The two-fold task of A Symphony of Distances is to provide an overview of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s use of distance imagery with regard to personal distinctions in the Holy Trinity and to offer a critical analysis of him as a modern Catholic theologian. A metaphor of “distance” integrates all of Balthasar’s theological thought as a primary cipher for the many symbols through which he reads the Christian theological tradition in a trinitarian and eschatological mode. The book follows a chronological, four-stage development of Balthasar’s trinitarianism through the lens of this distance metaphor as it occurs across representative texts. The critical analysis employs the conceit of a symphony of four musical movements that correspond to four varieties of theological distance. These distances show certain correspondences of God’s creation and redemption of the world—marked by the first two “distances”—with the relations of the divine persons to each other in the economy of salvation and in the eternal Trinity itself—marked by the third and fourth distances. “Listening” to the four movements of Balthasar’s theological distances enables his readers to “hear” the themes of all four movements in the ascending order of richness, complexity, and inclusivity over the long development of his thought. This fundamentally positive approach of A Symphony of Distances allows for a thorough critique of the internal consistency of Balthasar’s applied method, of the controversial use of gendered trinitarian notions in his speculations on divine pathos, and of his adequacy to the tasks of modern theology. The final judgment is that Balthasar’s theology of distance can be accepted, with reservations, as a positive element of his contribution to contemporary trinitarian theology. The book can thus serve as a critical reference for readers who find Balthasar’s notion of trinitarian distance, and indeed his trinitarianism as a whole, to be compelling, confusing, or frustrating.

Ernst Marti devoted his life to researching the ‘etheric realm’ – a subtle area that exists between the physical and spiritual. Taking the numerous statements and references by Rudolf Steiner as his starting point, Marti develops our understanding of the etheric world in various fields – from the theory of knowledge to the natural world, through to music, the realm of colours, eurythmy and medicine. In doing so, he proposes exciting bridges from the ancient and medieval worldview to the present and future of natural and spiritual science. The Etheric explores the fourfold realm of the ethers. Giving an overview of their cosmic origins in the evolution of the earth, Dr Marti shows how the ethers work in phenomena of warmth, light, sound and organic life. He brings a contemporary understanding and insight to the classical elements – fire, air, water and earth – as the media through which ethericity manifests and works in the world. Four physical forces are also explored which, as opposites to the ethers, have a constant tendency to break down and annul what life-giving ether creates. Dr Marti then studies the shadow aspects of the ethers connected to what he terms the ‘sub-natural’ forces of electricity, magnetism and nuclear force. Given that the author was unable to complete this book in his lifetime, his pupil and colleague Irmgard Rossmann edited the final version in the spirit of her teacher. It is published here in two volumes, with this first focusing on ‘The World of the Ethers’ and the forthcoming volume on ‘The World of Formative Forces’.

For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical transformation with capturing state power. The collapse of these statist projects from the 1970s led to a global crisis of left and working-class politics. But crisis has also opened space for rediscovering alternative society-centered, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, operating at a distance from the state. These have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and Rojava in Syria. They have been a key influence on movements from Occupy in United States, to the landless in Latin America, to anti-austerity struggles in Europe and Asia, to urban movements in Africa. Their lineages include anarchism, syndicalism, autonomist Marxism, philosophers like Alain Badiou, and radical popular praxis. This path-breaking volume recovers this understanding of social transformation, long side-lined but now resurgent, like a seed in the soil that keeps breaking through and growing. It provides case studies with reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and includes a dossier of key texts from a century of anarchists, syndicalists, insurgent unionists and anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Originating in an African summit of radical academics, struggle veterans and social movements, the book includes a preface from John Holloway.

Modern Recording Techniques is the bestselling, authoritative guide to sound and music recording. Whether you’re just starting out or are looking to improve your skills, this book provides an in-depth guide to the art and technologies of music production and is a must-have reference for all audio bookshelves. Using its familiar and accessible writing style, this new edition has been fully updated, presenting the latest production technologies and including detailed coverage of digital audio workstations (DAWs), networked audio, musical instrument digital interface (MIDI), signal processing and much more. Modern Recording Techniques is supported by a host of video tutorials, which provide additional listening and visual examples, making this text essential reading for students, instructors and professionals. This updated tenth edition includes: Newly expanded "Art and Technology" chapters, providing more tips, tricks and insights for getting the best out of your recording, mixing, monitoring and mastering An expanded MIDI chapter to include MIDI 2.0 More in-depth coverage of digital audio and the digital audio workstation Greater coverage of immersive audio, including Dolby Atmos Production

In this study Thomas Peattie offers a new account of Mahler's symphonies by considering the composer's reinvention of the genre in light of his career as a conductor and more broadly in terms of his sustained engagement with the musical, theatrical, and aesthetic traditions of the Austrian fin de siècle. Drawing on the ideas of landscape, mobility, and theatricality, Peattie creates a richly interdisciplinary framework that reveals the uniqueness of Mahler's symphonic idiom and its radical attitude toward the presentation and ordering of musical events. The book goes on to identify a fundamental tension between the music's episodic nature and its often-noted narrative impulse and suggests that Mahler's symphonic dramaturgy can be understood as a form of abstract theatre.

"What can be done about the state of classical music?" Lawrence Kramer asks in this elegant, sharply observed, and beautifully written extended essay. Classical music, whose demise has been predicted for at least a decade, has always had its staunch advocates, but in today’s media-saturated world there are real concerns about its viability. Why Classical Music Still Matters takes a forthright approach by engaging both skeptics and music lovers alike. In seven highly original chapters, Why Classical Music Still Matters affirms the value of classical music—defined as a body of nontheatrical music produced since the eighteenth century with the single aim of being listened to—by revealing what its values are: the specific beliefs, attitudes, and meanings that the music has supported in the past and which, Kramer believes, it can support in the future. Why Classical Music Still Matters also clears the air of old prejudices. Unlike other apologists, whose defense of the music often depends on arguments about the corrupting influence of popular culture, Kramer admits that classical music needs a broader, more up-to-date rationale. He succeeds in engaging the reader by putting into words music’s complex relationship with individual human drives and larger social needs. In prose that is fresh, stimulating, and conversational, he explores the nature of subjectivity, the conquest of time and mortality, the harmonization of humanity and technology, the cultivation of attention, and the liberation of human energy.

Content-based multimedia retrieval is a challenging research field with many unsolved problems. This monograph details concepts and algorithms for robust and efficient information retrieval of two different types of multimedia data: waveform-based music data and human motion data. It first examines several approaches in music information retrieval, in particular general strategies as well as efficient algorithms. The book then introduces a general and unified framework for motion analysis, retrieval, and classification, highlighting the design of suitable features, the notion of similarity used to compare data streams, and data organization.