Sound Imagery Research Articles

Bandura in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s Compositions by Maryna Denysenko: Genre and Stylistic Context of Ideas

The article summarizes the use of bandura in the compositional ideas of Maryna Denysenko, a famous Ukrainian composer (1962–2022). The nature of the bandura use in the artist’s works suggests the process of the academicization of the instrument. Engaging bandura in the Winter and Spring play and in the August the Sickle cycle, Maryna Denysenko makes this instrument a mediator between the musical material of a non-folklore nature and the folklore themes declared in the programmatic titles of the works. In general, Denysenko’s results demonstrate high mastery of compositional technique and artistic perfection, corresponding to contemporary musical trends. This once again confirms the urgent need to revive and explore her work. The analysis of Maryna Denysenko’s works featuring bandura revealed the following stylistic features of the composer’s creative method: a tendency to a programmatic approach, to the realization of folklore themes without explicit references to the characteristics of traditional genres of Ukrainian folklore in the musical language, and to a pronounced integrity of the composition. Her ideas in the field of instrumental bandura are characterized by the use of decentralized harmonic systems and modality in the principles of the harmonic basis of her compositions. These are the regularities of constructing colorful intonational material based on movements ofseconds asthe main structural microelements. The components of the author’sstyle of the instrumental chamber works with bandura were revealed, including the exchange ofroles between bandura and piano at certain moments of the work; elaborate composition with the dominating improvisation; a significant role of polyphonic techniques (use of equirhythmic counterpoint, various imitations, canons with two or more voices); numerous instances of inventive sound imagery (for example, the depiction of the sounds of drops and gurgling water in the third movement with the help of bells, a xylophone, or the layering of aleatoric techniques of bandura performance and pizzicato strings).

„Imagine” / Wyobraź sobie… Dostrajanie jako dźwiękowe praktyki spekulatywne

This article offers a creative reading of the classic composition <i>Imagine</i> (1971) by Yoko Ono and John Lennon from the perspective of theoretical propositions associated with speculative realism, and in particular, with the concept of hyperobjects by Timothy Morton. As a result of the artistic-theoretical collaboration, the text includes a discussion of Rafał Zapała’s word and music works, which were created as part of a joint practical-theoretical workshop. They illustrate the titular practice of tuning, the idea of which is to change the visual perspective of interaction with the world – understood as the dominant way of experiencing reality – to a sonic one, allowing for a different participation in the surrounding environment. The project encourages the readers to re-spond creatively to the content of the article with instructions and tasks to perform on their own. Key-words: speculative realism, hyperobjects, object-oriented ontology (OOO), listening, sound imagery

