bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Aaron Copland: A New York Composer
Authors: Salas Juan Orrego
Published: February 2010

Copland recognized the year 1939 as concluding an epoch of experiment in modern music. This was initiated, he asserts, at the end of the nineteenth century, and passed by way of Mussorgskian realism, French impressionism, embracing, to a certain extent, the traditionalism imposed by Strauss, Scriabine, Sibelius and others. The period includes the expressionist audacity of a Schönberg and a Satie, the dynamism of an early Strawinsky, the politonality of a Bartók (prior to 1908), and flows finally into the complexities of the post-(1914–18) war world. It is precisely during this epilogue that the young Copland himself emerges as a personality, at the disadvantage, on the one hand, of not having taken part in the first acts of the drama, and enjoying, on the other, all the advantages of not having been a protagonist in so involved a historical process. Moreover, his own country, from the time of his birth in a grey Brooklyn street, had followed a scarcely less complicated course.
Aaron Copland and the American Idiom
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: February 2010

The position of Aaron Copland as the dominant figure in contemporary American music has now won fairly widespread recognition over here; but the recognition does not depend on any very extensive knowledge of his works. It is general rather than specific; and indeed on the few occasions when his more important works have been played over here, they have been accorded a somewhat unsympathetic reception. Unlike most English critics, I happen to find Copland's music congenial and appealing. It is for this reason that I feel I may be able to make a few points about the nature and significance of his achievement that seem to have been, in this country, overlooked. I shall confine my attention to the two recent sonatas—for piano and for violin and piano—because they are relatively accessible and quotable, and because they are completely representative and amongst the most concentrated and mature of his works.
A Visit to South America
Authors: Boosey Leslie A.
Published: February 2010

My visit to South America was occasioned by the fact that the Confédération Internationale des Sociétés des Auteurs et Compositeurs held Congress there during the second week of October. The gathering was one of considerable importance. There were some 120 delegates from 31 countries. Among the British delegates were Sir Alan Herbert, representing authors, and Dr. William Walton and Mr. Eric Coates representing composers. UNESCO, the Library of Congress at Washington and the International Literary and Artistic Association also sent observers.
Richard Strauss's “Die Frau Ohne Schatten”
Authors: Erhardt Otto
Published: February 2010

One is always hearing it stated as an argument against opera that for quite a considerable time, say the last twenty-five years, nothing has been composed which has achieved world fame or even maintained its place in the repertory for a single generation. Yet a really thorough and knowledgeable examination—that is to say, one not impaired by partisan, doctrinaire points of view—would show that in the period from 1900 to 1950 a whole row of significant creations in the realm of music drama have come into being, which were wrongly judged as decadent, old fashioned, repetitive, eccentric or over ambitious, and were therefore put on the shelf until they suddenly rose up again through a lively new production, like the Phoenix from its ashes. So it was with Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten when, on 1st October 1949, it had its first performance on the American continent at the Colón Theatre in Buenos Aires.
Talking to Young Musicians
Authors: Amis John
Published: February 2010

I had an invitation this year to go to Salzburg for a month. This came from a group of Americans who run what is known as the Salzburg Seminar. The seminars were started by the Harvard Students Council because a group of young students there felt that there ought to be some means, after the recent war, of getting together young Europeans. The idea was to let them study the American way of life, culture and so on: and also to exchange views with each other, to compare notes and discuss what was going on in the various European countries. They thought it especially valuable that young students from the vanquished countries should have a chance of meeting their fellow Europeans, many of them, for the first time. Such a meeting place helps enormously understanding between nations: at least, between the lucky fifty or so a month who manage to get to Schloss Leopoldskron, formerly Max Reinhardt's castle, where the seminars are held.
The British Navy in 1797
Authors: Crozier Eric
Published: February 2010

Johnson's statement reads like a paradox, like one of those ponderous challenges to accepted opinion that sometimes he delighted to hurl out in conversation. It expresses an attitude that is at the opposite pole to the conventional eighteenth-century view of the British Navy. His lifelong friend David Garrick summed up this romantic view of naval life in his song, Hearts of Oak.
Guido Turchi
Authors: d'Amico Fedele
Published: February 2010

Why is it that the Italian composers who were born around 1880 did not continue the tradition of their immediate predecessors, but turned to other sources in search of a guiding star—to Gregorian plainchant, for example, to the madrigalists of the Renaissance, to the instrumental composers of the eighteenth century, even to contemporary Europe? It would take too long to go into the reasons here, but it is an undoubted fact that these composers are not so much sons of their fathers as of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and even, so to speak, of their non-Italian cousins; and the same may be said of the composers born at the beginning of this century, in whom the situation repeated itself, although in a somewhat modified form.
Teaching with Bartók's “Mikrokosmos”
Authors: Ameringer Silvia
Published: February 2010

