University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Faculty of Music Colloquia > To the Ear a Great Compassion: Listening, Counting and Number

  Browse A-Z

Log in

University Account External (via Google)

🔐 Log In

Information on

Subscribing to talksdetails Finding a talkdetails Adding a talkdetails Disseminating talksdetails Help and Documentationdetails

ℹī¸ Information

To the Ear a Great Compassion: Listening, Counting and Number

Download to your calendar using vCal

If you have a question about this talk, please contact .

Well into the nineteenth century, ‘numbers’ referred to the metrical or melodious structures of music or writing. In 1589, George Puttenham employed the term ‘numerosity’ to characterise ‘a certain flowing utterance by slipper words and syllables which… breedeth to the ear a great compassion’. This talk will reflect on the embodied mathematics of listening, especially to poetry and music. Number therefore represents the possibility of a world of absolute indifference. The kind of unconscious counting that is at work in music, that is the work of music, is the effort to capture and neutralise this indifference. But this is in the service of a life that must thereby depend upon and pass through that deathly

This talk is part of the Faculty of Music Colloquia series.

This talk is included in these lists:

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.

Other lists

TECRO Newnham Shell Garage, on Newnham Roundabout (CB3 9EY)/ The Orchard Garden, Grantchester CCFMarine Seminars

Other talks

Cooperation for Nature Advances in Label-Free High-Resolution Molecular Imaging using J Series III Cluster SIMS Animating urbanism: the demotic multiplicities of seeing cities digitally Alicia Anderson discussing some exciting news about HARPS3 Market Failure, Organ Shortage, Pandemic and Climate Change: The Architecture of Cooperation Christopher Cowie on the epistemology of assessing biosignature claims
 

Š 2006-2025 Talks.cam, University of Cambridge. Contact Us | Help and Documentation | Privacy and Publicity