bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Salzburg-En-Provence
Authors: Stevens James
Published: February 2010

Aix—Mozart—Rosbaud … the three names have become synonymous. It is in fact a curious manifestation of the French music festival for Rosbaud is most un-French in his outlook. His style is severely correct and immensely authoritative, yet he drains from a score all colour and nuance so that Mozart seems worked in lead rather than precious metals. It seems strange that the smart Parisian audience at Aix should have taken this conductor to their elegant bosoms whilst in Berlin, Monique Haas, essentially Gallic, and the sensuous Celibidache have become the most feted of visiting foreigners. The cult of Mozart at Aix is equally inexplicable except that the objectionable habit of French audiences to expect, and orchestras to play the last played movement as an encore, does not work at all badly in the case of Mozart, the master of the finale. But when it comes to opera, which is the core of the Aix festival, what is to be done? It is not possible to go on providing even more marvellous performances of the half dozen operas, and routine performances are best left to the opera-houses. Last year there was an adequate Così and a Figaro made memorable by the wonderfully inventive decor of Clavé. This year we had an appalling Seraglio and (sigh of relief) a tremendous Don Giovanni. This was an intelligent production by Jean Meyer magnificently acted and sung by a mainly Italian cast and beautifully designed by Cassandre.
Gerald Finzi - An English Composer
Authors: Russell John
Published: February 2010

An experienced writer on musical matters recently exclaimed: “I find it very difficult to write about Finzi's music—it's all so damned simple!” One can easily see what he meant. Who, for instance, in this year of grace, would dare to risk such a line as this in a major work:

This is certainly simple enough. Yet how else would one express in music Wordsworth's recollections of early childhood, the birds singing and the young lambs bounding? In the Angst of the twelve-tone system? In the “uncompromising” tight-lipped utterances of the mittel-European contemporary? It is only when we come to perform this music and hear it that we find we can do so without embarrassment.
National Frontiers in Music
Authors: Newman Ernest , Heyworth Peter
Published: February 2010

From these citations alone it is evident that there are any number of doctrines now current about nationalism and internationalism in music, theories of all degrees of good sense, part-sense and downright nonsense. Mr. Keller enjoys himself hugely among them. For his views and conclusions, however, I must refer my readers to the article itself; for my own part I can do no more in my limited space than timidly put forward one or two reflections of my own.
Festival of Contemporary Latin American Music
Authors: Copland Aaron
Published: February 2010

Caracas, Venezuela, unlike Paris, France, is a newcomer in the field of present day music. Nevertheless it recently succeeded in putting itself on the contemporary musical map—and with a bang. No one, not even Paris, had ever before thought of organising a festival of orchestral works by contemporary Latin American composers. This happened for the first time anywhere in Caracas, which is full of vitality at the moment, thanks to an oil-engendered prosperity. The town boasts of a good orchestra, a brand new open-air amphitheatre seating six thousand people, and a lively cultural organisation, the Institución José Angel Lamas, headed by Dr. Inocente Palacios. This musically minded enthusiast is the kind of Maecenas composers dream about. By enlisting the aid of the Venezuelan government and other private sources he managed to put on an event that will have historical significance in the annals of Ibero-American music. Within the space of two and a half weeks forty symphonic compositions originating in seven Latin American countries were performed in a series of eight concerts. This was a major effort for all concerned, especially for the courageous musicians of the Orquesta Sinfonica Venezuela and the Festival's principal conductors: Heitor Villa Lobos, Carlos Chávez, Juan José Castro, and Rios Reyna.
The Juilliard School
Authors: Taubman Howard
Published: February 2010

It will be fifty years tomorrow since the convocation ceremonies for a new Institute of Musical Art were held in a building at Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. The speakers that day were Cornelius C. Cuyler, Frank Damrosch, Felix Adler and Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton.
Music in Cananda
Authors: Neel Boyd
Published: February 2010

It seems to come as a complete surprise to many people, especially in the United Kingdom, that Canada has a vital musical life of its own, both as regards performance and creative activity. That this should be so is due chiefly to Canadians themselves, who are the most backward of all people in spreading abroad the facts of their cultural life. Apart from this, they are ill-served by their own musicians, who arrive in large numbers in the United Kingdom telling everybody that they have come because there is nothing for them to do in Canada. I myself was also a victim of this widespread impression until I had the good fortune to take the Boyd Neel Orchestra on tour in the Dominion in 1952. Imagine my astonishment when I found enormous audiences of an extremely enlightened nature and a musical life boiling with activity and lacking only one thing—sufficient players to meet the demand. I then realised the ludicrous situation that obtained with so many Canadians pouring into the already overcrowded musical world of the United Kingdom, while their confrères, who remained at home, were all working twenty-four hours a day to try to keep the pot boiling. I found the same conditions when I visited Australia and New Zealand some eight years ago. The cry was always ‘Why can't we get anything going here?’ The answer was obvious—that as long as all the best musical talent went immediately to England, nothing would ever get started in the Dominions.
Grenadier Music
Authors: Miller G. J.
Published: February 2010

