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In 2023, a major European musical ensemble, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, celebrates its centennial. In the course of 100 years, this institution faced numerous obstacles, but thanks to the enthusiasm of great musicians, especially conductors, it has survived and laid the foundation for further musical and cultural development in Serbia. This article discusses the activity of the most important orchestral leaders (Stevan Hristić, Lovro von Matačić, Krešimir Baranović, Živojin Zdravković, Horst Förster, Vassily Sinaisky, Emil Tabakov, Uroš Lajovic, Dorian Wilson, Muhai Tang, Gabriel Feltz, Daniel Raiskin and Zubin Mehta), who have vastly contributed to or changed the course of the orchestra's development and left a big mark in its hundred-year-long history. In its centenary year, we will look back into the past, review the present, but also take a glimpse into the future the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra has already started to write for itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and infection, including asymptomatic cases, focusing on infection risks during the Omicron wave, particularly among high-risk healthcare workers. In the KoCo-Impf study, we monitored 6088 vaccinated participants in Munich aged 18 and above. From 13 May to 31 July 2022, 2351 participants were follow-uped. Logistic regression models evaluated primary, secondary, and breakthrough infections (BTIs). Roche Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 assays detected prior infections (via anti-Nucleocapsid antibodies) and assessed vaccination/infection impact (via anti-Spike antibodies) using dried blood spots. Our findings revealed an anti-Nucleocapsid seroprevalence of 44.1%. BTIs occurred in 38.8% of participants, with reinfections in 48.0%. Follow-up participation was inversely associated with current smoking and non-vaccination, while significantly increasing with age and receipt of three vaccine doses. Larger household sizes and younger age increased infection risks, whereas multiple vaccinations and older age reduced them. Household size and specific institutional subgroups were risk factors for BTIs. The anti-Nucleocapsid value prior to the second infection was significantly associated with reinfection risk. Institutional subgroups influenced all models, underscoring the importance of tailored outbreak responses. The KoCo-Impf study underscores the importance of vaccination, demographic factors, and institutional settings in understanding SARS-CoV-2 infection risks during the Omicron wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocalizations are a central resource for instructing in orchestra rehearsals. Conductors use them to make the musicians understand what they want to hear, i.e., through singing and rhythmic vocalizations they imitate or depict the envisaged musical qualities. In this contribution, I examine what vocalizations of orchestra conductors look like and how they are embedded in the instructional interaction between conductor and musicians. Based on a corpus of orchestra rehearsals in France and Italy, the paper uses multimodal conversation analysis to describe the vocal resources used by the conductors for singing, the interactional and sequential organization of vocalizations, as well as their functional properties. Vocalizing appears to often be accompanied by other semiotic resources, such as gestures and gaze, in order to form vocal-gestural demonstrations that embody musical aspects, e.g., tempo, phrasing, articulation, etc. The analysis reveals that vocalizations are employed by conductors for various purposes that exceed the simple action of imitating the music. Data are in French, Italian and English. • Conductors vocalize using arbitrary but similar syllables and onomatopoeic patterns. • Vocalizations are closely tied to and timed with prosodic and gestural events. • Vocal depictions provide gestalt-like information about music character. • Vocalizations indicate correctable aspects prospectively and retrospectively. • Vocal demonstrations specify verbal instructions and monitor musical performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Frederick ("Fred") Cardin served as a director of instrumental music in the Reading, Pennsylvania, School District from 1930 until his retirement in June 1960. An accomplished performer and composer, Cardin studied at the Curtis School of Music and the Conservatoire Américaine in Paris, France. He is remembered as an outstanding educator and conductor both in the public schools and with community organizations. Cardin was also known as Pejawah, his Native American name. To gain further insight regarding Cardin's musical legacy and how it reflects his heritage, interviews were conducted with former students and colleagues. Additional artifacts were collected pertaining to his education, influences, and accomplishments. Cardin pursued a focused mission through compositions and performances to promote Native American music and culture while also demonstrating aptitude in music composition, performance, and conducting. Cardin is one individual who pursued a successful career in music and music education while navigating the issues of racial discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance spaces play a significant role in enhancing audience experience and perception of concerts. However, unlike their professional counterparts, community amateur orchestras frequently make use of more humble municipal venues