The "song triptych": reflections on a Debussyan genre

Debussy composed eight sets of three songs between 1891 and 1913. Containing almost all the mélodies of these years, the series tracks his development from post-Wagnerian maturity to ‘late’ style.While we have several fine readings of individual songs, the distinctive ‘triptych’ form of the Debussyan ‘song cycle’ has received little focused analytical attention. One reason might be glimpsed in Susan Youens’s assertion that these little cycles are not as ‘musically unified as [those] of Schubert, Schumann or Mahler’. Indeed the few existing studies of these tripartite sets generally emphasize textual links over musical ones, often in service of a narrowly ‘narrative’ sense of unity.In this paper, I take a fresh look at the various kinds of textual and musical unity on view in this distinctly Debussyan genre. I begin with a contextual glance into visual culture of the time, which saw a striking revival of interest in painted or printed triptychs. Then, in testing how such ‘painterly’ orientation can qualify our sense of multi-part literary and musical form,I outline an allegorical reading of Debussy’s successive triptychs as an evolving response to the pressures of modernist music historiography

Debussy's string quartet in the Brussels salon of "La Libre Esthetique"

The second performance of Debussy's String Quartet, given by the Ysaye Quartet on an all-Debussy program during the 1894 salon of "La Libre Esthétique" in Brussels, offers an ideal context for a critical reexamination of his musical and aesthetic affinities at this pivotal moment. In the first place, a view to the salon's other three concerts, which honored Beethoven alongside recent works by Societe Nationale composers, encourages reconsideration of Debussy's own response to the "great tradition" in the work he ironically designated "Opus 10." But at the same time, due regard to his other contemporaneous compositional obsessions, as exemplified in the works programmed alongside the Quartet, raises the question as to how such self-conscious dialogue with Classical models related to more pressing, post-Wagnerian musical negotiations. Pursuit of this question through analysis of the first movement's reconfigured sonata form ultimately suggests ways to distinguish, from amid the myriad post-Impressionist artists on view in the "Free Aesthetic" salon itself, those painters whose visual explorations most tellingly paralleled Debussy's own "games" with musical syntax and expression in the early 1890s

Stellar spectrophotometry in the far ultraviolet Final report, Jul. 1959 - Dec. 1963

Stellar spectrophotometry in vacuum ultraviolet - feasibility of ultraviolet spectrophotometric satellite, interference filter fabrication, vacuum calibration, and X-15 rocket aircraf

A Bayesian Framework for Parameter Estimation in Dynamical Models with Applications to Forecasting

Mathematical models in Biology are powerful tools for the study and exploration of complex dynamics. Nevertheless, bringing theoretical results to an agreement with experimental observations involves acknowledging a great deal of uncertainty intrinsic to our theoretical representation of a real system.
Proper handling of such uncertainties, is key to the successful usage of models to predict experimental or field observations. This problem has been addressed over the years by many tools for model calibration an parameter estimation. In this article we present a general framework for uncertainty analysis and parameter estimation which is designed to handle uncertainties associated with the modeling of dynamic biological systems while remaining agnostic as to the type of model used. We apply the framework to two Influenza transmission models: one deterministic and the other stochastic. The results show that the framework can be applied without modifications to the two types of models and that it performs equally well on both. We also discuss the application of the framework to calibrate models for forecasting purposes.
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A Conflict or War Impediment Strategic Approach: Perception Games, Deception Hypergames, and Deterrence in Global Politics

This article enhances the use of the applied game theory and hypergame theory in global politics and strategic security studies It suggests first a Deception Hypergame Model of Inter-state Conflict where conditions of certainty and uncertainty perception and deception are considered within a conflict war impediment perspectiv

How Right Was Samuel Butler About Evolution? Part II: Why Evolution is Really a Problem for the Humanities

Abstract: Samuel Butler begins to sketch a non-Darwinian story about evolution which indicates that the first task of the would-be naturalist is to decide how natural philosophy ought to be done. In attempting to give a plausible Lamarckian account of the very vague idea of evolution, he brings out the need for an adequate figurative language capable of doing justice to a primary assumption---that organisms are dynamically organized psycho-physical wholes. Thus interpreting the order in Nature not in modern terms of universal and immutable ‘laws of Nature'  but rather in terms of more or less fixed habits, Butler suggests that the trope of a living self infused with habits, powers, and unconscious memory holds the key to understanding the evolving macro-cosmos. The factor of emergence can thus be interpreted in terms of selective operations of natural powers which are capable of breaking extant habits by responding ‘intelligently' to certain feelings of need or want. A way is thus opened up to take into account the basic consideration that evolution alludes in the first instance to the creation of novel forms of organization. For if one interprets the trope of powers in terms of the faculties that Deleuze insists are indispensable to natural philosophy, one can think of faculties or powers as also capable of evolution. It is then possible to do justice to the fact that human experiencing involves a constant struggle to reconcile immaterial and material concerns. For if both types of concern refer to faculties that have emerged from more primitive concerns, as A. N. Whitehead intimates, it is possible to ‘naturalize' the moral and/or ethical (as well as aesthetic and religious) concerns that Butler elicits when he suggests that evolution implies a vague cosmic aim to produce ever deeper and more profound forms of sensibility. Indeed, with the help of Coleridge his story can be extended to a truly vitalistic naturalism which depicts the naturing of Nature as generally guided by a hidden Logos of the sort that Heraclitus long ago elicited---one that resonates with Butler's presupposition that the notion of self alludes to an embodied soul. For Heraclitus also indicates that a proper understanding of the fundamental notion of experience calls for a wise soul---which Coleridge intimates is one in charge of a well-cultivated faculty of imagination.  

Life, Thought, and Morality: Or, Does Matter Really Matter?

Modern, science-centered naturalisms can be charged with a certain moral laxity, according to S. T. Coleridge. This fault reflects a devitalizing, materialistic metaphysics informed by a narrow and self-serving conception of reason. Thus seeking a remedy that can bring justice to the spiritual as well as the physical aspects of experience, Coleridge envisages a 'true naturalism' that will not only address the question 'What is Life?' but also frame a 'true realism' that includes what might be called a 'true moralism'. This calls, however, for a Heraclitean metaphysics capable of linking 'goodness' in both thinking and acting to a *Logos* - that is, an essentially nonmodern theory of actuality that can do justice at once to the quicknesses and the uniformities of both Life and Thought. Coleridge thus presents an outline of how one might respond to a challenge that can be best met, I argue, with the help of certain insights of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, A. N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and C. S. Peirce. By enlisting Hannah Arendt's  individual-centered conception of morality, which ties ethics to public concerns, it is also possible to sketch a metaphysically grounded response to Friedrich Nietzsche's call for a healthy morality capable of overturning the nihilistic values entrenched in modern thought

Rare Lexical Speech Automatisms in a Case of Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia

The production of aphasic lexical speech automatisms (yes and right) produced by C.S., a man with progressive speech impairment and primary progressive nonfluent aphasia, were analysed across a range of takes varying in complexity. More automatisms were produced during single word and nonword reading and repetition and picture description than during connected reading and counting, suggesting that internally generated (picture description) and externally triggered (single word and nonword reading and repetition) were equally affected. In addition, a complex speech task (connected reading) produced then fewest automatisms than easier ones (single words). However, tasks where there were increased opportunities for disinhibition produced more automatisms. Results do not suggest that the intrinsic or extrinsic motor speech systems are separately damaged, but do suggest that increased opportunities for disinhibition may produce more automatisms