DOCSLIB.ORG

Nothing Left Behind Presentation Brenna Green

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nothing Left Behind Presentation Brenna Green Nothing Left Behind: Pedagogical Benefits of Studying Piano Repertoire for the Left Hand Brenna R. Green – Jordan College of the Arts – Butler University The surprisingly vast and stylistically diverse repertoire for left-hand piano provides more pedagogical insight than what is seen on the surface. Because the right hand frequently commands the melodic line, students tend to be less mindful of their left hand, especially in lyrical situations. Consistent integration of intermediate to advanced piano repertoire for the left hand alone is vital to developing a student’s awareness of left-hand technique and melodic projection within highly-controlled parameters. Analysis and discussion follow of the four main categories of left-hand repertoire – anatomy and injury, showmanship, compositional challenge, and technical development, as well as an outline of significant left-hand resources and collections for teachers to create their own approach. Anatomy and Injury Often as a result of a melodic/pianistic focus on the right hand, the left hand unfortunately goes on autopilot; however, the left hand actually lends itself well to melodic and harmonic roles in left-hand writing. In these parameters, the smaller fingers are mostly relegated to harmonic accompaniment, while the pointer finger and the thumb are assigned melodic lines. The composer and virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938), often dubbed “the Apostle of the Left Hand,” strongly advocated the possibilities of the left hand: In its application to piano playing the left hand has many advantages over the right hand ... it is a fallacy to deem the left hand less adaptable to training than the right hand. The left hand is favored by nature in having the stronger part of the hand for the upper voice of all double notes and chords and also by generally having the strongest fingers for the strongest parts of a melody… the left hand … has the incontestable advantage of enabling the player to produce with less effort and more elasticity a fuller and mellower tone, superior in quantity and quality to that of the right hand.i As Godowsky notes, the thumb – the stronger part of the hand – has a natural tendency to project tone due to its inherent strength. With care, the thumb’s vertical movement can produce a rich tone quality, as affirmed by pianist and pedagogue Josef Lhevinne (1874-1944).ii Additionally, the composer York Bowen (1884-1961) described how an impulse of arm weight could support the thumb when projecting lyrical material.iii While the thumb has latent power suitable for left-hand pieces, this finger often is untrained in younger pianists and can be unruly due to its position outside of the hand. When the fingers flex or move, the thumb also tends to flex. Nonetheless, the role of the thumb in most piano textures calls for an entirely different muscular function from other fingers, because inner voices (alto, tenor, or accompaniment textures) are generally more understated. It is essential for students to learn how to use the thumb to its advantage before they attempt to make it a supporting member. Pedagogue Thomas Fielden (1883-1974) wrote that the thumb should always operate from where it joins the wrist, and this is bolstered by pianist Irene Glasford’s observation that the thumb can act “as a lever within the pinpoint axis of the undulating, free- swinging, and rotational wrist.” Furthermore, to avoid the beginners’ tendency of producing a clumsy tone, Figure 1. Cast of Chopin's left hand. Nihil novi, Public pedagogue Beryl Rubenstein (1898-1952) wrote that domain via Wikimedia Commons the wrist should never be lowered so that the thumb can maintain the lightness and control of the other digits.iv Common characteristics of piano study may lead to neglect of left-hand strength and development, particularly if repetitive accompaniments are frequently encountered. There are several methods to bolster left-hand technique. Here, the phenomenon of bilateral transfer may be applied, as described by researchers Burnsed and Humphries – “the ability to learn a particular skill more easily with one hand or foot after the skill has been learned with the opposite hand or foot.” The same authors compare this with another study: two-hand coordination “… interference in a limb, which includes both inhibition and facilitation effects, is directly proportional to the intensity of activity involved in the process controlling the contra lateral limb.”v In a pianist’s terms, the more training and agility in the right hand may inhibit the training and agility in the left. Even the role of left-handedness in performance may not be enough to allow skill to develop in the left hand under traditional instruction. Since the left hand alone is well-suited to pianistic techniques, pianists who experience injury or disability in their right hand often throw themselves into this repertoire, as in the case of the composer Alexander Scriabin, who developed tendonitis in his right hand from strained practice, solacing himself by composing left- hand works. More recently, pianists Leon Fleischer, Gary Graffman, and Keith Snell, all affected by focal dystonia, reworked their performing careers using left-hand repertoire. The list goes on: composer Ludwig Berger suffered a stroke and lost facility of his right hand, performer Harriet Cohen irreversibly damaged her right hand when her drinking glass shattered inexplicably, while pianists Geza Zichy and Paul Wittgenstein both became right-arm amputees; all these musicians catalyzed their losses to focus on either developing and disseminating their own left-hand works or commissioning new repertoire.vi Showmanship Historically, pianists’ desire to attain evenness between the hands fueled some of the most virtuosic pieces for the left hand. Florid left-hand passages were