40 orchestras of three regions, UK, Europe and the USA and distributions of men and women across the four orchestral departments: strings, woodwind, brass and percussion are compared. Significant differences in representation between orchestras of the three regions are reported. Practices adopted by orchestras when appointing musicians to vacant positions are reviewed and numbers of males and females appointed to rank-and-file and Section Principals are (...) compared. Career patterns of male and female musicians are also compared. Increases in numbers of women appointed to orchestral posts in the last three decades are compared with increases in the proportion of women in the general workforce. The data of orchestral membership are then compared with the numbers of young people receiving tuition on orchestral instruments retrieved from a large national database (n = 391,000 students). Implications for the future of male and female representation in orchestral personnel are then considered. (shrink)

The historical features of the playing of the flute group in the symphony orchestra, the ability of soloists-instrumentalists to be performers of a single group and a single whole among the large composition of members of the symphony orchestra are analyzed. The authors substantiate the expediency of the development of instrumental musicians first of all as orchestra players, and then as solo performers. The aim and the tasks: to analyze the historical development of the ensemble playing of (...) the flute group as part of the symphony orchestra. The tasks of the research are the analysis of publications on this issue and the selection of the necessary components for playing a group of flutes in a symphony orchestra.Research methods: the research methodology consists of the ratio of traditional and modern expedient, ascent from individual to generalized (generalizing principle) from abstract to concrete. Research results: a wide range of research on the musical performance process from the New Age to the present is analyzed. Analysis of new modern concepts of training of instrumental musicians in institutions of higher education is carried out. The European search for new forms is characterized by the search for objective regularities in music education of past centuries, taking into account the modern demand for orchestra players on the European labor market. Discussion. What should come first in the training of an orchestra playerindividual classes or his training in a team. Conclusion. Thus, the analysis of the historical development of the ensemble playing of the flute group in the symphony orchestra allowed us to draw the following conclusions: during the reign of the classicism and romantic styles, an understanding of the necessary components for a symphony orchestra artist in the flute group was formed: a the component of pure vertical and horizontal intonation; a the component to feel the dynamic balance of all participants in the ensemble playing of the flute group as part of the symphony orchestra; a component of the timbre fusion of the flute group and full sounding in different registers; a component understanding in performing strokes in groups of flutes; a component of expressiveness and vivid phrasing of the ensemble playing of a group of flutes as part of a symphony orchestra; a component of metrorhythmic feeling in ensemble playing; a component of the collective understanding of style by a group of flautists in a symphony orchestra. All these components in their unity will allow the group of flutes to sound as a single harmonious whole. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} This paper discusses how the proposed musical Emir Kusturica & the no smoking orchestra , creates new forms of perception on situations of armed conflict (war in Bosnia-Herzegovina) and exclusion (relationship with the community Rom), which (...) change completely imaginary imposed by the media about such phenomena. This is seen from the view of aesthetic theory and policy Renciére Jacques, who believes that the purpose of politics is to make visible the failure of an universal order that can pick up all parts of society. (shrink)

The distinctions drawn by Vaesen are plausible when we are comparing chimpanzees and human beings somewhere between the middle Paleolithic and the Neolithic. But since then new kinds of organization have vastly outstripped these neurological differences to account for the enormous advancement of human technology leaving our remarkable evolutionary cousins far behind.

