9.509 Programming issue; LUDWIG list

Humanist (mccarty@phoenix.Princeton.EDU)
Wed, 31 Jan 1996 18:58:44 -0500 (EST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 509.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Eric Johnson <johnsone@jupiter.dsu.edu> (74)
Subject: Programming and the Humanities: Last Call

[2] From: Postmaster@attach.edu.ar (220)
Subject: LUDWIG list announcement

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 05:57:14 -0600 (CST)
From: Eric Johnson <johnsone@jupiter.dsu.edu>
Subject: Programming and the Humanities: Last Call

(Revised) CALL FOR PAPERS

Note new deadline: March 15, 1996

Special Issue of _Computers and the Humanities_
on
Computer Programming for the Humanities

Guest Editor
Eric Johnson <JohnsonE@columbia.dsu.edu>

TOPICS: Submissions of articles are invited that focus on any
aspect of computer programming for the humanities -- including
articles on topics such as the following:

Programming methodologies and software design principles
used to create computer programs in the humanities;

In particular, description of facets of humanities
programming which distinguish it from other kinds of
programming;

An overview (or projection of the future) of programming for
the humanities using

C and C++
Icon
Pascal
Perl
SNOBOL4 and SPITBOL
other computer languages

Descriptions of actual programming experiences (recently
finished or in progress) which raise significant questions
and problems.

Description of a specific programming application (or a type
of application) for the humanities -- including the visual
arts, drama, history, and music as well as literature and
linguistics.

In addition to technical papers, general discussion or opinion
papers are invited on topics that grapple with questions such as
the following:

Do humanists who create computer programs do so in ways
different from computer scientists? Do they more (or less)
readily grasp an overview of a computing problem and see the
general framework of a solution? Do they write computer
code differently? Do they prefer particular computer
languages?

Occasionally those with humanities educations and solid
academic positions in the humanities assume positions
normally held only by those with degrees in computer
science. How is that possible? Do those with educations in
computer science ever assume positions in the humanities?

LENGTH: Articles of any length will be considered. It is
expected that articles will range from 2,500 to 12,000 words --
except for opinion articles or overview articles which might be
shorter.

FORMAT: Submissions should be in the same form as regular
submissions to Computers and the Humanities:

they should begin with the following information:

Title of paper
Name of author(s)
Affiliation of author(s) including email address
List of up to 10 key words
Abstract of article

followed by the text of the paper with a blank line between
paragraphs.

All notes should be collected at the end of the paper under the
heading of "Notes." A section titled "References" or "Works
Cited" (if needed) is the last part of the paper.

SUBMISSION: All submissions should be via electronic media --
email and FTP are strongly encouraged. Articles that can be
saved as ASCII files (with line breaks and lines no longer than
80 characters) should be sent via email to the guest editor, Eric
Johnson, at

JohnsonE@columbia.dsu.edu

The guest editor should be contacted via email at the above
address about arrangements to transmit articles containing
special characters or graphics that cannot be saved as ASCII
files.

DEADLINE: March 15, 1996

Writers are encouraged to contact the guest editor to ask
questions or to express interest in contributing to the special
issue prior to emailing submissions.

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 12:07:56 +0000
From: Postmaster@attach.edu.ar
Subject: LUDWIG list announcement

A new list is up on the Internet: discussions on the life and works
of Ludwig Van Beethoven.

LUDWIG ON LISTSERV@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU - discussions on the life
and works of Ludwig van Beethoven. LUDWIG is a moderated
discussion list devoted to all aspects pertaining to the life and
musical compositions of the great German composer Ludwig van
Beethoven.

Contents
"""""""""
1. Introduction
2. Abstract of Beethoven's Biography
3. Methodology of discussions on the Ludwig network
______________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction

The LUDWIG mailing list for discussions of all aspects of the
life and works of the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven,
welcomes discussions of any topic directly related to Beethoven's
musical compositions, as well as contemporary and past
performances of his musical pieces.

2. Abstract of Beethoven's Biography

Ludwig van Beethoven was born December 16, 1770, in Bonn.
Beethoven was reared in stimulating, although unhappy,
surroundings. His early signs of musical talent were subjected to
the capricious discipline of his father, a singer in the court
chapel. In 1789, because of his father's alcoholism, the young
Beethoven began supporting his family as a court musician. His
early compositions under the tutelage of the composer Christian
Gottlob Neefe particularly the funeral cantata on the death
(1790) of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II signaled an important
talent, and it was planned that Beethoven study in Vienna with
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although Mozart's death (1791) prevented
this, Beethoven went to Vienna in 1792 and became a pupil of the
Austrian composer Joseph Haydn.