even more impressive in the age of Liszt, Gottschalk, and others, whose pieces featured excessively decorative passages for the right hand. During the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th, it became common to adapt repertoire pieces or themes from operatic or popular works for left hand. Some of these are more virtuosic than others, such as Leopold Godowsky’s transcriptions of the landmark Chopin Etudes. These Etudes, seldom attempted by most pianists, are staggering technical displays. Godowsky published a manifesto with these Etude paraphrases, outlining his purpose “to develop the mechanical, technical, and musical possibilities of pianoforte playing, to expand the peculiarly adapted nature of the instrument to polyphonic, polyrhythmic and polydynamic work, and to widen the range of its possibilities in tone coloring.”vii Another virtuoso in the circle of left- handed pianists, Paul Wittgenstein (1887- 1961) was a prolific commissioner and Figure 2. Paul Wittgenstein. By Unknown author - BFMI, CC BY transcriber of left-hand work. After he became 3.0 nl, a right-arm amputee, he focused on https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15859063 recapturing the repertory he was once able to execute – his style, aided by his advanced pedaling technique, had the effect of one hand accompanying itself.viii His School for the Left Hand includes transcriptions of Bach, including the famous Prelude No. 1 in C, which is a worthwhile study of voicing, polyphonic playing and finger pedaling.ix Composition As Theodore Edel noted in his 1994 compendium, over a thousand compositions exist for the left hand alone.x However, recent tallies from online databases dedicated to left-hand piano works project a number closer to 6,000.xi Many composers pursue this genre as it poses a unique challenge of harmony and demands the utmost limits of a single hand. Pianist Raymond Lewenthal epitomized the need for pieces meant for the left hand: “One of the surest ways to develop left-hand technique is by playing pieces written for it alone, because they allow complete scrutiny of the left hand uncamouflaged by right-hand activity—putting the left hand under a microscope, so to speak.”xii In view of this extensive repertoire, it comes as a surprise that there does not seem to be a specific method book approach for the left hand, although there are many left-hand etudes available. Teachers may want to seek out left-hand pieces published in collections, particularly by composers who were prolific in the single-hand genre, rather than using a piece composed as a curiosity. For an example of a collection, Stephan Beneking, a prolific, neoclassical composer from Berlin, has published a collection of 24 “Valses melancholiques,” 12 of which are for the left hand, all suitable for the early advanced student. A chart outlining this and other recommended collections can be seen below in Table 1. Table 1. Comparison of left-hand collections Many “schools” for the left hand have been written, but not all are for one hand only; for example, Czerny’s School for the Left Hand does not fit directly into the single-hand repertoire, as chords in the right hand occur throughout. Collections such as these, however, can serve as a springboard into hand independence, lending themselves well to single-hand pattern and voicing studies. The Etudes by Danish composer Ludvig Birkedal-Barfod (1850-1937) provide a particularly good starting point for left-hand etudes, as the collection is comprised of shorter pieces with interesting melody and rhythmic contrasts. Additionally, the Fand Left-Hand Piano Album: Contemporary Pieces for the Left Hand Alone features intriguing and well-written miniatures by various modern composers. For the musically-mature student who is new to left- hand repertoire, “Links” by the ambient music composer Roger Eno is a minimalistic but harmonically interesting piece, written across a single staff. “The Forgotten Temple" by Gary Higginson, another work in the Fand Album, will be appealing to the imaginative student at the late intermediate level, due to its expansive dynamics, unusual character, and use of mixed meter.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rethinking Fideism Through the Lens of Wittgenstein's Engineering Outlook
    University of Dayton eCommons Religious Studies Faculty Publications Department of Religious Studies 2012 Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook Brad Kallenberg University of Dayton, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/rel_fac_pub Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Other Religion Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons eCommons Citation Kallenberg, Brad, "Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook" (2012). Religious Studies Faculty Publications. 82. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/rel_fac_pub/82 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Religious Studies at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Note: This is the accepted manuscript for the following article: Kallenberg, Brad J. “Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71, no. 1 (2012): 55-73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11153-011-9327-0 Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook Brad J. Kallenberg University of Dayton, 2011 In an otherwise superbly edited compilation of student notes from Wittgenstein’s 1939 Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cora Diamond makes an false step that reveals to us our own tendencies to misread Wittgenstein. The student notes she collated attributed the following remark to a student named Watson: “The point is that these [data] tables do not by themselves determine that one builds the bridge in this way: only the tables together with certain scientific theory determine that.”1 But Diamond thinks this a mistake, presuming instead to change the manuscript and put these words into the mouth of Wittgenstein.