In this paper, I argue that brain death is death because, despite the appearance of genuine integration, the brain-dead body does not in fact possess the unity that is proper to a human organism. A brain-dead body is not a single entity, but a multitude of organs and tissues functioning in a coordinated manner with the help of artificial life support. In order to support this claim, I first lay out Hoffmann and Rosenkrantz’s ontological account of the requirements for organismal (...) unity and summarize an earlier paper in which I apply this account to the brain death debate. I then further support this ontological argument by developing an analogy between the requirements for the unity of an organism and the requirements for the unity of an orchestra. To do so, I begin by examining the role that a conductor plays in unifying a traditional orchestra, and then go on to show that the human organism functions like a traditional orchestra that relies upon a conductor for its unity. Next, I consider the conditions required to achieve orchestral unity in conductorless orchestras and show that, in contrast to simpler organisms like plants, the postnatal human organism lacks those conditions. I argue, in other words, that although conductorless orchestras do exist, the human organism is not one of them. Like a traditional orchestra without a conductor, the brain-dead body is not a unified whole. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore a documentary about the curious case of Charlie and his Orchestra. While swing music was outlawed in Nazi Germany as “degenerate,” the Nazi regime created a radio program called “Charlie and his Orchestra” for foreign consumption. The propaganda lay in the changes to the original lyrics of the songs played, making them convey the anti-Semitic and other themes of the Nazi ideology. The review discusses just how good the musicians were, and how popular (...) the program was. (shrink)

The focus in this study is the relationships between one tertiary music academy and four amateur orchestras. In this study the kinds of cooperation that exist, how students benefit from participati...

The focus in this study is the relationships between one tertiary music academy and four amateur orchestras. In this study the kinds of cooperation that exist, how students benefit from participati...

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Ahead of Print. The focus in this study is the relationships between one tertiary music academy and four amateur orchestras. In this study the kinds of cooperation that exist, how students benefit from participating in amateur orchestras, and how cooperation can be further developed is identified. Four administrators from the academy and four conductors were interviewed. The study shows that the bases for cooperation are informal arrangements and personal contacts between individuals. What the interviewees (...) considered as the main benefit for students was that participating in amateur orchestras provided opportunities for orchestral playing that were lacking within their formal education. Policy decisions were based on the interviewees ideas about students’ benefits, which could be social, musical and professional. The interviewees also respected the students’, and teachers’, autonomy in choosing their own musical and professional paths. Both the academy administrators and the amateur orchestra conductors value the cooperative relationships between academy and amateur orchestras. (shrink)

The book addresses how music (especially opera), the phonograph, and film served as cultural agents facilitating the many extraordinary social, artistic, and cultural shifts that characterized the nascent twentieth century and much of what followed long thereafter, even to the present. Three tropes are central: the tensions and traumas---cultural, social, and personal---associated with modernity; changes in human subjectivity and its engagement and representation in music and film; and the more general societal impact of modern media, sound recording (the development of (...) the phonograph in particular), and the critical role played by early-century opera recording. A principal focus of the book is the conflicted relationship in Western modernity to nature, particularly as nature is perceived in opposition to culture and articulated through music, film, and sound as agents of fundamental, sometimes shocking transformation. The book considers the sound/vision world of modernity filtered through the lens of aesthetic modernism and rapid technological change, and the impact of both, experienced with the prescient sense that there could be no turning back"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The central topic of this essay consists into establishing a relation between two dimensions of formation: the conceptual process of creating philo- sophical toys - that is of reelaborating existing philosophical concepts, mainly deriving from the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in terms of their potential as ‘operative constructs' - and their parallel redeployment towards the specific problem of analyz- ing a recent transdisciplinary artwork. By means of this strategical shift, theory looses its character of explanation and illustration. (...) Philosophy as toy becomes rather the matter of evaluating the com- plexity of a specific artistic composition in terms of its aesthetic potential. It contributes towards developing meta- stable conditions of mutual resonance between heterogeneous modalities of creation. (shrink)

Expression in orchestral music is a matter of conductors rather than orchestras. Why should that be so? The straightforward answer seems to be that expression is bound to the individual self. But, then, does it have to be? Collective expression of, e.g., anger, rage or protest is not at all unusual in the public domain of politics. Our intuition of conductors’ expressive primacy could be salvaged if we were to conceive of orchestras as their instruments. But that will not do. (...) For conducting is to make oneself understood by an orchestra rather than to impact on it causally. A better way of making sense of the relationship between conductor and orchestra is offered by the theory of the social contract. That idea should be supplemented by an account of the relationship between the conductor who gesturally embodies the music’s expression on the one hand and the audience on the other hand. (shrink)

Rubin loves the beautiful sounds that are played by the orchestra. He wants to learn to play the violin and make his own music. But when Rubin plays, it doesn't sound like he imagines it should. Rubin goes into the forest to practice alone and despite only getting the violin to screech, he finds an unlikely audience that loves his unique style.

