A whiter shade of pale:

Greaney, Susan

doi:10.2307/j.ctvkjb2v8.18

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…They are a subset of bass lines that traverse a larger interval, often in the context of repetition, as in the chaconne and passacaglia types. The major-mode form of the tetrachord bass often connote images of eternity and stasis-owing in part to their use of cyclic processes (McClary, 2004)-as in, for instance, Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (Brooker et al, 1967), with its clouded allusions to J.S. Bach's "Air" from the Orchestral Suite in D, BWV 1068 (c. 1730).…”

Section: Versementioning

confidence: 99%

Song and dance: a memetic angle on the evolution of musicality and music via case studies of a musemeplex in Saint-Saëns and ABBA

Jan

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Applying the theory of memetics to music offers the prospect of reconciling general Darwinian principles with the style and structure of music. The nature of the units of cultural evolution in music—memes or, more specifically, musemes—can potentially shed light on the evolutionary processes and pressures attendant upon early-hominin musicality. That is, primarily conjunct, narrow-tessitura musemes (those conforming to Ratner's “singing style,” and its instrumental assimilations) and primarily disjunct, wide-tessitura musemes (those conforming to Ratner's “brilliant style,” and its vocal assimilations) appear to be the outcome of distinct cultural-evolutionary processes. Moreover, musemes in each category arguably acquire their fecundity (perceptual-cognitive salience, and thus transmissibility) by appealing to different music-underpinning brain and body subsystems. Given music's status as an embodied phenomenon, both singing-style and brilliant-style musemes recruit and evoke image schemata, but those in the former category draw primarily upon vocal images of line, direction and continuity; whereas those in the latter category draw primarily upon rhythmic impetus and energy. These two museme-categories may have been molded by distinct biological-evolutionary processes—the evolution of fine vocal control, and that of rhythmic synchronisation, respectively; and they might—via the process of memetic drive—have themselves acted as separate and distinct selection pressures on biological evolution, in order to optimize the environment for their replication. As a case-study of (primarily) singing-style musemes, this article argues that a passage from the love duet “Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix” from Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila op. 47 (1877) is the cultural-evolutionary antecedent of the Introduction/Chorus/Outro material of ABBA's song “The Winner Takes It All.” Discussion of their melodic and harmonic similarities supports a memetic link between elements of Saint-Saëns' duet and ABBA's song. These relationships of cultural transmission are argued to have been impelled by the fecundity of the shared musemes, which arises from the image-schematic and embodied effects of the implication-realisation structures (in Narmour's sense) that comprise them; and which is underwritten by the coevolution of musemes with vocal- and rhythmic-production mechanisms, and associated perceptual-cognitive schemata.

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Section: Versementioning

confidence: 99%

Song and dance: a memetic angle on the evolution of musicality and music via case studies of a musemeplex in Saint-Saëns and ABBA

Jan

2024

Front. Psychol.

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“…Interest in the common snowdrop and in the breeding of new cultivars is mainly present in England, where species G. nivalis does not occur naturally. It is planted en masse in gardens, in which other species of this genus appear [22,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. In addition to these natural species and subspecies, a large number of varieties were found in the gardens and thus many new cultivars were grown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Cultivars of Galanthus nivalis in Slovenia

Bavcon,

Ravnjak

2024

Plants

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In Slovenia there is only one species of common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis L.) that occurs in all four of its phytogeographical regions. Slovenia is located in the center of the distribution of this species. At some sites the subpopulations of snowdrop are common and abundant, but at other sites they may consist of only a few individuals within small populations. Galanthus nivalis occurs in a diversity of habitats and individual plants within stands are extremely variable in many of their characteristics. The purpose of this research is to determine the diversity within the species and to identify new stable variants that are interesting for horticultural purposes and use. We examined plants in populations that were the most diverse and isolated individual characteristics from them, which we then cultivated for several years and determined their stability. We found two new varieties that have a very distinctive smell, and one of the new varieties retains its outer perigone leaves completely closed at the end of flowering. The new varieties belong to three different groups: the Skirt group, the Imperial group and the Green group.

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‘Connoisseurs of Stone’: Everyday Sarsen Stone in Neolithic Britain

Whitaker¹

2022

Proc. Prehist. Soc.

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Sarsen stone boulders are familiar components of numerous British Neolithic megalithic monuments. Non-monumental uses of sarsen stone are, however, less well understood. This paper focuses on non-megalithic sarsen and its roles for communities, using case studies from three sites spanning the Neolithic in Wiltshire. Published data from Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure and analysis, using a new methodology, of recently excavated material from the West Kennet Avenue occupation site, and Marden henge enclosure are used to explore the varied ways in which sarsen was used. Rather than being an expedient ‘mundane’ stone this analysis demonstrates that non-megalithic sarsen could be just as meaning-laden as other more ‘attractive’ (larger, exotic) material. Daily encounters with sarsen stone for different purposes and in varied quotidian contexts afforded it with values which likely contributed to its use in monumental contexts. The importance of attending to sarsen in its multiple forms and contexts is thus made clear.

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A whiter shade of pale:

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Song and dance: a memetic angle on the evolution of musicality and music via case studies of a musemeplex in Saint-Saëns and ABBA

Song and dance: a memetic angle on the evolution of musicality and music via case studies of a musemeplex in Saint-Saëns and ABBA

New Cultivars of Galanthus nivalis in Slovenia

‘Connoisseurs of Stone’: Everyday Sarsen Stone in Neolithic Britain

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