Much is written about the gulf between contemporary art on the one hand and the public on the other. But does this really obtain? Is it impossible for a great creative artist to be understood by his contemporaries? There is one solution of this problem; ground carefully cultivated will bear fruit earlier than ground that has been neglected. When one begins with virgin soil, that is to say with the sensitive but musically undeveloped child, then it is that the best results will be attained.
Tanglewood: 1952
Authors: Copland Aaron
Published: February 2010

The summer of 1952 will mark the tenth anniversary session of the Berkshire Music Center. No one will find it strange, I suppose, if those of us who were with the school from the start feel that this is a moment for rejoicing. This by now well-known school of music was established in 1940 because the late Serge Koussevitzky persuaded the Trustees of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to take an unprecedented step: the formation of a summer school under the aegis of a symphony orchestra. No one had ever before heard of such a thing. But it was the dream of our former director to find some tangible way for the older and more experienced musician to pass on a lifetime of experience to the young aspirant. Here talented young musicians might gather to engage in all kinds of ensemble playing and singing. Their very presence was to act as a stimulus among themselves and also to their teachers. Before long the plan was enlarged to include the departments of opera production, composition, and the study of the art of conducting. Beyond this—and here was a special love of Dr. Koussevitzky—a division of the school was to be set up for the musical enthusiast who wanted to spend a summer of “living and working in music.”
The Dubrovnik Festival
Authors: Duncan Ronald
Published: February 2010

How many people have heard of the Dubrovnik Festival of the Arts? Under what flat stone have our culture-mongers and journalists been sleeping? I confess that before I went there this summer I had only heard the vaguest rumours about it. And none of these had sharpened my interest—nowadays, so many holiday resorts try to stage some entertainments to attract tourists which they presume to call a Festival. At the most I expected one or two indifferent concerts, some folk-dancing and a local drama of only local interest. Certainly nothing had appeared in the English press to lead me to expect anything more than that. Now, having been there, I cannot help wondering whether the complete lack of news about Dubrovnik doesn't amount to an overt act of press censorship.
Bayreuth Since the War
Authors: Bourke Gerard
Published: February 2010

Having visited the Bayreuth festival during each of its five post-war seasons, I have now seen all Wagner's music dramas staged in the festival theatre of his own design by his grandsons, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner. The repertory was completed this summer by the addition of Der Fliegende Holländer, since in accordance with Wagner's wish, Rienbzi is never staged there, being too powerful an indictment of monarchy as represented by King Ludwig II, munificent patron and joint instigator of Bayreuth. The youthful essays Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot have, of course, never been staged there, and rarely elsewhere.
Some Performance Problems in Contemporary Music
Authors: Wooldridge David
Published: February 2010

“Meine Musik ist gar nicht modern: sie ist nur schlecht gespielt.” So protested Schoenberg after a hostile and unsatisfactory performance of the Kammersymphonie, Op.9; and while few audiences, even today, let alone the contemporary audience of Vienna, 1913, would be entirely ready to agree that this music was “not at all modern”, we can readily concede that it almost certainly was vilely played: it almost invariably is.
Schoenberg's ‘Atonal’ Music
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: February 2010

Schoenberg's ‘atonal’ (i.e. nontonal, pre-serial) music continues to offer stubborn resistance to analysis. The co-existence within the oeuvre of widely diverging, even conflicting, ‘linguistic’ directions has resulted in a theoretical literature inclined to illuminate the individual work or specific technical feature rather than to lay the foundations for useful analytical generalizations.
Bartók's Mikrokosmos
Authors: Ogdon John
Published: February 2010

Bartók's Mikrokosmos holds a place unique in pianoforte literature. Its achievement lies far beyond that of the conventional course of progressive studies. From the earliest exercises, consistent use is made of the ecclesiastical modes, which often supplant the diatonic scale, and a real extension of tonal awareness is thus offered from the most elementary stages; the student is also familiarised with unusual time-signatures and rhythmic structures, while to the student of composition valuable insight into technical procedures is offered in a particularly clear form. And a use of the rhythms and melodies of folk music is of great value as documenting (accessibly) the constituents of Eastern European peasant song and dance.
Bartók's Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