Forests, cars and orchestras are very different ontological entities, and yet very similar in some aspects. The relationships they have with the elements they are composed of is often assumed to be reducible to standard ontological relations, like parthood and constitution, but how this could be done is still debated. This paper sheds light on the issue starting from a linguistic and philosophical analysis aimed at understanding notions like plurality, collective and composite, and propos- ing a formal approach to characterise (...) them. We conclude the presentation with a discussion and analysis of social groups within this framework. (shrink)

Dance can be appreciated from all sorts of perspectives: For instance, by the dancer while dancing, by the choreographer while watching in the wings, by the musician in the orchestra pit who accompanies the dance, or by the loved-one of a dancer who watches while hoping that the dancer performs well and avoids injury. This essay will consider what it takes to appreciate dance from the perspective of a seated, non-moving audience member. A dance appreciator in this position is (...) typically someone who can hear and see, who can feel vibrations of sound through their skin, and who can have other human, kinaesthetic responses and perceptions as well as the cognitive ability to process them. This appreciator is also someone who is a person with a history that may or may not include experiences of dance that have conditioned his or her responses to watching dance. Based on both this experience, and the skill and capacity to focus, pay attention, make judgments, and convey those judgments, there are different types and levels of audience appreciation. This essay will consider three: 1. Innocent Eye Appreciation, 2. Dance-Trained Appreciation, and 3. Critical Appreciation. (shrink)

What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we propose five metaphors—teaching philosophy as (...) world-traveling, wondering, conducting an orchestra, storytelling, and coaching—that can better respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. Further, these metaphors find their ground in long-standing beliefs about what philosophy is, how it is done, and what it can do for those willing to engage in it. While no single one of them is comprehensive, we think that these models can help us enliven our own thinking about our teaching and the roles we and our students play in our classrooms. (shrink)

This chapter looks at how Göransson's motifs emotionally move us, but also how the music “reads the mind” of Din. In conveying meaning musically, Göransson's compositions enhance our aesthetic appreciation of The Mandalorian and further our emotional investment in Din's story. The ancient Greeks included music in education because they believed it perfects our soul or nature. Aristotle mentions that another purpose of music is to provide us with pleasure from the relaxation it provides. As Din and Kuiil set out (...) on their mission riding the blurrgs, The Mandalorian theme plays in full glory – a symphonic march with trumpets carrying most of the melody and harmony along with electric and bass guitars which help drive the orchestra. In addition to the pleasure we feel from enjoying well‐ordered emotional movements of music, Aristotle mentions another kind of pleasure we can feel from music: intellectual enjoyment. (shrink)

The sublime in classical aesthetics arrived at a famous formulation with Kant as a subjective quality more elevated than beauty, linked to commotion and respect followed by reaffirmation. However, a new interpretation of the Schopenhauerian sublime is necessary in its transforming appreciation of the importance of this feeling as a psychological state, which is not yet metaphysical as usually understood, when dealing with struggling situations without resolution. Here the focus will be on a variety of the sonorous sublime in contemporary (...) music, which finds resonances with Schopenhauer’s sublime: Witold Lutoslawski’s Three Poems of Henri Michaux for mixed chorus and orchestra focuses on unpredictability and form-contrariness, “picturing” surrealist texts of uncertainty in Pensées, violence in Le Grand Combat, and resignation in Repos dans Malheur. (shrink)