In Vienna, Beethoven dazzled the aristocracy with his piano
improvisations; meanwhile, he entered into increasingly favorable
arrangements with Viennese music publishers. In composition he
steered a middle course between the stylistic extravagance of
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and what the public had perceived as
the overrefinement of Mozart. The broadening market for
published music enabled him to succeed as a free-lance composer,
a path that Mozart a decade earlier had found full of frustration.
In the first decade of the 19th century Beethoven renounced the
sectional, loosely constructed style of works such as the popular
Septet op. 20, for strings and winds, and turned to a fresh
expansion of the musical language bequeathed by Haydn and Mozart.
Despite his exaggerated claim that the had never learned anything
from Haydn, he had gone so far as to seek additional instruction
from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Beethoven soon revealed his
complete assimilation of the Viennese classical style in every
major instrumental genre: symphony, concerto, string quartet, and
sonata. The majority of the works for which he is most readily
remembered today were composed during the decade bounded by the
Symphony no. 3 (Eroica, begun 1803; first performed, 1805) and the
Symphony no. 8 (1812), a period known as his heroic decade.

Beethoven's fame reached its zenith during these years, but the
steadily worsening hearing impairment that he had first noted in
1798 led to an increasing sense of social isolation. Gradually
Beethoven settled into a pattern of shifting residences, spending
the summer in the Viennese suburbs Heiligenstadt was a favorite
choice and moving back to the central city in the fall. In 1802,
in his celebrated Heiligenstadt Testament, a quasi-legal letter
to his two brothers, he expressed his agony over his growing
deafness.

After 1805 accounts of Beethoven's eccentricities multiply. He
performed in public only rarely and made his last appearance in
1814. Although reports circulated among Beethoven's friends that
he was constantly in love, he tended to choose unattainable women,
aristocratic or married or both. In his letter to the Immortal
Beloved (presumably never sent and now dated at 1812), he
expressed his conflicting feelings for the woman who may have been
the sole person ever to reciprocate his declarations. The
long-debated riddle of her identity was solved beyond reasonable
doubt in 1977 by the American musicologist Maynard Solomon. She
was Antonie Brentano, the wife of a Frankfurt merchant and a
mother of four. Conceivably, Beethoven's sense of virtue and fear
of marriage contributed to his flight from this relationship, with
its deeply shattering conflicts.

In 1815, on the death of his older brother, Casper Carl,
Beethoven devoted his emotional energies to a costly legal
struggle with his sister-in-law for custody of her nine-year-old
son Karl. The mother received a temporarily favorable ruling, and
only the intervention in 1820 of Beethoven's most powerful patron,
the Archduke Rudolph, won the composer custody of his nephew.
Beethoven was not an ideal parent and enormous friction developed
between the two, contributing to Karl's attempted suicide in 1826.
By 1818 Beethoven had become virtually deaf and relied on small
conversation books, in which visitors wrote their remarks to him.
He withdrew from all but a steadily shrinking circle of friends.
Except for the premieres of his Symphony no. 9 and parts of the
Missa solemnis in 1824, his music remained fashionable only among
a small group of connoisseurs. His prestige was still such,
however, that during his last illness he received huge outpourings
of sympathy. He died in Vienna on March 26, 1827; tens of
thousands witnessed his funeral procession.

Musical Development

Beethoven's major output consists of 9 symphonies, 7 concertos (5
for piano), 17 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 sonatas for
violin and piano, 5 sonatas for cello and piano, an opera, 2
masses, several overtures, and numerous sets of piano variations.

He has traditionally been referred to as the bridge to
romanticism, and his output is simplistically divided into three
roughly equal periods. Today most scholars view him as the last
great representative of the Viennese classical style, a composer
who at two important junctures in his life turned away from the
aesthetic of the emerging romantic period in favor of renewed
exploration of the legacy of Haydn and Mozart.

After arriving in Vienna Beethoven alternated between
compositions based openly on classical models, such as the String
Quartet in A Major op. 18 no. 5 (1800; patterned on Mozart's
String Quartet K. 464) and those based on looser Italianate
structures, such as the song Adelaide (1795).

The new manner that Beethoven referred to in 1802 marks his first
return to the Viennese classical tradition. Although his works of
the decade 1802-12 project a heroic aura, musically they
represent an expansion of the tighter forms of Haydn and Mozart.
This is apparent both in works of unprecedented scope, such as the
Eroica Symphony and the Piano Concerto no. 5 (Emperor, 1809), and
in stylistically compressed works such as the Symphony no. 5
(1808) and the Piano Sonata op. 57 (Appassionata, 1805). In these
works he proved that a style founded on unprecedented thematic
integration and on the harmonic polarization achieved by
manipulating opposing keys could produce works of remarkable
expressive power.