For the last programme of their 1904–5 season, on 15th March, 1905, the Budapest Philharmonic Society had announced the first performance of a new Scherzo for piano and orchestra by Bartók, in which the composer was to have played the solo part (as well as Liszt's Totentanz) with István Kerner conducting. Owing to the difficulties of the orchestral part, or rather to the inadequate rehearsal time allowed, and the resistance of the orchestral players, the work could not be learnt, and an earlier Scherzo by Bartok, for orchestra alone (a movement from a Symphony composed in 1902) was substituted, which Kerner had originally conducted at a concert of music by Academy students on 29th February, 1904.
First Performances
Authors: Warrack John , Sadie Stanley , Plaistow Stephen
Published: February 2010

Stravinsky's The Flood

Goehr's ‘Little Symphony’

Our Man In Havana
In Remembrance of Igor Stravinsky
Authors: Roth Ernst
Published: February 2010

However often during the last few years of his suffering we may have feared the worst, Stravinsky's death came as a profound shock not only to those who had the good fortune of enjoying his personal acquaintance, but also to the whole world of music and the arts. Seldom has the loss of a great man been felt more acutely. The reassuring knowledge of his presence was like a sheet-anchor in the storm that rages through the arts. Stravinsky was the last in what Ernest Newman called ‘the royal line of composers’. Yet he had never wished to be one of their number, and when at last he had to join them, it was against his will. So the enfant terrible of bygone years became a doyen no less terrible.
1912: Zvezdoliki
Authors: Matthews David
Published: February 2010

The title means, ‘The Star Faced One’, although the work is generally known by its French title, Le Roi des Etoiles. It has always been the most elusive of Stravinsky's major scores. Composed in 1911–12 and published in 1913, it soon went out of print and remained so until recently. The work was not performed until 1939, and subsequent performances have been rare. Although there have been signs of increasing interest in Zvezdoliki during the last decade, performances are unlikely to become frequent, owing to the difficulty of the chorus part and to the fact that a large orchestra—quadruple wind and eight horns—is required for a piece lasting only six minutes. The recording Stravinsky made in 1962 is indispensable but not, perhaps, irreproachable. He considered it to have been one of his best, but the tempi are much faster than his score indicates and it could be argued that they run away with something of the music's character.
1964: Abraham and Isaac
Authors: Young Douglas
Published: February 2010

Stravinsky's ‘Sacred Ballad for Baritone and Chamber Orchestra’ is his only setting of Hebrew, his only work for solo voice on a religious text, and, indeed, his only ‘ballad’. Completed in 1963 and dedicated to the people of the State of Israel, it is the fifth in the late series of major religious works which began with the Canticum Sacrum of 1956. Its other predecessors are Threni (1958), A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer (1961), and The Flood (1962); its solitary successor is the Requiem Canticles of 1966.
Mozart's Wrong Key Signature
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

Articles about keys tend to remain unread, even by musicians, who will pick out the odd point of interest, but regard tonal structure as something to be heard and not seen, as indeed it is. It's even true to say that most articles on keys are, in fact, boring: they explain, in infinitely patient conceptual detail, what is part and parcel of one's instinctive musical experience anyway, if one is musical at all—so why bother?

However, my subject is not a key, but a non-key—the most dramatic non-key I know in our entire diatonic literature. No technical knowledge is needed to appreciate what is a 181-year-old sensation. All you need to know is what one sharp means in a key signature. For the rest, it's worth getting a score of Cosi fan tutte out of the library if you don't possess one.
Twelve Questions for Leopold Spinner
Authors:   Drew/Spinner
Published: February 2010

1. The entry under your name in the 1954 edition of Grove's Dictionary gives the following biographical information: that you were born in 1906, of Austrian parentage, in Lwów, Poland; that you obtained a D.Phil at the University of Vienna; that you studied composition in Vienna with P. A. Pisk from 1926 to 1930, and then with Webern from 1935 to 1938; and that you settled in the United Kingdom in 1939.
Plausible Darkness: Peter Grimes after a quarter of a century
Authors: Garvie Peter
Published: February 2010

‘To meet is to destroy,’ wrote Crabbe of the elements in collision, and it might stand as a summary of Peter Grimes. Both the Borough and Peter are caught in the ‘force, tumult and wrath’ in which ‘the river and the ocean met’: the ordered society and the disordered elements of the individual. The Borough seems to survive the threat that Peter posed. What really survives is only the non-human, the elemental. The passing bell is tugged by human hands to signify the end of human time for each of us, but the bell-buoy sounds for ever to the movement of the tides.
Paris, May 1952
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 30 April to 1 June. 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 Stravinsky-Bartók-Schoenberg week, Stravinsky 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.
Stravinsky's Performance of AGON: a report
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