“Two choruses on H. Skovoroda’s poems” by Vitalii Kyreiko: conductor’s concept

The purpose of the study provides a conductor’s concept of “Two choruses on H. Skovoroda’s poems” by Vitalii Kyreiko creating process coverage.
 The methodology. Methodological principles are based on the historicism, genre-stylistic, intonation-dramaturgical and interpretive types of analysis, that are used to create a conductor’s concept of “Two choruses on H. Skovoroda’s poems” by Vitalii Kyreiko.
 The results. The development of the conductor’s concept is a process that covers worldview, analytical and creative-executive systemic levels. A conductor-choirmaster, first of all, must understand the artistic idea due to which V. Kyreiko combined the national philosopher’s poems into a choral diptych. In the first chorus “Ah, the fields” (“Akh, polia”), the essence of H. Skovoroda’s pantheistic doctrine is revealed, enriched with choral means of expression: sound imagery, antiphons between female and male choirs, nominal “dialogues”, a combination of diatonicism and tart, rich harmonies with a dynamic pastel palette. As a result, it creates an image of the Eden Garden, where the hero finds peace and happiness. The second chorus of the diptych “Seeing this life’s woes” (“Vydia zhytiya seho ya hore”) represents the hero’s difficult path to God and to understanding His mercy. The composer creates an artistic sound image due to monody, ostinato, sound imagery, multi-layer character, symbolism, textural and stroke diversity, contrasting dynamics and pleading intonations, the origins of which are found in a national folklore. Two choruses by V. Kyreiko on the H. Skovoroda’s texts, while revealing the spiritual meaning of the brilliant Ukrainian philosopher’s poems, receive features of the neo-baroque style due to the introduction into the XX century’s sound-space of the XVIII century’s poetic heritage, and rhetorical figures (symbols of the Baroque era) introduction into the musical canvas of the choral works. The chorus “Seeing this life’s woes” contains a Renaissance opposition: despair — hope, and chorus “Ah, the fields” represents the beauty cult, which gives the choral diptych Neo-Renaissance features.
 Despite the genre and figurative contrasts of these compositions (choral miniature-scenery and dramatic monologue), let’s emphasize the common features between the choral work by V. Kyreiko and the poetic primary source, which directs the development of choral dramaturgy. The use of couplets as a song carrier, which follows the structure of H. Skovoroda’s poems-songs, appears developed and enriched. The movement acceleration is facilitated by the comparison of sections in chorus “Seeing this life’s woes”, which are built according to the contrast principle, and concert baroque style in chorus “Ah, the fields”. In the choral compositions’ finales, the rhythmic and harmonic unity of the choral array reaches the highest culmination and provides “Two choruses on H. Skovoroda’s poems” with a logical completion in the disclosure of the artistic content. A conductor’s concept of Skovoroda’s diptych by V. Kyreiko represents two Worlds: Eearthly and Heavenly, where the renewal of the hero’s soul, the search for a path to happiness in harmony with nature and hope for God’s mercy and salvation in the highest world take place. This concept must be realized in the choir performance interpretation under the choirmaster’s direction.
 The scientific novelty. The scientific novelty lies in the conductor’s concept of “Two choruses on H. Skovoroda’s poems” by V. Kyreiko development, which will contribute to its realization in choral reproduction.
 The practical significance. The obtained results’ practical significance is determined by the need to find a conductor’s concept for an adequate composer’s intention interpretation.

Research on Sound Imagery of Electric Shavers Based on Kansei Engineering and Multiple Artificial Neural Networks

The electric shaver market in China reach 26.3 billion RMB by 2021. Nowadays, in addition to functional satisfaction, consumers are increasingly focused on the emotional imagery conveyed by products with multiple-senses, and electric shavers are not only shaped to attract consumers, but their product sound also conveys a unique emotional imagery. Based on Kansei engineering and artificial neural networks, this research explored the emotional imagery conveyed by the sound of electric shavers. First, we collected a wide sample of electric shavers in the market (230 types) and obtained the consumers’ perceptual vocabulary (85,710 items) through a web crawler. The multidimensional scaling method and cluster analysis were used to condense the sample into 34 representative samples and 3 groups of representative Kansei words; then, the semantic differential method was used to assess the users’ emotional evaluation values. The sound design elements (including item and category) of the samples were collected and classified using Heardrec Devices and ArtemiS 13.6 software, and, finally, multiple linear and non-linear correlation prediction models (four types) between the sound design elements of the electric shaver and the users’ emotional evaluation values were established by the quantification theory type I, general regression neural network, back propagation neural network, and genetic algorithm-based BPNN. The models were validated by paired-sample t-test, and all of them had good reliability, among which the genetic algorithm-based BPNN had the best accuracy. In this research, four linear and non-linear Kansei prediction models were constructed. The aim was to apply higher accuracy prediction models to the prediction of electric shaver sound imagery, while giving specific and accurate sound design metrics and references.

Auditory imagery in congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder affecting various aspects of music and speech processing. Although perception and auditory imagery in the general population may share mechanisms, it is not known whether previously documented perceptual impairments in amusia are coupled with difficulties in imaging auditory objects. We employed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS) to assess participants’ self-perceived voluntary imagery and a short earworm questionnaire to gauge their subjective experience of involuntary musical imagery. A total of 32 participants with amusia and 34 matched controls, recruited based on their performance on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), filled out the questionnaires in their own time. The earworm scores of amusic participants were not statistically significantly different from those of controls. By contrast, their scores on vividness and control of auditory imagery were significantly lower relative to controls. Overall, results suggest that the presence of amusia may not have an adverse effect on generating involuntary musical imagery—at the level of self-report—but still significantly reduces the individual’s self-rated voluntary imagery of musical, vocal, and environmental sounds. We discuss the findings in the light of previous research on explicit musical judgments and implicit engagement with music, while also touching on some statistical power considerations.

