The slav reception of Gregory of Nyssa’s works: an overview of early slavonic translations

Although a lot has been written about the "translatio" of Byzantine Christianity in the mediaeval Slavia orthodoxa, advancing a critical assessment of the Slav reception of the Greek Fathers remains a precarious undertaking. Although the mere listing of patristic texts in Slavonic translation obviously falls short of the demands of the subject, a notion of the corpus of translated texts is called for. The modest aim of the present article, which deals with the reception of Gregory of Nyssa among the orthodox Slavs, is first and foremost to establish the nature and range of the material reception of his writings by means of an overview of Old Slavonic translations of his works and of substantiated traces of influence of his writings on Slavonic texts, from the time of the Moravian mission (863) throughout the Slav Middle Ages

Wigner distribution functions for complex dynamical systems: a path integral approach

Starting from Feynman's Lagrangian description of quantum mechanics, we propose a method to construct explicitly the propagator for the Wigner distribution function of a single system. For general quadratic Lagrangians, only the classical phase space trajectory is found to contribute to the propagator. Inspired by Feynman's and Vernon's influence functional theory we extend the method to calculate the propagator for the reduced Wigner function of a system of interest coupled to an external system. Explicit expressions are obtained when the external system consists of a set of independent harmonic oscillators. As an example we calculate the propagator for the reduced Wigner function associated with the Caldeira-Legett model

Turkish folk music in Ghent: developing musical knowledge in a diaspora context

The question of musical knowledge applied to folk music is always challenging. While folk music normally does not have great artistic or academic aspirations and its theory and praxis are often little documented, its musicians and public still possess the necessary (implicit) knowledge to be able to produce and consume their music. When we consider Turkish folk music, it appears to be an example of academically approached, conservatory-institutionalised and state-supported folk music. The reason for all this attention is the fact that, according to the official republican ideology, traditional Turkish folk music has been considered as the only genuine musical expression of Turkish national culture. Notwithstanding the political applications and biased views of the music, and the inevitable musical adaptations, standardisation and narrowing-down, this preferential treatment has unarguably also benefitted the advancement of knowledge construction about the music. In the diaspora on the other hand, Turkish folk music lacks all this official attention and support. Thus, it will be probably impossible to maintain the level and pace of the knowledge construction existing in Turkey. Besides, when living abroad, Turkish musicians and their public are likely to adopt a new attitude towards their native music. Particular emotional motives will presumable affect the meanings they put on the music, and cause their priorities to shift and intentions to change. In this paper, ‘musical knowledge’ about the Turkish folk music repertoire performed among the Turkish immigrant communities in the Belgian city of Ghent will be examined. Turkish folk musicians will be interviewed and observed in search of their explicit or implicit knowledge related to different fields, such as music theory (scale/melody and metrical/rhythmical organization, tuning systems,…), performance practice (style and interpretation: ornamentations, variations, phrasings, dynamics, tempo changes,…), musical forms and genres, functions and meanings, geographical and temporal situation, etc. Dependable written sources about Turkish folk music, as well as recordings of authentic performances by traditional Turkish folk musicians will constitute the reference sources. The obtained information will be processed in order to compose a structured ‘map’ of concrete diasporic musical knowledge about Turkish folk music. The following step could be the placement of this ‘map’ over the existing educational situations (either formal or informal) within the Turkish immigrant communities in Ghent. Thus could be investigated which aspects of musical knowledge are being transferred and which are not. Interesting questions could be: which aspects are deliberately omitted, which ones are forgotten, and to which ones is paid either more or less attention. Looking for explanations of these findings could possibly reveal either difficulties manifesting in the construction and transfer of musical knowledge, or underlying hierarchies in appreciation of the knowledge aspects. As a pendant to the diasporic research, an analysis of the existing or desired knowledge about Turkish folk music at the conservatories in Turkey could be performed. It could be expected that a large amount of structured musical knowledge is in course of being built up and transferred within this institutions. The outcome of the analysis would be the composition of a matrix of ‘knowable’ and ‘teachable’ aspects of Turkish folk music. When the mapped out knowledge aspects of the immigrant musicians would be compared to this more comprehensive matrix, guidelines for future development and professionalizing of the education in Turkish music in the diaspora could emerge. While it is likely to find important hiatuses in the existing knowledge of the immigrant musicians, these musicians’ ways of dealing with their homeland folk music could in turn possibly serve as a guide for functional adaptations of the proposed knowledge matrix

Turkish folk music in Ghent: musical knowledge in a diaspora context

Turkish folk music (Türk halk müziği) is in its motherland an academically approached, conservatory-institutionalised and state-supported kind of music. The reason for this uncommon attention and care is the great importance that has been attached to this music since the founding of the Republic (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti). Traditional Turkish folk music has been considered with high esteem as the only genuine musical expression of Turkish national culture. This preferential treatment unarguably forwarded the knowledge construction about the music to a large extent, although it also implied some inevitable musical adaptations, standardisation and curtailment. In the diaspora on the other hand, Turkish folk music receives hardly any official attention and support. Thus, it will be virtually impossible to maintain the level and pace of the knowledge construction existing in Turkey. Moreover, when living abroad (gurbette), Turkish musicians and their public are likely to adopt a new attitude towards their native music. Particular emotional motives will affect the meanings they put on the music, and cause priorities to shift and intentions to change. In this paper, musical knowledge about the Turkish folk music repertoire performed among the Turkish immigrant communities in the city of Ghent (Belgium) is examined. Turkish folk musicians are interviewed and observed in search of their explicit or implicit knowledge related to different fields, such as music theory (scale/melody and metrical/rhythmical organization, tuning systems,…), performance practice (style and interpretation: ornamentations, variations, phrasings, dynamics, tempo changes,…), musical forms and genres, functions and meanings, geographical and temporal situation, etc. Dependable written sources about Turkish folk music, as well as recordings of authentic performances by traditional Turkish folk musicians constitute the reference sources. The obtained information is processed into a structured ‘map’ of concrete existing diasporic musical knowledge about Turkish folk music