There is criticism and there is reporting, or at any rate there ought to be. I do not mean the kind of thing we read in the newspapers, where writers criticize things they have heard, and report things they haven't in order to conceal the fact. Thus, as criticism and reportage are understood today, the former is the more responsible task, but it should really be the other way round whenever the facts are more important than the critic's opinions, which is not seldom. At the same time, opinions do enjoy greater popularity with both the reader and the critic himself: they are easier to get for either. The unpopular truth is that while any fool can opine and indeed perchance opine rightly, only a qualified observer can report, and only a qualified reader is interested in facts, plenty of them and nothing but them.
Colin Mason – A Memoir
Authors: Smalley Roger
Published: February 2010

It is now just over a year since Colin Mason died at the age of 47. I first met him in 1964 when, as chairman of the Macnaghten Concerts Society, he asked me to compose a new work for the forthcoming season. The occasion was a concert including Roberto Gerhard's Nonet, and Colin suggested that I might like to write a piece featuring the piano accordion, an instrument much favoured by Gerhard (and used in his Nonet) but for which virtually no other chamber music repertoire existed. I subsequently wrote The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo for trumpet, piano and piano accordion, given its first performance at a Macnaghten Concert in October 1964. I was then still a student, and this was the first commission I had ever received. I have no idea how Colin lighted upon my name; but it is well known that as a critic he did not have his head in the clouds, but kept his ear firmly to the ground, the better to detect the rumblings of burgeoning compositional talent.
Harmony in Weill: Some Observations
Authors: Kemp Ian
Published: February 2010

After a period in which he had concerned himself with ‘free’ dissonance, Weill began, in 1926–27, to return to a harmonic language based on tonality. Many other composers were doing something of the kind at that time, and, like him, were associating a return to tonality with references to popular dance rhythms, whether traditional or modern. But whereas such figures as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Prokofiev and Milhaud tended to reject traditional harmonic usages, Weill proceeded to develop a largely triadic harmony, paring down his vocabulary to the most basic of chords and progressions. Although the power and originality of that harmony have been widely acknowledged, the technical issues have received little or no attention, at least in any published form. What follows is a preliminary and necessarily selective survey.
Committed Opera: Gottfried von Einem's ‘The Visit of the Old Lady’
Authors: Saathen Friedrich
Published: February 2010

The visit of the old lady, after the play of the same name by the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt (who also wrote the libretto), is Gottfried von Einem's fourth opera. It was performed for the first time in 1971 at the Vienna State Opera, and after being mounted on several German stages in quick succession, it was given its American première in San Francisco last year. Von Einem's first opera, Dantons Tod (after Georg Büchner), won much praise as the major novelty of the 1947 Salzburg Festival. Six years later, also in Salzburg, came Der Prozess (after Franz Kafka); after which there was another pause, of almost ten years, before the next opera, Der Zerrissene (after Johann Nestroy), had its première in Hamburg. Von Einem had up to that time also written five large ballets, a quantity of instrumental music (including several pieces commissioned by leading European and American orchestras) and some vocal music: all in all, therefore, a respectably sizable body of work, especially when one takes into account that self-critical reserve to which his somewhat slow rate of production can be attributed. His consistency, at least in those works that have been repeatedly tried and tested, must perhaps today be counted as one of his most outstanding characteristics.
Views from Mont Juic
Authors: Berkeley Lennox
Published: February 2010

As one gets older, remote events and experiences, even from childhood, are more easily recalled than those of the middle distance. But although for me 1936 belongs to that middle distance, certain events have singled it out in my memory. It was in that year that I went to Barcelona for the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. One of the two selected British works was an Overture of mine (since withdrawn); the other was Benjamin Britten's Suite for violin and piano, superbly played by Antonio Brosa. As I had been living abroad for some years, I had not met Britten before. I immediately became aware of his extraordinary musical ability and his immense knowledge of music. Since he was subsequently to have such a profound influence on my life and musical development, that first meeting would in any case have made the year memorable for me.
The Music of Frank Bridge: 1) The Early Years
Authors: Payne Anthony
Published: February 2010

The neglect of the music of Frank Bridge by performers and writers since his untimely death in 1941 has delayed a full examination of one of the most fascinating developments of style and personality in English 20th-century music. It is the record of an artist's slow recognition of his deepest self, after a leisurely decade of reasoned creative work in which he had yet to explore the darkest recesses of his subconscious. Such a source of inspiration and revelation does not appear to have been necessary for the realization of the rational, even sceptical creative urge of his early years: it was only after a long period of inward development that his rich and complex character balanced that sort of neat orderliness with a dark irrational fantasy. Possibly the experience of the war marshalled the hidden forces in Bridge's nature, and forced him to come to terms with them. Even so, his enquiring mind, always alert to the development of style, might well have led him on to self-discovery by means of linguistic experiment. Certainly the music prior to his unexpectedly radical development in the 1920's is of increasing depth and penetration.
The Instrumental Music of Nicholas Maw: Questions of Tonality
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: February 2010

