COMPOSITIONS FEATURING THE PIANO IN FANTASY FORM: 1820-1920

The Fantasy form offered a composer the freedom to create a work without concerns for fitting into the current stylistic and traditional structures. The flowering of the form seems to be concentrated from 1820-1920 since the composer started to use it as a way to convey a personal idea or to portray a special spirit. This dissertation is comprised of three recitals with fantasies in different genres and styles. Through performing these diverse fantasies, I have been inspired to connect with the imagery and spirit of the compositions in order to capture the unique sentiments of each piece. Also, in order to keep the audience absorbed in the music that is without structure, I have focused on expanding my technical abilities to vary color, sonority, and phrasing. Program one (April 26,2004) includes Fantasie, Op. 17 and Piano Concerto, Op. 54 (assisted by Ya-Hsin Wu) by R. Schumann. Program two (December 10, 2004) includes Three Fantastic Dances, Op. 5 by D. Shostakovitch, Fantasy "Sonataecossaise ", Op. 28 by F. Mendelssohn, Sonata No.2 "Sonata-Fantasy", Op. 19 by A. Scriabin and Fantasie for Piano and Violin, D 934 by F. Schubert with violinist, TaoChang Yu. The last program (November 1, 2005) includes Fantasia baetica by E. de Falla, Morceaux de Fantaisie, Op. 3 by S. Rachrnaninoff, Fantaisie, Op. 49, Impromptu No. 4 '%h.ntasy-hpromptu", Op. 66 and Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op. 61 by F. Chopin.

New World Gold Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain

Elvira Vilches examines economic treatises, stories of travel and conquest, moralist writings, fiction, poetry, and drama to reveal that New World gold ultimately became a problematic source of power that destabilized Spain���s sense of ...

Witnessing Crisis in Contemporary and Golden Age Spain

In this volume, experts on the Spanish Golden Age from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States offer analyses of contemporary works that have been influenced by the classics from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Evaluation of Serious Games: A Holistic Approach

Digital games constitute a major emerging technology that is expected to enter mainstream educational use within a few years. The highly engaging and motivating character of such games bears great potential to support immersive, meaningful, and situated learning experiences. To seize this potential, meaningful quality and impact measurements are indispensible. Although there is a growing body of evidence on the efficacy of games for learning, evaluation is often poorly designed, incomplete, biased, if not entirely absent. Well-designed evaluations demonstrating the educational effect as well as the return on investment of serious games may foster broader adoption by educational institutions and training providers, and support the development of the serious game industry. The European project RAGE introduces a comprehensive and multi-perspective framework for serious game evaluation, which is presented in this paper.

ReaderBench: An Integrated Cohesion-Centered Framework

Dascalu, M., Stavarache, L.L., Dessus, P., Trausan-Matu, S., McNamara, D.S., & Bianco, M. (2015). ReaderBench: An Integrated Cohesion-Centered Framework. In G. Conole, T. Klobucar, C. Rensing, J. Konert & É. Lavoué (Eds.), 10th European Conf. on Technology Enhanced Learning (pp. 505–508). Toledo, Spain: Springer.

Informal Learning in Online Knowledge Communities: Predicting Community Response to Visitor Inquiries

Nistor, N., Dascalu, M., Stavarache, L.L., Serafin, Y., & Trausan-Matu, S. (2015). Informal Learning in Online Knowledge Communities: Predicting Community Response to Visitor Inquiries. In G. Conole, T. Klobucar, C. Rensing, J. Konert & É. Lavoué (Eds.), 10th European Conf. on Technology Enhanced Learning (pp. 447–452). Toledo, Spain: Springer.