In this year of 1956 it is only right and proper to call attention to the fact that it is the tercentenary of the founding by King Charles II in 1656 of the Royal Regiment of Guards, subsequently “The Royal Regiment of Foot Guards” and finally, after the Battle of Waterloo, according to the following order: WAR OFFICE. July 29, 1815.
Composers and Economics
Authors: Hawkes Ralph
Published: February 2010

The question of the composer's livelihood is always with us, a source of anxiety to the composer himself, his family, and his friends. It is not the purpose of this article to attempt a solution of the whole problem; and indeed, I should be at a loss to offer a solution were I asked.
Darius Milhaud's Recent Works
Authors: Frankenstein Alfred
Published: February 2010

Among the private papers of Darius Milhaud is a notebook which will some day be treasured by one of the world's great libraries. It is a completed register of this composer's works in his own handwriting, setting forth in parallel columns the “titre,” “genre,” “dédicace” and éditeur” of each.
At the Ballet: Poor Relations
Authors: Squire W. H. Haddon
Published: February 2010

Since Diaghilev no one has achieved so close a fusion of the three elements of music, painting, and dancing, a fusion in which, for him, lay hidden the secret of the “perfect ballet.” Before looking at some recent works given by the Sadler's Wells Opera-Ballet, the Ballet Rambert, and the Sadler's Wells Company at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, it may be useful to glance for a moment at that truly alchemic process by which the mediums of different arts may be fused into one. This can only be accomplished by a knowledge of those primary elements which are the life-source of every art, whatever its means of expression.
At the Ballet
Authors: Squire W. H. Haddon
Published: February 2010

Distance in time or space, it has been said, gilds formulas and styles; we turn to what is far away and ask for inspiration. By the light reflected from the past the artist endeavours to forge something new in harmony with his own period. Thus the great styles, always new and original, have in them at the same time something which we recognize as a common element. Style is not only the man himself but also his period. Style, therefore, is not merely an opinion but a fact.
Some Polish Composers of To-Day
Authors: Panufnik Andrzej
Published: February 2010

It is ten years since KAROL SZYMANOWSKI died at fifty-four. He was the most prominent representative of the “radical progressive” group of early twentieth century composers, which we call “Young Poland.” In their manysided and pioneering efforts they prepared the fertile soil on which Poland's present day's music thrives.
Problems of Operatic Performance
Authors: Cross Joan
Published: February 2010

Opera singers are generally thought of as indifferent actors. Why? On the whole singers are imaginative, very emotional, and sensitive to the music that they sing. It would be fairer to accuse them of a lack of knowledge of the technical side of stagecraft, a lack of knowledge of the kind of thing, in fact, that is taught at any dramatic academy to aspirants to the straight stage.
Stravinsky's Newest Work
Authors: Ansermet Ernest
Published: February 2010

This work, of which the last page bears the date 15th March, 1948, has occupied Strawinsky for some considerable time and it is the only one, I think I am right in saying, of his recent compositions not to have been written in response to a commission.
Introduction to Strawinsky's “Orpheus”
Authors: Ballo Ferdinando
Published: February 2010

Since Jeux de Cartes a large proportion of the public might have thought that Strawinsky had come to the end of his cycle of “experiments,” of his “trial balloons” in the language of music, and that he had now stabilized on certain formulæ calculated to achieve an easy popular success—clear simplicity of instrumentation, normality of rhythms, sweetness of harmony, condensation of form, a rounding-off of all the corners, greater accessibility of performance, feelings of serenity or gaiety. In sum, it might have been thought that Strawinsky had turned bourgeois, reactionary, with the hand extended to the worldly and complacent audiences of those theatres which are richest and most steeped in tradition. The technicians accused this new Strawinsky of treason in the sacred struggle for the renewal of the language of music; the cultured public accused him of having capitulated in the face of the difficulty of a more austere, hermetic and refined expression in order to abandon himself to expression within a range of feeling altogether easier, more apparent and more immediate. And finally there were those who accused Strawinsky of having quite plainly sold himself to the American taste—uncultured, gross, commercial—for what is striking but easy, preferring, in art as in other things, the standard product to the precious rarity.
Bartók Competition - October 1948: A Tribute to Bartók
Authors: Szigeti Joseph
Published: February 2010

When I was approached recently by a music-lover of Los Angeles, one of those typical “hommes de bonne volonté” full of utopian schemes, and when he expounded, to me his idea of an “International Musical Olympiad,” I declined to enter into discussion on the manifestly unrealizable project (or rather, dream). I pointed out to him the unpropitiousness of the year 1948 for such a vast undertaking, the shortness of time, the absence of “goodwill,” of harmony, of co-operativeness in the atmosphere, and so on and so forth.
Kodály's Later Orchestral Music (I)
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

It has often been said that the greatness of an artist depends on his relation to the legacy of previous epochs and on his attitude to the intellectual impulses of his time. His awareness of these factors, conditioned by his response towards the obligations of society, will determine the value of his own contribution.

In Kodály's case investigation was hitherto centred mainly on his choral music: it is now proposed to examine his two large-scale, purely orchestral works of comparatively recent date.
Zürich Opera Premières
Authors: Reich Willi
Published: February 2010

In giving premières of three notable contemporary works within the space of four weeks, the Zürich Stadttheater recently proved its outstanding artistic capacity.

The performance of Richard Strauss's Arabella, which took place on the 21st October, was of great importance, in the first place because of Professor Rudolph Hartmann's new production, but also on account of the re-casting of the leading parts, especially the title role sung by Lisa della Casa, on whom the audience's main interest was concentrated. Her achievement was constantly compared to the magnificent performance with which Maria Cebotari triumphed at the last Zürich performance in 1946. Lisa della Casa held her own even against that dazzling memory.
English Impressions
Authors: Post Joseph
Published: February 2010

I begin this summary of my impressions of music in Britain with the hope that anything. I say will not be construed as impertinence, or ingratitude to my hosts of the last six months for the stimulating experience and generous reception I have had here both as a practising musician and as an observer.
The Paris Festival
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

The Paris Festival of Masterpieces of the 20th Century lasted throughout May, and few had time to see it all. Unlike many foreign festivals that spread themselves out over a similar period, it was crammed tight with good things throughout, with something of interest every night except Sundays from April 30th to June 1st. The third week was the climax of the festival, and in general the last two weeks were more exciting than the first two, which were apparently meant to draw the Parisian bourgeoisie, being devoted mainly to ballet by the New York City Ballet, and containing nothing in music worth a journey abroad except perhaps two performances by the Vienna Opera of Wozzeck, which is rapidly becoming as familiar as The Rite of Spring. In the last two weeks, the festival's so-called “literary conferences” on cultural freedom were held, and to give these the best possible chance of wide publicity, the organizers had cleverly saved up their musical trump cards until then, with what was virtually a Strawinsky-Bartók-Schoenberg week, Strawinsky himself conducting his two late symphonies and Oedipus Rex, with Cocteau as producer, designer, narrator (and of course librettist), followed in-the last week by Billy Budd conducted by Britten, excerpts from Milhaud's setting of the Oresteia, and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts (which aroused higher expectations than it fulfilled, and was so severely trounced by Dumesnil in Le Monde that one wondered what would be the fate of the four further, independently financed and sponsored performances that were to be given after the end of the festival).
Arthur Benjamin's Piano Concerto
Authors: Cowan John
Published: February 2010

The solo concerto, and in particular the piano concerto, is still the most popular musical form amongst the general public to-day. Therefore the appearance of a new work of this variety by a well-known composer is inevitably a matter of widespread interest.
Why I Write as I Do
Authors: Rorem Ned
Published: February 2010

What can be told about music that the music itself can't tell? Only how it came to be written.

It is instructive to hear what one composer says about another because, no matter how biased, he quite knows what he's talking about. It is less instructive to hear what a composer says about himself because, no matter how sincere, he doesn't quite know what he's talking about. A composer can clarify his method to others, but not his esthetic. He can tell how he wrote his piece, but not why. His why is the piece. All else is a smokescreen through which he explains what you're supposed to hear rather than what you do hear. Unless the smokescreen itself is his music.
Delius's Advance to Mastery
Authors: Klein John W.
Published: February 2010

From the very outset of his career, undeterred by an incomprehension that might have crushed the spirit of even the most indomitable fanatic, Delius was convinced not only of his sacred vocation as a musician but of the supreme dignity of what Bizet termed ‘this celestial art’. For on one occasion he wrote: ‘Music is a cry from the soul! It is a revelation, a thing to be reverenced’. Perhaps no modern composer reveals so lofty and disinterested a conception of his art.
Delius's Stylistic Development
Authors: Payne Anthony
Published: February 2010