The Genre Legong is a secular (balih-balihan) Balinese dance genre (Anon. 1971).[1] Though originally associated with the palace,[2] legong has long been performed in villages, especially at temple ceremonies, as well as at Balinese festivals of the arts. Since the 1920s, abridged versions of legong dances have featured in concerts organized for tourists and in overseas tours by Balinese orchestras. Indeed, the dance has become culturally emblematic, and its image is used to advertise Bali to the world. Traditionally, the dancers (...) are three young girls; the servant (condong), who dances a prelude, and two legong. All wear elaborate costumes of gilded cloth with ornate accessories and frangipani-crowned headdresses.[3] The core repertoire consists of about fifteen dances (some of which are now lost), ranging in their longest versions from thirty to sixty minutes. Some of these are narrative, while others are abstract or general representations of nature, birds, insects, or plants. Those that involve narratives are, nevertheless, highly stylized, and the presentation of the drama is always secondary to the beauty of the dance. The genre is regarded as a treasury of the movements for Balinese women’s dance, and no dancer’s training is complete if she lacks a solid grounding in legong. The dance is accompanied by a gamelan of twenty-five or more players.[4] Though the legong dance remains popular in areas of traditional strength, and despite efforts to revive it, it is generally in decline (Davies 2006). (shrink)

ABSTRACT I focus on Pettigrove’s attack on the ‘proportionality principle’ of value, according to which our actions and attitudes ought to be proportioned to the degree of value present in an object, action, or event. I compare Pettigrove’s strong rejection of this principle with Aristotle's less radical view. There is no room in Aristotelian theory for a phronetic decision that does not take account of overall value. Yet how phronesis operates is clearly no mere utility calculus. What is clear is (...) that phronesis does not only attach itself to individual virtues in individual agents; it acts as a conductor of the whole virtue orchestra. Aristotle’s phronesis theory seems to bring him close to ‘proportionality principle’ territory. However, on a closer look, the whole idea of maximization is totally alien to Aristotelian virtue ethics. I explain how Aristotle's solution to the problem Pettigrove addresses lies in his individuality-adjusted account of virtue. (shrink)

A characteristic feature of Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian opera is the tendency to link scenes with numerous and often surprisingly lengthy orchestral interludes, frequently performed with the curtain closed. Often taken for granted or treated as a filler by audiences and critics, these interludes can take on very prominent roles, representing dream sequences, journeys and sexual encounters, and in some cases becoming a highlight of the opera. Christopher Morris investigates the implications of these important but strangely overlooked passages. Combining close readings (...) of individual musical texts with an investigation of the critical discourse surrounding the operas, Morris shows how the interludes shed light not only on the representational and narrative capacities of the orchestra, but also on the supposed 'absolute' realm of instrumental music, a concept to which many critics appealed when they associated the interludes with 'purely musical' and 'symphonic' qualities. (shrink)

Philosophical aspects of gambang kromong, a traditional orchestra of Betawi people which is a blend of gamelan, Western music and Chinese-style pentatonic base tones.

Une inscription trouvée à Chalcis célèbre l'exploit d'un Callinikos qui lors des Dionysia a fait 55 fois le tour de l'orchestra, porté sur une perche, et qui a soulevé seul le phallos. Rapprochement avec diverses traditions populaires.

