Music education can alleviate students’ psychological stress and play a positive role in the healthy growth and development of students. Synaesthesia theory is a relatively special cognitive phenomenon that can achieve connections between different sensory organs. Colour psychology can influence the change of mental state through the change of vision. In this study, synaesthesia theory and colour psychology were applied to music education, and the traditional music education method was used as the contrast method to set up (...) the experiment. The article focuses on the experimental results with regard to the Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA) score of the use of traditional music by students. It shows that the music education mode integrating synaesthesia theory and colour psychology can better improve the classroom quality of music education, so as to better relieve the pressure of students and promote their healthy, happy and positive growth. Contribution: Difficult learning tasks add pressure to the student’s learning capabilities, which leads to psychological problems such as anxiety and stress. Music education can relax students’ nerves and psychology, so as to relieve students’ psychological pressure. The research applies synaesthesia theory and colour psychology to music education to improve the classroom quality of music, so as to better alleviate student pressures and promote healthy, happy and positive growth. This research represents data, which can be utilised by scholars in the field of religious education and public theology. (shrink)

This review provides a commentary on coloured-hearing arising on hearing music: music-colour synaesthesia. Although traditionally explained by the hyperconnectivity theory (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001a) and the disinhibited feedback theory (Grossenbacher & Lovelace, 2001) as a purely perceptual phenomenon, the review of eight coloured-hearing neuroimaging studies shows that it may not be assumed that these explanations are directly translatable to music-colour synaesthesia. The concept of 'ideaesthesia' (Nikolić, 2009) and the role of conceptual and semantic inducers challenge the likelihood (...) of a single mechanism underlying the cause of synaesthesia and argue for a move away from a purely sensory to sensory explanation. Finally, music-colour synaesthesia forms a challenge for established philosophical theories and the position of synaesthesia is considered within the larger context of musical qualia. (shrink)

known as timbral sonicism, accepts that a musical work's orchestral colour is a factor in its identity, but denies that the use of the specified instruments is required for an authentic rendition of the work provided that sounds as of those instruments are achieved. This position has been defended by Julian Dodd. In arguing against his view, I appeal to empirical work showing that composers, musicians, and listeners typically hear through music to the actions that go into its production. (...) In this respect, musical listening reflects the standard account of ‘ecological hearing’; we appreciate sounds as providing information about their sources rather than for their intrinsic qualities. On this basis, I suggest that musical instruments are not merely means to the production of the sounds of performances. Their use is mandated if such performances are to be properly formed. More specifically, when composers are able to make the instrumentation of their compositions central to the identity of those compositions, accurate performances must involve the appropriate use of the specified instruments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 419-428.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference in Meran in October 2015 on intercultural aesthetics with the addition of some external contributions. Two general papers on the topic concerned (Ram Adhar Mall, Giusi Strumiello) are followed by contributions on music (H.-C. Günther on Mahler and on Busoni, Yoon Young Serena Kim on Yun Isang), Indian and Chinese art (Ram Adhar Mall, Harro von Senger, Gabriele Kiesewetter), urban planning (Thilo Hilpert) and film (Udo Steinbach). The contributions on art and (...) urban planning are amply illustrated. The appendix contains colour reproductions of an exhibition of watercolours by the Chinese artist Hong Yi with an introduction to the artist's work and detailed explanations of the painting by Gabriele Kiesewetter. (shrink)

From Music to Sound is an examination of the six musical histories whose convergence produces the emergence of sound, offering a plural, original history of new music. Both well-known and lesser-known works and composers are anaylsed in detail, from Debussy to contemporary music in the early 21st century; from rock to electronica; from the sound objects of the earliest musique concrète to current electroacoustic music; from the Poème électronique of Le Corbusier-Varèse-Xenakis to the most recent inter-arts (...) attempts. Covering theory, analysis and aesthetics, this book will be of great interest to scholars, professionals and students of Music, Musicology, Sound Studies and Sonic Arts. (shrink)

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts and hue combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall arousal (...) ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance. To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. (shrink)

El color en la historia -- El color en la historia de México -- Teorías y visión del color -- Gramática del color -- El color en las religiones -- El color en la literatura -- El color en la poesía -- El color en la pintura -- El color en la música -- El color en la política -- El color en la moda -- El color en la publicidad -- El color y sus extensiones simbólicas.

