Examples of program music in piano literature: storm, ocean, devil, ghosts

Master's Project (M.Mu.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016The purpose of this paper is to present background information on the author's graduate piano recital program, namely extended program notes on the music performed. It should be mentioned that, although not intended, the whole recital is, in a way or another, program music. It is divided in two parts: the first is about Storms and Water (with "The Tempest" by Beethoven and Une barque sur l' ocean by Ravel), and the second about Spirits (with Faust Waltz by Liszt and the Three Ghost Rags by William Bolcom). Alborada del gracioso by Ravel falls somehow in between these two parts - a gracioso (jester) is a character, thus a spirit; an entertaining one. In this paper, I will attempt to explain what inspired composers to add titles to their music - this extramusical aspect has always been very intriguing to me. In the case of Beethoven, the title was most probably given by someone else, therefore the "Tempest" is not intended to be programmatic. In the case of Liszt, the piece is a transcription of an opera, which can be considered a programmatic genre. Ravel's and Bolcom's compositions are undoubtedly program music, since the composers gave them descriptive titles and were inspired certainly by extramusical factors

Childhood mourning and lament - ways of treatment

Many children experience mourning and lament from death without having acquired the skills that are necessary to overcome these specific situations. Furthermore, they may not have any support on this matter with the danger to develop psychological issues in relation with grief and mourning. Therefore, it is very important for parents, teachers and therapists to recognize that there is high risk that can lead to complicated grief. Also, it is essential to take into account the child’s developmental stage and to communicate in open channel so children will be able to express their feelings and emotions. In any case it is very important to help them encounter the felling of loss and learn to live with it

Iatrogenic Migration of an Impacted Pharyngeal Foreign Body of the Hypopharynx to the Prevertebral Space

Impaction of foreign bodies in the upper aerodigestive tract is commonly encountered in ENT practice. The present paper describes an iatrogenic complication with migration of an impacted foreign body (chicken bone) of the hypopharynx into the prevertebral space, after unsuccessful attempt of endoscopic removal. The foreign body was visualized with cervical CT scan lying extraluminally between the major vessels of the neck. An open surgical procedure with neck exploration was necessary for the definite treatment

Upper-lip laser frenectomy without infiltrated anaesthesia in a paediatric patient: a case report

Labial frenectomy is a common surgical procedure in the field of oral surgery. Labial frenectomy is a procedure usually done for orthodontic reasons. The role of laser surgery in the oral cavity is well established. The use of diode laser frenectomy without infiltrated anaesthesia is currently under investigation. Needle-less oral surgery, without infiltrated anaesthesia, is a novel situation in paediatrics with paramount importance

A Greek sentence test based on the German HSM test

Nach dem Vorbild des deutschen HSM-Tests wurde ein Satztest für das Griechische entwickelt. Das Testmaterial besteht aus geläufigen, im Alltag benutzten griechischen Sätzen, welche von einem männlicher Rundfunk¬sprecher mit möglichst ausge¬glichener Lautstärke aufgesprochen wurden. Der Test besteht aus 20 gleich¬verständlichen Listen zu je 10 Sätzen, die aus 700 untersuchten Sätzen einer Urliste ausgewählt wurden. Jede Liste besteht aus acht Aussage- und zwei Fragesätzen. Die Satzlänge variiert zwischen 4 und 9 Wörtern. Alle Listen sind bezüglich der Satzlängen und der Satzart strukturgleich.Based on the German HSM sentence test, a similar test in Greek has been developed. The test material consists of familiar everyday phrases which were recorded from a male broadcast speaker at balanced speech levels. The test consists of 20 equally understandable lists of 10 sentences selected from an original list of 700 tested sentences. Each list consists of eight statements and two questions. The length of the sentences in a list varies between 4 and 9 words. All lists are of the same structure with respect to structure, sentence length, and type

Adapting Piano Music for Ballet: Tchaikovsky's Children's Album, Op. 39

The purposes of this paper are to impart the skills necessary for adaptation of existing music to novice ballet pianists and to expand their repertoire. New dance musicians often struggle with the choice of existing music for the ballet class. Publications written specifically for the purpose are good sources but can be outdated or limiting. The compositions pianists are familiar with usually need to be adapted to fit an exercise in the ballet class, as each exercise requires a certain musical structure. Pianists have been trained to follow the score reverently and thus need guidance on how to edit existing music for the ballet class. It is preferable to use intermediate rather than advanced piano repertoire as it is less technically demanding and requires less editing. Therefore, the author attempts to elucidate the process of adapting intermediate piano music by using Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album, Op. 39, as a guiding model. Through the creation of a complete music edition of Children’s Album adapted for the ballet class and video demonstrations with dancers from The University of Arizona School of Dance, the author illustrates how to approach the following adaptations: adding preparatory measures (introduction); changing phrase length (phrase reduction, phrase extension, balances, finishes); changing the form (repeats, order of phrases, transitions); changing accompaniment patterns; making metric alterations (changing time signature, shifting the barline); and finally, reinterpreting markings on the score (tempo, dynamics, accents) to fit the dance