Looking at Delius's music in chronological order, we discover a pattern of development more continuous than an almost life-long reliance on the same technique might suggest. An increasing richness of chord structure, bearing with it its own subtle means of contrast and development, slowly but surely ousted more conventional methods; slowly, that is, apart from the startling jump with which his music suddenly acquired full stature, only to resume its steady progress. As a young man he was far from being the dreamer we might think; in fact, he was very much an adventurer, always on the move, and thoroughly cosmopolitan. We can well imagine that he had little time for contemplation, so that his attitude to beauty would be, at first, conventionally picturesque, and devoid of personal involvement. Bearing in mind that his avowed intention as a composer was to express his emotions, we need not be surprised that with as yet little opportunity for the tranquil recollection needed to crystallize personal emotion, his early music is content to lean on Grieg and early Wagner. As time passed, and his poetic vision deepened, his models served him less satisfactorily until he finally dropped them. This process, probably unconscious, might well have been speeded up if he had been less absorbed in self-expression, and more interested in abstract formal problems. It could possibly be argued, in comparing the early Florida Suite (1888–1890) with Appalachia (1902)—both seemingly inspired by the same events—that the later work is superior because Delius had found the right means of expression; I think not. The emphasis lies the other way in that he had at last realized to the full the awful transience of love and nature, and there are few composers in whom we feel less inclined to divorce matter from style.
Kodály's Symphony: A Morphological Study
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

Full orchestra of ‘classical’ dimensions, i.e., double woodwind to which a third flute is added, changing to piccolo; four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettle-drums; a passage in the first movement requires triangle and cymbals; and the customary strings. Estimated duration, 30 minutes.
1930: Symphony of Psalms
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: February 2010

We all know that the Symphony of Psalms was ‘composed for the glory of God and dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’, but we don't always notice that this wry equivocation is appropriate to a work whose theme is the relationship between Man and God. A comprehensive and suitably illustrated analysis of the work in those (or any other) terms would fill at least a booklet. Here we must confine ourselves to the exposition and a few representative developments of the Man/God ‘theme’.
Taverner: Synopsis and Documentation
Authors: Davies Peter Maxwell
Published: February 2010

My opera Taverner projects onto the life and mind of the sixteenth century English composer John Taverner certain perennial preoccupations of my own, notably with the nature of betrayal at the deepest levels. The ‘action’ is within Taverner's mind; and so, despite constant references to sixteenth century sources (mostly English), neither time nor place are treated realistically. While time becomes non-sequential and functions in a formal and quasi-musical sense as a means of presenting event and anti- or shadow-event, place is as particular or as general as the text demands, and needs no definition by conventional ‘scenery’.
Impressions After an Exhibition
Authors: Spies Claudio
Published: February 2010

During these summer months the New York Public Library has been holding an exhibition at the Research Library of the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, of manuscripts, drafts, annotations, letters, photographs, posters, objets, objets d'art, and other memorabilia selected from Stravinsky's legacy, and lent by his widow. The exhibition is unprecedented with respect to the collection of objects on display—since, for one thing, it is presumably only after so public a figure's demise that an assortment of this kind becomes open to the possibility of being thus exhibited—although a number of items had been familiar in published form. It is also, I conjecture, the first in a potential succession of exhibitions (depending, primarily, upon the eventual location of, and time at which, the entire legacy of these materials may become, as is to be hoped, in the most positive sense, public property), and it was mounted in conjunction with a Stravinsky Festival celebrating the 90th anniversary of the composer's birth.
Stefan Wolpe (1902–1972): In Memoriam
Authors: Carter Elliott
Published: February 2010

Comet-like radiance, conviction, fervent intensity, penetrating thought on many levels of seriousness and humor, combined with breath-taking adventurousness and originality, marked the inner and outer life of Stefan Wolpe, as they do his compositions. Inspiring to those who knew him, these inspiring qualities reached many more through his music. A man, a musician, for whom everyone who came close could not help but feel admiration and affection. Contact with him was such an important experience that he was understandably surrounded by many devoted, convinced friends and students who helped with his problems of performance and publication, helped in finding him teaching positions, helped to save his manuscripts during the fire of a few years ago, helped him to move about when his physical condition was deteriorating. The force of his artistic personality, motivated as it was by deep conviction and by an innately original way of doing things, occasionally seemed to be utterly unconcerned with prudence and caution, yet frequently what he did turned out to be the only right way of acting.
Schoenberg in the United States
Authors: Sessions Roger
Published: February 2010

