Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde: an analysis and re-positioning for contemporary use

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityNoye's Fludde is an unusual intergenerational opera by Benjamin Britten. Professional adults and amateur children together sing and play this adaptation of the Chester Mystery Play. The audience participates by singing three hymns with the cast. The resulting community experience is a lovable work for children and also a well-crafted work of twentieth century music. Passacaglia, polytonality, dodecaphony, and the influence of Japanese Noh drama and Balinese gamelan all link this work to the rest of Britten's oeuvre. It is powerful a powerful tool for music education and faith formation. American performances have declined steadily since the 1970s. The score is still quite useful, but some requirements, such as the recorder section, are increasingly difficult for contemporary productions to fulfill. Because Noye's Fludde is a unique learning and faith experience, this study advocates more frequent productions by a variety of American institutions, even if adaptations are necessary. A biographical sketch of Britten is followed by a chapter introducing Noye's Fludde, including the roots of the libretto, musical influences, reception, and performance history. Chapter three provides analysis of the opera, first by examining the central role of the hymns as motivic generators for the entire work. Tonality in large and small dimensions, the influences of Britten's recent trip to Asia, and his fondness for repetitive forms (passacaglia, theme and variations, canon) are analyzed next. Chapter three concludes with a Julius Herford-style structural analysis. Britten scored flexibly, allowing local communities to adapt as needed. Chapter four addresses the hesitation that potential conductors may feel about modifying or adapting the work. By observing the score, his alterations during Noye's Fludde and similar circumstances throughout his career, and his important Aspen speech of 1964, this study demonstrates that adaptations to casting or scoring are appropriate and were expected by Britten. The closing chapters provide a practical guide to Noye's Fludde. Because of the variation in skill levels involved, the technical requirements of each vocal and instrumental part are outlined in chapter five. Chapter six offers strategies for rehearsal and teaching the opera

Disproving Using the Inverse Method by Iterative Refinement of Finite Approximations

International audienceIn first-order logic, forward search using a complete strategy such as the inverse method can get stuck deriving larger and larger consequence sets when the goal query is unprovable. This is the case even in trivial theories where backward search strategies such as tableaux methods will fail finitely. We propose a general mechanism for bounding the consequence sets by means of finite approximations of infinite types. If the inverse method also implements forward subsumption and globalization, then the search space under this approximation is finite. We therefore obtain a type-directed iterative refinement algorithm for disproving queries. The method has been implemented for intuitionistic first-order logic, and we discuss its performance on a variety of problems

Lacerda’s chromographs (1930s-1950s): the circulation and appropriation of knowledge in Europe and the Americas

From the 1930s to the early 1950s, chromography, a technique invented and developed by Armando de Lacerda, constituted an advanced method of investigation in the field of Phonetics which overcame the limitations of kymography, the method predominantly used in Experimental Phonetics laboratories during the period. The new technique was first used by Lacerda in collaboration with Paul Menzerath in Bonn, its use later spreading to Portugal and Brazil. The existence of the most advanced chromographic equipment at the University of Coimbra Experimental Phonetics Laboratory since 1936 explains why Portugal became a global centre for Phonetics research and remained such up until the 1950s, attracting numerous scientists from abroad who, under the supervision of its head, Armando de Lacerda, received specialist training in the use of chromography. Later, the technique was used at the University of Bahia, where Lacerda and Nelson Rossi established the first Experimental Phonetics laboratory in South America in 1956-57, and where the first work on linguistic geography of Brazil, entitled Atlas Prévio dos Falares Baianos, was produced.IHC - Pólo da UE. FCT. Ferraz de Lacerda, Lda

Focused Linear Logic and the λ-calculus

International audienceLinear logic enjoys strong symmetries inherited from classical logic while providing a constructive framework comparable to intuitionistic logic. However, the computational interpretation of sequent calculus presentations of linear logic remains problematic, mostly because of the many rule permutations allowed in the sequent calculus. We address this problem by providing a simple interpretation of focused proofs, a complete subclass of linear sequent proofs known to have a much stronger structure than the standard sequent calculus for linear logic. Despite the classical setting, the interpretation relates proofs to a refined linear λ-calculus, and we investigate its properties and relation to other calculi, such as the usual λ-calculus, the λµ-calculus, and their variants based on sequent calculi