Reductionism--understanding complex processes by breaking them into simpler elements--dominates scientific thinking around the world and has certainly proved a powerful tool, leading to major discoveries in every field of science. But reductionism can be taken too far, especially in the life sciences, where sociobiological thinking has bordered on biological determinism. Thus popular science writers such as Richard Dawkins, author of the highly influential The Selfish Gene, can write that human beings are just "robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish (...) molecules known as genes." Indeed, for many in science, genes have become the fundamental unit for understanding human existence: genes determine every aspect of our lives, from personal success to existential despair: genes for health and illness, genes for criminality, violence, and sexual orientation. Others would say that this is reductionism with a vengeance. In Lifelines, biologist Steven Rose offers a powerful alternative to the ultradarwinist claims of Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett and others. Rose argues against an extreme reductionist approach that would make the gene the key to understanding human nature, in favor of a more complex and richer vision of life. He urges instead that we focus on the organism and in particular on the organism's lifeline: the trajectory it takes through time and space. Our personal lifeline, Rose points out, is unique--even identical twins, with identical genes at birth, will differ over time. These differences are obviously not embedded in our genes, but come about through our developmental trajectory in which genes, as part of the biochemical orchestra of trillions of cells in each human body, have an important part--but only a part--to play. To illustrate this idea, Rose examines recent research in modern biology, and especially two disciplines--genetics (which looks at the impact of genes on form) and developmental biology (which examines the interaction between the organism and the environment)--and he explores new ideas on biological complexity proposed by scientists such as Stuart Kauffman. He shows how our lifelines are constructed through the interplay of physical forces--such as the intrinsic chemistry of lipids and proteins, and the self-organizing and stabilizing properties of complex metabolic webs--and he reaches a startling conclusion: that organisms are active players in their own fate, not simply the playthings of the gods, nature, or the inevitable workings out of gene-driven natural selection. The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves. Lifelines will be a rallying point for all who seek an alternative to the currently fashionable, deeply determinist accounts which dominate popular science writing and, in fact, crowd the pages of some of the major scientific journals. Based on solid, state-of-the-art research, it not only makes important contributions to our understanding of Darwin and natural selection, but will swing the pendulum back to a richer, more complex view of human nature and of life. (shrink)

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, (...) enhanced mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

The visible human body is composed of flesh and bones for the most part, yet an invisible orchestra of sensations and perceptions creates a virtual or phantom body that behaves like a shadow following every movement and gesture of its anatomical complement. This shadow becomes only “visible” to the individual when bodily integrity is affected, anatomically or cognitively. Phantom limbs have been known for a long time. They refer to the felt presence of a missing hand, leg, or other (...) body part as if it was still in place. Reciprocally and of a supposedly cognitive origin, phantom extremities are reported by some patients that feel the virtual presence of a supernumerary limb – signifying anatomical “overcompleteness.” However, other patients feel as one of their limbs does not belong to their body – signifying “foreignness”. Various shades of the so-called body integrity identity disorder exemplify the assumed complex signification processes within the human body. The Peircean theory of signs and the Uexküllian concept of endosemiosis are combined to approach the still poorly understood phantom phenomena in light of representation and embodiment. (shrink)

On the subject of football, Serge Mésonès, former French international turned journalist, wrote that ?the true miracle remains the birth of a great team; everything which could contribute to this deserves consideration. Whatever happens, the coach and his group will always form that tandem which Bella Guttman used to compare to a symphony orchestra and their conductor: there is a significant difference between the performance when Toscanini is conducting, and that when the conductor is mediocre? (Mésonès 1992, 12). With (...) the aim of better understanding the issues of such an assertion, in this article we will develop the theoretical elements that we began to tackle in the book Teaching Collective Sport in Schools (1999).1 This will involve clarifying, and going into detail on, some conceptions relating to the long journey that is the formation of a sporting group, exploring one scenario at a time. (shrink)

