Author: Lincoln Ballard File Type: pdf This unique collaboration between a musicologist and two pianists all experts in Russian music takes a fresh look at the supercharged music and polarizing reception of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. From his Chopin-inspired miniatures to his genre-bending symphonies and avant-garde late works, Scriabin left a unique mark on music history. Scriabins death centennial in 2015 brought wider exposure and renewed attention to this pioneering composer. Music lovers who are curious about Scriabin have been torn between specialized academic studies and popular sources that glamorize his interests and activities, often at the expense of historical accuracy. This book bridges the divide between these two branches of literature, and brings a modern perspective to his music and legacy. Drawing on archival materials, primary sources in Russian, and recently published books and articles, Part One details the reception and performance history of Scriabins solo piano and orchestral music. High quality recordings are recommended for each piece. Part Two explores four topics in Scriabins reception the myths generated by Scriabins biographers, his claims to synaesthesia or color-hearing, his revival in 1960s America as a proto-Flower Child, and the charges of anti-Russianness leveled against his music. Part Three investigates stylistic context and performance practice in the piano music, and considers the domains of sound, rhythm, and harmony. It offers interpretive strategies for deciphering Scriabins challenging scores at the keyboard. Students, scholars, and music enthusiasts will benefit from the historical insights offered in this interdisciplinary book. Armed with this knowledge, readers will be able to better appreciate the stylistic innovations and colorful imagination of this extraordinary composer. **

Author: Stephen M. Feldman File Type: pdf This book traces the evolution of the constitutional order, explaining Donald Trumps election as a symptom of a degraded democratic-capitalist system. Beginning with the framers vision of a balanced systembalanced between the public and private spheres, between government power and individual rightsthe constitutional order evolved over two centuries until it reached its present stage, Democracy, Inc., in which corporations and billionaires wield herculean political power. The five conservative justices of the early Roberts Court, including the late Antonin Scalia, stamped Democracy, Inc., with a constitutional imprimatur, contravening the framers vision while simultaneously claiming to follow the Constitutions original meaning. The justices believed they were upholding the American way of life, but they instead placed our democratic-capitalist system in its gravest danger since World War II. With Neil Gorsuch replacing Scalia, the new Court must choose Will it follow the early Roberts Court in approving and bolstering Democracy, Inc., or will it restore the crucial balance between the public and private spheres in our constitutional system?

Author: Paul Coates File Type: pdf What are phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious experiences? How do the phenomenal aspects of conscious experiences relate to brain processes? To what extent do experiences represent the things around us, or the states of our own bodies? Are phenomenal qualities subjective, belonging to inner mental episodes of some kind, and merely dependent on our brains? Or should they be seen as objective, belonging in some way to the physical things in the world around us? Are they physical properties at all? The problematic nature of phenomenal qualities makes it hard to understand how the mind is related to the physical world. There is no settled view about these issues, which concern some of the deepest, and most central, problems in philosophy. Fourteen original papers, written by a team of distinguished philosophers and psychologists and set in context by a full introduction, explore the ways in which phenomenal qualities fit in with our understanding of mind and reality. The topics covered include phenomenal concepts, the relation of sensory qualities to the modalities, the limits of current theories about physical matter problems about the nature of perceptual experience, projectivism, and the extent to which perception is direct non-conceptual content, the representational nature of pain experience, and the phenomenology of thought and issues relating to empirical work on synaesthesia, psychological theories of attention, and prospects for unifying the phenomenal array with neurophysiological accounts of the brain. This volume offers an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience. **

Author: Lisa Hopkins File Type: pdf Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe examines the lives of women whose gender impeded the exercise of their personal, political, and religious agency, with an emphasis on the conflict that occurred when they crossed the edges society placed on their gender. Many of the women featured in this collection have only been afforded cursory scholarly focus, or the focus has been isolated to a specific, (in)famous event. This collection redresses this imbalance by providing comprehensive discussions of the womens lives, placing the matter that makes them known to history within the context of their entire life. Focusing on women from different backgrounds - such as Marie Meurdrac, the French chemist Anna Trapnel, the Fifth Monarchist and prophetess and Cecilia of Sweden, princess, margravine, countess, and regent - this collection brings together a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to bring attention to these previously overlooked women.