An examination of the keyboard technique of Bach, Haydn, Chopin, Scriabin and Prokofiev

Master's Project (M.Mu.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016In this research paper, I will explore the keyboard technique of each composer presented in my recital: J.S. Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, Frederic Chopin, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Prokofiev. I hope to elucidate the physical approach used by each composer, and show in turn how that same approach influenced the music of each composer by analyzing the pieces performed in my recital. To understand the distinct technique of the composers, it is important to know some context. The instrument each composer wrote for necessarily influenced their technique and resulting composition. However, the instrument cannot explain every facet of technique, and it becomes necessary to understand the underlying aesthetics of technique. Moving chronologically from Bach to Prokofiev, a general trend of expansion in the use of the hand and arm will be seen throughout. Keyboards became louder and heavier in touch and the hand faced greater reaches in every generation. The technique of Bach and Haydn was largely focused on compact and relaxed hands with distinct finger movements, while Scriabin and Prokofiev at the other end require sweeping gestures that occupy the entire arm. However, it would be too easy to present this progression as a story that technique is only getting better and better, implying that the older composers were inferior to the later. That is simply false. Instead, extended study of each composer shows that many technical principles are universal. The baroque keyboardists were likely playing with more weight than popularly imagined and one cannot play Scriabin with mittens on the hands

Study of solid state photomultiplier

Available solid state photomultiplier (SSPM) detectors were tested under low-background, low temperature conditions to determine the conditions producing optimal sensitivity in a space-based astronomy system such as a liquid cooled helium telescope in orbit. Detector temperatures varied between 6 and 9 K, with background flux ranging from 10 to the 13th power to less than 10 to the 6th power photons/square cm-s. Measured parameters included quantum efficiency, noise, dark current, and spectral response. Experimental data were reduced, analyzed, and combined with existing data to build the SSPM data base included herein. The results were compared to analytical models of SSPM performance where appropriate models existed. Analytical models presented here were developed to be as consistent with the data base as practicable. Significant differences between the theory and data are described. Some models were developed or updated as a result of this study

The desire called architecture

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: ‚Die Realität des Imaginären. Architektur und das digitale Bild

Testing Models of Counselor Development With a Measure of Counseling Self-Efficacy

Models of counselor development have become very popular, but empirical research has found differences primarily between beginning graduate students and doctoral interns, in the research described here, a counseling self-efficacy instrument was developed and was used to test hypotheses based on self-efficacy theory and models of counselor development, both of which would make similar predictions about increases in counseling self-efficacy resulting from clinical training and experience. The findings include strong reliability and validity evidence for the instrument and several significantly different groups of participants that correspond roughly to the groups hypothesized in stage models of counselor development

Novice Teachers\u27 Sensemaking in an Era of Accountability: Implications for School Leaders

The purpose of this research study was to examine how novice teachers make sense of the realities of their chosen profession, given their initial motivations for entering the profession. My research into teacher motivation and retention provided evidence that teachers did enter the field for altruistic reasons and that as many as 50% of all new teachers in urban schools did not last beyond five years. When they begin teaching, they find a field that is heavily impacted by strict accountability standards and required mandated testing. I used Sensemaking Theory and Self-Determination Theory to examine how beginning teachers make sense of their chosen profession, how the principles of Self-Determination Theory interact with sensemaking to influence teachers’ decisions to stay or leave teaching, and whether teachers would indicate points of influence that school leaders had used to help them decide to keep teaching. I used narrative inquiry to interview 21 teachers who were in their 3rd to 6th year of teaching from public schools at different grade levels and specializations. My interviews suggest that teachers who decide early in their lives to become teachers were more likely to have trouble making sense of the urban school classroom compared to teachers who decided to become teachers as adults, especially after working in a different field. This suggests that school leaders should consider teachers’ motivation to enter teaching as they design professional development opportunities and assign teachers to teams. This dissertation is available in open access at Antioch University Repository and Archive (AURA), https://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, http://etd.ohiolink.edu/

Notes on Narrative Method in Historical Interpretation

These notes are offered as a sketch of interpretive method. I suggest that the writing of architectural history is, or should be, a deeply theoretical sort of symptomatology – an account of how the very forms and experiences of architecture both construct and repress the absent thing we call the social, and are its most material symbolizations. Such an account benefits from an idea and a practice of narrative. Narrative is an ideological production that avoids any copy theories of representation even as it insists on the real, material forms and events that are its subject matter

Solid state photomultiplier for astronomy, phase 2

Epitaxial layers with varying donor concentration profiles were grown on silicon substrate wafers using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques, and solid state photomultiplier (SSPM) devices were fabricated from the wafers. Representative detectors were tested in a low background photon flux, low temperature environment to determine the device characteristics for comparison to NASA goals for astronomical applications. The SSPM temperatures varied between 6 and 11 K with background fluxes in the range from less than 5 x 10 to the 6th power to 10 to the 13th power photons/square cm per second at wavelengths of 3.2 and 20 cm. Measured parameters included quantum efficiency, dark count rate and bias current. Temperature for optimal performance is 10 K, the highest ever obtained for SSPMs. The devices exhibit a combination of the lowest dark current and highest quantum efficiency yet achieved. Experimental data were reduced, analyzed and used to generate recommendations for future studies. The background and present status of the microscopic theory of SSPM operation were reviewed and summarized. Present emphasis is on modeling of the avalanche process which is the basis for SSPM operation. Approaches to the solution of the Boltzmann transport equation are described and the treatment of electron scattering mechanisms is presented. The microscopic single-electron transport theory is ready to be implemented for large-scale computations

A synopsis of the Tabanidae (Diptera) of Michigan

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56342/1/MP098.pd

Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment: Scientific Knowledge & the Extension from Aesthetics to Ethics

Aesthetics has played an influential role in how we ascribe value to the environment. Yet, it seems that if we are to take the beauty of the natural world seriously, certain aesthetics judgments must be better than others. The scientific cognitive model posits that the natural world must be interpreted through an understanding of biological and geological categories, which are provided by scientific knowledge and common sense. While there are clearly merits to this model, it is not without its own set of problems and limitations. These problems exist in both the model itself and with its extension to environmental ethics. This thesis functions as an analysis and critique of this particular model, suggesting that it should not be thought of as comprehensive in both a descriptive and a normative sense, nor relied on exclusively for environmental decision making. I suggest two other models of aesthetic appreciation that can and should exist alongside the scientific cognitive model, eventually settling on a position of constrained pluralism

The solid state photomultiplier: Status of photon counting beyond the near-infrared

Rockwell International's Solid State Photomultiplier (SSPM) is an impurity-band avalanche device which can count individual photons with wavelengths between 0.4 and 28 micrometers. Its response to a photon is a pulse of between 10(exp 4) and 10(exp 5) conduction electrons, making it an important device for use in phenomenology. The characteristics of the SSPM make it a potentially important device for use in astronomical applications. Contract NAS2-12400 was initiated in June 1986 to conduct modeling and characterization studies of the SSPM to provide a basis for assessing its use in astronomical systems. Some SSPM models and results of measurements which characterize the group of SSPMs recently fabricated on this contract are discussed