    [Show full text]
  • Evolution of One-Handed Piano Compositions
    CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE Evolution of One-Handed Piano Compositions Ignat Drozdov, BS, Mark Kidd, PhD, Irvin M. Modlin, MD, PhD Electronic searches were performed to investigate the evolution of one-handed piano com- positions and one-handed music techniques, and to identify individuals responsible for the development of music meant for playing with one hand. Particularly, composers such as Liszt, Ravel, Scriabin, and Prokofiev established a new model in music by writing works to meet the demands of a variety of pianist-amputees that included Count Géza Zichy (1849– 1924), Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961), and Siegfried Rapp (b. 1915). Zichy was the first to amplify the scope of the repertoire to improve the variety of one-handed music; Wittgenstein developed and adapted specific and novel performance techniques to accommodate one- handedness; and Rapp sought to promote the stature of one-handed pianists among a musically sophisticated public able to appreciate the nuances of such maestros. (J Hand Surg 2008;33A:780–786. Copyright © 2008 by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. All rights reserved.) Key words Amputation, hand, history of surgery, music, piano. UCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the creativity of EVOLUTION OF THE PIANO: OF FINGERS AND composers and the skills of musicians, and KEYS Mspecial emphases have been placed on the Pianists are graced with a rich and remarkable history of mind and the vagaries of neurosis and even madness in their instrument, which encompasses more than 850 the process of composition. Little consideration has years of development and evolution.1 From the keyed been given to physical defects and their influence on monochord in 1157, to the clavichord (late Medieval), both music and its interpretation.
    [Show full text]
  • This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G
    This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Not Beyond Language: Wittgenstein and Lindbeck on the Problem of Speaking about God Khay Tham Nehemiah Lim Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2019 Declaration I, Khay Tham Nehemiah Lim, declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature: ________________________ Date: ___________________ iii To Jenise whose faith in me has been unswerving and whose encouragement has helped me stay the course. My debt of gratitude to her is beyond language. iv Abstract The problem of speaking about God arises from the claim that God is utterly transcendent and is ‘wholly other’ from human or this-worldly existence.
