A taxonomy of humour in classical music

<i>Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination</i>, by Braxton D. Shelley

This book is a detailed study of the Canadian pianist, broadcaster, writer, and composer Glenn Gould (1932-82). While focussed primarily on his performances, it also situates his work and thought more broadly within relevant musical, cultural, intellectual, and historical contexts. It incorporates most of the existing primary and secondary literature on Gould, as well as many ideas, interpretations, and perspectives that have never before been offered. It also incorporates ideas from a wide range of literature, both musical and otherwise, and has benefitted from on-site research at The Glenn Gould Papers in the National Library of Canada. The book offers a more comprehensive, balanced, and thoroughly researched portrait of Gould as pianist and interpreter than any previous volume in the Gould literature. Following an introduction that summarizes Gould's career and the posthumous interest in him, the book divides into two parts. Part 1, `Premises', focuses on the intellectual and aesthetic ideas that informed Gould's performances, and draws on literature from many fields, including music history and aesthetics, cultural history, the history of performance practice, theatre, literary criticism, and music analysis. The three large chapters of Part 1 cover a wide range of topics: Gould's idealism, views on the musical work, musical tastes, and repertoire; his position on the role of the performer; the analytical, critical, and ethical discourses embodied in his performances; and his approach to performance in the contexts of Romanticism, modernism, neo-Classicism, post-structuralism, the historical performance movement, twentieth-century theatrical and literary practices, and cultural currents in the 1950s and 1960s. Part 2, `Practices', focuses in detail on Gould the pianist, illuminating important features of his style through prose description and critical analysis, and including graphic musical examples and plates. This second part focusses on specific aspects of Gould's performance practices: his relationship to the piano; his approach to counterpoint, rhythm, dynamics, articulation and phrasing, and ornamentation; and his uses of recording technology as a kind of performance practice. A conclusion serves in part as a summary of previous findings, but also discusses how, in light of these findings, Gould's work as a performer might ultimately be assessed.

Reviewed by: Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon Elizabeth L. Keathley (bio) Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon. By Ellie M. Hisama. Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis, Ian Bent, general editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Figures, tables, musical examples plus seven movements or works reprinted in their entirety. Bibliography and index. For at least the last two decades feminists have urged publishers and authors of music history textbooks to include music by women composers. A quick perusal of recently published textbooks intended for the music history sequence reveals that they all include only a small number of works by the same handful of women composers and that analytic discussion of these works is lacking in detail. Moreover, music analysis continues to be underrepresented in feminist treatments of works by women composers, a crucial issue given that academia confers value [End Page 111] on canonical compositions through music analysis based on meaningful methods.1 Such conferral of value through analysis is particularly important for marginalized groups like women whose nonconformance to conventional procedures is more likely to be construed as incompetence than as compositional innovation: in the absence of significant music analysis women's compositions will not be accorded the prestige they deserve. However, conventional analytic methods, which were developed to explain and evaluate canonical works, do not necessarily support feminist interpretations of music and music history. Hisama's Gendering Musical Modernism not only brings innovative tools to the project of analyzing the music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon but also confronts the problem of reading the formalist analyses through feminist theory: for this and other reasons, it is a tour de force of feminist music scholarship. Each of the seven analyses offered here uses a different method, as suggested by the music and the contexts of the composers' lived experiences as gendered subjects, "entwining" music analysis and social critique (181). Hisama makes no global claims about essential difference but rather documents the circumstances and attitudes of Crawford, Bauer, and Gideon through their diaries, letters, and published writings and demonstrates how the musical structures of these particular works comprise analogies to the composers' unspoken protest, experiences of marginalization, sexuality, identity, and political commitments. Her readings do not rely on that always suspect category, the "composer's intention," but rather situate Hisama's own hearing of the music from her subject position as an Asian American woman with experiences similar to those of her subjects. These are powerful premises for musical interpretation, for, as feminist theory's notion of "situated knowledge" shows, there are always epistemological limitations to "truth claims," which this methodology avoids, and these limitations proliferate when interpreting artworks. Because analogy and metaphor are important means for perceiving and interpreting musical works, it is significant that Hisama's analytical methods focus on audible musical features, such as contour, register, texture, and timbre. Although some of her analyses employ pitch class set theory, probably the preeminent method of analyzing posttonal music, her original analytical tools stem largely from recent theories of contour, whose perceptibility offers clear advantages. Hisama's analyses are verifiable by listening and therefore are meaningful and satisfying. Significantly, Hisama rejects the conventional wisdom that modernism is inimical to the aesthetics and interests of women. This is a matter dear to my heart because much feminist music inquiry—following, it seems, the lead of feminist literary scholarship—seems to have leapt from nineteenth-century Romanticism to late-twentieth-century postmodernism, relegating modernism to the domain of men, machismo, and misogyny. This lacuna disadvantages women with modernist sensibilities, leaving their works underrepresented, their participation in modernist projects undertheorized, and a significant segment of musical expression politically unavailable to them.2 Hisama's compelling analyses demonstrate that women composers have indeed used modernist idioms to create original works that also speak to feminist concerns. The analytical methods employed in the seven analyses, although selected—and sometimes invented—to examine the particular material at hand, are in no way exclusive to these works; that is, they are models that may be applied to other musical works, although perhaps (or probably) [End Page...