In this work we present the complex relationship between sound and color in musical creation throughout history that continues to be fruitful in current musical composition. Synesthesia in music establishes a correspondence between sound and color and has been a constant debate since the 17th century. The complex nature of sound appears from ancient Greece in the school of Pythagoras in which the number becomes the configurator of harmony. Since then, different aesthetic attempts have arisen to relate color and (...) sound that reach today's electronic procedures in contemporary music. (shrink)

Newton devoted some pages of his Opticks to describing an analogy between the color spectrum and the musical scale. Furthermore, in manuscripts penned in the 1690s, the so-called Classical Scholia, he claimed that Pythagoras had used a musical analogy in order to express knowledge of a heliocentric planetary system governed by universal gravitation. On this basis, historians of music and of mathematics have lately claimed that Newton endorsed myths concerning the harmony of the world typical of the neo-Pythagorean tradition. (...) This claim is here critically examined. (shrink)

This article responds to the new and major work on Lobby Loyde by Paul Oldham. It focuses on the middle period of Loyde’s career, from the Chicago-period Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs through to Lobby’s work with Sharpie band (was it?) Coloured Balls, and connects and compares Lobby’s trajectory to that of the post-Lobby Aztecs, as expressed in Sunbury, the 1972 parallel Australian event to Woodstock. Who led these processes, the bands or the crowds? If the crowd claimed a band, (...) what happened to musical autonomy in this process? This was a moment when mass audience response became tribal, and opened the possibility that musicians were no longer in charge of their art. Trying to escape from the wiles of the music industry, these musicians instead seem to have become captive to their audiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, (...) all of which are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

'Eye hEar The Visual in Music' employs the concept of the visual in proximate relation to music, producing a tension: 'is it not the case that there is a gulf between painting and music, between the visible and the audible? One is full of colour and light yet silent; one is invisible and marvellously noisy.' Such a belief, this book argues, betrays an ideological constraint on music, desiccating it to sound, and art to vision. The starting (...) point of this study is more hybrid (and hydrating): that music is never employed without numerous and complex intersections with the visual. By involving the concept of synaesthesia, the book evokes music's multi-sensory nature, stops it from sounding alone, and offers music as a subject for art historians. Music bleeds into art and visuality, in its graphic depiction in notation, in the theatre of performance, its sights and sites. This book looks at music in its absolute guise as a model for art; at notation and the conductor as the silent visual fulcra around which music circulates; at the music and image of Erik Satie; at the concert hall as white cube; at the symphonic film '2001: A Space Odyssey'; and at the liminality of John Cage and Andy Warhol. (shrink)

At the heart of the dialog between the art piece and the world, the artist works at communicating his sensations. For Gauguin, this work involves a self-claimed philosophical bent, as he considers his paintings as the result of a philosophical refoundation of color. His idea is that the artist’s sensations don’t stem from his contact with the empirical world but rather with the metaphysical one. This is due to the fact that the painter competes with nature: his imitation is inventive (...) and his truth is creative. An artist-philosopher, who is also a thinking subject, thus reasserts the pragmatic necessity of the perception. Being diverse, the color is an instrument by which the artist expresses his thinking. There is an arrangement that reveals the inner musical harmony of things and beings – by which the painter thinks out from words, within the symphony of pure colors. (shrink)

