Further findings related to the confusion, reported here a few days ago, and elsewhere years ago, about Beethoven and his markings and his metronome: “Conductors’ Tempo Choices Shed Light over Beethoven’s Metronome,” Almudena Martin-Castro and Iñaki Ucar, PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 12, 2020, e0243616. (Thanks to Xavier Purroy Solans for bringing this to our […]
Tag: Beethoven
Was Something Wrong with Beethoven’s Metronome?
Was something wrong with Beethoven’s metronome? Well, was something wrong? Well? A fair number of people have tried hard to find out. Four of them produced this mathematics-based analysis: “Was Something Wrong with Beethoven’s Metronome?” Sture Forsén, Harry B. Gray, L.K. Olof Lindgren, and Shirley B. Gray, Notices of the AMS, vol. 60, no. 9, […]
Beethoven for elephants
When all else fails, watch this video that documents Beethoven for elephants:
Happy New Year: Beaker’s Ode to Joy
For New Year’s Eve, a traditional song: Beaker’s Ode to Joy: BONUS: David Attenborough’s rendition of “What a Wonderful World” (HT Margo Howard and Ann Crichton-Harris): BONUS: “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”
Music against cancer in Brazil
Research underway at the Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is investigating whether music might be able to fight cancer. Dr. Márcia Alves Marques Capella and colleagues performed a series of tests in 2010, exposing dish-cultures of both healthy and cancerous cells to audio playbacks of […]
The Big Bank Opera (video)
“The Big Bank Opera” premiered as a featured part of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Here’s the entire mini-opera — Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Act 4 — each as a separate episode (#124-7) of the Improbable Research TV series. The video displayed below is Act 3, which is called “The Big […]