Living mainly in the Romanian counties of Tulcea, Braila, Constanta and Ialomita, Lipovan Russians are a small ethnic group (consisting of about 40,000 people) of Russian origin (Eastern Slavs). One of the most important events in human life is the wedding. The nuptial ceremony amongst Lippovan communities has preserved a very high number of ethnic features within the stages of wooing, engagement and the wedding ceremony itself. All these stages have been preserved and have gradually adapted to changing times under the influence of modernity and pressures from without. Regarding the traditional music of the Lipovan Russians we can say that it bridges a period of profound change. All these changes demonstrate that the tradition has not disappeared, but that the music adapts to conditions imposed by society and progress. The evolution and development of the Dobrogean Lipovan Russian community has led to their adaptation of their repertoire to instruments borrowed from neighbouring ethnic groups: these include the electronic organ, the accordion, and percussion instruments. ...

The article uses the word 'mollipedes' as a point of repair in its attempt to re-examine the didactic poetry of Aratus and Cicero. The three title words used by the authors, namely Phaenomena, Diosemeia, and Prognostica, will be found to have the etymological capacity to suggest that the writers' true agenda relates not to inexplicable portents of the weather but to the scientific causes of natural phenomena. However these etymologies also suggest that the rhetoric by which this new discourse is accessed will be oracular. That is, in complete contradistinction to what appears to be the case, the arguments of these authors will prove to be sibylline, while their material will prove to be scientific. The brunt of the article will consist in detailed analyses of specific passages from Cicero's Prognostica and Aratus' Diosemeia. It is hoped these analyses will show that an array of subversive literary techniques are laid by these authors at the service of an agenda that seeks to convey to posterity the truth about the way the ancient world was perceived by its literary elite. In the final analysis Cicero's word 'mollipedes' proved to have a fatal flaw which rendered it unattractive to his successors. However for our purposes it will serve as a totemic indicator of the literary programme Cicero and Aratus bequeathed to the world. Had Cicero not used the word, the discovery of our thread would have been virtually impossible. ...

Music proves to be an axis of the human spirituality which establishes a connection between the ephemerality and eternity. By means of vibrational energy, music, which is art and science alike, expresses, builds, uplifts and transcends the experiences and the feelings of any human being endowed with conscience. Musicology is the science which comprises the complex music, in a practical and teorethical way, diachronical and synthetical, and also esthetical way. The musicologist is the complex artistic personality which sums all the knowledge of these subjects, subjects which interpenetrate. In time, musicologists from Iasi, have intensivly manifested their intelectual authority. They represent the third fulcrum, grographically and spiritually, of a third that fulfills the harmony of the contraries, Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi: Theodor T. Burada (1839-1923), Eduard Caudella (1841-1924), Titus Cerne (1859-1910), George Pascu (1912-1996), Mihail Cozmei (n.1931), Liliana Gherman (b. 1939), Laura Otilia Vasiliu (n.1958). ...

Atonalism - involves, by definition, the possibility of independent compositional procedures applicable in general. The opera can be seen as a kind of microscopic set with fixed content of intervals, expressed either as sound or as a melodic figure or a combination of both. ...

Voice is the tool that can create art - the art of singing - without any complement because voice is not only the product of the vocal cord vibration but the product of the whole perfect human body. Although in educating any type of voice, the benchmarks taken into account are considered the same, they still require adjustment submitted by a certain type of voice. Native predispositions determined by the country of origin and by the spoken language manifests in a number of features of the voices, recognized in the singing technique of the singers trained in one school or another. Voice training and education is based on principles considered by experts as generally valid, on exercises specific to a field of singing and taking into consideration all the features that exclusively regard the individuals. ...

This paper brings the reader's attention to the importance of the transition from the traditional to the postmodern teaching process that is part of the development of teaching. In the panoply of professions, teaching has acquired, over the years, the merit to stand first. Contemporary society owes much to teaching, given the importance of education in developing a morally and informational healthy society. In postmodern teaching the three characteristics of the educational process: teaching, learning and assessment are no longer separate. The assessment also comes along with the other two, in a continuous process. The conclusion of my research paper emphasizes the need of a teaching carrier based on a perpetual process of learning, as a guarantee for quality, and the ability to adapt to changes that we all witness, generated the circle of knowledge. ...

Artistic exploration period of the early 20th century draws two new directions in art history called Dadaism and Futurism. Along with the painters and writers who begin to manifest in these artistic directions, is distinguished composers whose works are focused on producing electronic, electric and acoustic sounds. Music gets a strong minimalist and concrete experimental type, evolving in different genres including the ambient music. ...

Postmodernism is presented as a form of liberation from the rigors imposed by establishing high standards of quality, with the intention to provide a more accessible art form. The modernist current has contributed to a form of sealing the art around an elite group hardly letting art to be savored and understood by the public. With its innovative ideas on dismantling the rigorous barriers of elitist art, the postmodernism will threaten the preset aesthetic standards to constitute a better level of understanding of contemporary art which is dictated by taste and opinion. ...