Group musical performance, especially large instrumental ensembles, present the outward appearance of an asymmetric, temporally immediate stimulus-response relationship between conductor and ensemble. Interestingly, anecdotal reports from both conductors and performers indicate a degree of variability in the timing of orchestral response to the conductor’s gestures. This observation is not present in anecdotal accounts of other instrumental ensemble settings, like wind bands, but commonplace occurrence among orchestral musicians indicates the potential presence of greater complexity in the observed relationship. This study investigates (...) both the quality and quantity of temporal lag between conductor and ensemble in two common instrumental ensemble configurations – wind bands and orchestras – in an effort to describe the interplay present within conducted group performance. The findings indicate that the anecdotally identified lag is present within all ensemble types, and that it presents a flexible, dynamic temporal relationship between conductor and ensemble. Additionally, both the quantity and quality of lag values are significantly different between ensemble types, experience levels, and musical content. Several avenues for future research are identified, and confounds within the sampled ensembles are examined for their potential roles in the observed relationships. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward the Materiality of Aesthetic ExperiencePeter de Bolla (bio)Over the last twenty years or so it has become a commonplace in discussions of "aesthetics" or of "art" in the most general sense to note that the term "aesthetics" was only very recently invented by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735, where it appears in his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus [see Menke 40; Dickie; Eagleton]. But the force of (...) this observation in regard to the relative youth of the concept is rarely, if ever, commented upon. As many philosophers and critics have pointed out, Baumgarten's use of the term was not primarily angled at what today might be unproblematically called "artworks"—say, paintings in the European grand master tradition—since his new kind of investigation was to be a "science of sensual recognition," that is, a general inquiry into how we come to know the world from the evidence of our senses. But, as is also frequently remarked, early on in the tradition of speculation now associated with "aesthetics as the study of art" the mutual attraction (to put it in the most anodyne terms) of "art" and "aesthetics" seems to have been extremely strong. As Jonathan Ree remarks, "the real begetter of the philosophical doctrine connecting the arts with the empirical senses—what we might call the aesthetic theory of the arts—was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing" [58]. From this point on (for heuristic purposes it may be identified with the date of publication of Lessing's Laokoon in 1766), artworks, which heretofore had not required a specific branch of inquiry in order for them to make sense or be conceptually grounded as art, are almost universally assumed to require "aesthetic" contemplation or appreciation.1 It is curious, then, that before 1766 such a mode of experiencing artworks had not been felt to be lacking.One might understand this observation both historically and philosophically, and both approaches, it seems to me, are needed. In the case of the first, a number of material effects conspired across mid-eighteenth-century Europe to produce what was in essence the modern art market. These include the legal establishment of copyright, first in England in 1709 but only by the end of the century in France and Germany; the foundation of various institutions whose primary purpose was the promotion and establishment of the fine arts: academies of painting, sculpture, or letters either with or without royal patronage; the public exhibition of paintings (from 1737 in France and 1761 in England); the opening of royal collections to public view (during the second half of the century in London, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Rome); the development of public concerts of secular music (in small scale from the 1670s in England but only becoming fully integrated in fashionable social life by mid-century); the construction of purpose-built concert venues (the Gewandthaus in Leipzig, a former cloth merchant's hall, was remodeled in 1781 in order to accommodate a resident orchestra, in effect becoming the first dedicated concert hall in Europe); the foundation of literary periodicals and review media; the emergence of social spaces and rituals encompassing polite discussion of [End Page 19] literature (coffeehouses, the construction of dedicated library rooms in domestic settings); and the promotion of architecture to a fine art through various societies, competitions, and the public display of architectural drawings in exhibition contexts (the Royal Academy yearly show included both drawings and models). These and other material conditions helped define the fine arts and construct a market in and for them.2 By the 1770s the category of the "fine arts" was well established in Britain, Germany, and France: Charles Batteux's Les beaux arts reduit a un meme principe, first published in France in 1746, was quickly translated into English as The Polite Arts; or, a Dissertation on Poetry,Painting, Musick, Architecture, and Eloquence in 1749 and into German in 1751. By 1771 a four-volume General Theory of the Fine Arts had been published for the German public by J. G. Sulzer.All of this points to the fact that the concept of the "artwork" is subject to both historical and material pressures. Prior to the mid-eighteenth... (shrink)

