L'existence des neutrinos a été postulée dans les années trente par Pauli. Ces particules de spin 1/2 et de masse nulle ont permis de résoudre les problèmes de la désintégration beta. Leur étude expérimentale a commencé dans les années cinquante et se poursuit encore de nos jours. Cette longévité en physique des particules expérimentale est liée à leur détection difficile et aux énigmes qu'ils présentent. En particulier il est systématiquement détecté moins de neutrinos que ce qui est prédit pour les neutrinos solaires et pour les neutrinos atmosphériques, ce qu'on peut expliquer par un phénomène d'oscillation de neutrinos massifs. <br> Le projet OPERA se propose de prouver directement cette oscillation. Pour cela un faisceau de nu_mu sera produit au CERN et dirigé vers le Gran Sasso en Italie à 732 km de distance. Le détecteur a été optimisé pour mettre en évidence l'apparition du neutrino tau, produit de l'oscillation nu_mu --> nu_tau. Ce détecteur de 30 mètres de long et de 2 000 tonnes de cible sera composé de plus de 200 000 briques de plomb et d'émulsions photographiques. Les leptons taus seront mis en évidence après scanning des émulsions. Pour cela les briques devront être localisées dans le détecteur, et cette localisation sera réalisée par un trajectographe placé derrière chaque mur de briques. <br> Cette thèse avait pour but de déterminer le meilleur trajectographe pour OPERA. Trois options ont été étudiées et un trajectographe constitué de barreaux de scintillateur plastique a été choisi. Il permet d'avoir une efficacité de localisation du mur du vertex d'environ 80% et une efficacité de localisation de la brique à l'intérieur du mur d'environ 80%. Dans ce contexte d'utilisation de scintillateurs, nous avons testé des photo détecteurs de type HPD avec une électronique auto déclenchable. Ces HPD ont montré une très bonne résolution, une diaphonie inférieure à 2% et une uniformité supérieure à 98%. Une acquisition basée sur Ethernet a été proposée et acceptée par la collaboration. Chaque photo détecteur constituera directement un noeud du réseau. Un modèle complet de trajectographe constitué de barreaux de scintillateur lus par une HPD et une électronique auto déclenchable avec une acquisition par Ethernet a été validé pendant des tests sur faisceau.

Les travaux de recherche présentés dans cette thèse étudient la vitesse des neutrinos mesurée par l'expérience OPERA sur le faisceau CNGS au CERN. Divers modèles théoriques de gravité quantique et d'extra-dimensions prévoient des effets importants sur la violation de la conservation de Lorentz qui serait observable par la mesure de la vitesse des neutrinos. L'expérience MINOS a publié en 2007 une mesure de la vitesse des neutrinos muoniques sur une distance de 730 km avec un écart par rapport à celui de la lumière de 126 ns avec une erreur statistique de 32 ns et une erreur systématique de 64 ns. L'expérience OPERA détecte également des neutrinos muoniques ayant parcourut 730 km avec une sensibilité significativement meilleure que MINOS grâce à une statistique plus élevée due à l'énergie plus élevée du faisceau et à le système de synchronisation entre OPERA et le faisceau CNGS beaucoup plus sophistiquée et modifié dans le but de réduire l'erreur systématique. Ce système est composé par des horloges au césium et de récepteurs GPS spéciaux fonctionnant en common view mode. Le tout permet un time transfer entre les deux sites précis à l'ordre de 1 ns. Un système d'échantillonnage à 1 GHz (fast waveform digitizer) capable de reconstruire la distribution temporelle des protons envoyés sur la cible du CNGS a été intégré au système existant de mesure du faisceau CNGS. Le résultat consiste en la mesure de la vitesse des neutrinos produits artificiellement avec la précision la plus élevée jamais atteinte : le temps de vol des neutrinos a été déterminé avec une incertitude statistique d'environ 10 ns et une incertitude systématique plus petite de 20 nanosecondes.