This year two important new instrumental works by Nicholas Maw have received their first performances: the Serenade for chamber orchestra (Singapore, 31 March) and Life Studies for 15 solo strings (Cheltenham, 9 July). With the Five Irish Songs for mixed chorus (Cork International Choral Festival, 4 May) and a new piano composition (Personae, London, 2 August), 1973 looks like being one of Maw's most productive years. Stylistically it may also prove to have been the most crucial since 1962, when Scenes and Arias was first heard. Even after a single performance, I think there can be no doubt that Life Studies is a remarkable and convincing composition which could inaugurate a new approach by Maw to the whole question of form in instrumental music.
Tallis—Vaughan Williams—Howells: Reflections on Mode Three
Authors: Pike Lionel
Published: February 2010

Herbert Howells said that the one experience which stood out as a vitally determining factor in his life was his first encounter with Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. ‘It was after then that I felt I really knew myself, both as a man and artist. It all seemed so incredibly new at the time, but I soon came to realize how very, very old it actually was, how I'd been living the music since long before I could ever begin to remember’. This paradoxical combination of the new and the old in Vaughan Williams is worth investigation, and its effect on Howells's own music awaits full exploration. The present article can do little more than introduce the topic, but it will have served its purpose if it points the way to further investigation.
‘Hill Runes’
Authors: Harvey David
Published: February 2010

Davies's own note on Hill Runes is short enough to be quoted in full, and gives some indication of the character and provenance of the work. In view of the style of the earlier Lullaby for Ilian Rainbow (1972), Davies's only other composition for solo guitar, he cannot have been too concerned that pernicious ‘overtones of Spain’ might have crept in: the opening of Lullaby is given in Ex. I, its angular serialism contrasting with the more traditional textures of Hill Runes. The later piece does have its ‘Spanish’ moments, though, resulting from this use of the instrument and its idioms, notable in the first movement's tremolando (b. 33–38) and the rasaguedo strumming near the close of the work.
Panufnik at 70
Authors: Osborne Nigel
Published: February 2010

It was 1970. I was a student in Warsaw. Once a week our composition class would gather at the Academy for an analysis course. We were an odd bunch, a Hungarian pianist, a black Cuban composer, a conductor, two spirited Polish girls, and myself. But we were also typical of the sort of international group that had assembled in the Polish conservatoires at that time—musicians brought together by a common fascination with the Polish School, which was still very much in full flight, and by a determination to unravel its technical and aesthetic mysteries.
György Kurtág's Microludes
Authors: McLay Margaret
Published: February 2010

Kurtág's microludes are remarkable in at least two respects: firstly, some of them are so brief as to make even Webern seem verbose in comparison, and, secondly, Kurtág has managed to create something relatively rare—a form born of the chromatic scale itself The microludes are sets of 12 tiny preludes, one for each semitone. Each set moves from C to B by analogy to Bach's ‘48’; however, unlike the Bach pieces, the microludes are not essays in a particular tonality, but rather explore certain relationships to a particular individual pitch.
Delius's Sources
Authors: Stevenson Ronald
Published: February 2010

Peter Warlock's monograph on Delius (John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 1923, revised edition 1952, pp. 31–2) quotes Delius's childhood reminiscences. They include this significant passage:

My first great musical impression was hearing the posthumous Valse of Chopin which a friend of my father's played for me when I was ten years old. It made an extraordinary impression on me … I remember that after hearing it twice I could play the whole piece through from memory.
Villa-Lobos's Commissioned Compositions
Authors: Peppercorn Lisa M.
Published: February 2010

On 26 November 1944 Heitor Villa-Lobos made his United States debut with the Janssen Symphony Orchestra in Los Angeles, followed during the ensuing weeks by appearances as composer-conductor in Boston, Chicago, and New York City (where he was also interviewed about his composing methods by Olin Downes, then music critic of The New York Times). All these events changed the composer's life completely: he was suddenly catapulted into the limelight, lionized and feted by prominent persons from musical and cultural life at a reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. A long-sought dream had unexpectedly come true: international recognition as a composer and as Latin America's foremost musical figure of his generation.
‘One if by Land, Two if by Sea’ Maxwell Davies the Symphonist
Authors: Pruslin Stephen
Published: February 2010

