Five easy pieces. 1964-2006: 40 years of music and politics in Italy, from B(ella ciao) to B(erlusconi)

In five interconnected ‘pieces’ spanning almost half a century of Italian history, the author recollects the main critical junctures in the complex relationship between music and politics since the 1960s. The first piece recounts how the growth of the Italian folk revival centered around Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, a group of progressive ethnomusicologists and folksingers who in the early 1960s helped break the musical establishment’s conservative stranglehold on musical expression. The second piece traces the evolution of Stormy Six, a folk-rock-turned-progressive-rock band formed in Milan in 1966, as well as the creators of L’Orchestra, an independent label aimed at promoting a wide range of non-commercial music, from avant-garde and jazz to political protest song. The last three pieces chronicle the decline of these and other such forward-looking, countercultural initiatives over the 1980s and 1990s, as the influence of the intellectual Left on the Italian government wanes and a new anti-communist coalition led by Christian Democrats establishes tight control on the political system. In newly conservative Milan, Musica nel nostro tempo, a prestigious season of modern and contemporary music started in 1976, is allowed to go bankrupt, and Claudio Abbado is forced to resign as La Scala’s chief conductor because of his ‘excessive’ attention to the modern repertoire. </jats:p

IL PLAGIO. È LA PROVA DEL BUDINO DELLA MUSICOLOGIA?

I casi di plagio musicale, di tanto in tanto, emergono all’attenzione pubblica. È meno noto, tuttavia, che a occuparsene (oltre a giudici e avvocati esperti di diritto d’autore) siano docenti di musica e musicologi, in qualità di periti di parte o di ufficio. Ciò che viene messo a confronto, oltre a frammenti di canzoni, melodie, sequenze armoniche, ritmi, sonorità, sono le teorie in base alle quali è possibile sostenere la somiglianza o l’estraneità delle musiche coinvolte nel giudizio. In sostanza, ogni causa di plagio implica un confronto fra diverse interpretazioni dei concetti fondativi dello studio della musica. Non è un’esagerazione, dunque, affermare che il plagio sia la prova del budino della musicologia: un terreno di confronto consistente e articolato, spesso più sostanzioso di secolari controversie teoriche. Music plagiarism cases, now and then, emerge to public attention. It is less known, however, that those dealing with them (along with judges and lawyers, experts in copyright law) are music teachers and musicologists, as technical consultants for the parties involved and for the court. What is confronted, besides song fragments, melodies, harmonic progressions, rhythms, sounds, are theories according to which, it is possible to ascertain similarities or differences between music pieces involved in a case. In the end, every plagiarism case implies a confrontation between different interpretations of musicology’s fundamental concepts. It isn’t an exaggeration, then, to say that plagiarism is musicology’s proof of the pudding: a consistent and articulated test bed, often more substantial than lifelong theoretical controversies

N=1 Chern-Simons theories, orientifolds and Spin(7) cones

We construct three dimensional N=1 Chern-Simons theories living on M2 branes probing Spin(7) cones. We consider Spin(7) manifolds obtained as quotients of Calabi-Yau four-folds by an anti-holomorphic involution, following a construction by Joyce. The corresponding Chern-Simons theories can be obtained from N=2 theories by an orientifolding procedure. These theories are holographically dual to M theory solutions AdS_4 \times H, where the weak G_2 manifold H is the base of the Spin(7) cone.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, reference added

Operator Counting and Eigenvalue Distributions for 3D Supersymmetric Gauge Theories

We give further support for our conjecture relating eigenvalue distributions of the Kapustin-Willett-Yaakov matrix model in the large N limit to numbers of operators in the chiral ring of the corresponding supersymmetric three-dimensional gauge theory. We show that the relation holds for non-critical R-charges and for examples with {\mathcal N}=2 instead of {\mathcal N}=3 supersymmetry where the bifundamental matter fields are nonchiral. We prove that, for non-critical R-charges, the conjecture is equivalent to a relation between the free energy of the gauge theory on a three sphere and the volume of a Sasaki manifold that is part of the moduli space of the gauge theory. We also investigate the consequences of our conjecture for chiral theories where the matrix model is not well understood.Comment: 27 pages + appendices, 5 figure

Fate of soil organic carbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in a vineyard soil treated with biochar

The effect of biochar addition on the levels of black carbon (BC) and polcyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in a vineyard soil in central Italy was investigated within a two year period. Hydropyrolysis (HyPy) was used to determine the contents of BC (BCHyPy) in the amended and control soils while the hydrocarbon composition of the semi-labile (non-BCHyPy) fraction released by HyPy was determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, together with the solvent-extractable PAHs. The concentrations of these three polycyclic aromatic carbon reservoirs, changed and impacted differently on the soil organic carbon over the period of the trial. The addition of biochar (33 ton dry biochar ha-1) gave rise to a sharp increase in soil organic carbon which could be accounted for by an increase of BCHyPy. Over time, the concentration of BCHyPy decreased significantly from 36 to 23 mg g-1, and as a carbon percentage from 79% to 61%. No clear time trends were observed for the non-BCHyPy PAHs varying from 39 to 34 µg g-1 in treated soils, not significantly different from control soils. However, the concentrations of extractable PAHs increased markedly in the amended soils, and decreased with time from 153 to 78 ng g-1 remaining always higher than those in untreated soil. The extent of the BCHyPy loss was more compatible with physical rather than chemical processes

Operator Counting for N=2 Chern-Simons Gauge Theories with Chiral-like Matter Fields

The localization formula of Chern-Simons quiver gauge theory on $S^3$ nicely reproduces the geometric data such as volume of Sasaki-Einstein manifolds in the large-$N$ limit, at least for vector-like models. The validity of chiral-like models is not established yet, due to technical problems in both analytic and numerical approaches. Recently Gulotta, Herzog and Pufu suggested that the counting of chiral operators can be used to find the eigenvalue distribution of quiver matrix models. In this paper we apply this method to some vector-like or chiral-like quiver theories, including the triangular quivers with generic Chern-Simons levels which are dual to in-homogeneous Sasaki-Einstein manifolds $Y^{p,k}(\mathbb{CP}^2)$. The result is consistent with AdS/CFT and the volume formula. We discuss the implication of our analysis.Comment: 23 pages; v2. revised version; v3. corrected typos and clarified argument