Music performance anxiety is a commonly present topic among musicians. Most studies on MPA investigated effects of a more general occurrence of MPA on performances. Less is known about individual variations of MPA within a performance, more specifically at the times before, during, and after the performance. This study used a questionnaire to investigate these performance times in order to find out if there occur different types in the variation of the perceived MPA across the performance. The study was performed (...) with 532 musicians; 27% of them being professional orchestra musicians, 45% non-professional orchestra musicians, and 28% non-professional choir singers. The musicians were asked to fill in the Performance-specific Questionnaire for Musicians immediately after a performance. The questionnaire contains three scales regarding symptoms of MPA, functional coping with MPA and performance-related self-efficacy. A cluster analysis was performed on the PQM scales to identify systematic variations. Findings indicate that there are three different types of MPA in the sample studied. Type 1 describes musicians who have few symptoms of MPA throughout the performance, show functional coping with MPA, and have a stable and well-developed self-efficacy. Type 2 describes musicians who begin their performance with rather high symptoms of MPA but can positively reduce these by the end of the performance and show high values in self-efficacy and in functional coping. Type 3 contains musicians who begin their performance with some symptoms of MPA, which increase to the end of the performance. The values of self-efficacy and functional coping in this type are rather low. Of the total sample, half of the musicians were assigned to Type 1 and approximately a quarter each to Type 2 and Type 3. In accordance with the literature, the results confirm the importance of self-efficacy and functional coping for a positive performance experience. (shrink)

Unarguably, Jean-Luc Marion is the leading figure in French phenomenology as well as one of the proponents of the so-called “theological turn” in European philosophy. In this volume, Kevin Hart has assembled a stellar group of philosophers and theologians from the United States, Britain, France, and Australia to examine Marion's work—especially his later work—from a variety of perspectives. The resulting volume is an indispensable resource for scholars working at the intersection of philosophy and theology. “This is a ground-breaking book by (...) leading continental thinkers on one of the most pioneering and controversial voices to emerge in French thought in decades. This volume addresses the lynch-pin of Marion's thought—the point where philosophy and theology, gift and revelation, impossibility and grace, intersect in fascinating and arresting ways. Kevin Hart, as editor, assembles and conducts a magisterial intellectual orchestra.” —Richard Kearney, Boston College “The collective strength of these exceptionally high-quality essays is the authors’ diversity of reflection on the relation of phenomenology to theology. Readers new to Marion will find their way into the _corpus_ and those already familiar with Marion’s work will encounter stimulating interpretations, challenges, and defenses. Valuable, too, are Hart’s introduction to Marion as phenomenologist and Marion’s defense of the saturated phenomenon that bookend the volume.” —Merold Westphal, Fordham University “As a sophisticated engagement with the question of Marion’s relation to Christian theology specifically, and as a general response to Marion’s work as a whole, _Counter-Experiences_ is an undeniable success. The authors treat Marion’s texts carefully, bring impressive intellectual force to their task, and provide rich documentation in the strongest volume of work on Marion’s thought yet to appear in English.” —Jeffrey Bloechl, College of the Holy Cross. (shrink)

'Culture’. The Work for Choir and Orchestra. Music as an Organon for the Structural Analysis of Myth.

