Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 5h

The hallucination term implies some kind of human perception is taking place, which is not the case. GenAI search responses are just data sorting & pattern matching, not "intelligence". But as long as you are wary it can be very useful for summarising & shaping an argument outline from lots of data

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 5h

This is "hallucination", and it occurs frequently in answers where there isn't enough data. It's been recognised since the mid-1990s, long before GenAI, but now it's visible to all. Meta calls it "confident statements that are not true", and it's a real problem for AI that has yet to be solved

Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne - Wikipedia

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 22h

60) Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne. Ernest Tomlinson's quodlibet setting famous tunes against Auld Lang Syne, which Gavin Sutherland has called "a work of contrapuntal genius". 120 quotations listed, a handful still to find. (9/23) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasi... www.youtube.com/watch?v=act4... #jawiki

Left Bank Two - Wikipedia

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 1d

The piece came from the De Wolfe music library, composed and performed on the vibes by Wayne Hill, backed by the Noveltones ( a group of Dutch session musicians). Hill wrote some other library music pieces, but by March 1967 he had died. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Ba...

English String Quartet - Wikipedia

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John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 1d

59) The English String Quartet was founded in 1902. Frank Bridge was an original member, and the quartet gave the first British performances of both the Debussy and Ravel string quartets. Various later iterations have been formed since. (12/21) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 4d

58) Joseph Engleman, light music composer from Birmingham and his son Harry Engleman. Joseph's works span from the Potted Overtures medley to a (lost) Symphony in E. Harry was greatly influenced by Billy Mayerl. His best known piece is Finger Prints (8/24) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 6d

Hilda Gaunt, rehearsal pianist with The Royal Ballet for over 40 years, was (said Frederick Ashton) "a tremendous drinker. She'd always be on tap." She died on 10 October 1975. That's her in the hat in 1939. I pieced together this short Wikipedia entry for her. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_G...

List of émigré musicians from Nazi Europe who settled in Britain - Wikipedia

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 6d

57) List of émigré musicians who escaped from Germany and Austria before the war. I created this list (of over 70), with bibliography, as an index so that I could continue to fill out the individual entries. What an amazing contribution they made. (2/20) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... #jawili

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 7d

56) There wouldn't have been any modern performances of Lilian Elkington's evocative orchestral tone poem Out of the Mist (1921) if the score and parts hadn't been rescued from a Worthing 2nd hand book shop in the 1970s (3/23) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sf... #jawiki www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ski...

User:Sfjohna - Wikipedia

Music executive John Boyden smiling while embracing his fiancée,...

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 7d

Great photo of record exec John Boyden and singer Belle Gonzalez in 1957, probably in Richmond, just before they married. They met in Singapore. Sadly the marriage was dissolved in the mid-1960s. Belle now has a Wikipedia page www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_G...

Music executive John Boyden smiling while embracing his fiancée, singer Isabella Gonzalez, April 22nd 1957.

www.gettyimages.co.uk

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 7d

I do too - and Updike liked it as well. He wrote (in Salon) "It has done me a favor, that book, because it's a book like few others. It's an act of homage, isn't it? He's a good writer, and he brings to that book all of his curious precision, that strange Bakeresque precision."

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 7d

"Book reviews, not books [are] the principal engines of change in the history of thought". Nicholson Baker, U & I (1991), as he admits to having only the vaguest idea of Harold Bloom's argument in ''The Anxiety of Influence" (and of course he is anxious about it!).

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 8d

55) Christopher Edmunds, a successor of Bantock at the Birmingham School of Music, produced two significant works foreshadowing the war: the B minor Piano Sonata and the Symphony No 2. The Sonata was premiered in May 1938 (5/23) www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0_J... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo... #jawki

YouTube video by John Mayer - Topic

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 8d

Innocently listening to the 1967 Joe Harriott and John Mayer album Indo-Jazz Fusions this afternoon, and on comes the theme tune to Ask The Family (aka Acka Rag). Re-entering my brain after nearly 50 years as if it's never been away! www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ZL...

Acka Raga

www.youtube.com

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 9d

54) I knew the late Giles Easterbrook and vividly remember first meeting him at his Novello office, just off of Golden Square in Soho, smoking his trusty pipe. He helped me so much getting the score of Lambert's Tiresias back into circulation (12/24) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_E... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 10d

53) John Arthur St. Oswald Dykes was the son of John Bacchus Dykes, the archetypal Victorian hymn composer. St Oswald Dykes was a pupil of Clara Schumann and taught piano at the Royal College of Music for over 50 years, from 1889 until 1941 (5/25) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ar... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 12d

52) Frederick Durrant and his wife moved to Harrow (71 Whitmore Road) in the 1920s, where they stayed for 50 years while he taught harmony and composition at the Royal Academy. His Clarinet Quintet in E flat won the Clements Memorial Prize in 1938 (10/23) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederi... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 12d

51) Rudolph Dolmetsch was just as interested in early music and instruments as his father Arnold and younger brother Carl - but he was also a composer of neo-baroque tendencies (Clarinet & Harp Concerto). He died during WW2 when his ship was torpedoed (10/24) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 14d

I'm late with this even though I knew it was coming: a new biography of Bill Haley by Chris Gardner and David Lee Joyner. I worked with Chris for several years at PRS, he knows about all sorts of music. His father was composer John Gardner and he played piano with the Stargazers in the 80s. Ordered

Deirdre of the Sorrows - Wikipedia

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 14d

50) As part of my campaign to add the musical perspective to Wikipedia entries that otherwise ignore it, I contributed the "Musical settings" section to the piece on Deirdre of the Sorrows. Someone else has since expanded it further, which is great (2/20) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre... #jawiki

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 14d

Two eclectic and lively books that fill out some significant gaps in the history of light music. Kenneth Young's "Music's Great Days In The Spas And Watering-Places", focusing on the UK, came out in 1968. Ian Bradley's broader (ie Europe and North America) "Water Music" is from 2010.

John Abbott @sfjohna.bsky.social · 15d

49) An entry on one of my favourite reference books, A Dictionary of Musical Themes of 1949 (and its rival, The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes, 1975). Fascinating to delve into the background of the authors. Not many look it up, but I love it (5/20) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dicti... #jawiki