Example 1a. John Covach, Destructuring Cartesian Dualism in Musical Analysis (1994)Example 1b. Richard Littlefield, of the Frames (1996)Example 1c. Elizabeth Sayrs, Narrative Metaphor, and Conceptual Blending in 'The Hanging Tree' (2003)Example 1d. Richard cohn, Tetrahedral Graph of Tetrachordal Voice-Leading Space (2003)Example 1e. William Rothstein, Like Falling off a Log: Rubato in Chopin's Prelude in A-flat Major (op. 28, no. 17) (2005)Example 1f. John Covach, or Not To MOOC (2013)[1] In this essay, I will discuss how topical areas and presentational strategies have evolved as authors leverage the technological capacities of MTO. With the capacity to make articles and critical commentaries widely available in a short amount of time, MTO has attracted writers interested in articulating new methodologies, forging new interdisciplinary connections, and reevaluating our evolving identity as a scholarly society. Changes from fixed texts to multimedia and interactivity have evolved together with shifts in values and ideology. Examples 1a-f provide a sampling of article views representative of MTO's evolving design. A broadening in musical repertoires and analytical approaches has paralleled developments in digital media design, fostered by the flexibility MTO offers as an open-access medium for publication authored and produced by scholars. In this brief retrospective view spanning the history of MTO, it is inevitable that I will barely scratch the surface in commenting on a few articles while leaving other important contributions unmentioned. For this, I apologize in advance.Web Environments, Musical Worlds, and the Silence of the Frames[2] Several of the most prolific MTO authors have written thoughtfully on the changing landscape of music theory as it relates to other disciplines. Janet Schmalfeldt's six articles in MTO published between 1998 and 2010 (1998, 2004, 2005, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c) articulate a growing awareness of how musical analysis can be informed by performance and enriched through consideration of broader cultural and historical contexts. Patrick McCreless, in five articles spanning 1996 to 2011 (1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2000, 2011), traces how our Society grappled with the New Musicology critique in the late 1990s and continued to evolve in relation to other musical and scholarly communities. A wide range of studies in musical meaning can be traced from phenomenological approaches (Covach 1994, Littlefield 1996) and critical theory (Killam 1994, Krims 1994) to cognitive theory (London 1993, Zbikowski 1995) and semiotic approaches (Agawu 1996, Roeder 1993, Monelle 2000). The first writers for MTO formulated positions on future directions for music theory and recognized MTO as a logical platform for articulating those positions. These early articles were rich in philosophical introspection. Interestingly, MTO writers were directly concerned with syntactic, semantic, and intertextual issues in music often described through words that would also come to be understood as the stuff of HTML web design: network, frame, code, text, image. Engaged in the substance of their discussions, they did not always exhibit self-awareness as creators of the newly emerging phenomenon of hypertext. But now, the body of work from the early years of MTO forms a powerful example of evolving web-based scholarship.[3] There was urgency during MTO's first decade to repond to the challenges posed by new musicologists, to show that analysis of a musical work's internal relationships was compatible with investigations of larger contextualizations of musical meaning. In his 1996 article, Analyzing Music Under the New Musicological Regime, Kofi Agawu explored connections and mutual compatibilities in theory and musicology, citing examples from a vast range of innovative music-theoretical inquiries already under way that could not be dismissed as a merely formalist enterprise. …