‘One if by Land, Two if by Sea’… so ran the pre-arranged signals for Paul Revere's famous midnight ride. But what if three beacons had shone from the belfry? Confusing to history's nocturnal horseman, perhaps, but not to Peter Maxwell Davies, for whom landscape, seascape, and Renaissance church architecture have furnished the poetics of the first three works in what Paul Griffiths has called ‘the most important symphonic cycle since that of Shostakovitch’.
Alban Berg and the Fateful Number
Authors: Poole Geoffrey
Published: February 2010

No prizes for guessing the number. The pervasive stamp of 23, whether it be in the precompositional proportions, the tempo markings, or the rhythmic formation of works like theLyric Suite, Lulu, and the Violin Concerto, is well established in the current analytical literature. It is in any case confirmed by frequent calculations amongst the sketches. 23 also seems to have been inextricably linked to Berg's sense of personal destiny. It is widely agreed, for instance, that his first asthma attack occured on 23 July, though whether in 1900 or 1908 (when he was 23) or possibly another year remains uncertain. (The selectivity of this memory is itself curious.) On his deathbed he was convinced that December 23 would prove ‘decisive’, as indeed it did.
Roslavets: A postscript
Authors: Foreman Lewis
Published: February 2010

Having asserted in my centenary survey of Roslavets (TEMPO 135) that no one has managed to generate a range of performances of his music, I was clearly asking to be contradicted. The day after I passed the proofs for press, I was discussing the whole question of the Russian revolutionary avant-gardistes with the soprano Jane Manning, and was delighted to learn from her of a series of European performances, by her and others, during 1979 and 1980 which had included quite a number of works by Roslavets.
Warren's physical correlate theory: Correlation does not imply causation
Authors: Dorfman Donald D.
Published: February 2010

Warren's major contention is that judgments of subjective magnitude are not possible, and therefore subjects base such judgments upon physical correlates of the dimension in question. It would appear that Warren's theory will almost surely fail as a comprehensive model, even though it does provide a heuristic account of judgments of loudness and brightness. In order for the theory to succeed, Warren must specify a physical correlate for judgments ofeverysubjective attribute that has yielded orderly data with Stevens's scaling procedures.
Sensation magnitude judgments are based upon estimates of physical magnitudes
Authors: Warren Richard M.
Published: February 2010

After writing my response to the commentaries, I sat back and reflected on the fascination and frustration of work on this topic. There is the ancient fascination of trying to understand the nature of the sensory bridge linking us to the external world. Also, discussing the measurability of sensation brings to the surface concepts we use and take for granted when we are working in other areas of psychology; and it holds them before us for critical examination. The frustration lies chiefly in the difficulty of formulating concepts clearly, in a way understood by all. At least when constructing the original Tower of Babel, workers hearing strange words knew that communication was not occurring. The psychophysical Tower of Babel sometimes has workers using the same words, but with different meanings. Much of my response is based on attempts to clarify concepts and clear up confusions.
The Biology of Bird-Song Dialects
Authors: Baker Myron Charles , Cunningham Michael A.
Published: February 2010

No single theory so far proposed gives a wholly satisfactory account of the origin and maintenance of bird-song dialects. This failure is the consequence of a weak comparative literature that precludes careful comparisons among species or studies, and of the complexity of the issues involved. Complexity arises because dialects seem to bear upon a wide range of features in the life history of bird species. We give an account of the principal issues in bird-song dialects: evolution of vocal learning, experimental findings on song ontogeny, dialect descriptions, female and male reactions to differences in dialect, and population genetics and dispersal.

We present a synthetic theory of the origin and maintenance of song dialects, one that accommodates most of the different systems reported in the literature. The few data available suggest that large, regional dialect populations are genetically differentiated; this pattern is correlated with reduced dispersal between dialects, assortative mating by females, and male-male exclusion. At the same time, “subdialects” may be formed within regional dialects. Subdialect clusters are usually small and may represent vocal mimicry among a few adjacent territorial males. The relative importance of genetic and social adaptation may contribute to the emergence of subdialects; their distinctiveness may be correlated with the degree of polygyny, for example. Thus, subdialect formation is linked to one theory of the evolution of repertoire size, but data are too fragmentary to examine this idea critically.
The nature of the black–white difference on various psychometric tests: Spearman's hypothesis
Authors: Jensen Arthur R.
Published: February 2010

