ELEMENTS OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION – A MAJOR CONSTITUTIONAL FACTOR FOR MUSIC KNOWLEDGE FOR CHILDREN AND STUDENTS

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.

Download Full-text

Presidential Tenure and Constitutional Provisions: Recent Evidence from Central Africa

Africa Spectrum ◽

10.1177/0002039720980457 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. 272-290 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mark Dawson ◽

Daniel J. Young

Keyword(s):

Democratic Republic ◽

Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽

Central Africa ◽

Term Limits ◽

Republic Of Congo ◽

Term Limit ◽

Developing Democracies ◽

The Republic ◽

Constitutional Factor

Constitutions around Africa have been repeatedly tested on the issue of presidential term limits. We explore the four most recent cases of African presidents facing the end of their constitutionally mandated limit, all of which developed in Central Africa. Burundi, Rwanda, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo all adopted constitutions limiting presidential tenure to two terms; yet, in 2015, when these limits were approaching, none of the sitting presidents simply stood down. Our analysis focuses on the constitutional provisions meant to protect the two-term limit, the strategies employed by each of the four presidents, and the difficulty they faced in pursuing extended tenure. We find that constitutional provisions do constrain, but not always to the expected degree. Our analysis adds a consideration of a foundational constitutional factor to the growing literature on term limits in Africa, with implications for other regions of newly developing democracies.

Download Full-text

A Data Cleansing System for Musical Expression Analysis

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer and Communications Management ◽

10.1145/3411174.3411176 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mizutani Tetsuya ◽

Hasegawa Kei

Keyword(s):

Expression Analysis ◽

Musical Expression ◽

Data Cleansing

Download Full-text

The Origin and Form of Aeolic Verse

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s000983880001853x ◽

1909 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 291-309

Author(s):

John Williams White

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Modern Poetry ◽

Poetic Form ◽

Musical Expression ◽

Modern Music ◽

Greek Poetry

The Aeolic dimeter and trimeter constitute so considerable a part of Greek lyric and dramatic poetry that the correct apprehension of their form is a matter of great moment. The Greek metricians comprehended this rightly, in the main, but in the first half of the nineteenth century the doctrine of these learned men was supplanted by a new theory that attempted to apply the principles that underlie modern poetry to the explanation of the undoubtedly complex rhythm of these clauses. Many scholars persistently maintain this theory. It is not difficult to discover why it was invented (it is absolutely new) and why it remains attractive. That the quantitative rhythms and metres of Greek poetry should seem complicated to men whose language is accentual is inevitable, whereas modern metres and rhythms are notoriously simple. The limitations imposed upon poetic form by accentual speech are extreme. No modern poet, for example, has attempted Ionic or Cretic measures. Again Greek music was simple, and both music and dance were under the control of the singers, but modern music is a complex art, and casts language in an iron mould. Nevertheless musical expression must be the basis of comparison, so far as we allow ourselves to institute it, between ancient and modern rhythms. The attempt to conform Greek lyrics to the elementary—and uncertain—rhythms of modern poetry that is merely read or recited implies a fundamental misconception of relations. Greek lyrics were melic. Agathon, in the Thesmophoriazusae, sings as he composes. These Greek songs were never intended to be read by anybody, Greek or barbarian.

Download Full-text