    [Show full text]
  • Claims Resolution Tribunal
    Much of the information in this case is drawn from sources that rest in the public domain. Any such information is not redacted. CLAIMS RESOLUTION TRIBUNAL In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV96-4849 Certified Denial to the Trust established for the benefit of [REDACTED 1],1 also acting on behalf of [REDACTED 2], [REDACTED 3], [REDACTED 4], [REDACTED 5], the Estate of [REDACTED 6], [REDACTED 7], [REDACTED 8], [REDACTED 9], [REDACTED 10], and [REDACTED 11] to Claimant [REDACTED 12], also acting on behalf of [REDACTED 13], [REDACTED 14], [REDACTED 15], [REDACTED 16], [REDACTED 17], [REDACTED 18], [REDACTED 19], [REDACTED 20], [REDACTED 21], [REDACTED 22], [REDACTED 23], and the Estates of [REDACTED 24], [REDACTED 25], [REDACTED 26], and [REDACTED 27], and to Claimant [REDACTED 28], all represented by Stephen M. Harnik in re Accounts of Paul Wittgenstein, Hermine Wittgenstein, Helene Salzer, Wistag AG and Wistag Partnership Claim Numbers: 224600/MC; 222470/MC; 222473/MC; 222474/MC; 222475/MC; 501790/MC 1 On 3 August 2001, Stephen M. Harnik filed claims to the published accounts of Paul and Hermine Wittgenstein in the name of [REDACTED 1] (Paul Wittgenstein’s son). Mr. Harnik did not submit a power of attorney authorizing him to act on behalf of [REDACTED 1]. The CRT therefore contacted [REDACTED 1], who, in letters dated 5 February 2002 and 29 March 2002, stated that he had not authorized the filing of these claims and did not wish to pursue them because he considered them to be without merit. In a letter to the CRT dated 26 April 2002, Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • John Henry Newman and Ludwig Wittgenstein: on Certainty and Faith
    John Henry Newman and Ludwig Wittgenstein: On Certainty and Faith Ann Guinee, B.A. Thesis submitted to Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick For the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy Supervisor: Dr. Catherine Kavanagh Submitted to Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, January, 2013 Abstract The roles of certainty and faith have been very much divided in modern times by the positions allocated them under an all-consuming positivistic account of human processes. It is ironic that this view, which stems from the Enlightenment period, a time of appreciation of the wonderful capacities and potential of the human being, has come to neglect so much of the reality of life as it is daily lived out by the person. John Henry Newman and Ludwig Wittgenstein, working from a humanist core, give a view of certainty and faith which goes a long way toward restoring the harmony of these processes by drawing our attention back to the unified starting point of all our enquiries, to what is always already there and functioning in our lived lives. What emerges from this side by side reading of Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent and Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is firstly an organic and holistic account of how what we come to reflect on as our beliefs are formed. Secondly, similarities in their ways of seeing support Newman as a philosopher with a significant contribution to make to contemporary philosophy. Lastly, the parallel reading foregrounds the wide and often humanist scope of the religious mind-set which has the capacity to bring philosophical analysis back to a grounding in the ontological, ethical and existential concerns which give it dimension and purpose.
    [Show full text]
  • From the Archives
    Nordic Wittgenstein Review 3 (No. 2) 2014 FROM THE ARCHIVES Alfred Schmidt [email protected] Wittgenstein and World War I: some additional online sources On January 20, 1913 Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father Karl died in Vienna, leaving his wife Leopoldine and his six living children (Hermine, Kurt, Margarethe, Helene, Paul and Ludwig) an enormous fortune. In 1910, the Austrian Finance Minister Robert Mayer created an interesting document: a confidential list of the richest inhabitants of Vienna and Lower Austria, including all persons with an annual income of more than 100,000 crowns (Sandgruber 2013). For comparison, a college professor at the time earned about 10,000 crowns a year, a school teacher about 3,000, and a servant around 300. The name of Ludwig Wittgenstein, profession “technician”, appears on this list of in all 929 people in the 254th place, with a taxed annual income of 237,308 crowns. His father Karl is ranked 38th with 807,209 crowns yearly and Ludwig’s brother Paul with 251,522 crowns is found in the 220th place. Immediately after his return from war captivity in August 1919 Ludwig gave away his paternal inheritance to his siblings Hermine, Helene and Paul, but in the six years from 1913 to 1919 he was probably one of the richest men in Austria. His donation of 100,000 crowns, distributed via Ludwig von Ficker to needy artists just before the outbreak of WW1 in 1914, is well known in the Wittgenstein literature. In her Familienerinnerungen 181 Alfred Schmidt BY-NC-SA Hermine Wittgenstein accounts for a donation by Ludwig of one million crowns for the construction of a 30 cm mortar, a donation which, however, never reached its aim (McGuinness 1988: 207; Monk 1990: 106f).
