‘It Would Be without Error’: Automated Technology and the Pursuit of Correct Performance in the French Enlightenment

Marie-Dominique-Joseph Engramelle’s treatise La tonotechnie, ou l’art de noter les cylindres (1775) claimed that automated instruments driven by pinned cylinders would grant listeners direct access to music as the composer conceived it. Standard notation was insufficient, as it did not capture the music’s mouvement – its temporal flexibility from moment to moment. Denis Diderot provided an aesthetic justification for automated instruments in terms that linked them to materialist philosophy. Like android automata, which simulated life through automated motion, automated musical instruments encoded live music to simulate the ideal performance of a composer. Yet Engramelle’s collaboration with the composer Claude Balbastre, which resulted in a pinned-cylinder notage of one of Balbastre’s keyboard pieces, raises crucial questions about the effectiveness of the technology and its notation, and about Engramelle’s claims and his own musical skill. Engramelle’s project is best understood as a performance unto itself – a manifestation of the cultures of public science that were widespread in the European Enlightenment

The written representation of dialect: with case studies from 20th century Glasgow fiction

This thesis deals with and analyses the fictional representation of Glaswegian dialect, and brings to bear on that central issue techniques and concepts from linguistics and from the structure and history of -English. It also pays attention more tangentially to ideological and cultural connotations of matters of dialect. A prominent feature of the dissertation is a characterisation - at all relevant linguistic levels - of the linguistic features of Glaswegian speech, and of the fictional representation of written Glaswegian (with accompanying close analyses of representative extracts).The detailed contents of the thesis deal with the following topics: the relation between language varieties and their components, the different ideological evaluations of the standard variety, the discourse dimension of spoken and written language, the diachronic development of Standard English and Lowland Scots, a synchronic structural description of Glaswegian (including its representation in writing in relation to standard and Scots spelling), and a theoretical model for the analysis of written fictional Glaswegian The source material used for exemplification and analyses is drawn from a range of 201 century Glasgow novels and from some short stories.There is an appendix of word lists. The thesis is also accompanied by materials incorporated in a loose leaf folder inside the back cover. These materials constitute a collection (for ease of reference) of all passages analysed throughout the thesis

Moments of Geopolitical Choreography: Performance of Cultural Ideals in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Beyond

This research analyzes the standardized regimens of bodily training characteristic of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and dance in general. Not only were the movements of daily life such as gesture choreographed within these contexts, but also the dance scene at large was highly designed to represent the political ideals of the government. Through analysis of gesture, marching parades and mass movement choirs in Nazi Germany combined with discussion of censorship and artistic repossession in Soviet ballet, themes of conformity and individuality are extrapolated to trends in movement culture in the United States today. This is a study of bodies, not much different than our own—these bodies once moved through contexts we never will fully get to embody ourselves, but through looking at what physical movements defined their experiences, we can begin to grasp a better understanding of the history they moved through. Looking at history from the lens of movement and dance opens up a wider knowledge of the world we live in today. Dance inherently puts meaning into motion, and this written research puts physical motion into meaning. Your body is a sponge, absorbing the geopolitical climate you move through, and as you dance through life, consider the context and how it is leaving its inevitable mark on you

From pipe organ to pianoforte: the practice of transcribing organ works for piano with a critical study of César Franck's Prélude, fugue et variation, op. 18 and Johann Sebastian Bach's prelude and fugue in D major, BWV 532

Thesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 202

A Foundation for Collaboration: An Analysis of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op. 48

This paper provides an analysis of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe offering historical information and insights into each of the sixteen songs. The analysis includes the English translation of the texts and discussion of the form of each song as well as highlights of the special moments of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic structure in relation to Schumann’s setting of each poem. The analysis provides a foundation for collaborative skills for the singer and pianist for the study and performance of Dichterliebe. In addition, the paper includes brief biographies of Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine and background information on the poetry and the development of the cycle. Two appendices provide information on historic and current recordings of Dichterliebe and the available editions

Choosing Alternative Repertoire: Pedagogical Considerations for Robert Fuchs\u27s Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 83

This document serves to promote Robert Fuchs\u27s Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 83, as a study piece for the cello, piano, and collaborative duo, showing the pedagogical benefits of this Romantic sonata. This project will begin with a biography of Fuchs and background of the work, followed by an analysis that establishes the piece in the Romantic tonal tradition. The next section will discuss the pedagogical benefits of the cello part, the technical accessibility in the piano part, and the collaborative opportunities encountered in the piece, comparing it with other Romantic sonatas in the standard repertoire. Additionally, I will be advocating for programming this sonata as an accessible alternative to the other standard, Romantic duos for cello and piano. An edited cello part with bowings and fingerings for performance will be included at the end of the document

Soundings: the Newsletter of the Monterey Bay Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. 2007

(PDF contains 88 pages.

Handshape recognition using principal component analysis and convolutional neural networks applied to sign language

Handshape recognition is an important problem in computer vision with significant societal impact. However, it is not an easy task, since hands are naturally deformable objects. Handshape recognition contains open problems, such as low accuracy or low speed, and despite a large number of proposed approaches, no solution has been found to solve these open problems. In this thesis, a new image dataset for Irish Sign Language (ISL) recognition is introduced. A deeper study using only 2D images is presented on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in two stages. A comparison between approaches that do not need features (known as end-to-end) and feature-based approaches is carried out. The dataset was collected by filming six human subjects performing ISL handshapes and movements. Frames from the videos were extracted. Afterwards the redundant images were filtered with an iterative image selection process that selects the images which keep the dataset diverse. The accuracy of PCA can be improved using blurred images and interpolation. Interpolation is only feasible with a small number of points. For this reason two-stage PCA is proposed. In other words, PCA is applied to another PCA space. This makes the interpolation possible and improves the accuracy in recognising a shape at a translation and rotation unknown in the training stage. Finally classification is done with two different approaches: (1) End-to-end approaches and (2) feature-based approaches. For (1) Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and other classifiers are tested directly over raw pixels, whereas for (2) PCA is mostly used to extract features and again different algorithms are tested for classification. Finally, results are presented showing accuracy and speed for (1) and (2) and how blurring affects the accuracy