Processing of Byzantine Neume Notation in Ancient Historical Manuscripts

This article presents the principal results of the doctoral thesis “Recognition of neume notation in historical documents” by Lasko Laskov (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), successfully defended before the Specialized Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modelling on 07 June 2010.Byzantine neume notation is a specific form of note script, used by the Orthodox Christian Church since ancient times until nowadays for writing music and musical forms in sacred documents. Such documents are an object of extensive scientific research and naturally with the development of computer and information technologies the need of a software tool which can assist these efforts is needed. In this paper a set of algorithms for processing and analysis of Byzantine neume notation are presented which include document image segmentation, character feature vector extraction, classifier learning and character recognition. The described algorithms are implemented as an integrated scientific software system.* This work has been partly supported by Grant No. DTK 02/54, Bulgarian Science Fund, Ministry of Education, Youth and Science

Understanding Optical Music Recognition

For over 50 years, researchers have been trying to teach computers to read music notation, referred to as Optical Music Recognition (OMR). However, this field is still difficult to access for new researchers, especially those without a significant musical background: Few introductory materials are available, and, furthermore, the field has struggled with defining itself and building a shared terminology. In this work, we address these shortcomings by (1) providing a robust definition of OMR and its relationship to related fields, (2) analyzing how OMR inverts the music encoding process to recover the musical notation and the musical semantics from documents, and (3) proposing a taxonomy of OMR, with most notably a novel taxonomy of applications. Additionally, we discuss how deep learning affects modern OMR research, as opposed to the traditional pipeline. Based on this work, the reader should be able to attain a basic understanding of OMR: its objectives, its inherent structure, its relationship to other fields, the state of the art, and the research opportunities it affords

Monumentality and its shadows : a quest for modern Greek architectural discourse in nineteenth-century Athens (1834-1862)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-335).The dissertation traces the sources of modern Greek architectural discourse in the first period of the modern Greek State following Independence and under the monarchy of Bavarian King Othon I (1834-1862). Its intent is to provide an informed account, first, of the intellectual and ideological dynamic wherein the profession of the modern architect developed in Greece in contradistinction to that of the empirical masterbuilder; and second, of the cognitive realm whereby modern Greeks formed their architectural perception relative to the emerging phenomenon of the westernized city. The dissertation offers a methodical survey of Greek sources of organized discourse on architecture authored mainly by non-architect scholars at the time. The focus of the writings is Athens, the reborn city-capital in which westernization manifested its effects most prominently. Monumentality, a concept with implications of cosmological unity and sharing in the same communicative framework, serves as a working conceptual tool which fa cilitates the identification, categorization, and analysis of different models of thought in reference to key architectural ideas (e.g., beauty, imitation, dignity). Special heed is paid to the writers' attitude relative to the country's monuments, both old and new, which were now considered the principal activators of ethnic unity, cultural assimilation, and national identification for diverse urban populations under the call for a return to the country's "Golden Age." The texts reveal that the urge for nation-building under the aegis of a centralized authority provided but little room for the development of disinterested discourse on architecture as opposed to instructive discourse which often followed the path of prescriptive or ideological reasoning. Bipolarity, moralism, reliance on precedent, and impermeability of boundaries were some of the characteristics of this reasoning. Architecture, in particular, was subjected to an ideologically-based dichotomy of classicism and romanticism which in theory obstructed any fruitful amalgamation of the two intellectual paradigms and which, in effect, displaced any organic/ evolutionist patterns of thought. The dissertation presents the discourse of the Greek philologist-archaeologists as the most influential in the shaping of the theoretical foundations of architecture as a new discipline, in the universalization of neoclassicism as the official style, and in the promotion of monumentality as the preferred rhetorical strategy toward the reacquisition of the country's ancient glory. The written and visual texts of the philologist- archaeologist Stephanos A. Koumanoudis (1818-1899) are set forth as telling witnesses of the relevance of this discourse to architecture, as well as of the positive and negative aspects of such a conjunction. The dissertation finally argues that organic practices of space use and manipulation with roots in the vernacular tradition persisted through the new era and informed people's response to building problems in the new city, yet now coupled with the rational categories of modernity as introduced by the aforementioned discourses.by Irene Fatsea.Ph.D

Jani Christou’s Strychnine Lady (1967): the development of an interpretative strategy in the context of the interdisciplinary ideas surrounding its genesis

