This study demonstrates how smooth voice leading in music can be effectively modeled using concepts from abstract algebra. Minute voice-leading displacements are explained as iterations of the basic operation, the single-semitone transformation (SST). The SST is a type of transformation in which only a single voice in a chord is transposed by a semitone. Unlike previous music theoretic studies, the SST model does not rely on twelve-tone operations on sets to determine voice-leading paths. SST-succession classes can then be defined; they allow SSTs to be generalized as parsimonious voice-leading relations between pair-ordered set classes. Voice leading between chords of different “sizes” can be obtained through split and fuse operations. Once a mathematical basis for smooth voice-leading is formalized, 3D graphical representations in the form of lattices of parsimoniously related chord types can be developed. The study compares the single-voice transformational model to transformational theories of atonal voice leading and to recent work in the emergent field of neo-Riemannian theory. The final chapter examines music from tonal, atonal, and “post-atonal” stylistic periods by Chopin, Scriabin, Webern, Paul Lansky, and John Adams, showing the new voice-leading model’s versatility as an analytical tool.

Winner of the 2022 Vincent H. Duckles Award, Music Library Association John Adams: A Research and Information Guide offers the first comprehensive guide to the musical works and literature of one of the leading American composers of our time. The research guide catalogs and summarizes materials relating to Adams’s work, providing detailed annotated bibliographic entries for both primary and secondary sources. Covering writings by and interviews with Adams, books, journal articles and book chapters, newspaper articles and reviews, dissertations, video recordings, and other sources, the guide also contains a chronology of Adams’s life, a discography, and a list of compositions. Robust indexes enable researchers to easily locate sources by author, composition, or subject. This volume is a major reference tool for all those interested in Adams and his music, and a valuable resource for students and researchers of minimalism, contemporary American music, and twentieth-century music more broadly.

This volume deals with shifts and changes that took place during the Middle Ages when things, or ideas, or writings, were transferred from time to time, place to place, or one ideological realm to another. The same objects, ideas, or texts changed their meaning, impact, or symbolic value according to different contexts. The twelve papers, written by leading experts, investigate the authority attributed to texts and their canonization in different contexts; the shifting uses and meanings of gifts, from honorable instruments in the settlement of disputes to corruption and bribery; and the transition of violence and power from relationships between equals to a tool for the maintenance of hierarchies. Contributors include: Gadi Algazi, Monique Bernards, Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Esther Cohen, Valentin Groebner, Yitzhak Hen, Mayke de Jong, Rob Meens, Marco Mostert, Thomas F.X. Noble, Timothy Reuter, Hendrik Teunis, and Stephen D. White.

Engage the delightful and inspiring, sometimes rough and rocky road to inclusive and transformative Bible reading This book offers the results of research within a new area of discipline—empirical hermeneutics in intercultural perspective. The book includes interpretations from the homeless in Amsterdam, to Indonesia, from African Xhosa readers to Norway, to Madagascar, American youths, Germany, Czech Republic, Colombia, and Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic. Features: Interpretations from ordinary readers in more than twenty-five countries Background introduction with history of the text Discussion of intertextual connections with Greco-Roman authors

THE FLAME OF TRANSFORMATION TURNS TO LIGHT is a book of poems in traditional ghazal form, the first half begun in Turkey, companion volume to "open form" poems written at a later visit, published in 2006 as Love is a Letter Burning in a High Wind (The Ecstatic Exchange). Visiting the epiphany-inducing tombs of Mevlana Rumi and his spiritual companion Shems in Konya, their baraka bathing the journey, the grave of Turkey's great native Sufi poet, Yunus Emre, and traveling through a land of such subtle spirituality, these poems chronicle an imagistic diary through both interior and exterior countrysides, with the second half continued in the same vein at home in Philadelphia.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary investigation of a critical moment in the evolution of religious thought—from the New York Times bestselling author of A History of God and The Spiral Staircase “A splendid book.... Lucid, highly readable.... Relevant to a world still embroiled in military conflict and sectarian hatreds.” —The New York Times In the ninth century BCE, events in four regions of the civilized world led to the rise of religious traditions that have endured to the present day—development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Armstrong, one of our most prominent religious scholars, examines how these traditions began in response to the violence of their time. Studying figures as diverse as the Buddha and Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah, Armstrong reveals how these still enduring philosophies can help address our contemporary problems.

Common Worship is ten years old. In this volume, Nicholas Papadopulos gathers contributions from distinguished liturgical practitioners to assess its development and reflect upon its usage in this first decade. In a series of penetrating and thought-provoking essays, ten authors consider Common Worship's emergence from earlier liturgical revisions. They examine its provisions for the Eucharist, baptism and ordination, as well as for the Service of the Word. The effective use of music and architecture is also considered, as are the training needs of worship leaders and the Church's liturgical future.