Opera Audiences and Cultural Value: A Study of Audience Experience

This project aims to better describe the cultural value of opera through a study of its most devoted audience members. Through qualitative surveys and in-depth, open-ended interviews with highly-engaged opera-goers, we identify and explore eight categories of interest that are important to this group’s experience of opera

Innate talents: reality or myth?

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence

Meat quality of obroshyno grey geese while their cultivation

The process of cultivating obroshyno gray geese improved their meat qualities. In particular, we determined by our researches that, based on the indicators of live weight, the males of the II group (4726 g) prevailed geese of the I and II groups (1.02%), while females of the ІІ group (4153 g) prevailed all groups by 4.19%. The weight of non-eviscerated males of the II group was 4116 g, which is 3.78% higher than that of males of the group I, while females of the group ІІ (3461 g) surpassed other geese by this indicator by 5.10%. The weight of eviscerated of carcasses of males of the II group was 3211 g, which is 3.5% higher than that of males of group I, while females of the second group (2738 g) surpassed others by 6.6%. The outcome of edible parts in the young geese of experimental groups was quite high, but the highest was the young in the second group. In males of the second group, this inicator was 61.5%, and females – 58.9%. The weight of the chilled carcasses of males of the II group was 3120 g, which was 3.93% higher than that of the males of the group I, while the females of the second group (2691 g) surpassed others by 7.04%. The weight of the skin with subcutaneous fat in males of the second group was 706 g, which is 3.67% higher than that of male of the group I (681 g), while females of group II (632 g) surpassed others by 4.64%. The mass of internal fat in males of the ІІ group was 111 g, which is 15.62% higher than that of male of the I group (95 g), while females of ІІ group (72 g) exceeded others by 12.5%. The weight of the muscles in the males of the second group was 1695 g, which is 8.58% higher than that of the male of the group I (1561 g), and the females of the second group (1399 g) surpassed others by this indicator – by 7.6%. The obtained data indicate that the most intense accumulation of dry matter in the chest muscles up to 9 weeks of age occurs in geese of the II group. A similar situation is observed in the femoral muscles. At 9 weeks of age, the males of the second group had 29.74% of the dry matter in the breast muscle of the crude mass, females – 27.35% of the crude mass, and in males of the I group – 27.74%, of females – 27.30%. The same regularity in the content of dry matter is noted in the femoral muscle. The accumulation of protein in the studied muscles of geese, as the main indicator of meat quality, was in accordance with the general laws. The highest rate was in the thoracic and femoral muscles of males and females of the II group. The highest level of total nitrogen content in the muscles was found in males of the second group. In experimental geese, the accumulation of protein nitrogen in the chest muscle is higher than in the muscles of the legs. This indicator is higher in males than females. According to the content of albuminous nitrogen in the chest muscle, the highest rate was observed in males II group (3425 mg%). Non-protein nitrogen in the chest muscles and leg muscles increased to 9 weeks of age

It's not what you play, it's how you play it: timbre affects perception of emotion in music.

Salient sensory experiences often have a strong emotional tone, but the neuropsychological relations between perceptual characteristics of sensory objects and the affective information they convey remain poorly defined. Here we addressed the relationship between sound identity and emotional information using music. In two experiments, we investigated whether perception of emotions is influenced by altering the musical instrument on which the music is played, independently of other musical features. In the first experiment, 40 novel melodies each representing one of four emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, or anger) were each recorded on four different instruments (an electronic synthesizer, a piano, a violin, and a trumpet), controlling for melody, tempo, and loudness between instruments. Healthy participants (23 young adults aged 18-30 years, 24 older adults aged 58-75 years) were asked to select which emotion they thought each musical stimulus represented in a four-alternative forced-choice task. Using a generalized linear mixed model we found a significant interaction between instrument and emotion judgement with a similar pattern in young and older adults (p < .0001 for each age group). The effect was not attributable to musical expertise. In the second experiment using the same melodies and experimental design, the interaction between timbre and perceived emotion was replicated (p < .05) in another group of young adults for novel synthetic timbres designed to incorporate timbral cues to particular emotions. Our findings show that timbre (instrument identity) independently affects the perception of emotions in music after controlling for other acoustic, cognitive, and performance factors

Musical Motivation: Towards a model synthesising the research

This article explores motivation to participate in music making activities. It examines historical and current theories of motivation and sets out a model describing the way that the characteristics of the individual including, personality, self-concept and personal goals interact with the environment to influence motivation and subsequent behaviour. The environment may include culture and sub-cultures, society, time, place, institutions, family and peers and the rewards and punishments that these offer. The article then explores research relating to motivation to actively participate in music. This supports the notion that musical motivation is determined by complex interactions between the individual and the environment within which they find themselves. The article concludes with a consideration of directions for future research

A Study of Music: Music Psychology, Music Therapy, and Worship Music

There are three specific fields related to music: the psychology of Music and how it affects human brain and functions, the methodology of Music Therapy and how it affects individuals undergoing treatment, and the psychological effects of Worship Music and how it can be used in music therapy. Music therapy is a growing field in which the therapeutic outcomes greatly benefit the patients. The overall purpose is to create a greater understanding of music and music therapy in order to a provide a system for introducing group worship services into music therapy to ultimately bring spiritual healing to individuals

Emotion resonance and divergence: a semiotic analysis of music and sound in 'The Lost Thing', an animated short film and 'Elizabeth' a film trailer

Music and sound contributions of interpersonal meaning to film narratives may be different from or similar to meanings made by language and image, and dynamic interactions between several modalities may generate new story messages. Such interpretive potentials of music and voice sound in motion pictures are rarely considered in social semiotic investigations of intermodality. This paper therefore shares two semiotic studies of distinct and combined music, English speech and image systems in an animated short film and a promotional filmtrailer. The paper considers the impact of music and voice sound on interpretations of film narrative meanings. A music system relevant to the analysis of filmic emotion is proposed. Examples show how music and intonation contribute meaning to lexical, visual and gestural elements of the cinematic spaces. Also described are relations of divergence and resonance between emotion types in various couplings of music, intonation, words and images across story phases. The research is relevant to educational knowledge about sound, and semiotic studies of multimodality

The Wow Factor? A Comparative Study of the Development of Student Music Teachers' Talents in Scotland and Australia

For some time there has been debate about differing perspectives on musical gift and musical intelligence. One view is that musical gift is innate: that it is present in certain individuals from birth and that the task of the teacher is to develop the potential which is there. A second view is that musical gift is a complex concept which includes responses from individuals to different environments and communities (Howe and Sloboda, 1997). This then raises the possibility that musical excellence can be taught. We have already explored this idea with practising musicians (Stollery and McPhee, 2002). Our research has now expanded to include music teachers in formation, and, in this paper, we look at the influences in their musical development which have either 'crystallised' or 'paralysed' the musical talent which they possess. Our research has a comparative dimension, being carried out in Scotland and in Australia. We conclude that there are several key influences in the musical development of the individual, including home and community support, school opportunities and teaching styles and that there may be education and culture-specific elements to these influences