The present thesis offers a holistic analysis of Strychnine Lady, a work created by the Greek composer Jani Christou (1926–70) in 1967. This work belongs to Christou’s last compositional period, during which he experimented with a personal art form that involves stage performance, mythical archetypes, dramatic elements and avant-garde materials and means. At this time, he also introduced new concepts, such as metapraxis and protoperformance, in order to engage with elements of the unconscious, influenced, in particular, by the field of analytical psychology as shaped by the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung (1875–1961). The thesis works on two levels: one, an analysis of primary material referring to archival findings and the score of Strychnine Lady itself; and two, the identification of links with the theories of others via my own use of secondary sources towards a clarification of the relationship of these theories to the work. Hence, I aim at situating Christou in the 1960s through a comparison between him and two other well-known composers of that era who appear to have similar practices, John Cage (1912–92) and Mauricio Kagel (1931–2008), as well as offering a comparison between Strychnine Lady and the experimental music-theatre of the 1960s. Furthermore, I seek to clarify Christou’s compositional concepts with reference to Strychnine Lady through an in-depth analysis of his personal writings found in his archive, and I present connections with other, non-musical theories by which, I argue, he was influenced. These theories predominantly concern the concepts of Jung and Mircea Eliade. Furthermore, this study argues that these areas of thought, commonly regarded as ‘non-musical’, become, in an important sense, musical in Christou’s late works. In addition, I identify spiritual elements in Strychnine Lady and present links between several of its aspects and spiritual practices. Finally, the thesis also provides an extended critical analysis of the work’s score, which follows Christou’s new, personal and ground-breaking music notation system. It is important to mention that this is the first dedicated study to explore Strychnine Lady both holistically and critically, and one of the very few attempts thus far to research Christou’s output in depth. Hence, its importance lies in the concern to confirm the composer’s posthumous reputation in the 21st century via research that will, it is hoped, make a significant contribution to improving understanding of the composer’s late works

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies : Round Tables

Following the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, the Organizing Committee decided to produce an online publication of Proceedings from the Round Tables. According to the official title of the congress, Byzantium - a World of Changes, AIEB together with the Organizing Committee, have decided to implement some changes to the concept of the Round Tables. The aim of these changes were to encourage discussion at the Round Tables by presenting preliminary papers at the website in advance. The idea was to introduce the topic and papers of the individual Round Tables that would be discussed, first between the participants, and then with the public present. Therefore, the conveners of the Round Tables were asked to create Round Tables with no more than 10 participants. They collected the papers, which were to be no longer than 18,000 characters in one of the official languages of the Congress and without footnotes or endnotes. Conveners provided a general statement on the goal of each roundtable and on the content of the papers. The present volume contains papers from 49 Round Tables carefully selected to cover a wide range of topics, developed over the last five years since the previous Congress. The topics show diversity within fields and subfields, ranging from history to art history, archeology, philosophy, literature, hagiography, and sigillography. The Round Tables displayed current advances in research, scholarly debates, as well as new methodologies and concerns germane to all aspects of international Byzantine studies. The papers presented in this volume were last sent to the congress organizers in the second week of August 2016 and represent the material that was on hand at that time and had been posted on the official website; no post-congress revisions have occurred. We present this volume in hope that it will be an initial step for further development of Round Tables into collections of articles and thematic books compiled and published following the Congress, in collaboration with other interested institutions and editors. With this volume, the organizers signal their appreciation of the efforts of more than 1600 participants who contributed, both to the Round Tables and to the Congress in general