In any survey of Schoenberg's work one fact must be emphasized above all: that no younger composer writes quite the same music as he would have written, had Schoenberg's music not existed. The influence of an artist is not, even during his lifetime, confined to his disciples or even to those who have felt the direct impact of his work. It is filtered through to the humblest participant, first in the work of other original artists who have absorbed and re-interpreted it for their own purposes; then through the work of hundreds of lesser individuals, who unconsciously reflect the new tendencies even when they are opposed to them. For genuinely new ideas determine the battle-grounds on which their opponents are forced to attack. In the very process of combat the latter undergo decisive experiences which help to carry the new ideas forward.
Copland's Dickinson Songs
Authors: Young Douglas
Published: February 2010

More than twenty years have passed since the publication of Copland's Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, and although the work has been widely praised, it has still to find its rightful place in the repertoire. In several respects it is, indeed, an isolated work. Composed between March 1949 and March 1950, it was Copland's first music for solo voice and piano since 1928, and has remained his only song-cycle (apart from the sets of American popular songs). The choice of poems is unusual; but the genre itself is foreign to the American ‘tradition’. The fact that relatively few American composers have entered this field perhaps reflects a desire to avoid direct comparison with 19th century European models. Charles Ives wrote many songs but no cycles, and the best of them are without musical ancestry (or direct progeny); if influences can be discerned they are from outside the field of ‘art’ music. So it is remarkable that Copland's cycle calls to mind the French mélodie, and particularly Fauré.
Pfitzner's Orchestral Music
Authors: Truscott Harold
Published: February 2010

Hans Pfitzner was born in 1869 in Moscow—where his parents were temporarily residing—and is sometimes described as a German-Russian composer, although in fact he had no Russian blood. He grew up in Frankfurt o/M, where his father was Musikdirektor at the Municipal Theatre. From him he had his first music lessons, and perhaps the environment helped foster his interest in opera and music for the stage. He studied piano with James Kwast and composition with Ivan Knorr—the teacher of Cyril Scott and Percy Grainger—at Hoch's Conservatoire in Frankfurt. After finishing there, he took up the first in a series of teaching and conducting appointments which lasted until the advent of Hitler in 1933. These included a period as Director of Strasbourg Conservatoire, conductorship of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich, and frequent appearances as conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he also made very notable recordings, especially of the Beethoven symphonies—performances which rank with the finest I have ever heard. Strasbourg University honoured him in 1913 with the degree of Ph.D., and in the same year he was married—in Canterbury, Kent, to which city he and his bride had fled to avoid unpleasant entanglement with Percy Grainger, who considered himself a suitor for the same girl's hand.
Two Open Letters to Boris Blacher
Authors: von Einem Gottfried , Burt Francis
Published: February 2010

Your friends and admirers throughout the world are glad to be able to celebrate your 70th birthday. During your long, delicate and difficult life you have created an oeuvre that will survive the challenges of time.

I have often wondered where you get the strength from. Is it perhaps from the understanding—which came to you very early—that ultimately we humans, as individuals, live in a state of mortal detachment from the course of the universe? Your equanimity in personal affairs has astounded me just as often as your courage in public ones; and your inexhaustible good humor seems to me like a gift from the heavens.
Britten in the Theatre: A Provisional Catalogue
Authors: White Eric Walter
Published: February 2010

In 1952, I made a bare list of Britten's scores for the theatre, cinema and radio (of which nearly 40 were written in the three years 1935–7!). The list was published in Benjamin Britten, a symposium edited by Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller (London: Rockliff, now out of print). Britten's 60th birthday seems an appropriate occasion for further investigations, and the theatre music particularly recommends itself. How often in our time has a composer of Britten's stature been so intensively involved with the spoken theatre? Not surprisingly, it proved fruitful soil for many musical ideas that he was to develop later in his operas and other works.
The Music of Frank Bridge: 2) The Last Years
Authors: Payne Anthony
Published: February 2010

The development of Bridge's language after the Cello Sonata of 1913–17 is so sudden as to suggest some kind of inner upheaval. Perhaps it was associated with his revulsion against the war—Benjamin Britten has spoken of his teacher's passionately-held pacifist convictions—and there may too have been a feeling that his own cultural background had disappeared in the holocaust, along with so many lives and hopes. On the other hand, his developing language at the time of the Cello Sonata and the Second Quartet may have unlocked some door to his subconscious. Whatever the case, he appears to have experienced a crisis of style and perhaps of personality immediately after the War. It is significant, for instance, that with one exception no major work seems to have been conceived after the completion of the Cello Sonata until the crucially important Piano Sonata, begun in 1922 but not finished until 1925. The period between these two sonatas was almost exclusively devoted to collections of small piano pieces and a handful of songs, some of which indicate the beginnings of Bridge's new style. The single exception is the little opera in three scenes, The Christmas Rose, which was sketched in 1919 and scored ten years later. Moments of dramatic pressure elicited a rich harmonic response from Bridge in splashes of whole- and bi-tonal colouring; but over the work as a whole there lies an idyllic serenity in which the composer seems for the moment to be by-passing the problems which were soon to force themselves upon him.
Still Sings the Voice: A Portrait of Ned Rorem
Authors: Johnson Bret
Published: February 2010