In this paper, based on computer reading and processing of music frequency, amplitude, timbre, image pixel, color filling, and so forth, a method of image style transfer guided by music feature data is implemented in real-time playback, using existing music files and image files, processing and trying to reconstruct the fluent relationship between the two in terms of auditory and visual, generating dynamic, musical sound visualization with real-time changes in the visualization. Although recommendation systems have been well (...) developed in real applications, the limitations of CF algorithms are slowly coming to light as the number of people increases day by day, such as the data sparsity problem caused by the scarcity of rated items, the cold start problem caused by new items and new users. The work is dynamic, with real-time changes in music and sound. Taking portraits as an experimental case, but allowing users to customize the input of both music and image files, this new visualization can provide users with a personalized service of mass customization and generate personalized portraits according to personal preferences. At the same time, we take advantage of the BP neural network’s ability to handle complex nonlinear problems and construct a rating prediction model between the user and item attribute features, referred to as the PSO-BP rating prediction model, by combining the features of global optimization of particle swarm optimization algorithm, and make further improvements based on the traditional collaborative filtering algorithm. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:“Destined to Fail”: Carl Seashore’s World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music by Julia Eklund KozaJune Boyce-TillmanJulia Eklund Koza, “Destined to Fail”: Carl Seashore’s World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2021)This is a difficult book to read not only because of its length but also its content. While reading the history of eugenics and how it played out (...) in the invention of the holocaust, I found myself feeling the nausea that I similarly feel when embarking on Margaret Attwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I also remembered how I had used the Seashore tests of musical ability in my time teaching in London primary schools. I was faced with a common problem in UK State schools–three places for violin tuition and twenty children seeking them. The Seashore tests appeared to be the answer to the problem. The claims made for them were that they would tell me which children were likely to succeed because they had more musical ability than others. It was only in the process of using them that I realized that this was an unjustified claim. Conversations with John Sloboda revealed two other aspects that might play out in musical success. One was a moment/event which made a person fall in love with a particular instrument and want to learn it. The other was the amount of time a person would put in to practice the instrument, which in many London contexts with high-rise flats and no soundproofing [End Page 83] was extremely difficult. All that the Seashore tests showed was the third aspect involved in engagement with music, which was the ability to recognize the musical patterns of a particular culture. But what this book shows us so clearly is the danger of rating this ability to grasp the musical patterns of the Western classical musical traditions as the totality of musical ability. Beneath this is the belief that some people are innately musical but, more significantly, others are not. In my experience, musicality is a difficult area in our UK culture; people are more likely to say that they are not musical in a way that they would not in relation to any other academic discipline such as English, geography or history. In many educational contexts, I have pointed out that, if a teacher believes that some students are musical and some are not, then it is unethical to have class music lessons for everyone in the curriculum. Helpfully, in the final chapter of the book, some of these shades from the past, that still color contemporary thinking about music education, are clearly set out.To turn to the book itself, the first chapter sets out Seashore’s life as a “Mendelian hereditarian who believed that musical talent is biologically inheritable, differently bestowed, and immutable.”1 The author contextualizes the belief system in which this is rooted, discussing the American Eugenics Society, the best baby contests, and the “great man” narratives of the early to mid-twentieth century (first set out in Galton’s idea of genius). Seashore’s legacy figures in a number of academic fields, including audiology, aesthetics, educational reform, the American Psychological Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. She hopes to initiate a debate about how eugenics has, and still does have, a part in stories of both music education and education generally. She situates her work in a view of “‘the past’ as a dynamic construct created and recreated in the present.”2 She sets up a different way of remembering the past by acknowledging that past, present, and future are culturally constructed and bounded, in which she uses Foucault’s concept of power.3 She considers the role of “solid” science in supporting both eugenics and its responsibility for the Holocaust. I would recommend that anyone embarking on historical musicology read this chapter to understand the complex mechanisms which need to underpin such study.My own academic research has been about deconstructing the patriarchal values that filled my own miseducation in music history. The legacy of Galton’s construction of genius dominated my music education and when I took my professorial... (shrink)

The Eurocentric canon remains the predominant focus of music education often excluding the role of music and experiences of Black individuals and people of color. This singular perspective creates an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the comprehensive nature of music and the humans who create, perform, and engage with it. In this article, the author shares her experience as a Black music educator and her aspirations for a music profession that incorporates the full range of (...) human music engagement and expression. The paper begins with a reflection on W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness followed by an exploration of the nuances, complexities, contradictions, and beauty of being a Black educator in a primarily white field. Subsequently, the essay presents four conceptual principles for a reimagined, inclusive music education approach, drawing inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s “new science of the Word.” These principles advocate retelling the music education narrative to incorporate historically marginalized voices, reorienting music education to be human-centered, embracing interdisciplinary approaches to view music teaching and learning, and acknowledging the power of music in uplifting the human condition. Finally, this paper proposes a pathway for reconciling diverse identities prevalent in American culture with music education and academia. (shrink)

Preface In 1739, the composer and theorist of music Johann Mattheson wrote the following about musical tone: In most books which treat the art of tone, ...