    [Show full text]
  • PROGRAM NOTES Maurice Ravel
    PROGRAM NOTES Maurice Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand Composition History Ravel composed this concerto between 1929 and 1930. Paul Wittgenstein was the soloist for the first performance, on January 17, 1933, in Paris. The orchestra consists of three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, woodblock, tam-tam, harp, and strings. Performance time is approximately nineteen minutes. Performance History The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand were given at Orchestra Hall on February 15 and 16, 1945, with Robert Casadesus as soloist and Désiré Defauw conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performances were given on October 1, 2, and 5, 2004, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist and Charles Dutoit conducting. The Orchestra first performed this concerto at the Ravinia Festival on August 4, 1960, with John Browning as soloist and William Steinberg conducting, and most recently on July 10, 1998, with Leon Fleisher as soloist and Christoph Eschenbach conducting. Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Piano Concerto for the Left Hand Had Paul Wittgenstein’s career as a concert pianist gone according to plan, this and several other works for piano and orchestra wouldn’t exist. He was born into one of Vienna’s most remarkable families; his father, Karl, a steel, banking, and arms magnate, and his mother, Leopoldine, brought nine children into the world.
    [Show full text]
  • The House of Wittgenstein: a Family at War Free
    FREE THE HOUSE OF WITTGENSTEIN: A FAMILY AT WAR PDF Alexander Waugh | 384 pages | 30 Dec 2009 | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC | 9780747596738 | English | London, United Kingdom The House of Wittgenstein : A Family at War - - His youngest child, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, once asked a pupil if he had ever had any tragedies in his life. Ludwig often thought of doing so, as did his surviving brother, Paul. There were three sisters: Gretl, Helene, and Hermine. Helene was highly neurotic, and had a husband who suffered from dementia. Gretl was regarded as irritating by most people, including her unpleasant husband, who committed suicide, as did his father and one of his aunts. Bad temper and extreme nervous tension were endemic in the family. All of this was before the Nazis got to work. The Wittgenstein children were brought up as Christians, but they counted as full Jews under the Nuremberg racial laws because three of their grandparents had been born Jewish and did not convert to Christianity until they reached adulthood. The fourth, their maternal grandmother, had no Jewish ancestry. After Germany annexed Austria, inthe family money bought the lives of the three sisters—Paul had escaped, and Ludwig The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War safe in England—but at the cost of estranging several of the surviving siblings from one another. A few days before the invasion of Poland, inHitler found the time to issue an order granting half-breed status to the Wittgenstein children, on the pretext that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince.
    [Show full text]
  • Shapreau Report, Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation 2014
    UC Berkeley Other Recent Work Title The Vienna Archives: Musical Expropriations During the Nazi Era and 21st Century Ramifications Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0q71b0p2 Author Shapreau, Carla Publication Date 2014-06-05 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY BERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ INSTITUTE OF EUROPEAN STUDIES Dr. Carla J. Shapreau 207 MOSES HALL, MC 2316 Research associate, Institute of European Studies BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-2316 Lecturer, School of Law Dept. Tele: +1.510.643-5777 Tele: +1.510.849.0777 | Fax: +1.510.849.0177 URL: http://ies.berkeley.edu Email: [email protected] http://ies.berkeley.edu/contact/visitingscholars/cshapreau.html Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Report, 2014 The Vienna Archives: Musical Expropriations During the Nazi Era and 21st Century Ramifications by Carla J. Shapreau Carved wooden violin case, German mid-18th century, initials “H.V.L.” Confiscated from Oscar Bondy, 1939, Vienna, restituted in 1948,1 and currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art Collection, New York2 1 After the 1939 confiscation of this violin case from Oscar Bondy, it was transferred to the Museum Carolino Augusteum, (the Salzburg Museum). The confiscation property card for this case states that it was returned: “übergeben 10.342/1948.” 2 Metropolitan Museum online entry: http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/505302. © 2014 Carla Shapreau Table of Contents I. Introduction……………………………………………..…………...……..………...Page 3 II. The Anschluss……………………………………………...……...….……………………3 III. Jewish Asset Registrations………………………………………………...........…………5 IV. Emigration and Musical Material Culture………………..………..………………........…9 V.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Wittgenstein's Transcriptions for Left Hand