I Well Remember hearing my first Rorem work—his Symphony No. 3 of 1959, with its wealth of melody and uninhibited joie de vivre. I determined to hear more and soon realized that there has been too little comment on him (not to mention performances!) on this side of the Atlantic. His reputation, earned in the 1950's and 1960's, as ‘America's foremost composer of art songs’ has been consolidated whilst he has been venturing into many other areas of musical terrain. Indeed, he has been a busy man—with more than 30 major works to his credit since 1970: and since his reputation as a composer of large-scale orchestral and choral works is less clearly perceived in this country, I propose to concentrate on this aspect in a brief survey of how his art has developed in recent years.
James Wood's ‘Stoicheia’ and ‘Oreion’
Authors: Warnaby John
Published: February 2010

Although James Wood has been in the forefront of contemporary music as both choral conductor and percussionist, directing the New London Chamber Choir in many new works, and organizing the Darmstadt Summer School Percussion Course for several years, his own compositions have little in common with the mainstream of postwar European music. It might be assumed that his interest in ancient Greek rhythms, together with their Indian and Chinese equivalents, stems from his association with the music of Xenakis; but he has never shown any inclination to use complex mathematical formulae, and has probably been less concerned than almost any other contemporary composer with the organization of pitch.
From Liszt to Adams (II): ‘The Black Gondola’
Authors: Miller Malcolm
Published: February 2010

The Black Gondola, John Adams's transcription for chamber orchestra of Liszt's La Lugubre Gondola II, composed in 1989 for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota, shows how – as in the case of Wiegenlied (discussed in an earlier article, Tempo 175) – the composer has been attracted to those aspects of Liszt's late style which inter–connect with minimalism: regular, and fluid, rhythmic textures; economy of thematic material which undergoes ‘minimal’ transformation; extensive phrase repetition in a ‘sequencing’ structure; harmonic ambiguity and elusiveness. In addition, in this case, a strong programmatic element is evident in the symbolism of the original piece which is heightened considerably within Adams's transcription: an expression of the dramatic style which has influenced his recent stage works, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.
The metabolic basis of dual periodicity of feeding in rats
Authors: Le Magnen Jacques
Published: February 2010

This article examines how the depletion and replenishment of various energy stores give rise to periodic eating and how constant body-energy levels are maintained over time.

Measures of the energy expended throughout the 24-hour feeding pattern in rats indicate that two different energy stores (one of small capacity and one of large) determine two superimposed feeding periodicities: one from meal to meal (prandial), the other from day to night (nycthemeral). The article reviews how experimental overrepletion or overdepletion of gastrointestinal content, blood glucose, or body fats affect food intake. These data suggest that gastrointestinal content determines both meal size and meal-to-meal periodicity. Other evidence indicates that glucose uptake rate in tissues, which is modulated by fat synthesis and fat mobilization, affects the periodic onset of feeding and the difference between nocturnal and diurnal postprandial satiety.

There follows an examination of the neuroendocrine bases for the interacting mechanisms governing energy input and output balance and of the role of the ventromedial hypothalamus in body-fat regulation and the lateral hypothalamus in feeding.
Measurement of sensory intensity
Authors: Warren Richard M.
Published: February 2010

The measurement of sensory intensity has had a long history, attracting the attention of investigators from many disciplines including physiology, psychology, physics, mathematics, philosophy, and even chemistry. While there has been a continuing doubt by some that sensation has the properties necessary for measurement, experiments designed to obtain estimates of sensory intensity have found that a general rule applies: Equal stimulus ratios produce equal sensory ratios. Theories concerning the basis for this simple psychophysical rule are discussed, with emphasis given to the physical correlate theory, which considers judgments of subjective magnitudes to be based upon estimates of physical dimensions that vary regularly with changes in degree of stimulation. For the most thoroughly investigated sensory scales, brightness and loudness, the physical correlate is considered to be distance. Our “tacit knowledge” of the sensory effects of changing distance plays an essential role in matching motor activities to environmental conditions and in ensuring accurate perceptual evaluations through brightness and loudness constancies. In psychophysical experiments, subjects apparently use this same tacit knowledge when required to estimate relative subjective magnitudes. The evidence related to the physical correlate theory is summarized, and it is concluded that, while under appropriate conditions we demonstrate considerable skill in evaluating environmental relationships, we are quite unable to estimate the neurophysiological nature or quantity of sensory response. A psychophysics devoted to studying conditions required for accuracy and conditions producing errors in the perception of environmental relationships would seem to be more valuable than one devoted to subjective magnitudes.
A multiple-level model of evolution and its implications for sociobiology
Authors: Plotkin H. C. , Odling-Smee F. J.
Published: February 2010