When it became uncool to speak of beauty with respect to pieces of art, physicists started claiming that their results are beautiful. They say, for example, that a theory's beauty speaks in favour of its truth, and that they strive to perform beautiful experiments. What does that mean? The notion cannot be defined. (It cannot be defined in the arts either). Therefore, I elucidate it with examples of optical experimentation. Desaguliers' white synthesis, for example, is more beautiful than Newton's, and (...) the many colourful syntheses done by Viennese painter Ingo Nussbaumer exemplify even greater beauty. Here are some criteria (which, of course, do not implement a decision procedure concerning beauty in experiments): cleanliness, simplicity, intellectual clarity, symmetry. Similar criteria are relevant to our aesthetical judgements about some pieces of music. So we can assume that our notion of beauty conserning art is related to the one conserning scientific experiments. (shrink)

In his essay Thinking Colours and/or Machines Kittler hints at a key point in the emergence of modern European culture: the point at which ‘letters and numbers no longer coincide’. In this essay - first published in 2003 as Zahl und Ziffer - Kittler traces the split between numerals and numbers in sweeping historical detail. This is part of a much larger project, the aim of which is to think about technology, history and culture anew by considering the ways in (...) which ‘letters, numbers, images and tones’ have been differentiated and re-integrated by developing notation systems and media technologies. In this present essay, Kittler is concerned specifically with the question of number. His argument is that numbers and numerals have not always stood apart. In Old Hebrew and even nursery rhymes, for example, numbers are in fact words. This might seem like a banal observation, but for Kittler it is crucial as historically, mathematics proper only developed ‘in cultures in which numbers are present as numerals’, a development which entailed the transformation of numbers from signifiers (‘a matter of hearing’) into signifieds (‘a matter of reading and writing’) and which rested on the emergence of storage and transmission media that Kittler calls ‘the media of mathematics’. This connection between media and mathematics is explored through a wide range of philosophical sources: Plato, Philolaus, Aristotle and Aquinas, to name but a few. Kittler is fascinated by the inscription technologies that make mathematics possible, and which at the same time structure cultural forms as well as our bodily experience of them. As he puts it in a programmatic aside, ‘media studies only make sense’ if they focus on how ‘media make senses.’ Hence his focus on the Greek phonetic alphabet: for Kittler, its superiority has less to do with its ability to reproduce the spoken words of any language, than with the fact that at one point it was used to handle language, music, and mathematics - that is, one and the same set of signs was used to encode letters, tones and numbers. This, however, was not an abstract undertaking but developed in constant feedback with specific instruments or media, especially the lyre and the bow. It was here that fundamental concepts such as logoi were first developed that were subsequently distorted, misunderstood and deprived of their musico-technical origins by philosophers such as Aristotle. Kittler’s essay is thus also part of a larger cultural project, indebted in particular to Martin Heidegger, whose aim it is to ferret out the different, as yet unrevealed beginning of occidental culture. Moreover, while it was necessary for the evolution of modern mathematics that numbers receive a notation system of their own that will allow for ratios and decimals, among others, it is obvious that Kittler sees the computer (as first envisaged in Alan Turing’s mathematical modelling) as a return of universal alphabet that operates in constant feedback with a medium that shapes our senses: ‘In the Greek alphabet our senses were present - and thanks to Turing they are so once again.’. (shrink)