Konstanty Gorsky’s Songs on Polish texts: aspects of genre stylistics

Statement of the problem. K. Gorsky’s creativity has not been studied enough. Relatively recently, articles by R. Aladova (2005), G. Serochinsky (2010), V. Luniakyna (2009), T. Bakhmet (2009) and other authors have been published due to the growing public interest in his creative figure. However, the vocal works by K. Gorsky have not yet been studied in their multi-level connections with national, historical and genre stylistics, as well as the predominant genre of solo singing, on the basis of which the composer formed the intonation specifics of his own chamber vocal style. Therefore, there is a need for further study of the vocal style of K. Gorsky, in particular, the inclusion of his works in a wide repertoire of concert and chamber singing. The purpose of the study is to identify the stylistic features of the key genre of K. Gorsky’s vocal works – the romance, which is most clearly represented in the cycle “12 Romances” based on the texts of the Polish poets – M. Konopnicka, W. Syrokomla, Z. Dembitsky (Dębicki). For the first time, an integrated approach is applied to the songs by K. Gorsky, as to original examples of this genre interpretation in the post-romantic era, with an emphasis on their style features – national and “personal”. The work on the research topic required the use of general scientific and special musicological methods, including historical-genetic, deductive approaches, genre-stylistic and performance analysis. Results and conclusions. The legacy of K. Gorsky (1859–1924), a virtuoso violinist, one of the founders of the musical culture of Kharkiv, includes vocal genres. In the mature period of his activity (1900s), the composer focused specifically on vocal genres, namely romances (he created about 100 pieces), arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs, cantatas on spiritual themes, choral concerts and operas. The main features of his romantic outlook, combined with the Polish musical mentality, are concentrated in “12 Songs” with Polish lyrics. Semantically, K. Gorsky’s romances gravitate toward lyrical contemplation, conveying its various states, from “objective” epics and sound imagery to emotional outbursts, which brings them closer to opera arioso. Within the framework of the cycle, there is an allocation and alternation of songs-romances of four semantic modes: folkpoetic, reflexive-lyrical, graceful-salon, free-declamatory reminiscent of “poetry with music”. Each of these groups is based on certain traditions and requires appropriate means of performance interpretation.

Translation Pragmatics of Phonic Expressive Means in English Poetic Texts

Phono-stylistics is a promising research area. Expressive power of a text depends on its phonetic imagery. The research objective was to identify the pragmatic features of phonic expressive means in translations of contemporary English poetry. The methods included a comparative analysis, phono-semantic and phono-stylistic interpretation of the original poems and their translations, and O. N. Tynyanov's law of versification. The method of sound counting developed by E. V. Elkina and L. S. Yudina was used to calculate the frequency of sounds in the context of phono-semantic analysis in the Russian translations. The method of sound counting designed by Tsoi Vi Chuen Thomas was used to calculate the frequency of sounds in the original English texts. The theoretical foundation of the research was formed by the works by M. A. Balash, G. V. Vekshin, Z. S. Dotmurzieva, V. N. Elkina, A. P. Zhuravlev, L. V. Laenko, F. Miko, L. P. Prokofyeva, E. A. Titov, etc. The study featured the phonics and pragmatics of S. Dugdale’s poem Zaitz and its three translations made by E. Tretyakova, A. Shchetinina, and M. Vinogradova, and C. E. Duffy’s Anne Hathaway translated by Yu. Fokina. The author compared the pragmatics of sound imagery in the English originals and their Russian translations. The research made it possible to define the role of sound imagery in the poetic discourse, as well as the relationship between the sound organization of poetic speech and the pragmatic value at the phonographic level. The results can be used in courses of translation, stylistics, and phonetics.

MODERNISTIC SOUND RECORDING IN BORYS LIATOSHYNSKYIʼS FIVE CHOIRS BY MAKSYM RYLSKYIʼS POEMS: STYLISTICS OF CHORAL THINKING