<p>The present thesis explores factors and processes associated with the artistic profession and development of opera singers. The profession of opera singers has a long story deriving its origin in early 1600s in Italy. What is performed on opera stages today is written in the musical scores in the 18th and 19th century. The question arises how the modern opera singers live, learn and excel in their contemporary pursuit in order to meet the high demands on performance. The initial study identified health issues related to the professional activity of opera singers. Qualitative and quantitative measurements indicated that psychological problems were associated with a distinct worry for possible negative evaluation from significant others and a fear of vocal indisposition. A range of health-promoting activities was demonstrated aiming at preventing the occurrence of somatic problems that could cause vocal indisposition. Psychosocial problems concerned difficulties to maintain a family life and relations due to irregular working hours. In Study II, the psychological and physiological effects of singing lessons were investigated with respect to amateur and professional levels of singing experiences. Amateur singers experienced more well-being measured by self-reports of emotional states and by lower levels of stress hormones than professionals. In Study III, narrative accounts were collected to identify factors and processes in the artistic development during higher opera education. A descriptive model was created that embraced the development of various skills such as singing technique, means of expressiveness and interpersonal skills. Outcome variables from the education were artistic autonomy, artistic competence and change in self-concept. In Study IV, personality characteristics were assessed among elite students in opera and business education representing an artistic versus a traditional educational streaming. Female opera students, female business and male business students shared the personality characteristic of extraversion indicating a disposition towards sensation seeking. Male opera singers exhibited a profile of elevated levels of emotionality. In general, the findings across the studies demonstrate that the individual development of operatic artistry is a complex process where health-related issues, personality characteristics, skills acquisition and sociocultural values are critical constituents. A major result was the marked focus on the instrument per se, the voice. Vocal functioning in singing was described as a means of enabling operatic singing, a mode for artistic expression and indicator of health.</p>

<p>I am a practising classical soprano. After more than 20 years of professional singing, I re-trained my voice according to principles of the old Italian school of singing. In this essay, I examine the origins and priciples of bel canto, with special focus on appoggio and chiaroscuro, two key ingredients in the bel cantao tradition. I explore the relationship between science and the craft of singing, and what modern voice science has to say about the efficiency and health aspects of this technique, I also describe the profound effect it has had on me as an artist.</p>

Thesis (M.Mus.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The objective of this essay is to study technical problems and performance issues in the piano-reduction accompaniments of three solo arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni: “Or sai chi l’onore,” “Dalla sua pace la mia dipende,” and “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto.” This study is executed through the comparative analysis of the arias’ accompaniments from four piano-vocal score editions of the opera (Bärenreiter, G. Schirmer, Ricordi, and Boosey & Hawkes) with cross-reference to the full orchestral score (the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe). The essay contains a detailed presentation of the merits and flaws of each of the four piano-vocal score editions; a discussion of the realizations’ quality; examples by the author of plausible modifications; and the author’s suggestions for practice, fingering, pedaling, and dealing with various performance issues. This essay can provide a stimulus for vocal pianists to explore the countless possibilities in piano realizations of the orchestral accompaniments of operatic works, and to continue to refine and improve their ability to imitate orchestral sonorities and textures at the piano.

The present thesis explores factors and processes associated with the artistic profession and development of opera singers. The profession of opera singers has a long story deriving its origin in early 1600s in Italy. What is performed on opera stages today is written in the musical scores in the 18th and 19th century. The question arises how the modern opera singers live, learn and excel in their contemporary pursuit in order to meet the high demands on performance. The initial study identified health issues related to the professional activity of opera singers. Qualitative and quantitative measurements indicated that psychological problems were associated with a distinct worry for possible negative evaluation from significant others and a fear of vocal indisposition. A range of health-promoting activities was demonstrated aiming at preventing the occurrence of somatic problems that could cause vocal indisposition. Psychosocial problems concerned difficulties to maintain a family life and relations due to irregular working hours. In Study II, the psychological and physiological effects of singing lessons were investigated with respect to amateur and professional levels of singing experiences. Amateur singers experienced more well-being measured by self-reports of emotional states and by lower levels of stress hormones than professionals. In Study III, narrative accounts were collected to identify factors and processes in the artistic development during higher opera education. A descriptive model was created that embraced the development of various skills such as singing technique, means of expressiveness and interpersonal skills. Outcome variables from the education were artistic autonomy, artistic competence and change in self-concept. In Study IV, personality characteristics were assessed among elite students in opera and business education representing an artistic versus a traditional educational streaming. Female opera students, female business and male business students shared the personality characteristic of extraversion indicating a disposition towards sensation seeking. Male opera singers exhibited a profile of elevated levels of emotionality. In general, the findings across the studies demonstrate that the individual development of operatic artistry is a complex process where health-related issues, personality characteristics, skills acquisition and sociocultural values are critical constituents. A major result was the marked focus on the instrument per se, the voice. Vocal functioning in singing was described as a means of enabling operatic singing, a mode for artistic expression and indicator of health.