for their performances. This distinction is foregrounded in the present research reporting the experiences of two groups of audience members who attended concerts given by Australian community orchestras: one located in a metropolitan area performing in local churches, school halls and service clubs; the other situated in a regional country town performing in town halls and outdoor settings. Themes of space, proximity and viewership emerged explaining how artistic-social relationships act as powerful catalysts to promote both musical and community connection. The findings highlight the important audience development work community orchestras do and encourage both professional and community arts audience developers to re-consider the ways that space and relationships are mediated as part of thoughtful concert curation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractExtractive capitalism and neoliberal politics have for years plundered Africa, causing extended ecological devastation and disavowing indigenous epistemologies that did not abide with Western anthropocentric thought. Literary production, however, has not failed to document life in the ruins of structural racism, amid the gradual effacement of local livelihoods, and native knowledges and belief systems founded on politics of living-with, as part of, instead of dominating over animal, plant, and Other. In Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2010) and Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) representations of the ongoing destruction of ecologies and ontologies under the weight of neoliberal practices and the impositions of overriding neocolonial ideologies are entangled with and moulded by the depictions of those marginal but often resilient social assemblages and their quotidian communal practices that resist being reduced to relics of a used-to-be. This article explores the ways in which the two novels unravel their protagonists’ stories while revealing the immense pressure neoliberal politics exercise over native land and indigenous epistemologies in modern-day Nigeria, all while offering glimpses into the multiple ways these assemblages resist and challenge despotic formations that dominate their ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kurdish music has many important transformations, including the liberation of Kurdish singing from the tarab sensuality on the one hand, the modernization of oriental music with Western classical musical instruments on the other hand, and then the enrichment of melodic and vocal writing with advanced musical sciences represented by the use of counterpoint, which led to the development of oriental music composition methods in terms of aesthetics and expression, which sought these methods, which began from the eighties (1980s) of the twentieth century to our current reality in the development of counterpoint techniques in polyphony Texture. Hence, the researchers believe that there are many experiences of Kurdish musicians in employing folkloric and folk heritage songs by treating their melodies in a contemporary musical way, i.e. by introducing polyphony (counterpoint and harmony) and diversifying in the instrumental distribution. The research aims to show the role and use of counterpoint in Kurdish orchestral compositions. It is an important part of the development and diversification of contemporary Kurdish music, in general and shows how Dilshad Mohamed Said's counterpoint is used in his Kurdish orchestral compositions. The use of counterpoint in Kurdish orchestral compositions is an endeavor to achieve serious scientific and systematic steps in the field of artistic expression and vocal diversity, which enhances Kurdish musical culture to reach the global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five Unpublished Letters by Friedrich Nietzsche. Five unpublished letters by Nietzsche to Louise Röder-Wiederhold, as well as an unknown letter (draft) from her own hand suggest that Nietzsche's negative judgment of her, which has dominated biographical Nietzsche research up to now, was anything but definitive and can be strongly relativized. The new documents also prove that Röder-Wiederhold was not only a temporary "secretary" for Nietzsche, but also an intellectual and humorous, interested, compassionate and independent-thinking correspondence partner, even if she did not enter into a closer friendship with him. What particularly connected the two and remained an almost constant theme of their correspondence was the difficult life situation of their mutual friend, the unsuccessful composer Heinrich Köselitz, and how one could help him to get access to orchestras and opera stages in German-speaking countries which might perform his works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of closed and opened setup conditions on students' and teachers' reported immediacy, affect, motivation, and group cohesion in band and orchestra classrooms. A secondary purpose was to explore relationships among students' and teachers' reported immediacy, affect, motivation, and group cohesion. Six teachers and 379 of their students participated in the study. In this within-subjects experiment, teachers were asked to teach with their classrooms arranged in closed and opened setup conditions. In the closed condition, teachers used a traditional setup of arcs and were not asked to change their use of space when teaching. In the opened condition, an aisle was added to the ensemble setup and teachers were provided with strategies to encourage movement