The creative heritage by Borys Liatoshynskyi as one of the musical modernism founders in Ukrainian music belongs to the best national culture pages and it has been studied by musicology, mostly, in symphonic and chamber genres. Instead, choral works are itʼs less studied pearls, in particular, two cycles on the poems by Maksym Rylskyi op. 64 and op. 65 (1964), which are examples of the high level modernistic sound recording in Ukrainian choral art. It gives grounds for their vision in the pan-European musical art panorama in the 20th century. Thus, the study this topic on the example of the Five Choirs cycle op.64, has a high relevance and significance degree for modern science and art practice. The aim of the article is to reveal the characteristic stylistics features of choral thinking in Borys Liatoshynskyi’s Five Choirs a cappella ор. 64 by Maksym Rylskyiʼs poem and to substantiate the modernistic sound recording model in Ukrainian choral music in the middle of the 20th century. The research methodology is related to the following problems: 1) analysis the main studies by B. Liatoshynskyiʼs choral works; 2) analysis the Five Choirs cycle by B. Liatoshynskyi on M. Rylskyiʼs poem through the choral style thinking prism; 3) the typology of modernist sound recording in the specified cycle and the determining a prospects for further research in the declared problem. Scientific novelty. As a result of the style choral thinking analysis in the Borys Liatoshynskyiʼs Five Choirs cycle by Maksym Rylskyiʼs poem it typologize the modernistic sound recording features and substantiate the realization model in the Ukrainian choral music of the 20th century. Conclusions. Modernistic sound recording model that presented in the choral cycle op. 64 by B. Lyatoshynsky was formed on the basis of four stylistics choral thinking types, namely: 1) the polyphonic, quasi secession arabesque lines interweaving («Autumn», «Rain was Noises»); 2) the variant work with melodic formulas on the modern ornamentation example, it creates the special vertically interval phoneme («Rain»); 3) the soft-expressionist harmonic color and polytonality («Wide field»); 4) the sound imagery and modal alteration («Lullaby»). The prospects for further research on the declared topics are the artistʼs choral work analise in the European context and understandingon on this basis the main trends in Ukrainian music as a European phenomenon of the 20th century.

Сучасні системи сценічного звукового забезпечення

The purpose of the article is to review, systematize and analyze the functional characteristics of the sound supply means of stage productions. The research methodology consists of the following approaches: system-historical (to study the problem), art history (to clarify the role of the sound system in modern stage practice), structural-analytical (for the functional classification of the components of the stage sound system). Scientific novelty. In the offered research the modern sound maintenance system of theatrical and entertaining productions is considered, its basic constituent elements have been systematized and analyzed; the role of technical means in work of the sound director on sound imagery creation of production has been comprehended. Conclusions. The study found that the profession of theater sound director and entertainment productions involves, in addition to sound recording skills, selection, editing and musical montage, noise, voice and other types of sound effects in accordance with the director’s design, and the ability to work with analog and digital sound equipment. It has been established that the main elements of the stage sound equipment system include microphones, monitors, amplifiers, speakers and mixing consoles. For example, during a rock concert on stage, musicians and vocalists use different types of microphones, place combo amplifiers of their electric instruments next to musicians; monitors on the floor in front of them invisible audiences shoot from the side of the stage or hang over the portal arch mirror the stage and directed towards the listeners are portals. In the center of the auditorium is a sound engineer’s console. It has been proved that an important component of the system of quality sound design is the room’s acoustic characteristics, which must be taken into account and improved during the events organization. It has been found that with the help of modern wireless sound systems it is possible to create conditions for theatrical and entertainment events without restrictions on their acoustic characteristics.

Relationship between environmental sound imagery and environmental sound identification in cochlear implant listeners

Identification of common environmental sounds (“car honking,” “baby crying,” “waves”) is a continuing challenge for many adult postlingual cochlear implant (CI) listeners. This study investigated whether environmental sound imagery, used to characterize the strength of underlying mental representations, relates to CI listeners' environmental sound identification. CI participants first read the names of 24 individual sounds and rated how familiar, pleasant, complex, and easy to imagine each sound was on a 5-point scale. Next, they heard and identified each sound. Rating responses were transformed based on how each sound's rating corresponded to its identification accuracy to obtain an imagery correspondence index (ICI). A higher ICI indicates a closer agreement between a sound's rating and its identification accuracy. Across participants results indicated moderate-to-high correlations between identification accuracy and ICI scores only for familiarity and ease of imagining but not complexity and pleasantness. A similar correlation pattern with raw ratings was observed across sounds but not across participants. These results suggest that aspects of environmental sound imagery can be predictive of auditory perception of real-world sounds in CI listeners and should be considered in future diagnostic and rehabilitation applications.