This study considers the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted in cross-cultural contexts from the nineteenth century to the present, specifically in Europe and India, through the media of opera and film. I bring into dialogue reception theory, adaptation studies, Shakespeare scholarship, musicology, film studies, and postcolonial theory in order to examine the mechanisms of Shakespeare’s reception in these two culturally diverse regions of the globe, and argue that there are significant parallels between European and Indian adaptations of Shakespeare. Despite the different cultural and political histories of the two regions, Shakespeare’s plays reached out to local audiences only when they were modified in order to make them relevant to the cultural and ideological concerns of the new audiences that were far removed from Shakespeare’s own. Moving away from understanding Shakespeare’s reception either in terms of the dramatist’s “universal appeal” or in terms of colonial instrumentality, as has usually been the case, I argue that such predetermined critical paradigms take away from what in Shakespeare various cultures have found truly valuable, truly affective. Moreover, I argue that the degree of transculturation, both with European and Indian adaptations, is greater when Shakespeare is adapted in media that involves performance, than when he is adapted in a purely verbal medium, such as translations. This process of indigenization through performance, one that I have termed “performative transculturation,” has opened up fresh avenues of cross-cultural exchange over the ages. The works I examine in detail are Ambroise Thomas’ opera Hamlet, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar’s Bhrantibilash, a prose adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, and Vishal Bhardwaj’s films Maqbool and Omkara, based on Macbeth and Othello respectively.

<p>This thesis examines how multilingual spaces in South Africa are imagined and reconstructed through the use of scripted codeswitching in 7de Laan. It explores how the socio-political discourses and other ideologies from the broader South African context shape and influence the ways in which the soap reconstructs multilingual spaces and the identities that exist within these spaces through language and language practices. In the literature presented in this study I explore various theories and case studies that examine Afrikaans and its indexicality in our&nbsp / contemporary society, the conventions of soap opera in representing &lsquo / reality&rsquo / to society, the role of codeswitching in multilingual mass communication, the policies and ideologies that govern post apartheid television and finally the link between ideology, the media, language and imagined identities.. These five overarching themes often overlap throughout this thesis. My investigation of the main questions set in this thesis is based on a triangulated analysis of (a) a five episode transcript of the soap, (b) solicited viewer perceptions gleaned from questionnaires and (c) unsolicited social media commentaries. This analysis is framed by a poststructuralist critical analysis with a specific focus on how social practices and contemporary ideologies manifest in the discourse of the soap. This approach views discourse as the juncture where identity, stereotypes and power are negotiated, enforced, imagined and challenged. In this thesis I argue that the conspicuous absence of indigenous African languages and the use of standard white Afrikaans as the lingua franca in the soap creates an unrealistic utopian portrayal of the new South Africa that naturalises white Afrikaans culture and marginalises other indigenous cultures and languages. I argue that the soap puts middle class white Afrikaners at the epicentre of South African society thus enforcing the idea that non-whites still need to conform to white Afrikaans standards and norms at the expense of their own culture and languages despite the inception of democracy. The soap offers no depictions of resistance to this dominant white Afrikaans culture, thus misleadingly portraying it as the uncontested dominant culture of the new South Africa.</p>

Performances of poetry constitute significant cultural and literary events that challenge the representational limits and possibilities of transposing written words into live and recorded media. However, there has not been a comprehensive study of Canadian poetry that focuses specifically on performance. This dissertation undertakes a theorizing of performance that foregrounds mediation, audience, and presence (both readerly and writerly). The complex methodology combines theoretical approaches to reading (Linda Hutcheon on adaptation, Wolfgang Iser on the reader, and Roland Barthes on the materiality of writing) with poetics as theorized by Canadian poets (namely bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Jan Zwicky, Robert Bringhurst) in order to argue that performances of poetry are responsive exchanges between performers and audiences. Importantly, the dissertation argues that performances of poetry call for a re-evaluation of reading as listening, thereby altering the interaction between audience and performance from passive to participatory. Arranged in four chapters, the dissertation examines a range of Canadian poets and performances: The Four Horsemen (Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, Steve McCaffery, and bpNichol), dance adaptations of Michael Ondaatje’s poems, George Elliott Clarke’s poetic libretti, and Robert Bringhurst’s polyphonic poetry. Following the Introduction’s outlining of the term performance, Chapter One examines processes of recording and adapting avant-garde sound poetry, specifically in the sound and written poetry of Nichol and McCaffery. Chapter Two theorizes adaptation as a responsive reading practice in the context of dance adaptations of Ondaatje’s writing (Bruce McDonald’s Elimination Dance and Veronica Tennant’s Shadow Pleasures). In Chapter Three, Clarke’s jazz opera Québécité, with libretto by Clarke and music composed by D.D. Jackson, foregrounds a central argument of this dissertation: that multi-vocal poetics can, in fact, reconfigure multicultural politics. Chapter Four turns to polyphony as a textual representation of multi-vocality in the poetry of Robert Bringhurst. Through a close-listening to a musical poem by Jan Zwicky, the Conclusion points towards new critical directions in listening to Canadian poetry. Only in understanding how cultural and political performances are recorded, enacted and received both on and off the page can we listen, critically and actively, to our multi-voiced Canadian soundscapes.