The completion of the Symphony no. 8 and the fading of hopes for
a successful relationship with the Immortal Beloved left Beethoven
in a sea of compositional uncertainty. The prodigious output of
the previous decade ceased. The few works of the years after 1812
such as the op. 98 song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the
Distant Beloved, 1816) and the Piano Sonata in A Major op. 101
(1817) took on an experimental hue, reviving and expanding on the
more relaxed musical structures Beethoven had employed in the
1790s. This handful of open-ended, cyclic works of this period
exercised the most direct musical influence on the succeeding
generation of romantic composers (apparent, for example, in the
song cycles of Robert Schumann).

In 1818 Beethoven inaugurated a second return to the tightly
structured heroic style. The move was marked by the Piano Sonata
in B-flat Major op. 106 (Hammerklavier), a work ofunprecedented
length and difficulty that left behind theaccomplished amateur
performer once and for all.

The works of Beethoven's last period, rather than being composed
in sets or even in pairs, are each marked by an individuality
that later composers could admire but scarcely emulate. In the
Ninth Symphony and the Missa solemnis he gave expression to an
all-embracing view of idealized humanity more rooted in the
Enlightenment than in Roman Catholic doctrine, and more compelling
than the equally lofty ideals portrayed a decade earlier in his
only opera, Fidelio (1814).

The dominant private dimension of Beethoven's late style gave
rise to the five string quartets of 1824-26, the last two of which
were written without commissions. In these works Beethoven
achieved an ideal synthesis between popular and learned styles,
between the humorous and the sublime. Judged inaccessible in their
time, the string quartets have become as has so much of his music
yardsticks against which all other musical achievements are
measured.

Beethoven's lifelong habit of sketching musical compositions as
he worked them out became even more important as he grew older.
The more than 7000 pages of drafts entered outdoors on scraps of
paper or in small notebooks, as well as the more extensive
notebooks he filled up indoors, form one of Western music's most
enduring monuments to musical creativity.

Influence

Beethoven towered over the 19th century, embodying the heroic
ideal and the romantic image of the artist; yet his explicit
musical influence was limited. For some composers such as
Johannes Brahms, who produced no symphony until his 40s
Beethoven's presence was paralyzing. Richard Wagner invoked
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, particularly its choral finale, as
support for his own vision of the music drama. Not until the late
romantic symphonies of Anton Bruckner and, especially, those of
Gustav Mahler was Beethoven's symphonic ideal carried to what
many regard as its final stage of development. Today Beethoven's
works form the backbone of orchestral and chamber music
repertoires the world over.

_____________________________________________________________________

Methodology of discussions on the LUDWIG network
_____________________________________________________________________

For the benefit of the list and its members we ask that you ...

o check that you are mailing your message to the appropriate
recipient: personal messages to the person, collective messages
to the mailing list, administrative commands to the listserver

o use a " message

o quote selectively from posts that you respond to, for the
most part, a complete quote is not necessary

o favour short messages over long messages, unless the topic
requires a long message

o if you disagree with what someone has said, respond to the
message -- don't attack the person

Please try to avoid diatribes and personal abuse, but do not
refrain from criticism whenever you find it fit if you have
grounds to do so. Personal announcements, any form of publicity or
advertising, -particularly records and tapes -be it commercial,
technical, personal, and so on- will be strongly discouraged, as
well as discussions that do not relate to Beethoven's life and
works.

Many people on this list may have differing opinions from your
own. If they didn't, there would't be anything to discuss about.
So feel free to differ and elaborate on your reasons to do so as
long as you wish, but be RATIONAL, not emotional. In case you are
a musical critic or a musicologist, do not substantiate your
arguments on quotations from your own literature. If you are a
musician or a music teacher, do not try to impose your views on
others by merely resorting to your own alleged long successful
experience, just express your opinion. Matters of seniority and
renown are considered irrelevant to discussions, it doesn't
matter WHO states such and such, but WHAT she or he says.

To subscribe to LUDWIG, send the following command to
Listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu in the BODY of e-mail:

SUBSCRIBE LUDWIG yourfirstname yourlastname

For example: SUBSCRIBE LUDWIG Max Doe

Owner: Juan C. Garelli <Lagare@attach.edu.ar>

-----------------end of announcement---------------------

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