The following article challenges the traditional reading of the Rural Dionysia scene in Aristophanes’ Acharnians. It is often assumed that the text contains a reference to an animal sacrifice, which is arguably absent from this comedy. Moreover, the vast majority of scholars claim that the lines 244 ff. were uttered after the procession of worshippers reached the altar in the orchestra. However, as I argue, these verses were most probably spoken by the characters in front of the door of (...) the comic hero’s house and only subsequently did the procession form and move towards the altar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience or Interpretation:"What You See Is Not What You Read"Klaus OttmannMuseums of modern and contemporary art are growing at an unprecedented rate. New museums are being founded and existing ones are expanding exhibition spaces and acquiring more and more works of art. Concurrently, cultural institutions compete with a growing number of art fairs, biennials, galleries, and public collection spaces.Since the 1980s the focus of museums increasingly has been on (...) education and interpretation, which among other things has created a boom for audio guides and scholarly exhibition catalogs at the expense of the unmediated experience of works of art. Perhaps what is needed are exhibitions that present art again primarily as "experience," with minimal curatorial and didactic intervention. [End Page 13]I have borrowed the title of my essay from a lecture that was given by Nicolas Serota, the director of the Tate galleries in London, in 1996. His lecture was subtitled "The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art."But the question of the presentation of art, and specifically, that of experience vs. interpretation, by no means originated in the last decades. It is at least as old a question as modern art itself, going as far back as the nineteenth-century French intellectual dispute on the museum between the poet Paul Valéry and the novelist Marcel Proust, as recounted with a sympathetic voice by the German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor Adorno in a short essay with the minimalist title "Valéry Proust Museum."There is much to be learned from reading this small text. Paul Valéry criticized the museum of his time (the Louvre) for creating confusion in the mind of the spectator by reducing the experience to the level of information only. No one would want to listen to ten orchestras at once, he argued, yet we are forced to apprehend, at the same moment, a seascape, a portrait, and a still-life, or worse, painting styles completely incompatible with each other. He warned that excess of information would lead to impoverishment of the senses, as art was becoming a matter of education. Valéry's view could be regarded as the conservative position.Marcel Proust's view was more modernist: he regarded the museum as the best place to view art. Devoid of décor and other commonplace distractions, its galleries symbolized for him the inner spaces into which the artist withdraws to create works of art.Both Valéry and Proust emphasized that art should be enjoyed. But while for Valéry art lost its vitality in the museum and effectively "died," Proust saw an afterlife of art in the museum and in the subjective stream of consciousness of the viewer.For Adorno, both views were too one-sided and extreme. Valéry's absolute unwavering contemplation of pure art takes the risk of neutralization, unless the work can point beyond itself toward a social context. Thus, a work of art is neither an embodiment of a Platonic idea, as Valéry believed, nor is it exclusively a reflection of the soul, as Proust understood it. Rather, in Adorno's view, art is a "force field" between the art and the viewer, both passive and active.In his 1931 lectures on "Art as Experience," the American philosopher John Dewey said:The trouble with existing theories [of art] is that they start from ready-made compartmentalization, or from a conception of art that "spiritualizes" it out of connection with the objects of concrete experience. The alternative, however, to such spiritualization is not a degrading... materialization of works of fine art, but a conception that discloses the way in which these works idealize qualities found in common experience.1 [End Page 14]In my book The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, I describe the creative act as an active-passive leap that the artist is impelled to make and the viewer is challenged to repeat.Wittgenstein often spoke about the inexpressible, that which is beyond the limits of language. He called it "running against the boundaries of language." It is something any poet, musician, or painter is familiar with; they all run against boundaries of language, sound, or color... (shrink)

This article is devoted to examining the ontological foundations of computer-generated music scores. Specifically, we focus on the categorial question, i.e., the inquiry that aims to determine the kind of ontological category that musical works belong to. This task involves considerations concerning the existence and persistence conditions for musical works, and it has consequences for the determination of what it is to compose a musical work. Our contention is that not all the possible answers to the categorial question in the (...) ontology of music are equally compatible with the hypothesis that creative music systems compose musical works. The thesis defended here is that musical Platonism is the proposal that best accommodates this hypothesis. We claim that musical Platonism is the answer to the categorial question that offers the most straightforward explanation for the possibility of considering creative music systems as genuinely composing musical works. Moreover, we uphold that the notion of creative-evaluative discovery as the characterization of what it is to compose a musical work entailed by Platonism is the simplest explanation of the process developed by a computer in producing musical works. For this purpose, we will take as empirical data the features of the Iamus computer, a system that produces musical works autonomously using evolutionary algorithms and following an evo-devo strategy. The works generated by this computer have been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and other renowned international soloists, and its impact has been notable in the literature (Ball, 2012; Coghlan, 2012; Berger, 2013). (shrink)