Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the Twentieth Century

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Consonant clusters: These multi-consonant patterns can occur at the onset, nucleus, or coda positions in a syllable. It introduces us to thrilling dreamers from the last century who believed that music could fundamentally recalibrate our lives

A complex relationship between the density and pressure of the medium. This relationship, affected by temperature, determines the speed of sound within the medium. Coda clusters: Coda clusters are consonant sequences found at the end of a syllable. Some familiar coda clusters include "st" in "lust" or "ft" in "loft". As with onset clusters, certain combinations are not allowed, like "bd" or "gt". When sound is moving through a medium that does not have constant physical properties, it may be refracted (either dispersed or focused). [5] Spherical compression (longitudinal) wavesL p = 10 log 10 ⁡ ( p 2 p r e f 2 ) = 20 log 10 ⁡ ( p p r e f ) dB {\displaystyle L_{\mathrm {p} }=10\,\log _{10}\left({\frac {{p} These stories could get easily bogged down in musical jargon, but Molleson’s enthusiastic style and eye for character and place give them life. The international sweep of her book is especially compelling when she is travelling: when she is in “dusty, nervy, loud” Jerusalem to meet the 93-year-old bed-bound Ethiopian pianist and former nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, or among the “yellows and fierce golds” of the birthplace (St Petersburg) of Molleson’s refugee grandfather as she explores the brutal dissonance of Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya. Onset clusters: These are consonant clusters that occur at the beginning of a syllable. Certain combinations are allowed in English, such as "pr" in "prey" and "tr" in "tree". However, others are not permitted, like "tl" or "zb". Phonotactics comprises a wide range of rules and restrictions that govern how sounds are combined in any given language. When it comes to the English language, several common phonotactic rules come into play, delineating permissible sound sequences and syllable structures. Below are some of the key phonotactic rules in English:

Consonant-vowel (CV) pattern: This pattern begins with a consonant followed by a vowel, creating many different phonotactic combinations. Applications of acoustics are found in almost all aspects of modern society, subdisciplines include aeroacoustics, audio signal processing, architectural acoustics, bioacoustics, electro-acoustics, environmental noise, musical acoustics, noise control, psychoacoustics, speech, ultrasound, underwater acoustics, and vibration. [3] Definition Despite her compositions being distinctly uncomfortable I think I might have actually enjoyed the company of Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53). Molleson does the next best thing when, in one of the book’s most engaging chapters, she interviews Ruth’s daughter, the folk music legend Peggy Seeger, at her home in Oxford. I too have spent time with Peggy Seeger and if her mother was anything like her she would have been politely intense, single-minded but warm, charming and funny. Quite difficult to reconcile this and her family’s profound association with folk music with Ruth’s challenging, dissonant, avant-garde music. Molleson describes her as ‘wholesome, meticulous…never swore, who crocheted on the porch and read Perry Mason detective novels’, but she was also ‘a sensationally skilled composer…a pioneer of hard-hitting modernism…she composed caustic little piano pieces, blindsidingly intense songs…hers was unapologetic music that blazed a trail for a new national paradigm — or might have done, had she kept going with it’. Trouble was, domesticity, family life and a subservient marriage to a man — her teacher and a composer not nearly as gifted as her — took over and her career and influence in the world of contemporary experimental music waned. She kept composing well after her star had faded but Molleson and Peggy Seeger quite properly lament the lot of creative, talented women in a rigidly uncompromising patriarchal society. Newly published by Faber, Kate Molleson’s ‘Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears To The Twentieth Century’ reaches towards a more expansive definition of classical music, writes Andy Childs. Sound is transmitted through gases, plasma, and liquids as longitudinal waves, also called compression waves. It requires a medium to propagate. Through solids, however, it can be transmitted as both longitudinal waves and transverse waves. Longitudinal sound waves are waves of alternating pressure deviations from the equilibrium pressure, causing local regions of compression and rarefaction, while transverse waves (in solids) are waves of alternating shear stress at right angle to the direction of propagation.This is but the sketchiest outline of oustanding lives that Molleson brings to the fore so vividly. Not all of the music that she talks about is easily available to listen to but there is a fairly decent range of material on Spotify to accompany the reading and give you some idea of what these remarkable characters achieved. She portrays a world of exceptional compositional talent that, had it been given rightful prominence, would have enriched and expanded the domain of modern classical music beyond measure. And I would assume that it’s by no means just an historical problem although thankfully, these days, we have scholars and broadcasters like Molleson to continue the work of redressing the balance. Moved more to centre-stage instead of consigned to the margins, who knows what amazing music might develop? Radio Three should give her her own weekly show in which to feature the lives and work of these marginalised and fascinating composers. It might not always make for easy listening but, as she so clearly argues, their story and their work deserve to be heard and integrated into a long-overdue revisionist appraisal of the music of our time. Sound waves are often simplified to a description in terms of sinusoidal plane waves, which are characterized by these generic properties: The mechanical vibrations that can be interpreted as sound can travel through all forms of matter: gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum. [6] [7] Waves which is also known as the Newton–Laplace equation. In this equation, K is the elastic bulk modulus, c is the velocity of sound, and ρ {\displaystyle \rho } is the density. Thus, the speed of sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio of the bulk modulus of the medium to its density.