WORKS, PERFORMANCE, CREATIVITY Virtuosity and Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt. By Jim Samson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [viii, 240 p. ISBN 0-521-81494-4. $75.] Music examples, bibliography, index. For some time now, musicology has sought methodology that offers persuasive response to assertions of Critical Studies discipline (called Theory in U.K., as opposed to Music Theory) regarding musicology's insufficient acknowledgment and treatment of social, cultural, and economic context of work (sometimes called its context). The criticism has long history; it is true that musicological preoccupations were, for long time, bibliographical and editorial. It is also true that discipline's putative myopia regarding all other kinds of inquiry has been exaggerated to point of falsity, with the music itself and cognate phrases now carrying talismanic power to belabor discipline from within and conjure up Bad Old Days. An example of this would be Matthew Head's identification of a recourse to 'the musical' as one of contemporary musicological ploys that amount to an unscholarly resistance to ... cultural There is no scholarly escape route from this theory. (Musicology on Safari, Music Analysis 22/1-2 [2003]: 218.) According to this common paradigm, Theory first, then (maybe) music, as it relates to Theory. Whatever music, and whatever cultural complications, there is still good deal to be said for responsibility of discipline devoted to scholarly study of music to address music, and to do so without fear of kind of reflexive criticism that has sometimes resulted when discussion has wandered too far from particular political agenda, such as that just quoted. In this volume, Jim Samson meets challenge head on; as he says in introduction, I believe that direct, close-to-thetext engagement with musical materials is likely to prove more revealing than seductive of 1980s and 1990s, and that such an engagement may provide necessary ballast for more thoroughly grounded, evidence-based hermeneutics (p. 2). A more direct (yet still civil) statement of difference to some of recent trends in musicology and cultural criticism cannot be imagined. While Samson does not specifically offer this book as catalyst of major hermeneutic paradigm shift, that, it seems to me, is its potential: thick context (including musical context), musicking (i.e., understanding and treatment of music as practice), and tracing of genre's development in one composer's hands against backdrop of broader musical environment. Theory is here, too, and it informs some of questions asked and complications identified, but it is neither melody to Liszt's accompaniment nor treated with fundamentalist awe. Samson's book draws on traditions of two musicological genres: studies devoted to specific large work or group of small works, such as Cambridge Guides (same publisher, different series), and genre history such as William Newman's monumental, three-volume study of sonata. It is happy pairing, due to special history of Transcendental Studies; set was published in three different versions, each dating from crucial period in Liszt's life. The first incarnation was Etude en 12 exercices, op. 1 (1826; first published salvo of young virtuoso); 12 grandes etudes followed, dedicated to Carl Czerny (1837; from midst of his career as touring virtuoso); and finally Liszt revised it again, and it took its most familiar form, Etudes d'execution transcendante (1851), also dedicated to Czerny, and dating from crossover period when composer had stopped touring and was moving directly into more concentrated composition and conducting. He was also revising earlier versions of other works, such as Paganini Studies and what would become Hungarian Rhapsodies. …