What is the influence of music on the brain? And in what cases can this influence cause dysfunctioning? Among the different examples analyzed by Oliver Sacks, one is particularly significant: the phenomenon of synesthesia. Synesthesia is connected to having an extra one that associates different kinds of sensory information, music, and color. It can sometimes transform hearing music as a painful experience, transforming it into a pure literal meaning – to feel together – the secret condition for (...) all sensations? This hypothesis is examined by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. After all, Wagner was subject to synesthetic syndromes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Lauren Kapalka Richerme, "The Diversity Bargain and the Discourse Dance of Equitable and Best," Philosophy of Music Education Review 27, no. 2 (Fall, 2019)Nasim NiknafsI was asked to write a response to Lauren Richerme's convincing research on why and how one should distinguish between "equitable educational practices"1 and what she calls following Ellen Berry the "diversity bargain" where equity as the second-best option has always taken (...) a hit from the more dashing diversity. If I may metaphorically put this conversation into a romantic comedy, equity is always the wingperson of color to diversity as the main protagonist; by the end of the show it is the main protagonist who survives the hardship and reaches salvation, be it a long-lost love, an oasis of sorts, or making it to the finish line. The rest of the cast have the function of complementing and highlighting the main actor but never substituting for it; or they are as Homi Bhabha would say, "almost the same but not quite."2 For the sake of filling in the blank of let's-add-more-color-into-it, the genuine conversation over the nuances of equitable practices gets undermined and diffused of its poignancy. And this is what Richerme is arguing against: let us not forget that a more significant challenge than a mere technicolor presence is at play. In that, my response to Richerme's essay would [End Page 215] not be so much of a response but a grand nod, a body gesture, an embedded signal of approval between two human beings born and raised in two different parts of planet earth who after years of diverse and perhaps un-equitable educational access ended up in the same room at the same time. Thus, my nod to Richerme also originated from personal experiences and intimate familiarities with unequitable educational access. Yes, people of color can be assets to their institutions and their corresponding fields who add to the diversity of knowledge creation practices, but it is not people of color's project or responsibility to act as the trophy to alleviate the unhappy conscience of educational malpractice or give a helping hand to the main protagonists for whom the scenario has already been written. Undoubtedly, they can take on that role if they want to, but it is only contingent upon where their desires lie not where they should lie.I strongly agree with Richerme's claim that music classrooms and I would add any classroom and learning environment should be a place and space for "sharing stories and insights"3 to not only learn about the content material whatever it may be but to learn to empathize with one another, understand positive and negative human behaviors toward humans and their environment, and act against discriminatory practices, racial, ethnic, religious, and gender prejudices, and to the point of Richerme's essay, unequitable practices that are insistent in today's political climate on a global scale.At this very juncture I diverge not from Richerme's fine thesis and argumentation, but from the larger issue of the premise of her arguments grounded on Thomas Green's educational framework.4 Green argues that the "rank order of political arguments that can be mustered in support of the [educational] system … [is] roughly as follows": (1) the fundamental or compelling interests of the state; (2) the aggregate of individual or parental interests; (3) societal interests; and (4) educational goods for their own sake."5 Following Green's framework Richerme analyzes contemporary music education initiatives in relation to the differing political strengths of each group of stakeholders: the state, parents, society, and educational goods for their own sake.There is a sense of mistrust in the local and national government implied by Green's framework, reminding one of the cumulative mistrust of the elite by U.S. citizens. Years of neglect, condescension, and lack of attention to the real and tangible needs of people amalgamated into what today one sees as white nationalism, plutocracy, and protectionism across borders. Green wrote his book, Predicting the Behavior of the Educational System, in 1980; historically the world order was increasingly metamorphosing and establishing itself... (shrink)

This is a book about time--about one's own journey through it and, more important, about enlarging the pleasure one takes in that journey. It's about memory of the past, hope and fear for the future, and how they color, for better and for worse, one's experience of the present. Ultimately, it's a book about freedom--freedom from despair of the clock, of the aging body, of the seeming waste of one's daily routine, the freedom that comes with acceptance and appreciation of (...) the human dimensions of time and of the place of each passing moment on life's bounteous continuum. For Robert Grudin, living is an art, and cultivating a creative partnership with time is one of the keys to mastering it. In a series of wise, witty, and playful meditations, he suggests that happiness lies not in the effort to conquer time but rather in learning "to bend to its curve," in hearing its music and learning to dance to it. Grudin offers practical advice and mental exercises designed to help the reader use time more effectively, but this is no ordinary self-help book. It is instead a kind of wisdom literature, a guide to life, a feast for the mind and for the spirit. (shrink)