Seeing eye to eye

Aus der Sicht der byzantinischen Quellen scheint ein religiöser Konfrontationsansatz mit dem Islam oft zu fehlen; dort werden die Muslime als “Araber”, “Sarazenen”, “Ismaeliten” oder “Hagarener” genannt, wie man die vorislamischen Araber auch bezeichnet hatte. Es ist damit nicht ganz klar, wie die universalistische Ansprüche des frühen Islam von Byzanz aus zu verstehen sind. Es gibt andererseits deutliche Hinweise, dass das junge Kalifat seine kurz zuvor noch römischen Untertanen in erheblichem Ausmaß einzubinden suchte. Diese Bestrebungen scheiterten spätestens 717/718, als in Byzanz Leo III an die Macht kam, was von christlich-messianischen Erwartungen begleitet wurde. Dreissig Jahre später fielen die ‘Umayyaden selbst der ‘Abbasidischen Revolution zum Opfer, und die islamische Welt orientierte sich – tatsächlich – ostwärts, gefördert von einer steigenden Zahl nicht-arabischer (vor allem iranischer) Konvertiten. Eine strukturalistische Analyse von Glaubensvorstellungen in der Grenzzone zwischen Byzanz und dem Kalifat zeigt die Grenzen einer strikt konstruktivistischen Annäherung an das Thema auf. Gleichzeitig wird aber deutlich, dass eine universalistisch dimensionierte Religion ohne festen geographischen Kontext, sich historisch gesehen, wenn überhaupt, nur schwierig durchsetzen kann. Um die Entwicklung theologischer Grenzen als politischer Trennwände zu verstehen wird die Entwicklung einer religiös-universalistisch geprägten Historiographie untersucht. Dabei geht es nicht um eine Literatur wie die frühchristliche oder frühislamische, die von eschatologischen Erwartungen mit jüdisch-monotheistischem Charakter geprägt war, sondern, darüber hinausgehend, um die systematische Integration älterer Geschichts-, Literatur- und Wissenschaftstraditionen in die geschichtsepistemologischen Felder der jüngeren Weltreligionen.Byzantine sources often seem to ignore the religious cause of controversy with Islam: they refer to Muslims as “Arabs”, “Saracens”, “Ismaelites” or “Hagarenes”, names which had already been used to denote the pre-Islamic Arabs. The Byzantine point of observation on the universalist claims of Early Islam is, thus, not quite clear. There are, however, several clues to the assumption that the early Caliphate aimed at the integration of the former Roman subjects in the Near East. These efforts suffered a final blow at the gates of Constantinople in 717/718, when the new emperor Leo III took power, accompanied by Messianic expectations. Thirty years later, the ‘Umayyads fell victims to the ‘Abbasid Revolution, and the Islamic world oriented itself, literally speaking, towards the East, enhanced by a rising number of non-Arab converts in Iran and beyond. A structuralist analysis of beliefs and religious practices in the borderlands between Byzantium and the Caliphate point at the limits of a strictly constructivist approach to the subject but also make it clear that a religion with universalist claims will find it difficult, not to say impossible, to make a lasting historical impact if it lacks a stable geographical context. To understand the identification of theological distinctions with political borders it is necessary to consider the emergence of historiographical traditions distanced themselves from early Christian and Muslim eschatological view upon the world, and instead struggled to integrate the ancient historical, literary and scientific heritage of other cultures with their own religious epistemology of universal history

GENDER, SEX, AND THE BODY IN MEDIEVAL ARMENIA

This dissertation investigates textual representation of the body, gender, and sexuality in Armenian chronicles produced between the fifth and eleventh centuries CE. In so doing, it reconstructs the development of Armenian somatology between Zoroastrian and Islamic suzerainties. Specifically, the dissertation examines the modalities by which the body functioned to medieval Armenian cognition as the locus of identity and alterity through the deployment of such devices as the following, to each of which is devoted a chapter: masculinity, femininity, archetypes of sexual morality, legislation of sexual conduct, sexual experientiality (in both temporal and eschatological dimensions), anatomy, and violence. As such, the body operated visibly in medieval Armenian subjectivity as a definitionally ethnicized object whose value was mediated by its gender assignment (and conformity thereto), carnal continence, spiritual obedience, and corporal vulnerability. The dissertation asserts in conclusion that medieval Armenian traditors directly positioned native purity, articulated as the containment of carnal impulsions and rejection of sensory excess, against foreign intemperance and incontinence. These inclinations to be contained included those not only sexual but dietetic, emotional, and even verbal. In this way, these auteurs operationalized the body to dissimilate Armenian ipseity from intrusive exogeneity. This research finds, secondarily, that the genre of medieval Armenian historical writing was characterized by a pervasive but tacit prohibition against direct acknowledgment of the female body, discussion of which is instead conspicuously (and often awkwardly) displaced onto the more socially acceptable male body or else onto an insentient object of analogy. Finally, the dissertation situates medieval Armenian medical consciousness within a broader regional context, considering it alongside contemporaneous Greek, Persian, and Arabic somatological discourse

Early Modern Russian Letters

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature. The essays address a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature, from authorship and philosophy to gender and religion in Russian Enlightenment culture. The first part of the collection explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a formative role in literary life of his day. In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment’s privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian self-image, and that its “occularcentrism” was profoundly shaped by Orthodox religious views. Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative explorations of a vital but little studied period

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’