Studies in American Fiction119 Rovit's Ernest Hemingway (Twayne), also cheaper and more thorough than Shaw's book. University of North DakotaRobert W. Lewis Schulz, Max F. Bkck Humor Fiction of the Sixties. Athens: Ohio University Press. 156 pp. Cloth: $8.50 The Comic Imagination in American Literature, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 448 pp. Cloth: $12.50. The sixties have barely concluded and already they have become the subject of a substantial body of literary interpretation, much of it concentrating on black humor, the mode with which the period may well turn out to be permanently identified. Like earlier studies, Bhck Humor Fiction of the Sixties attempts a representative rather than a comprehensive definition of the genre, here concentrating on Barth, Vonnegut, Borges, Bruce J. Friedman, Leonard Cohen, Thomas Berger, Charles Wright, and Robert Coover. Characteristically, Schulz identifies the collective vision of these figures as one of a disintegrating world, unredeemed by a coherent order and consequently able to sustain only discontinuous states of being, in short an absurd universe. Schulz, however, makes a valuable distinction in seeing the black humor response to the "cosmic labyrinth" not as a constant mode of apprehending experience but as the product of a specific cultural context. Distinct from the sick jokes of Lenny Bruce, the theatrically absurd comedy of Joseph Heller, even from the existential assertion of self that marks the work of Saul Bellow, the operative term in his definition is "multiple possibilities." Arbitrarily suspending choices, he feels, black humor fosters a solipsism that itself becomes the object of its own ironic scrutiny, viewing reality as a constantly shifting series of masks or disguises. Through such open ended pluralism, however, the constriction of events, of identities, of value systems which obscure reality may be at least encountered if not overcome. In developing this thesis, Schulz's emphasis on culture remains chiefly attributive rather than demonstrable. That is to say, other than suggesting literary antecedents in the heroes of Scott's Waverly romances, who are similarly confronted with anxieties rising from fluid social conditions, Schulz does not identify either a literary tradition or an immediate historical context in which black humor may be seen. The cultural background he does provide is limited to comparisons with contemporary painting and sculpture. There is no direct examination of cultural phenomena as is given by critics such as Irving Howe, for whom the problem of personal identity in postmodern fiction emerges as a consequence of estrangement from the meanings afforded by a recognizable social order or by Leslie Fiedler, whose futurist projections conversely see that fiction turning to strategies of pornography and obscenity, finally to silence as a fulfillment of the cultural drive toward anti-rationalism. Schulz, accordingly, contents himself with identifying the dilemma raised in black humor rather than offering a perspective in which it may be evaluated. Alternating between allegorical and parodistic interpretations and psychological examinations of the characters, his discussion leaves unresolved the problems of Vonnegut's ironic undercutting of the redemptive figures in his fiction, his parody of their concern for the welfare of humanity, or, as it is stated paradoxically in Cat's Cradle, "the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it." Similarly, to say as Schulz does in talking about Barth, that the narrative refusal to confirm the plot is a reaction to the normative forms which illustrate the novel's 120Reviews dissonance, is to surrender to the complexities of the novel rather than to illuminate them. What is absent most importantly from the exceedingly narrow limits Schulz sets for himself is a view of the fictions he discusses in terms of their comic movement if not of their theoretical correspondence with a formal tradition. Schulz is aware of such technical strategies as the elimination of plot, the parody of literary constructs themselves, or the blending of narrative points of view. What he does not do, however, is show how these elements collaborate to maintain the comic tension. His discussion remains abstract, emerging as a distillation of the essence of the novels, suggested in the plot summaries he appends. Ignoring the grotesque element of black humor, which sees...

