This essay takes up Theodor W. Adorno’s agenda for turning analysis around to show how Alban Berg’s music, specifically his Piano Sonata, op. 1, accomplishes a “permanent re-absorption back into itself” as the realization of a corrupt organicism, an organicism fixated on death and decay instead of growth (1982, 184). A hallmark of this corrupt organicism is the exhaustive use of backward development, where a leap forward in motivic development is filled to make the coherence of contrasting parts more comprehensible. Motivic analysis, traditionally focused on forward development, is ill-equipped to deal with this phenomenon. In order to understand the process of backward development in Berg’s music, then, this essay contributes to a renovation of motivic analysis. I will show that a fatalistic corrupt organicism is not only thematized in the sonata—“a tragic work” that ironically begins with the fated end of its “funereal” closing theme (Carner 1975, 100)—but pervasively effected through exhaustive backward development, exhaustive liquidation, and harmonic re-absorption.

Any tone can succeed any other tone, and any tone can sound simultaneously with any other tone or tones, and any group of tones can be followed by any other group of tones

"The analytic component of my dissertation, “Two Ways of Looking at Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus,” takes two points of entry into the masterwork for piano: the first examines the role of repetition in two of the movements, “Regard de la Vierge” and “Regard du Fils sur le Fils”; the second investigates Messiaen’s synesthesia, analyzing the pitch collections that contributed to his visual perceptions. “Regard de la Vierge” utilizes the juxtaposition of disparate musics in order to create a conflict; pitch-centricity and the sharing of motives unify the movement and contribute to the resolution of the conflict. In “Regard du Fils sur le Fils”, Messiaen re-contextualizes the first movement, labeled the Thème de Dieu, which provides the structural foundations for the superimposition of two additional musics. "

Nos remontamos en este trabajo a la psicología animal y, sobre todo, al inicio de la etología clásica de Konrad Lorenz y Nikolaas Tinbergen para ver cómo fueron redefinidas las conductas animales denominadas 'instintivas' y cómo funcionaban estas. De ahí saltamos a los años 70 con el inicio de la sociobiología de Edward O. Wilson que, apoyándose en la etología y en los desarrollos matemáticos aplicados a la genética, propuso una supuesta nueva síntesis postdarwiniana aplicada a las conductas sociales de especies animales -como los insectos, dada su especialidad en hormigas- y, muy polémicamente, a los comportamientos humanos. Su innatismo genético para las sociedades humanas soliviantó a biólogos como Stephen Jay Gould o Richard Lewontin en duras polémicas en los años 80 del siglo pasado.

Digitalization has been changing the methods of production, distribution, and use of written and audiovisual products, according to a process of “platforming”. Most audiovisual content is available via streaming platforms, through a lot of devices (PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, and videogame consoles), which have empowered the process of media convergence. Based on a theoretical framework related to the impact of the platforms on the ongoing process, we intend to analyse how platforms are changing the identity of the audiovisual industry and how they represent themselves online. In order to analyse the ongoing process, we intend to examine some platforms that could be considered as best practices in the audiovisual field: Netflix, MUBI, and Festival Scope. On the one hand, using these platforms as case studies will enable us to highlight some beneficial aspects of the ongoing process of digitalization and platforming: holding many gazes and points of view; catching market ni...