Minor Pieces Research Articles

A discussion on the aesthetics and philosophy of music in popular music

Since childhood, children have been drawn to the aesthetics of music. In the current exploratory study, we investigate the relationship between age, gender, and music education in terms of the perception of music preferences and musical emotions, which are two fundamental aspects of the aesthetic experience of music, using the children of teachers. I utilized the sectional design. We have established an experimental method for addressing particular children's musical interests and tendencies to do this. Melodic emotions and style are highly regarded. The melody consisted of three brief piano pieces: a significant piece, a minor piece, and a freetone piece. This article describes the "Reasoning of Music Education" or "Philosophy of Music Education" field (MEP). Method of music instruction is a relatively young field, and many music educators are unaware of its existence, as well as its inclination and value. In North America and most other nations, specialized MEP courses are not currently common in undergraduate and graduate curricula. The most surprising aspect of music is the variety of human advancements and individuals that create, utilize, evaluate, teach, learn, and invent "music" items, cycles, encounters, etc. Similarly, billions of people have invested a great deal of time, effort, thought, emotion, money, and in some cases, their lives creating specific sounds and related activities. I also acknowledge that it has been completed. Although music is an important and visible component of human civilisation, certain types of "music" sounds are created and listened to fulfill basic survival demands. Infrequent (if not entirely bizarre) compared to the enormous effort we exert. As many have noted, music does not appear biologically essential, yet it permeates all cultures.

Modelling ecological scarcity considering the long-term interaction between human and nature in dry agricultural landscapes. Application in Qazvin (Iran)

Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) is a pervasive driver of today's global socioecological crisis. In light of the LUCC in many agricultural landscapes worldwide, natural resource conservation is critical. Put-aside dry agricultural landscapes have significant limitations when attempting to guarantee long-term food production and other ecosystem services in ecological scarcity conditions under climate change scenarios. In this research, an Intermediate Disturbance-Complexity (IDC) model was applied to evaluate how ecological scarcity in NW Iran can be affected by anthropogenic disturbance and landscape complexity. This model calculates both the behaviour of the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP), a proxy of the amount of anthropic disturbance, and a Landscape Ecology (Le) metric, which measures complexity as a heterogeneous and well-connected land matrix. HANPP results show how dry pastures are affected by human pressure, while the results for Le indicate how human activities are affecting ecological corridors linking the northern and the southern parts of the study area. Finally, IDC results show that intermediate disturbance can have a positive effect on the provision of human needs and, at the same time, can help maintain the landscape's ecological functionality. The analysis confirms that land use policies should consider the landscape as a whole and should avoid applying a string of ad hoc decisions to minor pieces of the territory. Our findings support the view that a strong relationship between intermediate disturbance and landscape complexity exists, which highlights the importance of traditional economic activities as ways of maintaining biocultural landscapes.

Bernard Shaw as Political Writer

Bernard Shaw as Political Writer

A Medieval Open Work

Abstract Guigo II is commonly known and praised among specialists of Western mysticism for his Scala claustralium, a work that presents a spiritual program for cloistered monks. His Meditations, on the other hand, have usually been relegated to the margin of attention. The First Meditation, in particular, is generally regarded as a minor piece. The paper argues, however, that a new approach can make better sense of the First Meditation, while also enabling us to recognize its specific function and value. Seen from this new perspective, Guigo’s purpose with the text is to train and exercise his readers’ minds according to the spiritual program laid out in the Scala. The paper shows that the First Meditation realizes that goal, surprisingly, by having the same essential features that Umberto Eco found in the ‘open works’ of the Western avant-garde.

CEN: Understanding Rook vs Minor Piece Endgames

This is a response to 'Understanding Rook vs Minor Piece Endgames' by Mueller and Konoval, the third volume in their 'Understanding ...' series. It provides a selection of positions for comment and instruction. The supplementary material provides the full set of maxDTC(onversion) positions which are in the URME domain, together with DTC-optimal play from those positions.

Chess endgame news: Understanding minor piece endgames

This article explores the variety and depth of chess' sub-8-man minor piece endgame. These endgames feature no queens or rooks but at least one bishop or knight, and no more than one per side. Demis Hassabis, now CEO of Deep Mind, has talked of 'the exquisite balance of Bishop and Knight'. The investigation uses the framework of 'Understanding Minor Piece Endgames' by Karsten Mueller and Yakov Konoval. Some twenty-five examples taken from games, studies, computer analysis and teaching material, show a variety of ideas. We compliment the book and provide ancillary files which provide more detailed endgame-structure lists, 103 maxDTC positions for all the constituent endgame sides and DTC-minimaxing lines from them.

