Haydn\u27s Farewell Symphony: the Musical Aftermath of an Anecdote

The compositional response to Haydn’s works in the second half of the twentieth century has up to this point scarcely been investigated. Understandably, it focuses on Haydn’s more prominent works. An examination reveals that the reception of the “Farewell Symphony“ plays an exceptional role inasmuch as it forms not only the musical basis of works by Alfred Schnittke, Jindřich Feld, Kirke Mechem, George Crumb and other composers, but the “pantomime” (Georg August Griesinger) elements of the first performance, as told in the anecdote, are turned into performative actions in reception: the light’s extinction and the musicians’ departure. Analysis of Frank Corcoran’s Farewell Symphonies, Jindřich Feld’s Capricci, Kirke Mechem’s Haydn’s Return, Dieter Schnebel’s Haydn-Destillate, Alfred Schnittke’s First Symphony and moz-art à la haydn, Jörn Arnecke’s Unter Eis, George Crumb’s Night of the Four Moons and Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet exemplify this framework of possible modes of compositional response

Testate amoebae (Protozoa: Testacea) as bioindicators in the Late Quaternary deposits of the Bykovsky Peninsula, Laptev Sea, Russia

Testate amoebae (Protozoa: Testacea) were studied in the Late Quaternary permafrost depositsin the Siberian Arctic (Bykovsky Peninsula of the Laptev Sea coast, 71º40'-71º80'N and 129º-129º30'E). The studied Testacea associations reflect specific environmental conditions in paleocryosols,which were controlled by the local micro-relief as well as regional climate conditions. Totally, 86species, varieties, and forms of testate amoebae were found in 38 Pleistocene and Holocenesamples. The rhizopods indicate that soil conditions at ca 53,000 14C yr BP were probably rathersimilar to the modern cold and wet arctic tundra environment. More moisture and warmer soilconditions were relatively favourable for rhizopods ca 45,300-43,000 14C yr BP, but significantlydrier at about 42,000 14C yr BP. Drier and colder environmental conditions were also presentabout 39,300-35,000 14C yr BP. The Late Pleistocene samples, radiocarbon dated to 33,000-12,000 yr BP, are characterized by a low species diversity and density. This period may have beenextremely cold and dry, which is also supported by the polymorphism of some species.Hydrophilic Difflugia species (mostly obligate hydrobiotes) are broadly represented in theHolocene samples. The species composition and density of rhizopods in the majority of Holocenesamples suggest wet and relatively warm conditions. Changes in rhizopod assemblages during thelast 53,000 years were not very dramatic, mostly consisting of rare species and changes in thedominant species complexes during the Pleistocene and Holocene. However, these changes weremore drastic during the Pleistocene. They, probably, were at least partly responsible for thedisappearance of some rare testacean species such as Argynnia sp

Palaeoclimate reconstruction on Big Lyakhovsky Island, north Siberia—hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in ice wedges

Late Quaternary permafrost deposits on Big Lyakhovsky Island (New Siberian Islands, Russian Arctic) were studied with the aim of reconstructing the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental conditions of northern Siberia. Hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope analyses are presented for six different generations of ice wedges as well as for recent ice wedges and precipitation. An age of about 200 ka BP was determined for an autochtonous peat layer in ice-rich deposits by U/Th method, containing the oldest ice wedges ever analysed for hydrogen and oxygen isotopes. The palaeoclimatic reconstruction revealed a period of severe winter temperatures at that time. After a gap in the sedimentation history of several tens of thousands of years, ice-wedge growth was re-initiated around 50 ka BP by a short period of extremely cold winters and rapid sedimentation leading to ice-wedge burial and characteristic ice-soil wedges (‘polosatics’). This corresponds to the initial stage for the Late Weichselian Ice Complex, a peculiar cryolithogenic periglacial formation typical of the lowlands of northern Siberia. The Ice Complex ice wedges reflect cold winters and similar climatic conditions as around 200 ka BP. With a sharp rise in υ18O of 6‰ and υD of 40‰, the warming trend between Pleistocene and Holocene ice wedges is documented. Stable isotope data of recent ice wedges show that Big Lyakhovsky Island has never been as warm in winter as today

Late Quaternary Deposits of the Northern Verkhoyansk Mountains: Geochronology and Questions of their Genesis

Using accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS), it was possible to obtain 35 radiocarbon age dates from late Quaternary deposits of the Northern Verkhoyansk Mountains (Kharaulakh Ridge). The presented results showed that frozen sediments covering pre-Quaternary rocks in the studied areas are relatively young; their accumulation began only in the Karginsk Interstadial (MIS 3). Within the Kharaulakh structural-facial zone (the Kharaulakh Ridge), the age of the Quaternary deposits ranged from about 28 000 BP up to the present time. In the adjacent territory of the foothill plain that belongs to the Buor-Khaya structural-facial zone their ages ranged from about 48 000 BP to the Holocene. The sediments studied in two catchment areas of the Kharaulakh mountains were linked to relief forms (cirque-like areas, turning into terraced surfaces), which indicate their accumulation under the influence of nival processes associated with snowfields. This conclusion is confirmed by the rhythmic stratified structure of the investigated sediment sections that was caused by seasonal snowfield melting and the associated transport and sorting of detrital material. Measured ages suggest that these processes were especially common in the last phase of the Kargins interstadial (MIS 3) and at the beginning of the Sartan stadial (MIS 2), as well as during the late Holocene. The ages of alluvial deposits from the Khara-Ulakh River valley indicated that sedimentation began at the end of the Sartan stadial (MIS 2) − about 12 thousand years ago − and continues to the present day. These data confirm the young age of the Kharaulakh depression. At a similar time, the formation of the Khorogorsk depression in the northern part of the Kharaulakh Mountains occurred. Ice-rich sediments with polygonal ice wedges on the foothill plain at Cape Ogolokh-Tumsa located in the Buor-Khaya structural-facial zone are comparable with the very thoroughly studied section of the ice complex deposits on the Bykovsky Peninsula

A model for annotating musical versions and arrangements across multiple documents and media

We present a model for the annotation of musical works, where the annotations are created with respect to a conceptual abstraction of the music instead of directly to concrete encodings. This supports musicologists in constructing arguments about musical elements that occur in multiple digital library sources (or other web resources), that recur across a work, or that appear in different forms in different arrangements. It provides a way of discussing musical content without tying that discourse to the location, notation or medium of the content, allowing evidence from multiple libraries and in different formats to be brought together to support musicological assertions. This model is implemented in Linked Data and illustrated in a prototype application in which musicologists annotate vocal arrangements of the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from multiple sources