Invictus– the poem that inspired Nelson Mandela
by William Ernest Henly
The following poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henly, a Victorian poet, was published in 1875 and was a deep inspiration to the great Nelson Mandela (July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013)
With so many Chinese musicians on the world stage, it is tempting to make the link between musical ability and language structure, but researchers at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto found that native Cantonese speakers with no musical training processed pitch in much the same way as trained musicians. The effect in Cantonese speakers was found to be even more marked than in those who spoke Mandarin.
“When we looked at tasks that involved the perception of music, tone language speakers performed very much like musicians,” study author Dr. Gavin M. Bidelman, assistant professor at the University of Memphis, told The Huffington Post.
I also think the written language encourages perception of pattern and speech encourages intuition (so few sounds are used, links and meaning must be made in a split second – does this help sight reading ability?).
Here is another article from five years ago.
Thanks to Kenneth Kwan for bringing this to my attention, at the same time as I was reading it! Now, where did I put that Cantonese phrase book?
The National Youth Guitar Ensemble is looking for players, grade 5-6 to audition for this prestigious and fun ensemble.
Do you have young students who enjoy a challenging musical experience playing original works for guitar ensemble?
This year’s guest artists are the Vida Quartet (Mark Eden, Chris Stell, Helen Sanderson, Mark Ashford), and the programme will feature original concertos for guitar quartet and guitar orchestra.
Details below
some more from selftaughtgirl
Even more from selftaughtgirl
More from selftaughtgirl
Pittaluga, Bautista, Jose – firsts, by the great guitarist Ricardo Iznaola. Part of the wonderful archive of BBC broadcasts that selftaughtgirl has posted for us on the internet.
Some very familiar faces, and some no longer with us.
A scary but great competition!
Thanks to Oren Myers for bringing this to my attention.
There were some notable events from this competition – Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, the first prize winner had a tragic accident with the little finger of his left hand; Paul Galbraith, who won second prize was only 17 years old at the time, and there was an incident involving a prize sherry goblet and Eliot Fisk!
Here is a quote from Graham Wade’s second volume on Segovia:
“After the playing of three movements from the set repertoire and a movement from Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, the finalists were Eliot Fisk, Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, Cheryl Grice, Paul Galbraith, Stefano Grondona, and Yoshinobu Iwanaga. The competitors then went into the performance of a concerto and when this was completed the unanimous choice for winner was Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, with the youngest competitor, Paul Galbraith, second, and Stefano Grondona, third.
All finalists were given a silver sherry goblet, though it was at first reported that Eliot Fisk, disappointed with the result, threw his goblet into the moat at Leeds Castle. This story was eventually clarified in an editorial in Guitar where it was reported that the goblet had been thrown from a taxi and later retrieved by the driver, who was allowed to keep the article.”
A few weeks late for a homage , but this is an interesting interview with the Godfather of Punk and cofounder of Velvet Underground in Guitar World, 1998. He was obsessed with guitar technology and did surprising things with guitars!
Here is a nice article summing up the vihuela and its players by Antonio Corona in Atrium Musicologicum, an interesting source for early (and not so early) music articles.