The fundamental tenet of contemporary sociobiology, namely the assumption of a single process of evolution involving the selection of genes, is critically examined. An alternative multiple-level, multiple-process model of evolution is presented which posits that the primary process that operates via selection upon the genes cannot account for certain kinds of biological phenomena, especially complex, learned, social behaviours. The primary process has evolved subsidiary evolutionary levels and processes that act to bridge the gap between genes and these complex behaviours. The subsidiary levels are development, individual animal learning, and socioculture itself. It is argued that individual learning is pivotal to the derivation and biological analysis of culture. The differences between cultural and noncultural societies are stressed. It is concluded that such a multiple-level model of evolution can form the basis for reconciling opposing sides in the sociobiology debate.
Categories, life, and thinking
Authors: Ghiselin Michael T.
Published: February 2010

Classifying is a fundamental operation in the acquisition of knowledge. Taxonomic theory can help students of cognition, evolutionary psychology, ethology, anatomy, and sociobiology to avoid serious mistakes, both practical and theoretical. More positively, it helps in generating hypotheses useful to a wide range of disciplines. Composite wholes, such as species and societies, are “individuals” in the logical sense, and should not be treated as if they were classes. A group of analogous features is a natural kind, but a group of homologous features is not. Imposing hypotheses justified only on the basis of nominalist, realist, phenomenalist, or conceptualist metaphysics upon the neurophysiology of organisms or upon the causes of behavior exemplifies the “psychologist's fallacy” of William James. Levels should be distinguished from their members and from classes of levels, and the ontological status of entities ranked at levels should be made clear. It is important not to confuse such categories as substance and process with one another. Several genetical terms, such as “gene” and chromosome,” are even more equivocal than has been realized. Discussions about units of selection, behavior, and thinking suffer from the ambiguity of a “unit of” an entity. An important source of misunderstanding about natural selection is the habit of treating it as an “agent”: in an important sense, natural selection does not “act” at all.
How are grammers represented?
Authors: Stabler Edward P.
Published: February 2010

Noam Chomsky and other linguists and psychologists have suggested that human linguistic behavior is somehow governed by a mental representation of a transformational grammar. Challenges to this controversial claim have often been met by invoking an explicitly computational perspective: It makes perfect sense to suppose that a grammar could be represented in the memory of a computational device and that this grammar could govern the device's use of a language. This paper urges, however, that the claim that humans are such a device is unsupported and that it seems unlikely that linguists and psychologists really want to claim any such thing. Evidence for the linguists' original claim is drawn from three main sources: the explanation of language comprehension and other linguistic abilities; evidence for formal properties of the rules of the grammar; and the explanation of language acquisition. It is argued in this paper that none of these sources provides support for the view that the grammar governs language processing in something like the way a program governs the operation of a programmed machine. The computational approach, on the contrary, suggests ways in which linguistic abilities can be explained without the attribution of any explicit representation of rules governing linguistic behavior.
Is blindsight an effect of scattered light, spared cortex, and near-threshold vision?
Authors: Campion John , Latto Richard , Smith Y. M.
Published: February 2010

Blindsight is the term commonly used to describe visually guided behaviour elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused by a lesion of the striate cortex. Such “vision” is normally held to be unconscious and to be mediated by subcortical pathways involving the superior colliculus. Blindsight is of considerable theoretical importance since it suggests that destriate man is more like destriate monkey than had been previously believed and also because it supports the classical notion of two visual systems. It is also of potential clinical importance, since it has been claimed recently that systematic practice in blindsight can lead to the recovery of normal visual function in patients with cortical lesions. From a review of the literature it is concluded that all of the phenomena of blindsight can be attributed either to light scatter into unimpaired parts of the visual field or to residual vision resulting from spared striate cortex. The possible contribution f other factors is also considered. It is concluded that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for such nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and partly because of difficulties in defining the term “blindsight.”