Max Weber’s Verstehende Soziologie

This is one of the final volumes in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe and is entitled Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. It is ostensibly on Weber’s methodological writings but most of the contents appear to be rather minor pieces— a large number of conference comments, small contributions, and several book reviews. Yet, this is an important work because of those pieces as well as the two major essays on methodology: “Über einige Kategorien der verstehende Soziologie” (1913) and “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften” (1917), both of which were originally published in the journal Logos. As with all of Weber’s writings on methodology, these two essays are difficult to comprehend; yet, they are critical for grasping Weber’s sociology. The first one sets out Weber’s conception of “understanding” in history while the second explains why he believes his distinction between facts and values is critical for scholars. He suggests that we may not understand everything that occurred in history but we can understand enough; if we did not, then there would be no historical discipline. His words concerning the need for intellectual honesty are as important today as when he wrote them more than one hundred years ago. This book is a worthy companion to the forthcoming volume Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften and is crucial for understanding Weber’s path to sociology. It is a worthy final addition to the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. And, it is a worthy successor to the Gesammelte Schriften zur Wissensschaftslehre. For anyone hoping to understand how Weber became the famous sociologist, this book is necessary reading.

Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery: Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonOctober 1, 2016–February 5, 2017CatalogueEnglish Medieval Embroidery: Opus AnglicanumEdited by Clare Browne, Glyn Davies, and M. A. MichaelNew Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2016.336 pp.; 270 color ills.Cloth $75.00ISBN 9780300222005The Age of Opus AnglicanumEdited by M. A. MichaelLondon: Brepols

<i>Opus Anglicanum</i>: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery: Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonOctober 1, 2016–February 5, 2017Catalogue<i>English Medieval Embroidery: <i>Opus Anglicanum</i></i>Edited by Clare Browne, Glyn Davies, and M. A. MichaelNew Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2016.336 pp.; 270 color ills.Cloth $75.00ISBN 9780300222005<i>The Age of <i>Opus Anglicanum</i></i>Edited by M. A. MichaelLondon: Brepols

Atrapados sin salida: de nuevo con Sor Juana en Los empeños de una casa

Es tal la seducción de Los empeños de una casa de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, que una vez más volvemos a la lectura del texto y queremos saber más acerca de su primera representación. ¿Cuándo y cómo sería ésta? Las referencias al contexto histórico mencionadas en la comedia dieron pie a que se propusiera una fecha de representación; lo mismo su alusión en la propia obra a autores y personajes de otras comedias, que dio lugar a una fecha distinta. ¿Se ha resuelto lo relativo a la primera vez que se representó la comedia? Y debido a su larga extensión, ¿se representaría completa la primera vez que se llevó a cabo? Las piezas menores que acompañan a las tres jornadas de la comedia –una loa, tres canciones, dos sainetes y un sarao– ofrecen claves para situar la comedia en el contexto de la cartelera teatral de la época. Si bien no se resuelve plenamente lo relativo a la fecha de representación de la comedia, sí resulta clara su relación con otras dos comedias novohispanas puestas en escena en años cercanos. El tríptico teatral tiene en el centro Los empeños de una casa, y sus piezas menores son imprescindibles en el conjunto del festejo, espectacular y barroco.

Arduino based Wireless Powered Chess

This paper concentrate on designing of chess boards using Arduino mega and Reed Switches. The Arduino is the open source platform. The normal chess procedure is just so sit next to each other and enjoy the game but if you don’t find anyone near you to play, And if you find a person who has a same skills as you but live for five block ahead and can’t come to your place to play and what happen when you are in hospital and you want to kill the time by playing the game. The wireless powered chess has solutions of all the problems. Already build system requires computer and laptop to enjoy the game which affects cost and complexity. In the result and simulation part this paper will focus to enjoy the game at distance.When we play an ancient and noble game of Chess, we grapple with ideas about honesty, deceitfulness, bravery, fear, aggression, beauty and creativity which echo the attitude we take up in daily lives. Chess is an activity in which we deploy almost all our available cognitive resources; therefore it makes an ideal laboratory for investigation into the working of human mind. This study will focus on automatically operated chess board with the help of Bluetooth and Arduino Processesor. In this process two chess boards are connected with the help of Bluetooth and by using Arduino processors the interfacing between the two boards is done. The idea to carry on this project is taken up from “Computer Controlled Chinese Chess” in which the program is written in visual basis (VB) language and the commands are given with the help of computer to microcontroller which manages the different RF receiver robots at RF frequency and moves the different major and minor pieces and performs the operation of castling .The Complete operation is done at RF frequency and the moves done on computer is perform on the board as well. In the proposed wireless powered chess project, since both the chess boards are connected with Arduino Microprocessor, the move performed on manually attended boards is also seen on other board without operating by the player. This study of Wireless powered chess will facilitate playing chess sitting at different location in a limited surrounding.