Audiomotor interaction induced by mental imagery

Mental imagery can induce audiovisual integration, but whether it can induce interactions in other modalities remains uncertain. It has been demonstrated that audiomotor interaction can be generated following training, but whether such audiomotor interaction can be induced by auditory imagery training remains unknown. The present study aims at determining whether auditory mental imagery could induce a multimodal association with postural control. We examined static postural control in the presence of a frequency-modulated sound in three groups of participants, prior to and following a short period of training designed to create an association between auditory mental imagery of sounds and postural swaying. Results suggest that mental imagery impacted performance, as a significant decrease in postural control was observed in the experimental group following mental imagery training. Results of the control groups confirmed that the effect of mental imagery was not due to response bias, but to a significant multimodal interaction following training. These findings are in accordance with previous studies suggesting that mental imagery stimuli can interact with perceptual stimuli of a different sensory modality and lead to multisensory integration. The results also confirm that audiomotor interaction can be generated a mental imagery training. However, the full extent of mental imagery influence on multimodal interaction remains to be determined.

Style Features of the Vocal Cycles by Alexander Jacobchuk

The vocal cycles “Excerpts from my Kobzar” based on I. Hubarenko’s poems for mezzosoprano and piano and “Plum Blossom” based on M. Bashō’s poems for soprano and piano (2017) by Alexander Jacobchuk, the representative of the Kyiv Composers School, are considered in view of the originality of interpretation of conceptual basics of the outlined genre.The embodiment of poetry in music, in particular in the genre of the vocal cycle, as one of the interesting areas of the composer's work is highlighted through the use of textual, analytical, comparative, historical methods, as well as the method of interviewing the author. Since an era of Romanticism a history of music has accumulated considerable experience in this genre, which testifies to its huge artistic and aesthetic potential in both vertical (chronological, stylistic) and horizontal (geographical, national) aspects, according to the renewal of compositional techniques in interpretation of poetry. In this field A. Jacobchuk’s work has not yet become the subject of interest, that’s why actualizes its study in the stream of vocal cycle development at the beginning of the XXIth century. The artistic and stylistic features in relation to the figurative and semantic context of the verbal series are analyzed. It is revealed the use of musical intonation as the most important expression of the semantic load of the word. Chromatization consistently used in melodic lines and harmonic complexes, due to the expressive-philosophical basis of I. Hubarenko’s poems, as well as the manifestation of Orientalism in the embodiment of lyric contemplative-meditative poems by M. Bashō are introduced to convey the idea of colouring music language, which resonates with the achievements of the impressionists (parallelism of seventh chords, the principle of matching consonances, sound imagery, the study of phonic qualities of texture in the direction of spatial effects). It is proved that the integrity of drama in both cycles is based on thematic arches, the formation of culmination zones, a well-thought-out tonal plan. A special way of concentrating emotions is alternation the use of unaccompanied vocal solos with piano solos in some parts and instrumental interludes (in framing parts).

The sound-free SMARC effect: The spatial-musical association of response codes using only sound imagery.

This study provides clear evidence that the human cognitive system automatically codes sound pitch spatially. The spatial-musical association of response codes (SMARC) effect, in which a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone facilitates an upper (lower) response, is considered to reflect the spatial coding of sound pitch. However, previous studies have not excluded the directional effects of sound localization. Because a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone is automatically misperceived as originating from a spatially high (low) location, the location of a perceived sound source might artificially elicit the SMARC effect. This study challenged this unresolved issue. Participants were trained to associate visual stimuli (novel contoured shapes) with sound pitches (high-pitched or low-pitched pure tones). After training, participants completed a discrimination task in which the vertically aligned keys were associated with the visual stimuli in the absence of sound. Even without sound, the SMARC effect was observed in response to the trained visual stimuli (Experiment 1). However, this sound-free SMARC effect was eliminated when training was omitted (Experiment 2). Therefore, the SMARC effect was observed based solely on the activation of sound imagery that was spatial.

