This study proposes a methodology for constructing a music database for research purposes. We focused on the feasibility of an efficient and reliable technique to collect music stimuli that induce a variety of emotions. We selected iconic phrases from 4 famous classical pieces with 4 controls of scales, respectively. We modified each piece into 4 categories by changing the properties in terms of “mode” (converting a major piece to a minor, or vice versa) and “tempo” (changing the BPM speed faster or slower). We verified our method by a Music Information Retrieval (MIR) system. The MIR analyses showed that most of the pieces were successfully positioned in the intended categories (major/minor mode at a high/low tempo). The result suggests that this may be an efficient method to construct an objective music database that is independent of the psychological evaluations.

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The “hard” diplomacy of the Cold War was accompanied by sustained cultural engagement between East and West, even at times of intense political tension. The article discusses the formal agreements made between the government of the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom between 1959 and 1987 that regulated cultural and scientific relations between the two countries. Using material from the UK’s National Archives, it analyses the motivation for initiating formal inter-governmental cultural agreements in the 1950s and discusses how the process of cultural diplomacy was sustained over the following three decades. The practical implementation of the agreements was sometimes challenging, but both sides persisted and these agreements were renewed every two years. Cultural and academic exchanges became a regular part of the relationship between the two countries during the 1960s and 1970s, with visits by leading cultural companies alongside individual contacts between academics, scientists and students. The political tensions produced by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the UK’s expulsion of 105 Soviet diplomats in 1971 had immediate impact on cultural relations, but the article argues that these effects were short-lived and that cultural diplomacy returned to normal relatively quickly. Cultural diplomacy proved to be too useful for both sides for it to be abandoned, and the article concludes that cultural relations were important in moderating the wider political tensions between the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom during the Cold War.

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The present study describes the physical features and the musical effects of expressive gestures performed by a professional orchestra conductor including a preliminary analysis of interpersonal relationships between a conductor and an orchestral player. I videotaped sequences of orchestra rehearsals by Michiyoshi Inoue (Conductor) and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and used this data in the following analysis. In Analysis 1, I measured the timings and the degrees of synchronization between the physical directions of a conductor and the bowing actions of a concertmaster (a principal violinist regarded as a leader of orchestra) to show the emergent processes of mutual coordinated timing structures. Results show that the largest time differences between their actions were observed on the first day of rehearsals, but those time lags were gradually reduced as the rehearsals proceeded. The longest time lags on the first day may reflect that the conductor made strong efforts to convey his musical intentions to the orchestra rather than to control the precise and/or mechanical timings for their ensemble. In Analysis 2, I sought to investigate the musical and expressive aspects of conductor's gestures on the first day. Through the detailed comparisons with a classification table of the conventional conductor's gestures compiled by Braem & Bräm (2000), the outward appearances and the musical contents of the conductor's gestures on the first day were coded. The conductor and five of orchestral players were interviewed in order to check the conductor's musical intentions underlying his gestures and the players' interpretations or impressions that were conveyed by that conductor's gestures. Findings reveal that the conductor flexibly produced many gesture variations not only in the physical appearances but also in the musical contents, which were beyond the conventional patterns. In some cases the multiple musical directions were simultaneously embodied in a conductor's single gesture in a specific manner which represented the compositional structures. Discussion of these results suggests that the conductor's gestures can be considered as dynamic activities with flexibility and simultaneous multiplicity in meaning, and that these features in the real conductor's gestures must contribute to organizing interpersonally coordinated relationships with the orchestra.

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