AMHXANIA IN EURIPIDES᾽HERACLIDAE

There has been much controversy over the completeness and unity of Euripides᾽Heraclidaein the last two centuries. Hermann᾽s characterization of the play as a heavily mutilated piece, which was adopted by Kirchhoff, Wilamowitz, Nauck and Murray, prevailed for a long time. Wilamowitz's thesis that theHeraclidaewas revised by the ancient director found its adherents. It was Günther Zuntz who led the general offensive against this widely accepted opinion and whose critical scrutiny reversed the view of the play. According to Zuntz, the play has come down to us substantially as it was written. The alleged mutilation, as well as the specific dramatic technique, shortness and swiftness of theHeraclidae, also influenced the general evaluation of the play as a minor or odd piece. It was Günter Zuntz again and also Franz Stoessl who reconstituted the reputation of theHeraclidae. Today Euripides᾽Heraclidaeis studied and recognized as a classicalHikesiedrama, a play deeply rooted in Athenian ideology and in the social and religious context of fifth-century Athens, and representing various aspects of communal life. Since the play has been interpreted and scrutinized from a very wide range of perspectives, I do not aim at a radically new general interpretation of theHeraclidae, but I would like to make a short remark on an aspect of it which has, as far as I know, been neglected or only briefly referred to: the term ἀμηχανία in crucial passages of the play, which signifies, or rather describes, a situation which is desperate, hopeless, and with no way out. I would like to show that for the characters in theHeraclidaewho follow the ideal of justice (τὸ δίκαιον), in contrast to those who prefer profit (κέρδος), no situation is hopeless, even as it was not for Heracles, who managed to do things which could be evaluated as impossible (defeating the Hydra of Lerna and the Nemean lion, gaining the apples of the Hesperides, etc.). On the other hand, those who opt for the Heraclean ideal have to prepare to face the ultimate challenges.

Medievalism in The Excursion

Wordsworth's comparison of Excursion to AntiChapel of a gothic sets up an implicit contrast between contemporary Anglican values in 1814, and medieval, Catholic, or pre-Reformation past. He continues analogy by explaining that his minor Pieces. . .when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by Reader to have such connection with main Work as may give them claim to be likened to little Cells, Oratories, and sepulchral Recesses, ordinarily included in those Edifices (1814 viii-ix; Cornell ed. 38) (1) His ideal or attentive readers included Bishop of London and Anglican clergy whose high commendations he cited in a letter to his brother Christopher (MY II 171). These readers would have noted Catholic allusions: Cells and Oratories were part of Catholic churches where monks and nuns had prayed for others' souls while for Anglicans, an oratory was simply a domestic chapel. Similarly, a Recluse would have been a celibate member of an enclosed monastic order. In a poem that was to help reclaim and renovate war-weary world of 1814, Wordsworth's simile reveals contradictions between Catholic or pre-Reformation past and contemporary Anglican culture as a source of ethical value. Medievalism was only defined as a style and state of mind in Victorian period, when Ruskin divided Western history into a trinity of ages that represented not only historical moments but also cultural perspectives, namely, classicism, medievalism, and modernism (Ruskin 153): indeed, when Wordsworth wrote Excursion word medieval was yet to enter English language. (2) Examples of medievalism nevertheless appear as soon as thinkers and artists detected difference and distance between themselves and Middle Ages. Medievalism is adoption of style and / or values of Middle Ages, usually prompted by a need to find a critical distance from present. Unlike Antiquarianism, where pastness is primary source of value, medievalism looks for value by contrasting style, ethics, and society of past with present. For Wordsworth and many of his contemporaries, problem with Middle Ages was domination of Roman Catholic Church. Histories of England, even David Hume's version which is largely unsympathetic towards religion, claimed that, after Norman Conquest, William I depressed English identity (I 248), allowing his archbishop Lanfranc to promote the interests of papacy (I 226). Yet perhaps values could still be found in Middle Ages, and each of four speakers in Excursion represents a slightly different interpretation of such values. Wanderer is associated with minstrel tradition, while Solitary's retreat from world connects him with recluse or Hermit. Pastor creates a more chivalric view of Middle Ages, especially his narrative of Sir Alfred Irthing. Finally, Poet's medievalism is less distinct, but he is attracted to ideas of tradition and nationhood. In combination, these perspectives contribute to a uniquely Wordsworthian, Reformed medievalism. full expression of Wordsworth's medievalism is Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), a sonnet sequence on history of English Church begun around December, 1820, after a walk with Sir George Beaumont through different parts of his Estate, with a view to fix upon Site of a New Church which he intended to erect (Jackson 137). The Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time, kept my thoughts in same course; and it struck me, that certain points in Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously be presented to view in Verse (Jackson 135). Wordsworth's sonnets and his notes to Ecclesiastical Sketches reveal a new, or rather re-formed, narrative about history of English Church, which Robert Southey was also developing in Book of Church (1824). …