Comparison between covert sound-production task (sound-imagery) vs. motor-imagery for onset detection in real-life online self-paced BCIs

BackgroundEven though the BCI field has quickly grown in the last few years, it is still mainly investigated as a research area. Increased practicality and usability are required to move BCIs to the real-world. Self-paced (SP) systems would reduce the problem but there is still the big challenge of what is known as the ‘onset detection problem’.MethodsOur previous studies showed how a new sound-imagery (SI) task, high-tone covert sound production, is very effective for onset detection scenarios and we expect there are several advantages over most common asynchronous approaches used thus far, i.e., motor-imagery (MI): 1) Intuitiveness; 2) benefits to people with motor disabilities and, especially, those with lesions on cortical motor areas; and 3) no significant overlap with other common, spontaneous cognitive states, making it easier to use in daily-life situations. The approach was compared with MI tasks in online real-life scenarios, i.e., during activities such as watching videos and reading text. In our scenario, when a new message prompt from a messenger program appeared on the screen, participants watching a video (or reading text, browsing images) were asked to open the message by executing the SI or MI tasks, respectively, for each experimental condition.ResultsThe results showed the SI task performed statistically significantly better than the MI approach: 84.04% (SI) vs 66.79 (MI) True-False positive rate for the sliding image scenario, 80.84% vs 61.07% for watching video. The classification performance difference between SI and MI was found not to be significant in the text-reading scenario. Furthermore, the onset response speed showed SI (4.08 s) being significantly faster than MI (5.46 s). In terms of basic usability, 75% of subjects found SI easier to use.ConclusionsOur novel SI task outperforms typical MI for SP onset detection BCIs, therefore it would be more easily used in daily-life situations. This could be a significant step forward for the BCI field which has so far been mainly restricted to research-oriented indoor laboratory settings.

Lip-Reading Enables the Brain to Synthesize Auditory Features of Unknown Silent Speech.

Lip-reading is crucial for understanding speech in challenging conditions. But how the brain extracts meaning from, silent, visual speech is still under debate. Lip-reading in silence activates the auditory cortices, but it is not known whether such activation reflects immediate synthesis of the corresponding auditory stimulus or imagery of unrelated sounds. To disentangle these possibilities, we used magnetoencephalography to evaluate how cortical activity in 28 healthy adult humans (17 females) entrained to the auditory speech envelope and lip movements (mouth opening) when listening to a spoken story without visual input (audio-only), and when seeing a silent video of a speaker articulating another story (video-only). In video-only, auditory cortical activity entrained to the absent auditory signal at frequencies <1 Hz more than to the seen lip movements. This entrainment process was characterized by an auditory-speech-to-brain delay of ∼70 ms in the left hemisphere, compared with ∼20 ms in audio-only. Entrainment to mouth opening was found in the right angular gyrus at <1 Hz, and in early visual cortices at 1-8 Hz. These findings demonstrate that the brain can use a silent lip-read signal to synthesize a coarse-grained auditory speech representation in early auditory cortices. Our data indicate the following underlying oscillatory mechanism: seeing lip movements first modulates neuronal activity in early visual cortices at frequencies that match articulatory lip movements; the right angular gyrus then extracts slower features of lip movements, mapping them onto the corresponding speech sound features; this information is fed to auditory cortices, most likely facilitating speech parsing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Lip-reading consists in decoding speech based on visual information derived from observation of a speaker's articulatory facial gestures. Lip-reading is known to improve auditory speech understanding, especially when speech is degraded. Interestingly, lip-reading in silence still activates the auditory cortices, even when participants do not know what the absent auditory signal should be. However, it was uncertain what such activation reflected. Here, using magnetoencephalographic recordings, we demonstrate that it reflects fast synthesis of the auditory stimulus rather than mental imagery of unrelated, speech or non-speech, sounds. Our results also shed light on the oscillatory dynamics underlying lip-reading.

Spatial-musical association of response codes based on the sound imagery

Spatial-musical association of response codes based on the sound imagery

An investigation of the neural association between auditory imagery and perception of complex sounds.

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that mental imagery and perception share similar neural substrates, however, there are still ambiguities according to different auditory imagery content. In addition, there is still a lack of information regarding the underlying neural correlation between the two modalities. In the present study, we adopted functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the neural representation during imagery and perception of actual sounds in our surroundings. Univariate analysis was used to assess the differences between the modalities of average activation intensity, and stronger imagery activation was found in sensorimotor regions but weaker activation in auditory association cortices. Additionally, multi-voxel pattern analysis with a support vector machine classifier was implemented to decode environmental sounds within- or cross-modality. Significant above-chance accuracies were found in all overlapping regions in the classification of within-modality, while successful cross-modality classification only was found in sensorimotor regions. Both univariate and multivariate analyses found distinct representation between auditory imagery and perception in the overlapping regions, including superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal sulcus as well as the precentral cortex and pre-supplementary motor area. Our results confirm the overlapping activation regions between auditory imagery and perception reported by previous studies and suggest that activation regions showed dissociable representation pattern in imagery and perception of sound categories.

