Intersection : Exploration du concept à travers la composition de trois oeuvres musicales

La version intégrale de ce mémoire est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l'Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU).Dans mon travail de recherche et de création musicale, je m’inspire du concept d’intersection pour sa capacité à donner naissance à quelque chose de nouveau. Ce mémoire de maîtrise documente une exploration de ce concept dans trois contextes différents : une pièce instrumentale, une pièce mixte et une pièce pour chœur. J’emploie le mot « intersection » dans le sens figuré de deux éléments abstraits ou concrets qui se rencontrent. La nature de leur rencontre ainsi que les résultats possibles m’intéressent également. Je vise l’intégration du concept à tous les niveaux d’une pièce : du global (la conception, la forme) jusqu’au local (la facture et l’emploi des techniques de composition). Le choix de procédés est très ouvert et dépend entièrement du contexte de la pièce et du résultat artistique envisagé. Ainsi, dans chacune de mes trois pièces de maîtrise, j’ai choisi une approche différente de l’idée de l’intersection. J’ai expérimenté une variété de moyens et de procédés, ainsi que la fonction de la composante extra-musicale (lorsqu’il y en a une). Au premier chapitre, je discute de mon quintette Finding Common Ground qui explore l’intersection de l’écriture pour percussion avec l’écriture pour les quatre autres instruments plutôt « mélodiques ». Ensuite, au deuxième chapitre je présente ma pièce Pleine lune pour contrebasse et bande, qui apprivoise le croisement de l’écriture instrumentale avec l’écriture acousmatique. Finalement, au troisième chapitre j’expose ma pièce Séjour dans un autre monde, pour chœur de jeunes et piano préparé, qui s’inspire du croisement de la pensée électroacoustique et de l’écriture vocale et instrumentale.In my musical research and creative work, I am inspired by the concept of intersection for its capacity to give birth to something new. This Master’s thesis documents an exploration of this concept in three different contexts: an instrumental piece, a mixed piece and a piece for choir. I employ the term “intersection” in the figurative sense of two elements, either abstract or concrete, which meet. The nature of their meeting and the possible results are of equal interest to me. I strive to integrate the concept at all levels of a piece: from the global perspective (the conception, the form) to the local perspective (the craft and the use of compositional techniques). The choice of procedures is wide open and depends entirely on the piece and the envisioned artistic result. Thereby, for each of my three Master’s pieces I chose a different approach to the concept of intersection. I experimented with a variety of means and procedures, as well as the function of the extra musical component (where applicable). In the first chapter, I discuss my quintet Finding Common Ground, which explores the intersection of percussion writing with the writing for the four other “melodic” instruments. Next, in the second chapter I present my piece Pleine lune for double bass and tape, which undertakes the crossing of instrumental writing with acousmatic writing. Finally, in the third chapter I examine my piece Séjour dans un autre monde, for youth choir and prepared piano, which was inspired by the crossing of electroacoustic thought with vocal and instrumental writing

The impact of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games on employment and wages in Georgia

Using the standard differences-in-differences (DD) technique and a modified DD technique in the slopes, this paper determines that hosting the 1996 Summer Olympic Games boosted employment by 17% in the counties of Georgia affiliated with and close to Olympic activity, relative to employment increases in other counties in Georgia (the rate of growth increased by 0.002 percentage points per quarter). Estimation of a random-growth model confirms a positive impact of the Olympics on employment. In addition, the employment impact is shown not to be merely a "metropolitan statistical area (MSA) effect"; employment in the northern Olympic venue areas was found to increase 11% more post- versus pre-Olympics than it did in other, similar southern MSAs. The evidence of an Olympic impact on wages is weak

Allegory and the Art of Memory

Scholars of early modern literature often consider allegory inherently idealist, particularly in its exploitation of visual description, which, they argue, produces a spurious vividness that tries to pass off the schematic and the ideal as natural. Critics who subscribe to this view often celebrate Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590/96) as both a pinnacle of the genre and a skeptical anatomy of it—a great allegory that is great because it exposes allegory's illusions. As the argument goes, Spenser reveals the false visuality at the heart of allegory by complicating his imagery with naturalistic description. By turning allegorical images against themselves, the poem prevents allegory from subordinating the world of matter and appearances to a timeless conceptual order.This dissertation, Allegory and the Art of Memory, offers an alternative framework for understanding allegory's visuality and Spenser's use of it: the mental visualization techniques of the classical and medieval memory arts. Because these mnemonic methods draw mental imagery into the service of memorizing words and ideas, they too have been accused of visual bad faith, but recent scholarship has excavated the practical and philosophical contexts in which these methods were used, and this visual regime gives us a new way to think about allegorical imagery as well. I argue that in adapting the memory arts to narrative poetry, medieval allegorists did not aspire to impress an idealist image of cosmic harmony upon the empirical world but to lead readers through a voluntary and collaborative process of composing meditative imagery. In the following pages, I analyze three pre-Spenserian allegorical poems particularly engaged with the theory and practice of memory: Guillaume de Deguileville's Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (1330-32), Olivier de la Marche's Le Chevalier Délibéré (1483), and Stephan Batman's loose adaptation of Le Chevalier Délibéré into The Trauayled Pylgrime (1569). I use these analyses to illuminate crucial episodes of The Faerie Queene to show that, rather than revealing the fissures in the earlier poems' methods, The Faerie Queene continues their project by adapting allegory to the transformed media environment of sixteenth-century England, where the visual mnemonics of the memory arts had mostly been discarded. The pre-Spenserian poems I analyze borrow formal elements from mnemonic techniques while critically evaluating the practices and the role of memory in human life. The Faerie Queene, I argue, follows their trajectory into the age of print. Whereas the older poems treat their imagery as a script for composing mental images, Spenser uses the formal tropes of the memory arts—image (imago), place (locus), and order (ordo)—to represent memory-processes, not just of the individual but of an entire culture, a collective record that is both analogous to memory and radically unaccommodating to the human mind