Transverse waves, also known as shear waves, have the additional property, polarization, and are not a characteristic of sound waves. Kate Molleson is a distinguished teacher, journalist and broadcaster whose New Music Show on Radio 3 is a crucial component of that station’s gradual and, some may say, long overdue policy of embracing a more inclusive, global concept of what could be termed modern classical music. Think jazz, electronic music, improvisational music, folk, classical, experimental, noise, and combinations thereof. Molleson is a passionate advocate for this more expansive definition of classical music and, as this important and engrossing book establishes, she is particularly engaged in extolling the work and telling the stories of the many composers from around the world whose music has been side-lined, undervalued and ommitted from the mainstream histories. Of the ten composers whose work is discussed here, all were born in the first four decades of the twentieth century and seven are no longer with us. Because their work was adventurous, rule-breaking, often extreme and because they weren’t either white, male, privileged, European, American or born in the right place at the right time, they have never been fully accepted as part of the mainstream narrative of contemporary classical music. As such, this is not only an important book but an ear-opener, a revelation and a portal to another world. A world in which music has an anarchic, organic quality that defies categorization, where music has no boundaries and restrictions, stylistically and geographically, both in form and execution, where innovation and complexity and rigorous musical disciplines work together to stretch and embellish our understanding of what music can be. It introduces us to thrilling dreamers from the last century who believed that music could fundamentally – and disruptively – recalibrate our lives. In Mexico, we meet Julián Carrillo, the youngest of an indigenous family of 19, who becomes a composer obsessed with the possibilities of microscopic intervals between tones (in layperson’s terms, the many tiny gradations of sound between two notes on a keyboard). For instance, vowel combinations like /iu/ and /ai/ occur in words such as 'view' and 'my', while certain consonant clusters are found at the beginning of words like 'train' and 'splendid'.2. Prevent ambiguity: Phonotactic constraints help to avoid confusion and maintain clear word boundaries, ensuring that speech is not misinterpreted by listeners. This is particularly crucial in English, as the language has a large number of homophones. 3. Foreign word adaptation: Phonotactic rules influence the way loanwords are adapted into English, as native speakers tend to modify unfamiliar sound sequences to match those found in their own language. Original (Foreign) WordPhysics Experiment using two tuning forks oscillating usually at the same frequency. One of the forks is being hit with a rubberized mallet. Although only the first tuning fork has been hit, the second fork is visibly excited due to the oscillation caused by the periodic change in the pressure and density of the air by hitting the other fork, creating an acoustic resonance between the forks. However, if we place a piece of metal on a prong, we see that the effect dampens, and the excitations become less and less pronounced as resonance is not achieved as effectively.