The birth of poetry from the music of disaster: divine violence in the poetry of Meir Wieseltier

This article explores the poetic and political-theological nexus of power, violence and sovereignty in Meir Wieseltier's work. No poet seems to have inserted himself quite so powerfully into the narrow crack between the authority of the political sovereign and that of the divine sovereign, warning against the dangerous link between the theological and the political in Israel's messianic discourse. Wieseltier seems to draw inspiration from the theological-political sovereignty which relies on “an act of exception”, then to perform it poetically (“an exceptional verb”) to found his sovereignty and authority. Wieseltier's poetry arises from the divine music of catastrophe, based on a great intimacy with the ancient sources. It includes musical syntactic structures, like the mishnaic catalogue syntax, or the apocalyptic language of liturgical poetry in the prayers for the High Holy days with their outrageous “music of curses”.     

Musical structure modulates semantic priming in vocal music

It has been shown that harmonic structure may influence the processing of phonemes whatever the extent of participants' musical expertise [Bigand, E., Tillmann, B., Poulin, B., D'Adamo, D. A., & Madurell, F. (2001). The effect of harmonic context on phoneme monitoring in vocal music. Cognition, 81, B11-B20]. The present study goes a step further by investigating how musical harmony may potentially interfere with the processing of words in vocal music. Eight-chord sung sentences were presented, their last word being either semantically related (La girafe a un tres grand cou, The giraffe has a very long neck) or unrelated to the previous linguistic context (La girafe a un tres grand pied, The giraffe has a very long foot). The target word was sung on a chord that acted either as a referential tonic chord or as a congruent but less referential subdominant chord. Participants performed a lexical decision task on the target word. A significant interaction was observed between semantic and harmonic relatedness suggesting that music modulates semantic priming in vocal music. Following Jones' dynamic attention theory, we argue that music can modulate semantic priming in vocal music, by modifying the allocation of attentional resource necessary for linguistic computation.     

Orpheus and Eurydice: a creative agony

The archaic story of the Thracian musician Orpheus and his bride Eurydice is heard first as an ancient myth of marriage and death, wedding and separation. The mixture of expectation and dread in its sentiments is sounded still today in the contemporary wedding songs and funeral laments of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Similar sequences of engagement and withdrawal, ascent and descent, change and metamorphosis are found in the adventures and vicissitudes of other mythic figures. Its premise of the soul's transmigration and its promise of psychic transformation inspired the religious ruminations and philosophic speculation of many centuries. The shifting keys in the songs of Orpheus and the cries of Eurydice score the shocking emotions of epiphanal moments, the creative 'agon', and a depth psychological passage. With its crescendos and denouements, the Orpheus/Eurydice phenomenon suggests the range of experience as one both engages reality and reaches toward meaning.     

Cross‐sectional study on the relationship between music training and working memory in adults

Learning to play musical instruments has been shown to enhance a wide variety of cognitive domains. The present study investigated the specific aspects of working memory (WM) that differed between adult musicians and non‐musicians. Twenty‐four musicians and 30 non‐musicians matched for age, gender, years of formal education, and verbal intelligence performed several WM tasks. A multivariate analysis of covariance, wherein family income was controlled, revealed that musicians outperformed non‐musicians in tasks related to visual–motor coordination, visual scanning ability, visual processing speed, and spatial memory. However, no significant differences were found in phonological and visual memory capacity. This study supports the view that music training is associated to specific (and not general) WM skills.     

Hugo Kauder's unexpressed philosophical concept: Schelling's transcendence,Nietzsche's visions and Buber's Israel

Hugo Kauder, born in 1888 near Prague, composer, instrumentalist, theoretician and music-philosopher, came to Vienna in 1905, left Austria after the Novemberpogrom 1938 and reached New York via the Netherlands and England in 1940. In 1938 Tel Aviv was also one of his intended havens (parts of Kauder's estate are kept at the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem). Engaged in the crisis discourse in Vienna's postwar period of the early 1920s, Kauder drafted his philosophical ideas under the influence of Friedrich Schelling and Friedrich Nietzsche, also speculating on music-teleology, mysticism and cosmology. Corresponding with the German philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz, with the authors Karl Wolfskehl and Erich von Kahler, Kauder expressed his Jewishness – much more as a mindset than an active Jewish identity. Coming from a system of transcendental and natural philosophy combined with Christian ideas, Kauder moved to a more complex syncretism also reflecting on Jewish topics. Kauder did not organize his ideas into a concept, they are, rather, the theoretical framework of his educational books and are widespread in his essays and letters.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS APPLIED AESTHETICS

The question of how to place psychoanalysis in relation to science has been debated since the beginning of psychoanalysis and continues to this day. The author argues that psychoanalysis is best viewed as a form of applied art (also termed applied aesthetics) in parallel to medicine as applied science. This postulate draws on a functional definition of modernity as involving the differentiation of the value spheres of science, art, and religion. The validity criteria for each of the value spheres are discussed. Freud is examined, drawing on Habermas, and seen to have erred by claiming that the psychoanalytic method is a form of science. Implications for clinical and metapsychological issues in psychoanalysis are discussed.     

FROM DNA TO DEAN

Abstract. In this broadly intellectual autobiographical essay, Arthur Peacocke describes how his educational background at Oxford led him eventually to physicochemical studies on DNA and other biological macromolecules and how biological complexity and the general problems it evokes have remained a recurring theme in his thought. He also describes how, although coming from a relatively non ecclesiastical background, this interest has nevertheless been intertwined with the larger questions to which the Christian faith seeks to respond. He outlines how he has been able to reconcile these two strands in his existence-even to becoming a priest-scientist and eventually the Dean of chapel of a Cambridge college. He reflects on the trends in the relation of religion and science over the last four decades and points to some hopeful developments in the relation between the two communities-and to some unanswered questions.     

音乐欣赏过程中三至十岁儿童的情绪判断与想象发展

研究不同年龄儿童音乐欣赏后的情绪判断及想象,结果表明：儿童对喜悦、悲伤两种艺术情绪判断正确率呈极显著差异,学前儿童情绪判断正确性喜悦大大高于悲伤。进入小学学习后的儿童对悲伤情绪判断正确率迅速提高。儿童想象指数随年龄缓慢增加。情绪正确判断人数与产生想象人数呈显著相关。     

网易云音乐不同人格用户的网络行为及歌词偏好特征分析

本研究通过网络爬虫技术获取在线音乐用户网络行为与歌词文本数据,并结合大五人格问卷进行分析,旨在探讨用户的人格与网络行为、歌词偏好特征之间的相关模式。结果：（1）用户的人格特质与平台网络行为特征呈弱相关;（2）用户的人格特质与歌词文本的词类分布、关键词特征呈弱相关,用户歌词文本的关键词特征在一定程度上符合其人格特点。     

Moral Tuning

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch , and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning . This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety.