Composing, Researching and Ways of Talking

© Copyright Cambridge University Press 2015This reply addresses a number of misunderstandings that have arisen with regard to my argument in ‘Composition is not Research’; notably that it rests on a definition of research derived from ‘scientific method’, and that it somehow entails the view that composers should not be asked to write about their music. It is argued here that referring to composition as ‘research’ is at best a perverse (if institutionally expedient) way of talking about what composers have always done, and at worst leads to a distorted picture of compositional work and musical value

A Comparison of the School Societal Interface in Three Countries

Recently there has been a growing interest in improving the connection between school and society in general, and schools with their communities in particular. This concern comes from many sources. Employees criticise teachers as being ignorant of the world of work, and blame teachers for helping to create high school leaver unemployment by generating unrealistically high expectations in high school students. Parents too, are demanding that schools become more accountable to them in terms of the skills taught to their children. Social reformers are advocating that school teachers take more account of the ethnic sickness of the local population, and make efforts to include multicultural materials into the curriculum

Unified model of ultracold molecular collisions

A scattering model is developed for ultracold molecular collisions, which allows inelastic processes, chemical reactions, and complex formation to be treated in a unified way. All these scattering processes and various combinations of them are possible in ultracold molecular gases, and as such this model will allow the rigorous parametrization of experimental results. In addition we show how, once extracted, these parameters can be related to the physical properties of the system, shedding light on fundamental aspects of molecular collision dynamics.Comment: 16 Pages, 5 Figure

The identity of the individual in the book of psalms

The aim of the thesis is to discover the identity of the individual in each of the ninety-three psalms in which an "I" occurs and to assign each of these psalms to a context in the cultic religion of ancient Israel. After the introduction, which explores briefly the current state of the debate and explains the methodology adopted here, the thesis falls into two halves: Part I examines the two questions in psalm studies which are most closely related to the question of the "I" in the psalms namely the identity, or several identities, of the: antagonists in the psalms and the meaning of the various terms translated "poor". This lays the foundation for the examination and classification of the psalms of the individual in Part II. These psalms are discussed in the three divisions of royal psalms, psalms of the private person and psalms which are best assigned to the cultic ministers (the cultic prophets, wisdom teachers and temple poets). Within this main division a further classification is attempted on the basis of the situation which appears to underly the use of these psalms in temple worship. In the case of the royal psalms, this leads to an examination of the royal ritual and a new reconstruction of this ritual is put forward. The thesis concludes that just under half of the individual psalms were written for the king's use; about a third of the remainder were intended to be used in the cult by private persons and the remaining psalms are the work of, and intended to be delivered by, the ministers of Israel's cult