Dieses Buch untersucht die Art und Weise, wie die Musikschriftsteller Robert Schumann, E. T. A. Hoffmann und Ludwig Tieck versucht haben, den musikalischen Eindruck von Werken wie Beethovens Neunter Symphonie oder Mozarts Don Giovanni zu beschreiben. Der Autor Moritz Katz zeigt auf, wie diese Beschreibungen notwendigerweise unvollständig sind und wie die Sprache der Musik sich der Beschreibung entzieht. Dieses Buch wird Musikliebhaber und Studenten der Musik- und Literaturgeschichte ansprechen. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and (...) is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Bringing Flowers HomeWe try to put a bandage on the wound,offering a vague apology:Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.Towers turn out to have been built on sand.Regimes collapse. No use in asking whywe ripped the bandage off that bleeding wound.An earthquake followed by a hurricane,fires, floods: they've passed some of us by.Us. And who is we? And what is home?Last week an enormous yellow moonhung low in a corner of the sky.Beauty is no bandage for the wound,hole in (...) the future much too big to mendor even to imagine, though we tryto camouflage it, bringing flowers home.You said, when we were talking of the end,that no one teaches us to say goodbye,or how to ease the bandage from the wound.Forgive me, death. I brought these flowers home.Moving the PianoCompact, gleaming, black and white,this sturdy Yamaha uprightstood staunchly in one room for yearsuntil, maneuvered through several doorstoday by two young slender menand up a ramp into their van,it ventured briefly out into the world again.The change of space, the space of change:the walls look naked, empty, strange.Heavy has given way to light.Habitual soliditytoo familiar to seeyields to possibilitytoo unfamiliar to see.Late and early, early, late,end, beginning—all are swirledinto a mist that veils the world.The black and white of status quoblends to a color I don't know,transition that I cannot name,but I salute it all the same.Goodbye, piano, and hello.So where is the piano going?Where will it find another life,music and memories unpackedin an unfolding second act?North Carolina, near a riverwhose stream, like time, is always flowing.My son lives there with his wife.Beloved, nothing is forever.You can't step twice into this life.Nap at Stony PointMy cousin and my friendon their respective recent deathbedsslid from my mind. I noticedthe scarlet splash of a cardinal perched on a cannonon a bluff above the Hudson.I lay down on a picnic table,sun on my face, five turkey vulturescircling overhead, and closed my eyes.And when I opened them I felt as pleasedas if I had completed some needful taskinstead of having forgottenhow my friend in January and my cousin in March,both of them alert and wry and tranquil,had faced what each of them clearly saw approaching—more, had recognized and greeted it,instead of ignoring it by looking through it,the way some people, even iftheir office is two doors down the hall,look right through you, pretending not to see you.Or maybe they don't see youany more than one envisions deathon a sunny April afternoon.The Last Lecture HallTheaters that were never ours,classrooms empty and refill.Nor do the trees belong to us.We cross the stage and disappearor venture in among the treesand lose ourselves there.Feverish categories blur.Genre distinctions: what for?The empty theater becomesa lecture hall. A classroom morphsinto a forest murmuringwith voices. Words pelt down like rainor rise like mist and dissipate.The rustling trees swell to a roar.But they were never still.Theater, classroom, maple, fir:feverish categories blur,presences pressing through the veilof the phenomenal;a leopard padding down the aisle.Tiger-masked students fill the seatsof the amphitheater.The old professor, looking outover the upturned faces, said“You are all allegoricalfigures to me. I will not learnyour names.” Did the students laugh?Tragedy, satire, comedy:genres are deciduous.Modes blur, leaves spin and fall.The leaves of memory seemed to makeA mournful rustling in the dark(Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”).Lights go on in the theater.Class is over. We stumble out.The GatesWhen I woke up I had walked through a gate.I looked around the room—trickle or torrent, stepping into time—and bent my head to drink at a black stream.I look around a roomthick with the dust of after and before.Am I meant to drink from this black stream?My lips are dry,thick with the crust of after and before,gate of ivory and gate of horn.My lips are dry, I'm thirsty.Heat, cold, fire, snow, sun.Gate of ivory and gate of horn:to cross a threshold ends one story(firelight; snow squeaking; winter sun)and begins another.To cross a threshold ends one story(ever after? or a transformation?)and begins anotherthere is no law compelling us to enter.Ever after or a transformation.Torrent, trickle: we set foot in time,but there's no law compelling us to enterstory once we've latched the gate of dream.FilamentsYour past is thickening. You can seeits filaments, as carefullyyou begin to part the strands(they're all connected) with both hands,and clear a path. Now warilyenter the web—not all the way,but toward some kind of clarity.We have been rightly taught that wecan't finish, but must do, the work.Partway through the leafy murk,crisscrossing dapple of the trees,so tough and so precarious,you find yourself in the dawn air,the circle's center everywhere.Along the PromenadeReading a book about transitioningin the twenty-first-century meaning of the wordblends with plans for my son's upcoming weddingand scraps of conversation overheardat the Japanese-themed street fair today.Somnambulists along the promenadefloat in the warm currents of Broadway,eat talk look linger in the sun and shade.Then to the park: October leaves still green(climate change or merely Indian summer?).Snatched memories, I catch them on the wing:Samos Septembers, pomegranate tree,lemon tree, okra, a chameleon,the little summer of Saint Dimitri,they called it. All this happened; but to me?Streams of conversation flowing by.The sound artist described his work like this(if work is the right word): “Accidentallyuploading seemingly private messages,”which describes, also, dreams and poetry,the drifting crowd, incessant carousel,city and weather, time and holiday,all lived, palped, tasted, tested, overheard.Somnambulists along the promenadehave set up booths, their dreams... Bookending my dawn dream: symmetricalsoaking sponges dripping... DNA?Destiny, temperament, personality:the cards we're dealt and that we have to play,except we now can change them gradually.Transition: he or she or rather they,constructed, deconstructed, rearranged,the tarot spread of genealogy,inheritance as aleatoric play.We walked west to Eleventh Avenue,drawn by rumors of Ad Reinhardt's blue,which buzzed and throbbed. Stand still: my head was spinning.Allusions to water or to sky,dense, deep, alarming, ending or beginning... I sat awhile and watched the crowd glide by,enchanted promenaders all drawn inon the exhibition's last dayby the silence's cerulean humming.And then they climbed the stairs, and so did we,to lighter textures on an upper floorwhere Ruth Asawa's baskets in midairweightlessly demonstrated gravity,twigs, trees, crowns, bubbles dancing in white space.Next week my class will read “On Being Ill.”“Blogs,” I'll tell them, is the word we nowuse, not “essay,” for the moving mind,that saunterer who takes note and leaves behindand doubles back and ponders and regretsamidst the wash of vision, the flowand tidal pull of what we see and know,what we've dreamed, what we have said and heard,the thrumming colors and the floating crowd,as if the bubbly brew of sunny dayand anxious dreams could somehow all be caughtup in one enormous, one all-encompassing word. (shrink)