toward and among students when teaching. At the end of each condition, teachers and students completed measures of constructs related to immediacy, affect, motivation, and group cohesion. Results indicate the effect of the intervention increased negative affect among students, teacher proximity was associated with negative affect among students, and students' perceptions of their teacher's immediacy was found to have positive relationships with student affect, motivation, and group cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La estandarización sonora de las orquestas sinfónicas y la evolución en la dirección orquestal como disciplina plantea un siguiente reto en la educación instrumental, la regulación de la interpretación orquestal. Además, la multiplicidad de estilos musicales obliga a que estas enseñanzas empiecen lo antes posible. El artículo expone la normativa previa a la Educación Superior de Alemania, Francia, Italia, España, Polonia y Finlandia, se analiza el contenido que referencia la práctica instrumental colectiva a través de una metodología cualitativa y se comprueba si existe una correlación reguladora dentro de este marco común. Los resultados muestran que existe un interés común por la educación instrumental colectiva, que hay una distinción entre la acuñación conceptual de la asignatura: «orquestal» o terminología de ámbito pedagógico; alguna establece un marco de actuación genérico y otra ofrece libertad a los centros para su desarrollo. Se evidencia que la educación pública necesita una definición clara de objetivos, contenidos y resultados de aprendizaje para regular la práctica orquestal desde edades tempranas. Sin embargo, el rendimiento también dependerá de la flexibilización de la asignatura por parte de los Centros de Enseñanza. Sound standardization of symphony orchestras and the evolution of orchestral conducting suggest a next step in instrumental education, orchestral performance regulation. Furthermore, the multiplicity of musical styles obliges to initiate sooner this training. The article exposes the regulations of the previous courses to higher education in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Finland, analyzes the content through a qualitative methodology regarding collective instrumental practices and confirmes if there is a correlation in this common framework. The results demonstrate that there is a shared interest in instrumental group education, that there is a distinction when naming the course: «orchestral» or other pedagogy terminology and that some regulations either offer a general setting or prefer to give freedom to the institution for further development. It is revealed that public education needs a clear definition of objectives, contents and learning outcomes to standardize orchestral practice from an early age. Nevertheless, the level of performance will also depend on the adjustment of the course by the music institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performances of the same piece can differ from one another in many ways. Nevertheless, few scholars have attempted to investigate stylistic differences between orchestras. This article explores in what ways and to what extent the Vienna Philharmonic – an orchestra widely regarded as one of the world's most distinctive – performs metrical rhythm differently from other professional orchestras. It presents findings from an empirical analysis of the timing of the 'Viennese rhythm', a rhythmic pattern characterised by the shortening of the first beat and the lengthening of the second in the performance of Viennese waltzes. The methodology employs computer‐assisted techniques to analyse beat lengths in 30 recordings of two excerpts from The Blue Danube. The results indicate that the Vienna Philharmonic tends to use the Viennese rhythm more frequently and to a greater extent than other professional orchestras. This tendency enhances expressivity and heightens the sense of dance motion. As a result, in the Vienna Philharmonic's performances, metrical rhythm is far more than mechanical reproduction of a preordained set of time divisions, becoming instead a spontaneous expressive device which creates the sensuous embodiment of a durational process. This research shows that the way in which the Vienna Philharmonic plays metrical rhythm forms an integral part of their style, regardless of conductor. The article offers new insights into stylistic differences between orchestras and paves the way for a deeper investigation of performance styles in orchestral music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine school string teachers' beliefs about and practices of teaching nontraditional music courses. We surveyed middle and high school string teachers (N = 42) about what nontraditional music courses and ensembles (NMCEs) they currently offer and would like to offer to their students. In addition, we examined the educational rationales that string teachers have for offering NMCEs. Our findings indicated that the most frequently offered NMCEs were guitar class, pit orchestra, and music technology. Participants expressed strongest interest in adding fiddle club, popular music, and mariachi ensemble. The participants explained that NMCEs provide opportunities to teach content that closely may more reflect students' cultures and possibly attract a wider range of students. The participants used NMCEs to cultivate musical skills that are often overlooked in large-group setting, including improvisation, playing by ear, and collaborative arranging and composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Director può farlo anche un asino. Ma fare musica è un'altra cosa" used to say maestro Toscanini to emphasize the true role of the conductor, because conducting does not only mean gestures to maintain "order", technical rules, rhythm, accents, but represents the art of making music in the true sense of the word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of harmonium in opera during the transformative 19th and early 20th centuries, amidst significant reforms in orchestration. The author thoroughly explores how harmonium is used in opera, even providing a table of operas that feature this instrument. It delves into specific opera passages by composers representing diverse nationalities and spanning various epochs, covering the period from 1845 to 1936. Through examples from works such as Verdi's "Giovanna d'Arco" and "Don Carlos," Dvořák's "Rusalka," and Enescu's "OEdipe," the essay illustrates the diverse roles played by the harmonium in operas. The author highlights the historical and musical significance of the harmonium in opera, suggesting a reevaluation of its role in today's performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While numerous studies have investigated teachers' professional learning through their interaction with resources, the question of how teachers' knowledge evolves at different stages of the instructional process remains underexplored. To address this gap, this article builds on the documentational approach to didactics (DAD) and the theory of instrumental orchestration to investigate teachers' professional learning in terms of document development through their interaction with resources in and out of class. To this end, the paper proposes a theoretical and methodological model to analyze the evolution of a document, focusing on the joint evolution of utilization schemes and professional situations. This model provides analytical tools to track the development of teachers' professional knowledge. The theoretical and methodological model was applied to a case study involving a Tunisian primary school teacher who used the technological resource GeoGebra for the first time to introduce the properties of parallelograms to 6th grade students (aged 11–12). Findings suggest the relevance and operationality of the proposed model, through a short-term analysis of documentational genesis, to track the evolution of the teacher's professional knowledge related to the use of GeoGebra in class. This model can be considered as a theoretical and methodological contribution, deepening the understanding of teachers' professional learning when using technological resources and providing insights into the dynamic nature of teachers' professional knowledge development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a Python framework for characteristic feature extraction is developed and applied to gene expression data of human fibroblasts. Unlabeled feature selection objectively determines groups and minimal gene sets separating groups. ML explainability methods transform the features correlating with phenotypic differences into causal reasoning, supported by further pipeline and visualization tools, allowing user knowledge to boost causal reasoning. The purpose of the framework is to identify characteristic features that are causally related to phenotypic differences of single cells. The pipeline consists of several data science methods enriched with purposeful visualization of the intermediate results in order to check them systematically and infuse the domain knowledge about the investigated process. A specific focus is to extract a small but meaningful set of genes to facilitate causal reasoning for the phenotypic differences. One application could be drug target identification. For this purpose, the framework follows different steps: feature reduction (PFA), low dimensional embedding (UMAP), clustering ((H)DBSCAN), feature correlation (chi-square, mutual information), ML validation and explainability (SHAP, tree explainer). The pipeline is validated by identifying and correctly separating signature genes associated with aging in fibroblasts from single-cell gene expression measurements: PLK3, polo-like protein kinase 3; CCDC88A, Coiled-Coil Domain Containing 88A; STAT3, signal transducer and activator of transcription-3; ZNF7, Zinc Finger Protein 7; SLC24A2, solute carrier family 24 member 2 and lncRNA RP11-372K14.2. The code for the preprocessing step can be found in the GitHub repository https://github.com/AC-PHD/NoLabelPFA, along with the characteristic feature extraction https://github.com/LauritzR/characteristic-feature-extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genre of the concerto arose at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries in church music as a choral work, in which instrumental accompaniment was often used. The presence of an instrumental part in a spiritual concert had a great influence on the emergence and development of the instrumental version of the instrumental genre of the concert. The purpose of the article is to highlight the ways of modification and features of the instrumental concert genre during the period of stylistic transition from Baroque to Classicism. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive approach based on historical-cultural, hermeneutic and music-theoretical research methods. The main theoretical methods of work are: historical-comparative, genre-stylistic, systematisation, generalisation, analysis. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that questions of the evolution of the instrumental concert are considered in the context of stylistic changes from Baroque to Classicism. Special attention is paid to intra-genre changes, which have not been received due attention by musicologists. Conclusions. The genre of the instrumental concert of the transition period from Baroque to Classicism is marked by a certain dual character. First of all, this manifests itself at the level of form, which is characterised by both ritornello and sonata principles of thematic organisation. Along with the alternating exposition of sections of the sonata form by the orchestra and by the soloist, which comes from the baroque concerto grosso, in the early classical samples of the instrumental concert, there is a dialogic type of exposition of the material at the level of thematism, approved in the classical samples. The coming to the fore and dominance of the soloist in the concert causes a change in the texture of the solo part, which acquires extraordinary virtuosity and improvisation. This affects the strengthening of the role of the soloist, the rejection of his participation in the tutti, leadership in the presentation of the material, which leads to the multiplicity and diversity of thematics. At the same time, the orchestra, in addition to performing an accompanying function in support of the soloist, gets the opportunity to "express" itself in independent "plays", thereby violating the clear distribution of the sections of the sonata form. The specified transformations contributed to the stratification of the sound space and the duality of its perception, characteristic of the classic models of the genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, the issue of trauma in Ulysses of Baghdad, written by Eric Emmanuel Schmidt and the Nocturnal Harmony of Woods Orchestra, written by Reza Ghasemi, have been investigated. In both stories, the reader witnesses the migration of the main character of the story. The main character of Ulysses of Baghdad, Saad, decides to emigrate in order to escape the civil war of citizenship, and in the Nocturnal Harmony of Woods Orchestra that portrays a hyper-realistic narrative of Yadullah's migration, we are looking for the reason for migration and the damages caused by it. Trauma or psychosis following a psychological injury that usually occurs to a person in childhood can have irreparable consequences that are very difficult and even impossible to treat. Migration, especially if it is unwanted, can result in a traumatic injury that sometimes causes multiple tears, feelings of depression, emptiness, loneliness and disorder. A person who experiences migration faces a new world in which many principles and boundaries will change. This comparative study shows that migration, whether voluntary or forced, can have traumatic consequences and transform a person's identity, how it is represented in these works, and how it affects the experiences and relationships of the characters. Also, a narrative of migration, whether realistic or meta-realistic, leads to confusion in the writing and the structure of the story, which indicate a traumatic narrative. Moreover, in this research, we will examine the concept of trauma in two literary works by Eric Emanuel Schmidt and Reza Ghasemi, and we will compare the methods depicted in each of them. The results of this study show that both novels depict trauma as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that affects people's lives in different ways, and on the other hand, the representation of trauma in each novel is unique and the cultural and historical context are reflected in the relevant works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific research is devoted to the disclosure of the most characteristic features and distinctive particularities of the All-Ukrainian festival competition of academic wind music "Magic Flute". This festival-competition has been held by teachers of the academic wind music and percussion department of the Kryvyi Rih Regional Professional Music College for fifty years. The "Magic Flute" is implemented with the constant support of the educational institution's administration and headed by the director of Musical College, L.V. Rakityanska. On the half-century anniversary, the specialized festival competition showed the uniqueness of its creative face. There are maximizing the introduction of various musical and performance forms (solo, ensemble, and orchestral performance on wind and percussion instruments), constant diversification of the repertoire palette (academic masterpieces, works of various cultural and historical periods), involvement of the broadest possible professional wind and percussion academic instruments, as well as artistic and patriotic relaying of the annual holding of this professional and specialized forum of academic wind musicians and percussionists of the Kryvyi Rih region are creating the achievements in the fiftieth anniversary of the artistic life for the "Magic Flute" academic wind festival-competition. The method of historical and comparative analysis of the most significant events in the chronicle of the "Magic Flute" festival-competition, we will emphasize, with the subsequent determination of the stages of formation and development of this large-scale festival-competition event can become a significant prospect for further scientific investigations regarding the specified topic of the presented scientific article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]