EARLY AND LATE ROMANTICS Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74 and 95. By Nancy November. (Music in Context.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [xiii, 282 p. ISBN 9781107035454 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9781107496798 (e-book), $76.] Music examples, illustrations, facsimiles, tables, bibliography, index.Nancy November's Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 is the first fulllength study of Beethoven's five middleperiod quartets since Gerald Abraham's 1942 monograph for Oxford's Musical Pilgrim series (Beethoven's Second-Period Quartets [London: Oxford University Press, 1942]). While the 71 years separating these two publications have yielded numerous and diverse studies of Beethoven's quartets- most notably Joseph Kerman's groundbreaking exegesis of the entire cycle (The Beethoven Quartets [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1979])-scholars have tended to conceive of the middle-period quartets as transitional works, works that forecast but do not quite achieve the complexity and expressive depth of the last five quartets (plus the Grosse Fuge ), the beating heart of Beethoven's late period.Until recently, the literature has also had relatively little to say on these quartets' historical and cultural context. In part because of the string quartet's symbolic status as the epitome of abstract, absolute musical expression, the notion that these works ought to be studied in relation to the time and place of their composition long thought to be superfluous. The introductory essays in The Beethoven Quartet Companion, edited by Robert Winter and Robert Martin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), represented an important first step toward a more holistic approach. Such an approach, however, has been slow to emerge. Angus Watson's survey of the entire chamber music oeuvre (Beethoven's Chamber Music in Context [Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press, 2010]) perhaps comes closest, but as a practical listening guide, it necessarily sacrifices depth for breadth.November's book addresses both of these scholarly lacunae, but it also does more than this. Drawing together reception history, music analysis, social and cultural backgrounds, historiography, performance practice, and sketch studies, it offers sophisticated and original perspectives both on individual quartets and on the five quartets as a group. It also contributes new insights to a growing literature that considers how our understanding of Beethoven's music has been mediated by ideological forces that emerged during his lifetime and have remained intrinsic to musical culture ever since.The book is divided into an introduction and eight chapters. The introduction and first two chapters establish the book's agenda and explore the middle-period quartets in broad outline, focusing on such issues as genre, function, canonicity, historiography, and performance. Each of the next five chapters is devoted to a single quartet. The final chapter weaves together a number of loose strands regarding the quartets' reception and offers some provocative concluding thoughts.November begins by critiquing three core paradigms in Beethoven studies: the division of his career into three style periods, the notion of heroic Beethoven, and the persistent analytical focus on the musical score, as opposed to the music's physicality, visual codes, and social meanings (p. 3). While all three critiques will be familiar to Beethoven scholars, they have particular resonance in the context of these five quartets, works that have often been understood in relation to Beethoven's middle-period symphonic style rather than on their own terms. She seeks to carve out some new aesthetic spaces (p. 2) for these works by considering each quartet alongside the contemporary theories, practices, and ideas that informed its design.In lieu of the traditional tripartite view of Beethoven's career, and crucially for her thesis, November posits a epoch (roughly 1800-1815) during which Beethoven was particularly engaged with, and sought further involvement with, theatrical works and theatrical concepts (p. …

OPERA Mozart and His Operas. By David Cairns. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. [xi, 290 p. ISBN-10: 0520228987; ISBN-13: 9780520228986. $29.95.] Bibliographic references, index, illustrations. The cornucopia of literature available on Mozart's makes a many-coursed banquet-some might say a groaning board-for interested reader. David Cairns, in his new book, admits as much in his first sentence: Another book on Mozart and his may not be needed (p. 1). Authors on this topic have whipped up their own concoctions out of much same ingredients, producing an almost endless variety, from delicacies to square meals to basic field rations. But question is: can anyone bring anything new to table? In late 18th century, magnificent feasts of five to six courses were norm. So before question above can be answered, let us sample some of main treats already prepared. Brigid Brophy's Mozart Dramatist: A New View of Mozart, His Operas and His Age (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), like a savory appetizer, is a brilliant meditation on intellectual and cultural connections of operas, with references as far afield as Sigmund Freud, Alexander Pope, Antoine Watteau, Soren Kierkegaard, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Alma Mahler. It is somewhat dated in its unquestioned Freudian and anti-Beethovian stance, but it is full of surprising details and is organized by topic (Anarchy, Impotence and Classicism, Women and Opera), rather than chronology. For those who are ravenously hungry, William Mann's The Operas of Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) is an encyclopedic reference work that provides music examples and English translations of every solo aria. It contains fascinating asides that focus on, for example, contemporary notions of key characteristics, and provides much historical and cultural background. Although this work is also a bit dated (he mentions age of Aquarius on p. 1), it offers, in its author's words, the genesis of each opera . . . exactly what words and music are contained in each musical number . . . a commentary on whole dramatic action as it develops, as well as a critical consideration of each work. (p. 4). But by far most satisfying dish has been brought forth by Daniel Heartz with Thomas Bauman, Mozart's Operas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Although it only treats operas of Mozart's mature years (p. xii), i.e., Idomeneo to The Magic Flute, and eschews being an operatic Baedeker (p. xiv), Heartz provides contextual information on from original sources, autograph studies, and other musicological inquiries. The book has extensive music examples, illustrations, parallel translations of texts, reliable references, and goes a long way to correcting previous misunderstandings. This work does presume a lot of background knowledge on reader's part, and contains some musical analysis (forms, key relations), but is stuffed with enough interesting tidbits (Mozart wrote bass part especially large throughout his autograph so that continuo cellist, old Innozenz Danzi, could read it, p. 47) and useful tables to sate a non-musician. Two final tastings are works that put Mozart's into cultural context: Mary Hunter's The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) and Andrew Steptoe's The Mozart-DaPonte Operas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Hunter's book is a true scholarly work, offering invaluable social, political, gender-related, and musical contexts. She treats Mozart's buffa as part of a dialogue between individual and generic conventions of plot, character, dramatic function, musical 'type' and vocal behavior (p. 5), and appendices contain a list of she consulted (79!), formal structures of buffa arias, and rare plot summaries. …

Laughter in university lectures

A brief history of the origins of opera in the United States identifies titles, composers, and premieres to establish the point that composers in America were active in writing operas and that the music of European composers were available to them as models for their own works. A history of Shakespearean operas from their origin in the late seventeenth century in England to the present (1985) follows to illustrate that Shakespearean operas by American composers did not appear until after the Second World War. Eleven American composers are cited with their Shakespearean works. Their operas are grouped under three headings: festive comedies, dark comedy and romance, and tragedies. Among the comedies are three operas based on The Taming of the Shrew: Christopher Sly by Dominick Argento; and two operas of the same title as the play by Philip Greeley Clapp and Vittorio Giannini, respectively. The other comedies are Twelfth Night by David Amram, Love's Labour's Lost by Nicolas Nabokov, and Night of the Moonspell--after A Midsummer Night's Dream--by Elie Siegmeister. A dark comedy, All's Well That Ends Well by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and a romance, Winter's Tale by John Harbison, are discussed together. From the tragedies are Prince Hamlet by Sam Raphling and two operas based on Antony and Cleopatra by Louise Gruenberg and Samuel Barber, respectively. Each of the operas is discussed according to the choice of characters, their voice classification, the instrumentation and size of the orchestra, the comparative lengths of the operas in acts and scenes, the similarity or departure from the story line of the play, and the manner in which the libretto is derived from Shakespeare's text. Two hundred and eighty-five musical examples illustrate points concerning instrumental music, musical characterizations, and vocal ensembles. Finally, the relationships among all the operas are discussed, and from these, conclusions are drawn and recommendations for future research indicated. An epilogue on why American composers are turning to the plays of Shakespeare as a basis for some of their operatic works suggests historical, dramatic, and musical reasons.

This research aims to identify and explain the signifiers, signified, denotations, connotations meanings, and myths embedded in the signs of the TV series Criminal Minds poster. In this research, the authors used the descriptive qualitative method to identify, analyze, and explain the signs in the Criminal Minds TV series poster. The authors also employ Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes' semiotic approach in the research. The primary data of this research is taken from both the verbal and nonverbal signs in Criminal Minds TV Series posters. This research shows that there are nine nonverbal and two verbal signs. Furthermore, after analyzing all of the signs (both verbal and nonverbal) in Saussure and Barthes' semiotic approach, this study found that all of the signs carry specific messages. Its purpose is to give the audience teasers or clues about the story, which tells about the journey of all main characters of Criminal Minds. Moreover, the myth commonly found across the signs in this TV series poster is to attract more potential viewers to watch the series.