Music, which is composed of sound, rhythm and harmony components, is an important phenomenon that exists in every phase of human life, that gives meaning and color to life. Music, as in the past, is not only used as a means of entertainment or leisure, but is also an important tool used in the treatment and education of people. Especially in the education of pre-school children, it is necessary to benefit more from music due to the characteristics (...) of the age range of children. In this study, it has been examined how much musical elements are included in the instruction books of the Directorate of Religious Affairs 4-6 Years old Qur'an Courses operating within the scope of pre-school religious education, and in this sense, how much music is used as an educational tool in the education given to children. The aim of the study is to draw attention to the importance of music in the education of preschool children, who acquire a lot of information through games and entertainment, and to emphasize the need for more use of music. This research, which evaluates the suitability of existing songs and lyrics for pre-school children by determining whether musical elements are used at a sufficient level in the 4-6 years old Qur'an courses teaching books, is a qualitative research in which data collection methods such as document analysis are used. As a result, it has been seen that musical elements are not included enough in the instruction books of the Qur'an Courses for 4-6 years old. (shrink)

This book is a series of examinations of Black queer cis and transfeminity, a personal and loving homage to "Black femmes poetics of survival during the Trump era and beyond." Tinsley examines contemporary Black femme cultural production: the music of Kelsey Lu and Janelle Monáe; the visual work of Juliana Huxtable; Janet Mock's writing/directing of the TV show Pose, and the creations of Tourmaline; the fashion of Indya Moore; and (F)empower. She is interested in Black femme representations in film, (...) popular music, television, graphic novels, and poetry to conceptualize Black femme as figuration: that is, as a set of consciously, continually rescripted cultural and aesthetic practices that disrupt conventional meanings of race, gender, and sexuality. (shrink)

Maps and realist pictures comprise prominent sub-classes of iconic representations. The most basic, most important sub-class is perception. Other types are drawings, photographs, musical notations, diagrams, bar graphs, abacuses, hieroglyphs, and color chits.