    PAUL WITTGENSTEIN'S TRANSCRIPTIONS FOR LEFT HAND: PIANISTIC TECHNIQUES AND PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS, A LECTURE RECITAL, TOGETHER WITH THREE RECITALS OF SELECTED WORKS OF R. SCHUMANN, S. PROKOFIEV, F. LISZT, M. RAVEL, AND F. CHOPIN Won-Young Kong, B.Mus., M.M. APPROVED: Major Professor Minor Professor Commi ember Dean o e Co ge f Music Dean of the Robert B.'Toulouse School of Graduate Studies 377 PAUL WITTGENSTEIN'S TRANSCRIPTIONS FOR LEFT HAND: PIANISTIC TECHNIQUES AND PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS, A LECTURE RECITAL, TOGETHER WITH THREE RECITALS OF SELECTED WORKS OF R. SCHUMANN, S. PROKOFIEV, F. LISZT, M. RAVEL, AND F. CHOPIN DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS By Won-Young Kong, B.Mus., M.M. Denton, Texas August, 1999 Kong, Won-Young, Paul Wittgenstein's transcriptions for left hand: pianistic techniques and performance problems, a lecture recital, together with three recitals of selected works of R. Schumann, S. Prokofiev, F. Liszt, M. Ravel, and F. Chopin. Doctor of Musical Arts (Performance), August, 1999, 85 pp, 3 tables, 76 examples, bibliography, 56 titles. Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961) made significant contributions to the piano literature for the left hand through numerous commissioned works as well as his own transcriptions. In the transcriptions, Wittgenstein preserved the texture of two-hand music, aiming for the simulation of the original works. This requires special techniques in the performance by the left hand alone. This dissertation investigates technical means and performance problems associated with the transcriptions as well as Wittgenstein's own recordings of selections from his works.
    [Show full text]
  • A World Without Time: the Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein Palle Yourgrau 2005 It Is a Widely Known but Little Appreciated
    A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein Palle Yourgrau 2005 It is a widely known but little appreciated fact that Albert Einstein, the twentieth century's greatest physicist, and Kurt Godel, its greatest logician, were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. They walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German-Austrian science in which they had grown up. What is not widely known is the discovery that grew out of this friendship. In 1949 Godel published a paper proving that there exist possible worlds described by the theory of relativity in which time, as we ordinarily understand it, does not exist. He went further: if it is absent from those theoretical universes, he showed, time does not exist in our world either. Einstein's great work has not explained time, as most physicists and philosophers think, but explained it completely away. Einstein recognized Godel's paper as "an important contribution to the general theory of relativity." Physicists since then have tried without success to find an error in Godel's physics or a missing element in relativity itself that would rule out world models like Godel's. Stephen Hawking went so far as to propose an ad hoc modification of the laws of natureóa "chronology protection conjecture"óspecifically to negate Godel's contribution to relativity. Philosophers have been largely silentóand their silence, says Yourgrau, is one of the intellectual scandals of the past century.
    [Show full text]
  • Machines À Penser (Essay by Dieter Roelstraete)
    edited by Dieter Roelstraete Machines à penser CONTENTS NOTE TO THE READER This publication accompanies the exhibition “Machines à penser,” conceived and Dieter Roelstraete Trois machines à penser 19 curated by Dieter Roelstraete at Fondazione Prada, Venice. The project recounts the archi‑ Ludwig Wittgenstein Culture and Value 179 tectural typology of the hut as a “machine for thinking,” made for or named after the three Shumon Basar The Eternal Return 197 German philosophers Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger of the Primitive Hut and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In addition to the lead essay Theodor Adorno Refuge for the Homeless 251 by the curator, the volume con ‑ tains two essays and a poem written by scholars, theorists, Alec Finlay HUTOPIA 257 and participating artists. Also included are a selection of excerpts relating to the Martin Heidegger Why Do I Stay in the Provinces? 323 theme of dwelling by Adorno, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Saint Jerome, and three con‑ Goschka Macuga versations with artists commis‑ sioned to make new works for the exhibition project: Leonor Leonor Antunes Conversations 339, 357, 369 Antunes, Alexander Kluge, and Goshka Macuga. The publica‑ tion features a bibliography, the Alexander Kluge } Italian translations of the texts, and a list of exhibited works and illustrations. Mark Riley Thinking Place: 403 All the images in the book, apart from the cover cards, Imagining Heidegger at Todtnauberg are accompanied by a short and Wittgenstein at Skjolden caption with the name of the artist or maker, title of the work, and date. Complete captions Saint Jerome Letter XLIII to Marcella 443 for the illustrations can be found in the list of exhibited works and illustrations.
    [Show full text]