This study is aimed at identifying the verbal signs with their mode and connotative meaning of an advertisement. The data of this study was a wildlife advertisement entitled Would You Care More IF I Was A Panda? (2011) created by Ogilvy and published by World Wild Life. The data were collected using documentation method with note-taking technique. The data were analyzed qualitatively using Peirce’s semiotic theory to identify the verbal signs with their mode and Leech meaning theory to analyze the connotative meaning of the sign. The result of this study shown that there were three verbal signs found in the advertisements that belong to symbolic signs in the form of the combination of alphabets. The verbal signs consist of representamen, interpretant, and object. The connotative meanings are expressed in words, phrases, or sentences with the interpretation based on knowledge, emotion, and imagination. &#x0D;

The problem of bringing into wide scientific and educational and methodological use a still little-known, but in some cases extremely productive type of music analysis—Middle-Out Music Analysis (MOMA) has been updated. The relevance of the study is that, against the background of outdated methodological approaches often used in music analysis, a number of advantages of middle-level analysis oriented to cognitive and psychological methods have been revealed. The purpose of the study is shown the advantages of the integrated use of MOMA with other types of music analytics, especially with discourse analysis, perception analysis and communicative analysis. The productivity of the use of successive rise or fall in the consideration of the analytical procedures involved in the process of the levels of the structure of the work from the initial median is noted—in accordance with the set goal. The position-hypothesis of the first developers of MOMA about its optimal suitability for studying the communicative and discursive features of the analyzed works and the psychological foundations of the processes of perception and understanding of music has been established. The practical effectiveness of middle-level analysis has been tested on the example of completed analytical etudes of well-known and accessible musical works. The methodological basis of the article is the musical-psychological approaches proposed by doctors R. Parncutt and R. Pascall in the understanding of analytical, cognitive and speech activity in the perception of music, as well as the functional method and basic provisions of the systemic approach and stylistic analysis (when considering musical works) primarily of tonal music. The results and conclusions. The Ukrainian-language name of this type of music analysis, which in English is defined as Middle-Out Music Analysis (MOMA; according to the proposal of its main promoters R. Parncutt and R. Pascall), is proposed. An overview of the scientific basis used by the first developers of the theoretical foundations of Middle-Out Music Analysis is given. The advantages of using this type of musical analysis for the study of tonal and tactometric patterns of music are noted. The opinion of doctors R. Parncutt and R. Pascall about fixing in the analysis various types of repetitions of intonation, timbre, tonal-harmonic and metrorhythmic nature, which occupy an important place in the process of perception, comprehension and interpretation of the studied musical works, is supported.

Focusing on music written in the period 1800–1850, Thinking about Harmony traces the responses of observant musicians to the music that was being created in their midst by composers including Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. It tells the story of how a separate branch of musical activity - music analysis - evolved out of the desire to make sense of the music, essential both to its enlightened performance and to its appreciation. The book integrates two distinct areas of musical inquiry - the history of music theory and music analysis - and the various notions that shape harmonic theory are put to the test through practical application, creating a unique and intriguing synthesis. Aided by an extensive compilation of carefully selected and clearly annotated music examples, readers can explore a panoramic projection of the era's analytical responses to harmony, thereby developing a more intimate rapport with the period.

Breast-feeding initiation rates have increased in the USA; however, maintenance of breast-feeding for recommended durations is low. The objective of the present study was to identify factors that may facilitate breast-feeding for longer durations among first-time mothers, including physiological and social experiences and changes in maternal perceptions. Survival analysis and linear regression methods were used to explore the relationship between experiences and breast-feeding duration, and the possible mediating effect of changes in maternal perceptions. Secondary data from the Infant Feeding Practices Study II, conducted in the USA between 2005 and 2007. Data from 762 first-time mothers who ever breast-fed were analysed. Experiencing trouble with baby's latch, problems with milk flow/supply and painful breast-feeding were significantly associated with breast-feeding duration (64, 26 and 36 % shorter duration, respectively). Meanwhile, positive changes in perception with respect to breast-feeding self-efficacy, opinion about infant feeding and belief about breast milk were associated with 16-27 % longer duration. Furthermore, changes in perception were observed to partially mediate the impact of physiological experiences on breast-feeding duration. Perceptions of breast-feeding self-efficacy, beliefs and opinions can change over time and are influenced by breast-feeding experiences. The combined effect of experience and perception plays a key role in influencing breast-feeding duration. Future research should explore interventions to maintain or improve these perceptions while accounting for physiological experiences to support breast-feeding for recommended durations among first-time mothers.