Charles Darwin's curiosity had a remarkable childlike enthusiasm driven by an almost compulsive appetite for a constant process of discovery, which he never satiated despite his many voyages. He would puzzle about the smallest things, from the wonders of barnacles to the different shapes, colours and textures of the beetles which he obsessively collected, from flowers and stems to birds, music and language, and would dedicate years to understanding the potential significance of everything he saw. Darwin's findings and theories (...) relied heavily on that same curiosity, on seeking and answering questions, however long these would take to clarify. His son Francis Darwin often recalls how "he would ask himself 'now what do you want to say' and his answer written down would often disentangle the confusion". In fact, "disentangling confusions" seems to have been the driving force behind Darwin's scientific pursuits, as he was struck with bewilderment when contemplating the luxuriousness of life. It was also the impetus for this book. The true implications of Darwin's legacy remain as controversial to the critics of our time as they were to his contemporaries. Darwin's impact within and beyond the biological sciences is both daunting and exhilarating, and attests to the need for an interdisciplinary approach by remaining a challenge to many scholars in the most diverse fields. The recent revival of his theories has opened a Pandora's box of different theoretical studies that are particularly receptive to exploring new and exciting angles of research. (shrink)

Here, I outline the idea of a unified hypothesis of sensory perception, developed from the theoretical vibrational mechanism of olfaction, which can be applied across all sensory modalities. I propose that all sensory perception is based upon the detection of mechanical forces at a cellular level, and the subsequent mechanotransduction of the signal via the nervous system. Thus, I argue that the sensory modalities found in the animal kingdom may all be viewed as being mechanoreceptory, rather than being discrete neurophysiological (...) systems which evolved independently of each other. I go on to argue that this idea could potentially explain language evolution, with birdsong being an example of a more simple form of non-Saussurean language that employs ‘frequency-mimicking’ to produce a vocal signal which describes acoustic, chemical and electromagnetic vibrational frequencies detected within in the environment. I also give examples of how this hypothesis could potentially explain phenomena such as vocal mimicry in animals, as well as the human perception of musicality and the occurrence of synaesthesia; a condition found in humans, where the stimulation of one sensory modality results in the stimulation of another. For example, auditory stimuli are detected and are heard as an acoustic signal, as well as being perceived as colour by the visual system. (shrink)

In Cameroon, a monumental "statue of liberty" is made from scrap metal. In Congo, a thriving popular music incorporates piercing screams and carnal dances. When these and other instantiations of the aesthetics of Africa and its diasporas are taken into account, how are ideas of beauty reconfigured? Scholars and artists take up that question in this invigorating, lavishly illustrated collection, which includes more than one hundred color images. Exploring sculpture, music, fiction, food, photography, fashion, and urban design, the (...) contributors engage with and depart from canonical aesthetic theories as they demonstrate that beauty cannot be understood apart from ugliness. Highlighting how ideas of beauty are manifest and how they mutate, travel, and combine across time and distance, continental and diasporic writers examine the work of a Senegalese sculptor inspired by Leni Riefenstahl's photographs of Nuba warriors; a rich Afro-Brazilian aesthetic incorporating aspects of African, Jamaican, and American cultures; and African Americans' Africanization of the Santería movement in the United States. They consider the fraught, intricate spaces of the urban landscape in postcolonial South Africa; the intense pleasures of eating on Réunion; and the shockingly graphic images on painted plywood boards advertising "morality" plays along the streets of Ghana. And they analyze the increasingly ritualized wedding feasts in Cameroon as well as the limits of an explicitly "African" aesthetics. Two short stories by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto gesture toward what beauty might be in the context of political failure and postcolonial disillusionment. Together the essays suggest that beauty is in some sense future-oriented and that taking beauty in Africa and its diasporas seriously is a way of rekindling hope. Contributors. Rita Barnard, Kamari Maxine Clarke, Mia Couto, Mark Gevisser, Simon Gikandi, Michelle Gilbert, Isabel Hofmeyr, William Kentridge, Dominique Malaquais, Achille Mbembe, Cheryl-Ann Michael, Celestin Monga, Sarah Nuttall, Patricia Pinho, Rodney Place, Els van der Plas, Pippa Stein, Françoise Vergès. (shrink)