Attorney advertising: The effect on juror perceptions and verdicts

This study examined the effect of attorney television advertising on jurors. Southern Nevada jurors who had served on personal injury and malpractice trials were sent survey questionnaires designed to elicit juror attitudes about attorneys and attorney advertising. The response rate was 53.3%; The major finding was that although respondents generally do not like lawyer television advertising, it does not affect their trial verdicts unless jurors are actually confronted with a plaintiff\u27s lawyer who advertises on television; then, jurors tend to vote for the defense. There is strong sentiment that the law should be changed to limit jury awards. Advertising lawyers become the focus of this perception and therefore jurors tend to vote against the plaintiff in these trials, voting their perceived economic self-interest. Jurors who have more positive opinions of lawyers in general and those in current working relationships with lawyers also have more positive opinions about legal service advertising

Characterization of an immobilized enzyme reactor for on-line protein digestion

Despite the developments for faster liquid chromatographic and mass spectral detection techniques, the standard in-solution protein digestion for proteomic analyses has remained relatively unchanged. The typical in-solution trypsin protein digestion is usually the slowest part of the workflow, albeit one of the most important. The development of a highly efficient immobilized enzyme reactor (IMER) with rapid performance for on-line protein digestion would greatly decrease the analysis time involved in a proteomic workflow. Presented here is the development of a silica based IMER for on-line protein digestion, which produced rapid digestions in the presence of organic mobile phase for both model proteins and a complex sample consisting of the insoluble portion of a yeast cell lysate. Protein sequence coverage and identifications evaluated between the IMER and in-solution digestions were comparable. Overall, for a yeast cell lysate with only a 10 sec volumetric residence time on-column, the IMER identified 507 proteins while the in-solution digestion identified 490. There were no significant differences observed based on identified protein’s molecular weight or isoelectric point between the two digestion methods. Implementation of the IMER into the proteomic workflow provided similar protein identification results, automation for sample analysis, and reduced the analysis time by 15 hr

EFFECT OF BODY MASS INDEX ON POST-EXERCISE HEMODYNAMIC RESPONSES

To assess the relationships of body mass index (BMI) on arterial stiffness at rest and post-maximal treadmill graded exercise testing (GXT). Forty-four apparently healthy, young adult males (22.1 ± 0.48 years) were recruited and divided into either a healthy weight (H, ≤24.9 kg/m2), overweight (OV, 24.9-29.9 kg/m2) or obese (OB, ≥29.9 kg/m2) group based on BMI. All subjects underwent arterial stiffness (carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, cfPWV), blood pressure (BP), pulse pressure (PP), mean arterial pressure (MAP) and body composition (bioelectrical impedance analysis, BIA) measurements at rest. Following the GXT, measures of arterial stiffness (cfPWV) and BP were acquired. Resting measures of cfPWV, BMI, systolic BP, diastolic BP, MAP, and PP were significantly (p \u3c0.05) greater in OV and OB compared with H. Compared with OV, OB had a greater BMI. Relative peak oxygen consumption (VP2peak) was greater in H compared with OV and OB (p\u3c0.05). systolic BP was positively associated, whereas VO2peak was inversely related to cfPWV (p\u3c0.05). No significant inter-group interactions were observed with cfPWV after the GXT. However, interactions were observed for SBP, DBP and PP (p\u3c0.05). In young men with varying BMI, SBP and VO2peak were associated with resting cfPWV. However, similar cardiovascular responses were observed between groups after a maximal GXT

Predictors of Outcome Following Standardized Rehabilitation for Patients with Shoulder Pain

Shoulder dysfunction is frequently treated and persistent symptoms are common. Differential diagnosis of shoulder injuries can be challenging and knowledge of a diagnosis alone does not appear to be enough information to predict outcomes. Determination of a set of factors that predict outcome would assist clinicians in making the most effective treatment decision for patients with shoulder pain. The purposes of this dissertation were to investigate patient-clinician agreement in an orthopedic population of patients with shoulder pain and to determine what combination of factors best predicts positive patient-reported outcome following standardized rehabilitation in patients with shoulder pain. In the first study, it was determined that patient-clinician agreement was moderate to good. This further supports the use of patient reported outcomes as an appropriate approximation of “true” outcome. In the second study, patient-nominated functional limitations were reduced to 14 categories for inclusion as candidate predictors in the prediction model. In the third study, we observed that the combination of absence of neck pain, shorter duration of symptoms and report of exercise as a functional limitation were associated with greater odds of positive clinical outcome following 6 weeks of standardized rehabilitation. Due to limited sample size, generalizations cannot yet be made to other samples. Future investigation of this model in a larger sample and subsequent external validation in a separate sample are necessary to further develop the model for clinical use