The development of the aesthetic experience of music: Preference, emotions, and beauty

From an early age, children are attracted to the aesthetics of music. Employing a cross-sectional design including school-aged children, the present exploratory study aimed to investigate the effects of age, gender, and music education on three important aspects of the aesthetic experience of music: musical preference, musical emotion recognition, and the use of the aesthetic categories for music. To this aim, we developed an experimental procedure suitable to quantify children’s musical preferences and their judgment of musical emotions and aesthetics. The musical material consisted of three short piano pieces: a piece in major mode, a piece in minor mode, and a free tonal piece. The responses of 78 children were analyzed, whereby the children were assigned to two age groups: 6–7-year-olds (n = 38) and 8–9-year-olds (n = 40). Children preferred the piece in major mode to the one in minor. Except for 6–7-year-olds without music education, children gave the highest happiness ratings for the major piece. Only 8–9-year-olds found the minor piece sadder than the major piece, and the major piece more beautiful than the piece in minor. The ratings of the free tonal piece were mostly indifferent and probably reflect children’s difficulty in judging music that does not yet belong to their short musical history. Taken together, the current data imply that school-aged children are able to make emotional and aesthetic judgments about unfamiliar musical pieces.

Pharmacy integral to collaborative care at Mass General

When Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO) planned to test a Medicare-funded disease program for high-risk, medically complex patients, a pharmacy component was viewed as a relatively minor piece of the overall project. “But what we discovered relatively quickly into the program was that it’s actually something that we needed much more of,” said Eric Weil, associate chief of clinical affairs for the division of general medicine and medical director for MGH’s Care Management Program (CMP). CMP was one of six projects selected in 2005 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to take part in the Care Management for High Cost Beneficiaries demonstration program. The program targets high-cost enrollees in Medicare’s fee-for-service population. According to CMS, the goal of CMP and the other demonstration projects was to “increase adherence to evidence-based care, reduce unnecessary hospital and emergency room visits, and help participants avoid costly and debilitating complications.”

Anthologizing the Atlantic Slave Trade Literature

The ever-prolific Jeremy Black has assembled these four volumes of eighty five photo-reproduced articles in English. Ashgate, of course, specializes in this style of print reader and has produced a vast array of topically orga nized collections, supplementing growing availability of at least some of same materials in digital formats. (Readers of this journal will recall that more than ten years ago Patrick Manning published a similarly formatted collection centered on Africa, also through Ashgate/Variorum.)1 I have not confirmed Internet access to entire collection, but scanning sites from which contents of these volumes were taken suggests that nearly all may also be downloaded. The essays included date from 1940 (John Blake on English trade to Portuguese empire in West Africa) through 2004 (Guillaume Daudin on profitability in eighteenth-cen tury French trade). Three were published before 1960, seven in 1960s, twenty in 1970s, twenty-four in 1980s, twenty-two in 1990s, and eight after 2000. This is not place to speculate on various publishers' marketing strategies aimed at instructors seeking print collections for col lege and university classes, but presumably commercial as well as academic considerations led to exclusion of considerable scholarship in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Danish. Black opens each of century-defined volumes with a short intro ductory essay placing articles in their historical contexts. In edi tor's vision, articles fit into a general conceptual framework focusing on challenges that Europeans eventually addressed by sailing captives across Atlantic from Africa to Americas. Examples include role of disease in demographic collapse of Native American populations and contemporaneous expansion of commercialized serfdom in eastern Europe. Black's thoughtful quest for context thus occasionally reaches well beyond a geographical definition of the Atlantic; Araucanian responses in southern Chile, for example, are included as an example of resis tance Europeans encountered as they sought to seize labor from local pop ulations in Americas. Volume 1, on early phases of trade, thus includes two theoretical essays (Domar and Engerman), classic writings on Africa (Wilks and Fage?but not Meillassoux), half a dozen essays on Americas, two minor pieces on English involvement (Blake and Hair), and framing pieces on historiography (Ewald), volume (Lovejoy from