Experiments were carried out to investigate the extent to which subjects can exhibit performance similar to blindsight when they are using scattered light as a cue. This was done both with hemianopic subjects (by manipulating the amount of scattered and direct light coming from a stimulus) and with normal subjects (by presenting targets within their blind spots). Good blindsight performance was observed when only scattered light was available as a cue to the subjects. It is therefore concluded that an adequate case for blindsight has not been made. It is probably impossible to demonstrate the existence of blindsight on purely behavioural grounds. What is required is the establishment of relationships between visual function and independent anatomical evidence.
On determining what is unconscious and what is perception
Authors: Navon David
Published: February 2010

In sum, dichotic listening tasks are appropriate for testing whether perception requires attention. The separate issue of the possible presence of perception that can never be brought under the spotlight of awareness should indeed be investigated by paradigms such as masking. However, the ultimate criterion for availability to awareness must be phenomenal experience. The discrepancy between thresholds of different perceptual indices is an important empirical finding, but its theoretical interpretation is not straightforward. In addition, it is suggested that we worry about the possibility that so-called indirect evidence reflects side effects of perceptual processing rather than the contents of its final product. In that case, what are being observed are vestiges of the processing of stimuli that do not make it to awareness. Whether those stimuli are below the threshold for overt response is an open question.
Methodologies for studying human knowledge
Authors: Anderson John R.
Published: February 2010

The appropriate methodology for psychological research depends on whether one is studying mental algorithms or their implementation. Mental algorithms are abstract specifications of the steps taken by procedures that run in the mind. Implementational issues concern the speed and reliability of these procedures. The algorithmic level can be explored only by studying across-task variation. This contrasts with psychology's dominant methodology of looking for within-task generalities, which is appropriate only for studying implementational issues.

The implementation-algorithm distinction is related to a number of other “levels” considered in cognitive science. Its realization in Anderson's ACT theory of cognition is discussed. Research at the algorithmic level is more promising because it is hard to make further fundamental scientific progress at the implementational level with the methodologies available. Protocol data, which are appropriate only for algorithm-level theories, provide a richer source than data at the implementational level. Research at the algorithmic level will also yield more insight into fundamental properties of human knowledge because it is the level at which significant learning transitions are defined.

The best way to study the algorithmic level is to look for differential learning outcomes in pedagogical experiments that manipulate instructional experience. This provides control and prediction in realistically complex learning situations. The intelligent tutoring paradigm provides a particularly fruitful way to implement such experiments.

The implications of this analysis for the issue of modularity of mind, the status of language, research on human/computer interaction, and connectionist models are also examined.
Classical conditioning: The new hegemony
Authors: Turkkan Jaylan Sheila
Published: February 2010

Converging data from different disciplines are showing the role of classical conditioning processes in the elaboration of human and animal behavior to be larger than previously supposed. Restricted views of classically conditioned responses as merely secretory, reflexive, or emotional are giving way to a broader conception that includes problem-solving, and other rule-governed behavior thought to be the exclusive province of either operant conditiońing or cognitive psychology. These new views have been accompanied by changes in the way conditioning is conducted and evaluated. Data from a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena such as relapse to drug abuse by postaddicts, the placebo effect, and the immune response appear to involve classical conditioning processes. Classical conditioning, moreover, has been found to occur in simpler and simpler organisms and recently even demonstrated in brain slices and in utero. This target article will integrate the several research areas that have used the classical conditioning process as an explanatory model; it will challenge teleological interpretations of the classically conditioned CR and offer some basic principles for testing conditioning in diverse areas.
Selfishness examined: Cooperation in the absence of egoistic incentives
Authors: Caporael Linnda R. , Dawes Robyn M. , Orbell John M. , van de Kragt Alphons J. C.
Published: February 2010

Social dilemmas occur when the pursuit of self-interest by individuals in a group leads to less than optimal collective outcomes for everyone in the group. A critical assumption in the human sciences is that people's choices in such dilemmas are individualistic, selfish, and rational. Hence, cooperation in the support of group welfare will only occur if there are selfish incentives that convert the social dilemma into a nondilemma. In recent years, inclusive fitness theories have lent weight to such traditional views of rational selfishness on Darwinian grounds. To show that cooperation is based on selfish incentives, however, one must provide evidence that people donotcooperatewithoutsuch incentives. In a series of experimental social dilemmas, subjects were instructed to make single, anonymous choices about whether or not to contribute money for a shared “bonus” that would be provided only if enough other people in the group also contributed their money. Noncontributors cited selfish reasons for their choices; contributors did not. If people are allowed to engage in discussion, they will contribute resources at high rates, frequently on irrational grounds, to promote group welfare. These findings are consistent with previous research on ingroup biasing effects that cannot be explained by “economic man” or “selfish gene” theories. An alternative explanation is that sociality was a primary factor shaping the evolution ofHomo sapiens. The cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying such choices evolved under selection pressures on small groups for developing and maintaining group membership and for predicting and controlling the behavior of other group members. This sociality hypothesis organizes previously inexplicable and disparate phenomena in a Darwinian framework and makes novel predictions about human choice.