Although the black and white populations in the United States differ, on average, by about one standard deviation (equivalent to 15 IQ points) on current IQ tests, they differ by various amounts on different tests. The present study examines the nature of the highly variable black–white difference across diverse tests and indicates the major systematic source of this between-population variation, namely, Spearman's g. Charles Spearman originally suggested in 1927 that the varying magnitude of the mean difference between black and white populations on a variety of mental tests is directly related to the size of the test's loading on g, the general factor common to all complex tests of mental ability. Eleven large-scale studies, each comprising anywhere from 6 to 13 diverse tests, show a significant and substantial correlation between tests' g loadings and the mean black–white difference (expressed in standard score units) on the various tests. Hence, in accord with Spearman's hypothesis, the average black–white difference on diverse mental tests may be interpreted as chiefly a difference in g, rather than as a difference in the more specific sources of test score variance associated with any particular informational content, scholastic knowledge, specific acquired skill, or type of test. The results of recent chronometric studies of relatively simple cognitive tasks suggest that the g factor is related, at least in part, to the speed and efficiency of certain basic information-processing capacities. The consistent relationship of these processing variables to g and to Spearman's hypothesis suggests the hypothesis that the differences between black and white populations in the rate of information processing may account for a part of the average black–white difference on standard IQ tests and their educational and occupational correlates.
Choice, optimal foraging, and the delay-reduction hypothesis
Authors: Fantino Edmund , Abarca Nureya
Published: February 2010

Behaving organisms are continually choosing. Recently the theoretical and empirical study of decision making by behavioral ecologists and experimental psychologists have converged in the area of foraging, particularly food acquisition. This convergence has raised the interdisciplinary question of whether principles that have emerged from the study of decision making in the operant conditioning laboratory are consistent with decision making in naturally occurring foraging. One such principle, the “parameter-free delay-reduction hypothesis, ” developed in studies of choice in the operant conditioning laboratory, states that the effectiveness of a stimulus as a reinforcer may be predicted most accurately by calculating the decrease in time to food presentation correlated with the onset of the stimulus, relative to the length of time to food presentation measured from the onset of the preceding stimulus. Since foraging involves choice, the delay-reduction hypothesis may be extended to predict aspects of foraging. We discuss the strategy of assessing parameters of foraging with operant laboratory analogues to foraging. We then compare the predictions of the delay-reduction hypothesis with those of optimal foraging theory, developed by behavioral ecologists, showing that, with two exceptions, the two positions make comparable predictions. The delay-reduction hypothesis is also compared to several contemporary pscyhological accounts of choice. Results from several of our experiments with pigeons, designed as operant conditioning simulations of foraging, have shown the following: The more time subjects spend searching for or traveling between potential food sources, the less selective they become, that is, the more likely they are to accept the less preferred outcome; increasing time spent procuring (“handling”) food increases selectivity; how often the preferred outcome is available has a greater effect on choice then how often the less preferred outcome is available; subjects maximize reinforcement whether it is the rate, amount, or probability of reinforcement that is varied; there are no significant differences between subjects performing under different types of deprivation (open vs. closed economies). These results are all consistent with the delay-reduction hypothesis. Moreover, they suggest that the technology of the operant conditioning laboratory may have fruitful application in the study of foraging, and, in doing so, they underscore the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to behavior.
Levels of modeling of mechanisms of visually guided behavior
Authors: Arbib Michael A.
Published: February 2010

Intermediate constructs are required as bridges between complex behaviors and realistic models of neural circuitry. For cognitive scientists in general, schemas are the appropriate functional units; brain theorists can work with neural layers as units intermediate between structures subserving schemas and small neural circuits.

After an account of different levels of analysis, we describe visuomotor coordination in terms of perceptual schemas and motor schemas. The interest of schemas to cognitive science in general is illustrated with the example of perceptual schemas in high-level vision and motor schemas in the control of dextrous hands.

Rana computatrix, the computational frog, is introduced to show how one constructs an evolving set of model families to mediate flexible cooperation between theory and experiment. Rana computatrix may be able to do for the study of the organizational principles of neural circuitry what Aplysia has done for the study of subcellular mechanisms of learning. Approach, avoidance, and detour behavior in frogs and toads are analyzed in terms of interacting schemas. Facilitation and prey recognition are implemented as tectal-pretectal interactions, with the tectum modeled by an array of tectal columns. We show how layered neural computation enters into models of stereopsis and how depth schemas may involve the interaction of accommodation and binocular cues in anurans.
Real space and represented space: Cross-cultural perspectives
Authors: Deregowski J. B.
Published: February 2010

This paper examines the contribution of cross-cultural studies to our understanding of the perception and representation of space. A cross-cultural survey of the basic difficulties in understanding pictures—ranging from the failure to recognise a picture as a representation to the inability to recognise the object represented in the picture— indicates that similar difficulties occur in pictorial and nonpictorial cultrues. The experimental work on pictorial space derives from two distinct traditions: the study of picture perception in “remote” populations and the study of the perceptual illusions. A comprison of the findings on pictorial space perception with those on real space perceptual illusions. A comparison of findings on pictorial space perception with those on real space perception and perceptual constancy suggersts that cross-cultural differences in the perception of both real and representational space involve two different types of skills: those related exclusively to either real space or representational space, and those related to both. Different cultural groups use different skills to perform the same perceptual tasks.
Erratum
Authors: Dawes Robyn M.
Published: February 2010