Modélisation et fouille de discussions de Web

The development of Web 2.0 has resulted in the generation of a vast amount of online discussions. Mining and extracting quality knowledge from online discussions is significant for the industrial and marketing sector, as well as for e-commerce applications. Discussions of this kind encapsulate people's interests and beliefs and hence, there is a great interest in acquiring and developing online discussion analysis tools. The objective of this thesis is to define a model which represents online discussions and facilitates their analysis. We propose a graph-oriented model. The vertices of the graph represent postings. Each posting encapsulates information such as the content of the message, the author who has written it, the opinion polarity of the message and the time that the message was posted. The edges among the postings point out a "reply-to" relation. In other words they show which posting replies to what as it is given by the structure of the online discussion.The proposed model is accompanied by a number of measures which facilitate the discussion mining and the extraction of knowledge from it. Defined measures consist in measures that are underlined by the structure of the discussion and the way the postings are linked to each other. There are opinion-oriented measures which deal with the opinion evolution within a discussion. Time-oriented measures exploit the presence of the temporal dimension within a model, while topic-oriented measures can be used in order to measure the presence of topics within a discussion. The user's presence inside the online discussions can be exploited either by social network techniques or through the new model which encapsulates knowledge about the author of each posting.The representation of an online discussion in the proposed way allows a user to "zoom" inside the discussion. A recommendation of messages is proposed to the user to enable a more efficient participation inside the discussion.Additionally, a prototype system has been implemented which allows the user to mine online discussions by selecting a subset of postings and browse through them efficiently.Le développement du Web 2.0 a donné lieu à la production d'une grande quantité de discussions en ligne. La fouille et l'extraction de données de qualité de ces discussions en ligne sont importantes dans de nombreux domaines (industrie, marketing) et particulièrement pour toutes les applications de commerce électronique. Les discussions de ce type contiennent des opinions et des croyances de personnes et cela explique l'intérêt de développer des outils d'analyse efficaces pour ces discussions.L'objectif de cette thèse est de définir un modèle qui représente les discussions en ligne et facilite leur analyse. Nous proposons un modèle basé sur des graphes. Les sommets du graphe représentent les objets de type message. Chaque objet de type message contient des informations comme son contenu, son auteur, l'orientation de l'opinion qui y été exprimée et la date où il a été posté. Les liens parmi les objets message montrent une relation de type "répondre à". En d'autres termes, ils montrent quels objets répondent à quoi, conséquence directe de la structure de la discussion en ligne.Avec ce nouveau modèle, nous proposons un certain nombre de mesures qui guident la fouille au sein de la discussion et permettent d'extraire des informations pertinentes. Les mesures sont définies par la structure de la discussion et la façon dont les objets messages sont liés entre eux. Il existe des mesures centrées sur l'analyse de l'opinion qui traitent de l'évolution de l'opinion au sein de la discussion. Nous définissons également des mesures centrées sur le temps, qui exploitent la dimension temporelle du modèle, alors que les mesures centrées sur le sujet peuvent être utilisées pour mesurer la présence de sujets dans une discussion. La représentation d'une discussion en ligne de la manière proposée permet à un utilisateur de "zoomer" dans une discussion. Une liste de messages clés est recommandée à l'utilisateur pour permettre une participation plus efficace au sein de la discussion. De plus, un système prototype a été implémenté pour permettre à l'utilisateur de fouiller les discussions en ligne en sélectionnant un sous ensemble d'objets de type message et naviguer à travers ceux-ci de manière efficace

Modeling and mining of Web discussions

The development of Web 2.0 has resulted in the generation of a vast amount of online discussions. Mining and extracting quality knowledge from online discussions is significant for the industrial and marketing sector, as well as for e-commerce applications. Discussions of this kind encapsulate people's interests and beliefs and hence, there is a great interest in acquiring and developing online discussion analysis tools. The objective of this thesis is to define a model which represents online discussions and facilitates their analysis. We propose a graph-oriented model. The vertices of the graph represent postings. Each posting encapsulates information such as the content of the message, the author who has written it, the opinion polarity of the message and the time that the message was posted. The edges among the postings point out a "reply-to" relation. In other words they show which posting replies to what as it is given by the structure of the online discussion. The proposed model is accompanied by a number of measures which facilitate the discussion mining and the extraction of knowledge from it. There are opinion-oriented measures which deal with the opinion evolution within a discussion. Time-oriented measures exploit the presence of the temporal dimension within a model, while topic-oriented measures can be used in order to measure the presence of topics within a discussion. The user's presence inside the online discussions can be exploited either by social network techniques or through the new model which encapsulates knowledge about the author of each posting. In addition, a recommendation of messages is proposed to the user to enable a more efficient participation inside the discussion.Le développement du Web 2.0 a donné lieu à la production d'une grande quantité de discussions en ligne. La fouille et l'extraction de données de qualité de ces discussions en ligne sont importantes dans de nombreux domaines (industrie, marketing) et particulièrement pour toutes les applications de commerce électronique. Les discussions de ce type contiennent des opinions et des croyances de personnes et cela explique l'intérêt de développer des outils d'analyse efficaces pour ces discussions. L'objectif de cette thèse est de définir un modèle qui représente les discussions en ligne et facilite leur analyse. Nous proposons un modèle basé sur des graphes. Les sommets du graphe représentent les objets de type message. Chaque objet de type message contient des informations comme son contenu, son auteur, l'orientation de l'opinion qui y été exprimée et la date où il a été posté. Les liens parmi les objets message montrent une relation de type "répondre à". En d'autres termes, ils montrent quels objets répondent à quoi, conséquence directe de la structure de la discussion en ligne. Avec ce nouveau modèle, nous proposons un certain nombre de mesures qui guident la fouille au sein de la discussion et permettent d'extraire des informations pertinentes. Il existe des mesures centrées sur l'analyse de l'opinion qui traitent de l'évolution de l'opinion au sein de la discussion. Nous définissons également des mesures centrées sur le temps, qui exploitent la dimension temporelle du modèle, alors que les mesures centrées sur le sujet peuvent être utilisées pour mesurer la présence de sujets dans une discussion. La présence de l'utilisateur dans des discussions en ligne peut être exploitée soit par les techniques des réseaux sociaux, soit à travers notre nouveau modèle qui inclut la connaissance des auteurs de chaque objet message. De plus, une liste de messages clés est recommandée à l'utilisateur pour permettre une participation plus efficace au sein de la discussion