We Have an Obligation to Medical Insurers

We Have an Obligation to Medical Insurers

Vatican-branded science communication

The summer now gone has reported two episodes we would like to bring to the attention of the JCOM readers. Two minor pieces of news, unlikely to be in the limelight over the summer, when the media understandably focus on gossips and crime news. Even the experts – especially outside the Italian territory – would probably dismiss these events as minor, wouldn’t it be for the people involved. But let’s see the facts.

Vern L Bullough, Universities, medicine and science in the medieval west, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004, pp. xiii, 298, illus., £57.50 (hardback 0-86078-943-8).

Vern Bullough, long familiar to medical historians as a historian of sexual behaviour, first made his name as a medieval historian. This volume collects his papers on medieval medicine, both published and unpublished. They deal with the teaching of medicine in the newly created universities, the development of the medical profession, and ideas on sex and gender. There are also a few minor pieces, publishing small documents, and an introductory chapter taking the story from Antiquity to the first western universities and briefly commenting on recent scholarship. The collection is given coherence by the author's insistence on the relevance of examples from medieval history to more modern debates. But there are serious problems. Bullough's studies of medieval medical teaching were, when they first appeared over forty years ago, pieces of solid scholarship that brought to an anglophone audience in an accessible form the basic material from non-English sources. They quickly and deservedly became standard references. But time has moved on, and the new Chapter I hardly scratches the surface of the substantial work done since the 1960s. All his universities, Bologna, Paris, Montpellier, Oxford and Cambridge, have since been the subject of major studies in English that have extended our knowledge far beyond what is reported here. The papers on professionalization were also subsumed into the author's own book on the creation of the medical profession in the Middle Ages. For its time, all this was sound medieval scholarship, following in the footsteps of Charles Haskins and Hastings Rashdall, but it broke little new ground. By contrast, the most innovative paper in the collection, on the relationship between medieval universities and the creation of “achievement”, is also the most flawed, as even the author is forced to admit. It represents one of the early attempts by a medical historian to subject data to a computer analysis, and was a spin-off from another project dealing with Hanoverian Scotland. The minor papers at the end of the volume are just that, the typical fruit of a medievalist's hunt through archives, interesting but requiring others to put them into the proper wider context. Had this collection appeared thirty years ago (for only three of the papers were delivered or published after 1968), it would have been warmly welcomed. Alas, for all their merits, most of its contents have been superseded, either through the accession of new material or, more often, because the debate has moved on. A more detailed introduction, bringing each article up to date, would have enhanced their value, while at the same time placing them in the context of the time in which they were written.

Elgar's Invention of the Human: Falstaff, Opus 68

Falstaff, Elgar's tragic symphonic study, is at once program music, a minor piece of Shakespearean criticism, early modernist tonal and structural experiment, and a cynical musical commentary on humankind's "failings and sorrows." A satisfactory analysis of the work calls for a discussion of the program, the Shakespearean literary criticism that Elgar based his interpretation on and cited in his own published analysis of the work, and a structural analysis that can make sense both of a variety of generic implications (sonata, rondo, and multimovement deformations) as well as the complex associations between keys, motives, persons, and ideas in the work, together with its overall tonal structure. As this multilayered piece is examined from these different angles, Elgar's interpretation of the character of Sir John Falstaff (as presented by or inferable from Shakespeare) is revealed as an idiosyncratically gloomy view of human relationships and existential possibilities. It is also an intensely personal exploration of late-tonal musical language, its symbolic potential, its structural logic, and its relation to the musical tradition--Elgar's most complex, adventurous, and rewarding.

La marge, l'exemple et l'exception. Le parcours d'Élisa Félix dite Mademoiselle Rachel

The life of the great tragedian of the Comédie-Française, Élisa Félix (1821-1858), who became famous as Rachel, illustrates the acculturation and the social rise of the Jews in Nineteenth Century France. Provided her biographs did not use it against her, Rachel' s Jewishness has rather been held for a minor piece of information. By confronting the legend to the social reality, it appears that both her doubly marginal condition, as a Jewess and as an actress, and the expectation of exemplarity played a major part in the forming of her status as an exception in the midst of French society.