In my comments in BBS (Random generators, ganzfields, analysis, and theory, 1987, 10:581-82) regarding psi, I mistakenly ascribed to Professor Honorton the position that "good experimenters knew in advance that the assertion in the paper I cited (1985), and in fact regards it as a rather foolish one (personal communication 6/25/88). This incorrect assertion was based on my inference - not his - that the most plausible alternative to optional stopping for the negative correlation between sample size and effect size (and
even z-scores) was prior knowledge leading to the necessity of sampling fewer observations when the expectation of the estimated effect size was larger.

Honorton, C. (1985) The Ganzfeld psi experiment: A critical appraisal. Journal of Parapsychology 49:51-91.
Security of infantile attachment as assessed in the “strange situation”: Its study and biological interpretation
Authors: Lamb Michael E. , Thompson Ross A. , Gardner William P. , Charnov Eric L. , Estes David
Published: February 2010

The Strange Situation procedure was developed by Ainsworth two decades agoas a means of assessing the security of infant-parent attachment. Users of the procedureclaim that it provides a way of determining whether the infant has developed species-appropriate adaptive behavior as a result of rearing in an evolutionary appropriate context, characterized by a sensitively responsive parent. Only when the parent behaves in the sensitive, species-appropriate fashion is the baby said to behave in the adaptive or secure fashion. Furthermore, when infants are observed repeatedly in the Strange Situation,the pattern of behavior is said to be highly similar, and this pattern is said to predict the infants' future behavior in a diverse array of contexts. After an exhaustive review of the literature, it is shown that these popular claims are empirically unsupported in their strong form, and that the interpretations in terms of biological adaptationare misguided. There is little reliable evidence about the specific dimensions of parental behavior that affect Strange Situation behavior, although there does appear to be some relationship between these constructs. Temporal stability in security of attachment ishigh only when there is stability in family and caretaking circumstances. Likewise, patterns of Strange Situation behavior only have substantial predictive validity in similarly stable families. Implications for future research and theorizing — particularly as they relate to the use of evolutionary biology in psychological theory — are discussed.
An operant analysis of problem solving
Authors: Skinner B. F.
Published: February 2010

Behavior that solves a problem is distinguished by the fact that it changes another part of the solver's behavior and is strengthened when it does so. Problem solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli. Verbal responses produce especially useful stimuli, because they affect other people. As a culture formulates maxims, laws, grammar, and science, its members behave more effectively without direct or prolonged contact with the contingencies thus formulated. The culture solves problems for its members, and does so by transmitting the verbal discriminative stimuli called rules. Induction, deduction, and the construction of models are ways of producing rules. Behavior that solves a problem may result from direct shaping by contingencies or from rules constructed either by the problem solver or by others. Because different controlling variables are involved, contingency-shaped behavior is never exactly like rule-governed behavior. The distinction must take account of (1) a system which establishes certain contingencies of reinforcement, such as some part of the natural environment, a piece of equipment, or a verbal community; (2) the behavior shaped and maintained by these contingencies; (3) rules, derived from the contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences, and (4) the behavior occasioned by the rules.
Problems of selection and phytogeny, terms and methods of behaviorism
Authors: Catania A. Charles
Published: February 2010

We have had a grand tour of operant behaviorism ranging over evolutionary time and the breadth of human cultures. It has included both verbal and nonverbal behavior, and it has visited both their public and their private domains. To test my understanding of some of the issues discussed and to offer what I hope will be constructive contributions to the treatments, I here address to Professor Skinner several questions and comments on some of the topics stopped at along the way (I will treat his responses as my souvenirs of the trip).
Is there a role for extraretinal factors in the maintenance of stability in a structured environment?
Authors: Chekaluk Eugene
Published: February 2010

The calibration solution to the stability of the world despite eye movements depends, according to Bridgeman et al., upon a combination of three factors which presumably all need to operate to achieve the goal of stability. Although the authors admit (sect. 4.3, para. 5) that the relative contributions of retinal and extraretinal factors will depend on the particular viewing situation, Figure 5 (sect. 4.3) makes it clear in its representation that the role of perceptual factors is relatively minor compared to extraretinal ones. It is with this representation that this commentary wishes to take issue, believing that it occurs as a result of some assumptions about terminology that may be ambiguous, as well as some misconceptions about the circumstances in which there is a need for stability.