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy Indy Clark (bio) Most of the year’s work comes from two sources: the Thomas Hardy Journal, the official critical publication of the Hardy Society, and Fathom, an occasional e-journal generated by the French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies. In addition to celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hardy Society, the Autumn 2018 edition of the Thomas Hardy Journal is the first edited by Karin Koehler, and I should like to wish her well in her new venture. I look forward to the exciting and thought-provoking work that will undoubtedly be encouraged under her stewardship. As with last year, loss and mourning occupy the thoughts of Hardy scholars, with desire and gaze providing additional emphases for this year. Once again, “Poems of 1912–13” features heavily. With new writing by such critical heavyweights as Linda M. Shires, Roger Ebbatson, Jane Thomas, and Stephen Regan, this really has been a pleasure to compile. “Hardy’s Poems and the Reader: The Power of Unmaking” (Thomas Hardy Journal 34 [Autumn 2018]: 17–34) by Linda M. Shires begins with a consideration of the word poesis, which, in Latin, means simply “poem” or “poetry.” Its Greek meaning, the “activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before,” acts almost as a counterpoint to the central argument of this article. Hardy’s poems, writes Shires, “invite readers into a process, to unmake them—yet not to ruin or destroy” (p. 17); instead, the “unmaking” that Shires detects in the reading of Hardy’s poetry is a system of picking out or taking apart. “Unlike Romantic and Victorian predecessors,” she argues, “Hardy does not just reshape—but also destabilizes—the poetic voice” (p. 18). In a series of close, critical, and convincing readings, the “larger [End Page 399] goals” and “different kinds of pleasure” that can result from reading Hardy’s poems both with and against the grain are explored (p. 17). The first poem under investigation is “The Convergence of the Twain,” written to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Shires was initially drawn to it by the unfamiliar: words such as “thrid” or the phrase “rhythmic tidal lyres.” Most of all, perhaps, she “vaguely sensed that part of the power of Hardy’s poetry lay in collisions: physical, mental, and emotional” (p. 17). Fifty years later, the words are still striking, and they, along with the effects of sound symbolism and the triplet structure, provide the focus of the reading. Shires contends that the diction provides layers of meaning, with “maiden,” for example, evoking not only inaugural and unwed but also something made, and the description of the fires as “salamandrine” links the flames to sea worms (p. 21). The sound imagery comes mostly in the form of sibilance and especially the interplay between hard and soft s sounds, as the first five stanzas represent the ship beneath the water’s surface. Although the tercets recall Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shires sees more association with the closing elegiac triplets of Shakespeare’s The Phoenix and the Turtle and with the poem’s sense of destiny, consummation, and return. As Shires admits, she has written about “Heiress and Architect” many times before (see, for example, “Matter, Consciousness, and the Human in Wessex Poems,” Studies in English Literature 55, no. 4 [2015]: 899–924; and “Hardy’s Memorial Art: Image and Text in Wessex Poems,” Victorian Literature and Culture 41, no. 4 [2013]: 743–764), but here she returns to the poem to consider its “journey of reduction and of unmaking” as a “discourse on poetry” (pp. 24, 23). It is more a discourse on subjectivity, as the reader wrestles with Hardy’s “construction and reduction of selfhood” (p. 24). With “Self-Unconscious,” Hardy explores the blending and splintering of a point of view in a single consciousness. Once again, the diction is key, with Hardy’s use of “limn,” an unusual word of Middle English origin, providing an effective jolt. This, combined with the words “shapes” and “reveries,” suggests that “there is never a perception of wholeness, since for him there is no whole” (p. 25). The mordant humour of “Ah, Are You Digging...

Thinking in music: An objective measure of notation-evoked sound imagery in musicians.

Thinking in music: An objective measure of notation-evoked sound imagery in musicians.

Thinking in music: An objective measure of notation-evoked sound imagery in musicians.

Thinking in music: An objective measure of notation-evoked sound imagery in musicians.